My random Baum/Oz-related headcanon is that at one point Princess Langwidere wanted Queen Zixi’s head because she thought it was pretty. Eventually, she managed to get it (somehow...) but then immediately returned it when she realized that as a trade-off to Zixi’s eternal youth, her reflection actually shows her true age (680+ years). This didn’t sit well with Langwidere, because she likes admiring her reflection.
Actually would not be opposed to writing this out.
Rodney Matthews illustrated the Usborne books Greek and Norse Legends and Tales of King Arthur. They are fondly remembered to this day as some of the most metal retellings of legends in existence.
Rodney Matthews (who incidentally is on tumblr at @rodneymatthewsstudios !) really went above and beyond with the paintings! Very colorful, very spiky. Check out Scylla, for instance, combining both the six-headed and the dog-belted descriptions.
The Medusa really sticks out in my memory but I only just now realized she also has insect wings I took to just be background texture all my life
Nobody does spikes and eyebrows/lashes better. Check out the Green Knight too! Metal.
Proposition: Chivalric romances and fairy tales are set in the same universe, but told by different perspectives.
Chivalric romances, especially the Arthurian ones, focus sorely on knightly princes fighting epic battles, going into quests and rescuing damsels in peril.
Fairy Tales in general focus more on the exploits of those damsels in peril, along with some working class representation in the figure of lucky tricksters and helpless children.
In other words, Chivalric romances are mainly about Prince Charmings, while fairy tales are about everyone else.
The reason I started thinking about this was because of how much these types of stories share similar settings:
Humans, fae-like beings, dwarfs, cannibal giants (Ogres), and dragons being the main races.
Enchantress like Morgan Le Fay and the Lady of the Lake being suspiciously similar to the Fairies from the french fairy tales.
Christian entities being super present and somehow living relatively peacefully with other magical brings.
Heck, the oldest recorded version of the Sleeping Beauty type of story was in Perceforest, a Chivalric romance mea t to be a prequel to the King Arthur mythos.
Remember Perrault's version of the story, where after waking the Sleeping Beauty the prince has to go to war, leaving her and their children with his ogre mother?
Totally would be the type of story that chivalric romances would explore in bloody details
Hans Christian Andersen really heard this folktale about a little girl getting thrown into hell for stepping on a loaf and then went “you know what I don’t like this and I am going to write a fix-it fan fiction with some glorious redemption arc to give her happy-ending”
And somehow his fan fiction replaced canon over the decades and decades of years and people only remembered his fiction a century and half later
(Read about the Andersen story being based on an older folktale somewhere online a while ago when I was like “How could he punish the girl in such way.” Unfortunately I cannot find the source anymore.)
I just love it that Inge was not saved because of her two mother’s laments, but saved because another girl who knew her only through songs (that said she’s a bad girl) felt sorry for her and pleaded that she should get a chance. And this girl did it not only once when she was little but also again when she grew old and was about to die. It was her uncondescending empathy that made Inge wanted to listen to her words and was finally able to break free of her personal hell.
It was almost like it was the guilt and anger and self-loathing of Inge herself that kept trapping her on the bread and forced her to keep stepping on the bread.
———-
I have been listening audiobooks while struggling finishing some exhausting drawing for portfolio, and I just think Andersen’s stories are so interesting… We get so many women in his stories. The women are not all the innocent beautiful creatures of fairytales; there are women who are sinister or ugly or wild or strange but they have their own lives and goals. And they helped each other. (Sometimes the help came with a price)
‘The Little Mermaid’ by Edmund Dulac, 1911
From a German old book : ‘Lina’ s Fairytale ’, author : Albert Ludwig Grimm, 1837
Illustration by John Bauer (1907) from “The Seven Wishes”
I think the main problem with a lot of Morgan le Fay characterizations is that they focus too much on the angst and not enough on the Wile. E. Coyote-esque schemes
Morgan: Even now, my servant, the Green Knight, goes to challenge my brother's men. But once they lop off his head, he'll just pick it up and walk out of the room! MWA-HA-HA!
