Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany

Lokathor · Post by **Lokathor** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 8:01 am

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/ma ... ed-germany

A collection of 500 fairy tales, most of which were previously unheard of, was uncovered in Germany. They're working on getting it into English, and they have one of them already translated at the top of the article. It's... strange.

Anyway, I thought you guys might like to hear about such a thing and look for it in the future, what with how often it's useful to use older tales as the basis for adventure ideas and such.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 12:02 pm

awesome! thanks for posting this

ModelCitizen · Post by **ModelCitizen** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 12:16 pm

All RPGs must now include rules for drinking enemies after they turn into ponds.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 12:18 pm

The girl's just lucky that the witch made her fortitude save, or she'd have had to roll on the Bladder Burster table.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 1:18 pm

old news. the good thing is though, and i may have mentioned in the last place this was brought up, is that Disney cant claim ownership of ANY of them. Disney will now have to create its own stories to compete with fairy tales. princess and the frog...failure.

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 3:01 pm

Everyone I've talked to who's seen it has said that The Princess and the Frog was actually pretty good. Remember Shad, just because you don't like something (Or as has more commonly been demonstrated, 'just because you don't think you'd like something' or 'Just because you think you shouldn't like something') doesn't automatically make it bad.

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 3:16 pm

I thought Princess and the Frog was enjoyable. I loved the firefly. xD

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 3:56 pm

Doctor Facilier was a surprisingly good villain too.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 4:30 pm

Facilier was probably the best part of that movie, to me at least. I didn't like the firefly, but then, I hate ignorant (sounding) characters... Yes, this means I dislike most characters with southern accents.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 8:09 pm

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:Everyone I've talked to who's seen it has said that The Princess and the Frog was actually pretty good. Remember Shad, just because you don't like something (Or as has more commonly been demonstrated, 'just because you don't think you'd like something' or 'Just because you think you shouldn't like something') doesn't automatically make it bad.

the problems i have heard and agree mostly with are:

*bigotry via stereotype (Disney is famous for this, the only way they could create a BLACK princess to go along with the white, mythilogical, middle eastern, etc; was to set it in the Louisiana bayou. obviously because that is the only place dark-skinned persons live.

)
*it is a fish out of water. she was NOT a princess before and they had to alter the story to get back on track with each "subtle" change
*modernization of a fairy tale causes it to lose charm
*Shadow-master too closely resembled Baron Samedi from Live and Let Die

basically it boiled down to people only being able to tell the tale was present because it had a frog-prince and a kiss.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 9:03 pm

Shad, your complaints make little to no sense. The louisiana bayou is actually the third or fourth thing that comes to mind when I think where black people live. Which means Disney did a good job not being stereotypical. Seriously.

Also, Facilier's spirit shadows are pretty awesome. One of them is Jafar, one is Ursula... and I forget the other one. I just loved all that stuff.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 9:42 pm

...You Lost Me wrote:Shad, your complaints make little to no sense. The louisiana bayou is actually the third or fourth thing that comes to mind when I think where black people live. Which means Disney did a good job not being stereotypical. Seriously.

Also, Facilier's spirit shadows are pretty awesome. One of them is Jafar, one is Ursula... and I forget the other one. I just loved all that stuff.

the other one i think is either Pain or Panic, from Hercules, but i can never tell them apart without Matt Frewer and Bobcat Goldthwait actually doing the voice.

also the problem with what you said is a KEY in the other problem. "where black people live".

1 the plantation owner was white, it wasnt ALL black people. Aladdin was all middle east people by virtue of being middle east, but there could have been gauls (europeans? i get fuzzy on whether the silk road should be present near the story) , chinese, etc.

so for P&tF to have been ALL blacks, it failed, and there is NO need for it to have ALL blacks. it only needed a black princess, and a portion of the population to be black, or other so it didnt look like reverse-racism (which is just racism) with a black monarchy ruling an all-white populace.

since Disney doesnt go for historical accuracy, and i am fine with that. I wouldnt mind having a moor kingdom in medieval europe, or ANY other dark-skinned monarchy ANYWHERE on the planet.

the key thing is Disney wanted a BLACK princess, and the USA is the only country that really places that much importance on "blacks" in such high amounts.

anecdote: "black" american goes to africa for a visit, and native dark-skinned africans respond to them something like, "another damn american"; not like "we are great kin, lets be friends and family".

so while black v whitre is in places all over the world with fighting between them including but not limited to, USA, Africa, and Australia; there are many countries that just really dont give a shit.

Black Disney Princess, was made to appeal to Black Americans, as they claim "all Disney princesses have been white: Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella". those claims neglected to recognize: Jasmin, Ariel the fish/mermaid, Mulan (she isnt a princess, but is considered a "Disney princess" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Princess ), and Pocahontas as Disney Princesses, that are not "white".

it is ALL based on the argument ofr "light-skinned" vs extremely "dark-skinned" character drawings. Chinese are NOT white, Native American...NOT white, Middle Eastern...NOT white. Disney wanted a NEGRO Princess in order to satisfy the want of some.

i have no problem with wanting a "black" or "negro" Disney princess. if the made a new story and did it write, being a Disney movie, it stands a good chance of me liking it. MY problem is that P&tF butchered the actual fairy tale. Had it been an ALL white cast, granted voodoo is more prominently a non-white thing in most stories, i STILL would not like P&tF, because the story was butchered.

Its like Robin Hood with Russel Crowe. It was an OK movie, IF they changed his name, because it changes the story TOO much. King Richard can't come back to pardon Robin if the king is dead! Also like 4th edition D&D.. it might be a good game, but to MANY it doesnt represent what people know as D&D, and given a different name that doesnt include preconceptions of what it "should be" to those already knowing about it, it may have been better accepted. Treasure Planet was a retelling of a story that stayed true to its roots with a genre swap. it is really ALL about violating SoD with ANY sort of fiction. P&tF violated my SoD, like Robin Hood, 4th edition, and other things not named (DBE to name one of those unnamed things).

