Happy Birthday, Wilhelm Grimm

[filkertom]

On this day in 1786. (He kinda gets short shrift in Wikipedia, compared to his brother Jacob or the two of them together. Let alone the actual Fairy Tales.)

Today's assignment is to come up with a title and a brief description of your own Grimm-style fairy tale. Use one of their title formats ("[Adjective] [noun]", "The [adjective] [noun{s}]", "The [number] [noun{s}]", "The [noun{s}] and the [noun{s}]", etc.) and keep the description to 250 words or less. Or just write a drabble. ;) Mine is:

The Glassblower and the Goblin

An artisan who blows glass sculpture accidentally offends a vagrant goblin, who curses him with the hiccups. As this make it impossible for him to ply his trade, the glassblower sets off after the goblin and tries to apologize and get the curse removed. Along the way the glassblower meets a pretty and clever maid, who attempts numerous hiccup cures she learned from her mother. The goblin, who has been up to this point mightily amused by the whole affair, gets angry and threatens the maid, telling her to mind her own business. The glassblower is so fearful for the maid's safety that he confronts the goblin, whose curses no longer work on him. That one good scare got rid of the hiccups. The glassblower chases off the goblin, and he and the maid get married.

Comments

[hanabishirecca.livejournal.com]

Tom, I actually just stopped writing for this morning on my fairy tale I'm writing, The Rose and the Crown. I've been working on it for several months and am around 20,000 words or so. Funny you should mention such a game. I also posted on your LJ the Origin of the Munka at one point. I love fairy tales.

I'll give you a new story though.

The Lost Child
A pixie is wandering about the fae woods and encounters a small child with a ragged doll who is lost. She uses her magic to bring the doll to life and entertain the child. The pixie has birds and squirrels bring the child fruits and nuts to eat. When the night arrives, she has a large bear curl up with the child to keep her warm. In the morning, the pixie helps bring the child to her parents. When the pixie sees the parents leave the child's doll behind and punish the child for getting lost, she curses them. So long as the parents do anything but spoil the child, they receive nothing but ill fortune.

[tomreedtoon.livejournal.com]

The Anal-Retentive Man and the Magic Snake

An overly-cautious boy with an inclination to animal cruelty wandered through the woods one day. He came across a snake and almost beat it to death. But the snake said, "Hold on. I'm a magic snake. Spare my life and I'll grant you a wish, any wish."

The boy agreed, and took the snake home and put it in a glass aquarium with a sealed top, and fed the snake and took care of it. "When are you going to make your wish?" the snake asked. The boy replied, "I'm not going to make it in haste. I know how bad that turns out. Besides, I'll wait for an occasion when I really need a wish."

Years passed. The boy grew to manhood. He cared for the snake, feeding it mice, and refusing to make that wish. The snake begged for the wish, longing for his freedom, but the man refused. Then, one day, the boy dropped the day's mouse into the aquarium and left. Before the snake could eat, the mouse said, "Hold on. I'm a magic mouse. Spare my life and I'll grant you a wish, any wish."

Unlike the man, the snake knew what he wanted. And when the man returned home and opened the door, there was a six-foot tall magic snake and a six-foot tall magic mouse waiting for him. And in the last few seconds of his life, the man was no longer anal-retentive, if you know what I mean and I'm sure you do.

Moral: Everyone makes an ass of himself, but only a fool makes himself a tight-ass.

[signy1.livejournal.com]

Once upon a time there was a small child with hideously, excessively cruel parents, because the storyteller had some major unresolved issues and this was several centuries before therapists. Anyhow, the poor child was forced to run away, and along the road, he or possibly she met several bizarre people with nothing better to do than stand around displaying awe-inspiring, elemental powers, and for some inexplicable reason all these quasi-superheroes were perfectly happy to sign on as the child's unpaid sidekicks.

So. The king of that country had a problem he couldn't solve using his large and well-trained army, nor his puissant and wise old wizards, or even the fairy godmother he kept shackled to the sink for emergencies. Just as he was loudly lamenting his utter despair, the child, now using his (or her) newly acquired private army to compensate for her (or his) PTSD and chronically low self esteem, and volunteered to solve the problem.

The odd talents of the assorted sidekicks were-- shockingly enough-- exactly what was needed to solve the problem, and despite the fact that the child had done little or nothing, the king rewarded him or her lavishly, and adopted her or him as his heir. The no longer useful sidekicks politely left the kingdom to wait for the next pitiful quasi-orphan, the evil parents were tortured to death in a truly gruesome manner, and everyone else lived happily ever after.