Writing Happily Never After

[Sara]

[FONT=century gothic]Well, I was going through my old essays and found this little pearl. This was written about two years ago. I like to think that my writing has improved since then...

But it's a rant about fairy tales. I was in a fairly awful mood when I wrote it, but reading it now always makes me laugh.

It hasn't been edited for mistakes since it was written, so be gentle with your criticisms.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think about it.[/font]

[b]HAPPLIY NEVER AFTER[/B]

I just can?t figure out fairy tales. I mean, most of them are pretty ridiculous. Take Rapunzel. You know the story. The pregnant wife gets this totally uncontrollable craving for?of all things?lettuce. How likely is that? Chocolate, I could understand. Cheesecake? Definitely. But lettuce? What, is she part rabbit? And do you have any idea how long it is going to take before someone?s hair is twenty feet long? Cause Zel?s tower has to be at least two stories high, or the kid would have jumped out the window before she was four. Hair grows less than an inch a month! It would take between twenty-five and thirty years! How does the witch get up to the top of the tower for the first two or three decades of this girl?s life?

How about Snow White? Evil stepmother-witch sends this kind-hearted woodsman out into the forest to kill her stepdaughter and bring back her heart in a box. You have got to be kidding me. I mean, if you?re gonna off someone, at least hire a mercenary who?s gonna get it done right. None of this sentimental stuff. And what?s she going to do with the heart? Eat it? I mean, this isn?t some little pendant or piece of cute jewelry or something. This is a real, bloody, squishy heart. Does she have some sort of spell she wants to do, but she doesn?t have all the ingredients? ?One heart of a beautiful maiden, must be stored in an elaborate jewelry box before being used.? Sure. Makes perfect sense. A little salt, a little pepper...

And what about Rumplestiltskin? Don?t you think that funny little men who can spin straw into gold would be well-known? Come on, they?d have to be listed somewhere. Yellow pages, maybe? Everyone has to make a living. Although the price is a little high. First born children and all that. Makes you wonder about this guy. I mean, can he possibly know what he?s getting into? Probably not. Give him the whining little brat. In three days he?ll be back, begging to spin straw into gold for the rest of his life, if you?ll just take the kid back. Or maybe he eats them. You never can tell.

Speaking of unlimited gold, do you remember King Midas? Everything he touched turned to gold. Including people. So much for an active love life. And that?s gotta do something awful to supply and demand. I mean, that?s totally going to wreck the senior economics classes. An unlimited supply of gold? THAT fast, it?s worthless, and people are buying things with fig leaves again. Good wishing, genius.

And Hansel and Gretel. Cast out of their home by an evil step-mother, they find a house in the forest made of gingerbread and candy. Do you have any idea what would happen to a real gingerbread house? What about rain? What about ants ? What about Health Department Officials?

Take Sleeping Beauty. Especially the Disney-ized version. Puh-lease! Like an evil witch would ever be put off by a little thing like having every single spinning wheel in the kingdom destroyed. She?s an evil sorceress, people! You could repeatedly try to kill the princess, and she would not be able to die until she pricked her finger on her sixteenth birthday. Curses are stubborn like that. At least in this one the evil witch isn?t a step-mother.

What listing of fairy tales is complete without Cinderella? This one. So there. Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!

The Frog Prince. This has got to be the stupidest story ever. No, I?m sorry. I didn?t mean that. The stupidest story ever was some asinine thing in my eighth grade literature book. So this gets to take second place. Princess meets frog. Frog rescues princess?s ball from fountain. Princess kisses Frog. Frog turns into prince. Princess marries frog. How is this girl ever gonna learn to live happily ever after with someone who wants to get rid of the termite problem by eating them? I mean, what if they go to Mickey D's? He?s gonna try to order all his meals with a side of french flies. (Bah. Old joke.) Sheesh. She should have kept the talking frog.

Jack and the Beanstalk. How do hundred foot tall giants manage to build a castle in the clouds? Clouds. Water vapor. This stuff if not strong enough to support a mouse, much less angry giants who stomp around reciting bad poetry. And what?s up with the singing harp and golden goose eggs? Were they exposed to radiation, or what? These are not things you would want to approach, much less steal from a giant. And how exactly does English blood smell any different than, say, Swedish blood? Just wondering. It?s all in the interest of science.

