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"Doc" Emmett Brown ([personal profile] clockwork_doc) wrote2008-10-03 10:56 pm

Just Prompts: Fairy Tales (9/26 -- 10/9)

What’s your favorite Fairy Tale? Why?

Anyone who knows me knows I take a very dim view of faeries and the like these days. They’re NOT how they’re portrayed in most of these stories. If a Fae takes a liking to you, what you want to do is run. Not that it’ll help. . . .

Of course, given that I’m stuck in an alternate reality, perhaps I’m being unfair. Anyone want to give me examples of more pleasant, Disney-like Fae?

(And if you must know, as a child I was fond of “Sleeping Beauty.” I always wondered if someone could really sleep a hundred years without aging. Makes me wonder now if some Fae tried it)

[identity profile] exiledqueen.livejournal.com 2008-10-04 03:56 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, the old fairy tales are quite accurate. The tale of Tam Lin, or the story of Childe Rowland, even some of the old ballads. Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen, we daren't go a-hunting, for fear of little men... The old Celtic and Anglo-Saxon and Germanic märchen all pay the Unseelie their due quite well.

It's the Victorian stories one must watch out for, with their obnoxious talking animals, their Rackham paintings of twinkly little tarts with wings...of course, I'm afraid that Shakespeare's mostly to blame for that, they were just following suit. Oh, and Perrault, and Andersen. Fairies in their own right, sure enough, but not my kind.

But as much fun as it is to hear mortals shiver at the sound of your name, or hurry past fens where they see strange lights, I must admit that the pleasanter fairy tales do make things so much easier. Almost too easy. There's almost no more sport left in it.

[identity profile] clockwork-doc.livejournal.com 2008-10-04 04:06 am (UTC)(link)
. . . Well, the Victorian stories will never fool me again, that's for sure.

And you'll never take me alive again

[identity profile] exiledqueen.livejournal.com 2008-10-04 04:17 am (UTC)(link)
I should hope not, Doctor. You're much too old to clap your hands and believe, after all.

Practically a heap of rusting parts, in fact. I won't have to take you alive--I'll simply wait until you fall apart where you're standing and then sell you for scrap.