On a scale from fairytale to grimdark

[theInmara]

OK, so. Fairytales were the original grimdark, and your description of them is the Disneyfied version. But, that's beside the point. Just a neat thing to know.

And, well. For either of our worlds, The Sunspot Chronicles or girldragongizzard, we don't relate to this scale very well. We don't really truck with the concept of good and evil, for one. Though, there's definitely pain, suffering, and obscenely cruel intentions and actions. But, uh, yes? Take your scale and squish it down into a single box with all the descriptions, and put it into a blender. That's our rating. There are room for heroes and improvement and joy and moments of pure beauty in the darkness, but the biggest mistake the universe ever made was going through with the Big Bang.

Anyway, we're already there. This is it. We just add some wish fulfillment and let it ferment.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

OK, so. Fairytales were the original grimdark, and your description of them is the Disneyfied version. But, that's beside the point. Just a neat thing to know.

In a way, the "Disneyfied" versions are the direct heirs of L. Frank Baum, and typical of "American Fairy Tales" - a lot of the European ones (especially the ones collected by Hans Christian Anderson) are really brutal and dark (The Little Mermaid is ... nasty. Just plain nasty) - and they don't hold a candle to the only fairy tales I liked as a kid, the Slavic ones centered around the antics of the ogre-witch Baba Yaga.

Baum wanted to write something "sweeter" and "more appropriate for children" - and thus his Oz, Santa Claus and other two series of novels came into being as the "American Fairy Tale."

 

[corruption]

The original fairy tales WERE grimdark!
Take the tale of the dancing girl, who wished to be able to always dance. She had to dance even when tired and feet bleeding. It got so bad she cut her own feet off, but had to dance on the stubs of her feet.
Little Read Riding Hood? There was no woodsman. She was raped and eaten. Granny was eaten as well.
Sleeping Beauty? She woke up to her twin babies sucking on her breasts. She was a virgin when she went to sleep
Cinderella? She had small feet, and her stepsisters to try to get the slipper to fit by cutting parts of their own feet off. In the end they had to work as maids in the palace, even through they were crippled and could not walk.

And those are just versions the brothers Grim considered acceptable for the public to read.
Hmm Grim = grimdark? Maybe an unintended connection?

There is a reason the Fairies, and other Faye were called the Kindly ones; they got ticked if you implied otherwise. You did not want that to happen!

I would love to see some slashers having to face off against fairytale monsters in deathmatches.

If you talk about disneyfied fairytales, when you consider the implications of some, be very worried.
One example is: How did Cinderella get past security to get into the palace?

 

[CharlesEBrown]

The original fairy tales WERE grimdark!
Take the tale of the dancing girl, who wished to be able to always dance. She had to dance even when tired and feet bleeding. It got so bad she cut her own feet off, but had to dance on the stubs of her feet.

The Red Shoes

Little Read Riding Hood? There was no woodsman. She was raped and eaten. Granny was eaten as well.

Well... the whole story was allegedly an allegory for a teenaged girl getting her first period so...

Sleeping Beauty? She woke up to her twin babies sucking on her breasts. She was a virgin when she went to sleep

Now THAT one I never heard before!

Cinderella? She had small feet, and her stepsisters to try to get the slipper to fit by cutting parts of their own feet off. In the end they had to work as maids in the palace, even through they were crippled and could not walk.

Have heard a couple versions of that one - supposedly, in the original version, the slippers were FUR not GLASS... and still only fit Cinderella's feet. And then you have the version Tanith Lee wrote in "Redder Than Blood - Tales of the Sisters Grimmer" were Ashella was a witch who murdered the prince for what his family did to hers in the past...

 

[Rezcore]

In my OC story, it's definitely a Gilded World, with an evil God masquerading as good. And tyrants everywhere.

 

[NotaNuffian]

I want to complain.

The grimdark world's black text with red background is actually assaulting my eyes.

Gilded world should be the norm.