Compare if you will two movies. Pick ANY Alice in Wonderland movie with either The Matrix or The Labyrinth. should either of the latter been called "Alice in Wonderland" then they would have had less chance to be as successful than they were, for whatever that is worth. Changing so much of the Alice story, and... AND giving it a new name, made it MUCH more easily acceptable and enjoyed by removing those preconceptions that come with the name, and thus does NOT so readily violate SoD based on those preconceptions. Yet The Matrix movies, and The Labyrinth are effectively retellings of Alice in Wonderland, and the Matrix even calls attention directly to it in the first movie. so you can draw the parallels from there, once you realize what the movie is, and accept it still and may even go "WOW i never notice4d it was this story" and still appreciate the work because how well it was done to give the same story in a COMPLETELY new way, that may have gone unnoticed.

P&tF then was a bad story, when the lead up to it was "Disney's first black princess" by the media, and then the story failing for some to represent the original by changing it in weird places, added to the nature of WHY she is black. it is just a bad fanfic of the fairy tale made for Disney to look more Politically Correct.

Essence · Post by **Essence** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 10:48 pm

My big problem with the Princess and the Frog is that she wasn't a damned princess. Ever. She had zero of the qualities that you think of when you think "Disney Princess." It would be like Hasbro inserting Mach Kick into My Little Pony. Sure, it's a horse, but that doesn't make it a Pony. (Best quote: "Quite possibly the only transformer in history with a brushable tail.")

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 10:54 pm

Well, they got up to some bizarre hijinks in Beast Wars Neo, so you never know...

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 11:05 pm

Essence wrote:My big problem with the Princess and the Frog is that she wasn't a damned princess. Ever. She had zero of the qualities that you think of when you think "Disney Princess." It would be like Hasbro inserting Mach Kick into My Little Pony. Sure, it's a horse, but that doesn't make it a Pony. (Best quote: "Quite possibly the only transformer in history with a brushable tail.")

She's as much a princess as Belle, solely because of their marriage to a Prince at the end.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 11:28 pm

virgil wrote:
Essence wrote:My big problem with the Princess and the Frog is that she wasn't a damned princess. Ever. She had zero of the qualities that you think of when you think "Disney Princess." It would be like Hasbro inserting Mach Kick into My Little Pony. Sure, it's a horse, but that doesn't make it a Pony. (Best quote: "Quite possibly the only transformer in history with a brushable tail.")
She's as much a princess as Belle, solely because of their marriage to a Prince at the end.

and Cinderella.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Dec 05, 2012 11:57 pm

Leress wrote:
virgil wrote:
Essence wrote:My big problem with the Princess and the Frog is that she wasn't a damned princess. Ever. She had zero of the qualities that you think of when you think "Disney Princess." It would be like Hasbro inserting Mach Kick into My Little Pony. Sure, it's a horse, but that doesn't make it a Pony. (Best quote: "Quite possibly the only transformer in history with a brushable tail.")
She's as much a princess as Belle, solely because of their marriage to a Prince at the end.
and Cinderella.

yeah, Snow White, Aurora, Jasmin, and Ariel are the only ones that START as a princess, though Pocahontas is a chieftain's daughter.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Thu Dec 06, 2012 2:57 am

Tiana spends most of the movie as a frog, not a princess. No matter how much I like the movie, it just doesn't feel quite like the other Disney Princess flicks.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Dec 06, 2012 3:31 am

Maj wrote:Tiana spends most of the movie as a frog, not a princess. No matter how much I like the movie, it just doesn't feel quite like the other Disney Princess flicks.

What? Belle isn't a princess for the movie. Ariel's fish for at least half of it. Cinderella is a servant for most of hers.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Thu Dec 06, 2012 3:44 am

Ursula Vernon has done Annotated Fairy Tales. Some of them are pretty wild.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Thu Dec 06, 2012 3:52 am

MGuy wrote:
Maj wrote:Tiana spends most of the movie as a frog, not a princess. No matter how much I like the movie, it just doesn't feel quite like the other Disney Princess flicks.
What? Belle isn't a princess for the movie. Ariel's fish for at least half of it. Cinderella is a servant for most of hers.

I think she means Tiana doesn't look like a girl. Cinderella and Belle are both people for the whole movie, and at least Ariel had a human face.

JigokuBosatsu · Post by **JigokuBosatsu** » Thu Dec 06, 2012 8:59 pm

Remember, stories can only be told one way.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Sun Dec 09, 2012 10:34 pm

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Remember, stories can only be told one way.

Oliver & Company : Oliver Twist
The Great Mouse Detective : Sherlock Holmes
A Bug's Life : The Ant and the Grasshopper

While the on is pretty much the same characters (ants and grasshoppers), the others change the perspective in a faithful representation of the story.

Tiana and the rest gets screwed up because Disney decided to merge the Grimm story with a 2002 children's book loosely based on the Grimm Fairy Tale, and the merging and changes to make them merge just didnt fucking work.

if they had picked ONE story, not merging the original with something based on the original (a copy of a copy) then it would have stood a better chance at being recognizable or as good as other altered stories. otherwise you are looking a something like Fracture Fairy Tales that were humorous satires of fairy tales like Grimm and Aesop fables that appeared in Rocky and Bullwinkle show. those were NOT at all considered to be faithful, but getting the point across about the general idea of the story.

Tiana does NOT fulfill any ONE story because, and again, it is a copy of a copy, and EVERY should know how that works outside of digital copying. each successive copy of a copy degrades the product, such as happened with Disney's Princess and the Frog movie.