Little Red Riding Hood. If I am correct?and you?d better believe that I always am?this story is about a girl named (get this) Little Red Riding Hood. And you thought Rapunzel had it bad, being name after lettuce! She is called Little Red Riding Hood because, wherever she went, she wore a neon green football jersey. (The Mutant Frogs, #44, Prince) No, she wore a ?little red riding hood.? Just what the heck IS a ?little red riding hood?? Beats the heck out of me, but that?s what she wore. So Little Red goes to bring her poor sick Grandma some cookies. Now, where I come from, Grandmas are typically thought of being the ones to bake cookies to give to their sweet little grandchildren, not vice-versa. But, hey, I live in the real world! What do I know? So this little girl (let me stress this next bit) with her mother?s permission?with her mother?s orders (do we see a possible step-mother here?)?goes out into the big, dark, scary, wolf-infested forest, and meets the friendly neighborhood villain. Now this girl is not too bright. When the wolf asks where she?s going, she tells him. And then she takes the secret ?short-cut? that will inevitably cause her more grief than anything else in her life. But, being the girl she was ?the one named after a type of clothing no one even knows about? she cheerfully waves goodbye to Mr. I-Just-Had-The-Three-Little-Pigs-For-Breakfast. That?s all I?m going to write about Little Red, because, frankly, I?ve already written more about the idiot than she deserves.

And now for another idiotic little girl with a weird name who goes out into the forest by herself! You guessed it?Goldi-ditz! Er, I mean Goldi-locks. Oops. Ha-ha. This girl is a destructive maniac. She breaks chairs, steals food, bounces on beds. She is a complete brat. She deserves to be eaten by angry bears. I mean, the poor creatures have gotta get some compensation for supplying her with bed and breakfast. Although not necessarily in that order.

The ugly duckling was a perfectly normal swanlet (or whatever the heck the term is for a baby swan) whose egg just happened to be stolen by rude, mean, unfeeling, hateful ducks. His evil adopted sibs give him a lot of grief, and his evil adopted parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents etc., don?t really care. He goes through a lot of hazing before running away from home and becoming a beautiful swan. The moral is that running away from home will solve all your problems.

The Princess and the Pea. I don?t know if this particular princess had a name. And although she almost certainly had a wicked step-mother, I don?t know much about that either. All I know is that she slept on at least twenty mattresses, and was such a spoiled brat that she felt a pea underneath them and couldn?t sleep. Poor baby. I feel sooooo sorry for you, I think I?m gonna be sick.

The Emperor?s New Clothes. This a cool story about two fun con-artists. They go into this place where the emperor is a big idiot, and they tell him that if he?ll give them a gajillion dollars worth of gold and jewels, they?ll make him the most totally awesome cloak in the world. Here?s the best part: they don?t! They tell him that only really ?smart? people can see it. The emperor doesn't want everyone to think he?s not smart, so he pretends that he can see it! Pretty soon the entire empire is pretending to see the ?invisible? cloak. And then this one little jerk says that he can?t see it, and everybody realizes that the emperor isn?t wearing any clothes. The emperor gets all mad and embarrassed and everything. He orders the two really fun cool guys to be shot, or hung, or drawn and quartered, or whatever it is that they did to criminals. But as far as I?m concerned, they got away. Cause otherwise, what?s the point of the story?

The Three Little Pigs has got to be one of the more violent Fairy-tales. I didn?t learn it the Disney-ized way, where all three little porkers survive. No, I learned it the real way, the good way, the way in which two of the stupid idiots get killed. For crying out loud, if you try and build a house out of straw, you deserve to die. Slowly. Digested alive. You gotta feel sorry for the wolf, though. He must have felt sick for a month afterward.

Does anyone actually know the story of Puss-In-Boots? I don?t. Apparently its about a cat named Puss-in-Boots for obvious reasons. Other than that, I?m not sure, though if I had to guess I?d say it involved a wicked step-mother or two.

[Raiha]

[COLOR=royalblue]*snort* :rotflmao: Ah hah, ahaha, that's really good.........very funny........reminds me of a book called...[u]Fractured Fairy Tales.[/u][/COLOR]

[Spikey]

That was really nice. Keep up the good work.

[Guest Shift]

Heh nice one!!! And Spikey i notice you got to 500 posts....HOORAY FOR SPIKEY!!!!!!

[Yukazi]

Odd, yet cool Good Job

Oh, and it looks like someone else hit 500 also, huh Herman?