Sebile: Weren't we trying to kill Guinevere?
Morgan: Yeah, and when she sees this, she'll die of a heart attack.
Sebile:
Sebile: Okay?
Reblogging with these absolutely gems that were hidden in the tags:
‘Wild Woman riding a Unicorn’ from am unknown German artist from 15th century known as the “Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet”, (1475)
Last week I mentioned Bill Ellis’s essay on the connection between fairy tales like Cinderella and the magical girl genre, particularly in relation to Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles and the influence Sailor Moon had on it.
It then occurred to me that there is a more direct reference in Sailor Moon’s first arc. Specifically, the chapter where Usagi infiltrates the D Kingdom embassy’s party. The specifics and characters are very different, but there’s still the basic rhythm of “I want to go to the party”-->”You can’t go”-->”I’m going to use magic to go anyway!” For an added bonus, Usagi’s dad does see her at the party but doesn’t realize it’s really her (just commenting that she looks like his daughter). Said chapter is also a pretty pivotal moment in that arc, since it’s where she dances with Tuxedo Mask and Luna starts calling into question whether the latter is someone they can trust.
Seems Twitter is going to make it so that if I’m not active on my account within 30 days, it’ll be declared inactive and deleted.
I know I haven’t used Twitter much, but it was nice to have on the side. Though I haven’t really been feeling some of the more recent changes the current CEO has been going with.
In any case, I think I’m fine posting more on here than there. Having a bigger word length and the ability to edit posts (for free) is a huge draw. And I’m happy that people still check in on here despite me not being on a lot.
Either way, thank you for following me, as always.
Neverending Story motion comic drawings appreciation part 1 ✨
I've been wanting to post this for a while! All the drawings I did to create the Neverending Story motion comics. This way its easier to appreciate each illustration and give them a closer look if you feel like they worth it.
(Maybe it doesn’t look like much, but it was a challenge to create a short comic from a book as incredibly complex as this one)
If you haven’t watched the motion comics here they are:
Once you know that Marissa Meyer based The Lunar Chronicles (and specifically Cinder, the first book) on an old Sailor Moon fanfic she wrote, the inspiration can be fairly obvious (most obvious being the missing princess from the moon and the threat of war between Earth and the Moon). That being said, there’s enough of Meyer’s own inspiration/ideas in there to help make it stand out (the futuristic setting, for one thing).
But it did make me think: Bill Ellis (who I mentioned on here before) wrote an essay about Princess Tutu where he said that Cinderella--the fairy tale Cinder retells--is an archetypal precedent to magical girl transformations. Cinderella and Sailor Moon have premises unique to themselves, but then I thought about the basics of both stories: both Cinderella and Usagi start out as girls who are at a low point of their life (Cinderella is mistreated by her stepfamily, while Usagi is chronically late for school and failing tests--one is arguably worse than the other, sure, but the point is, neither of them is doing great in their own way). Then both of them encounter magic (fairy godmother, talking space cat, etc.) that gives them, as Ellis puts it, the skills they need to accomplish whatever they need to do (go to the ball, fight evil). For an added bonus, no one at the ball ever recognizes Cinderella, similar to how no one ever puts it together that Usagi is Sailor Moon, despite her never covering her face (though she did have a mask in the early chapters of the manga). Also, there’s a prince in both stories.
With that in mind, it’s not hard to see how it was easy for Meyer to take inspiration from Sailor Moon in her Cinderella retelling. (Interestingly enough, the original fanfic was a Puss in Boots AU, because as Meyer pointed out, both Puss in Boots and Sailor Moon have talking cats.)
#the lunar chronicles#cinder#sailor moon#bishoujo senshi sailor moon#usagi tsukino#linh cinder#marissa meyer#naoko takeuchi#cinderella#charles perrault#magical girl#magical girls#fairy tales#retellings#bill ellis#princess tutu#random thoughts#text#I don't know if I ever specified on here#but I am a Sailor Moon fan#just finally got around to watching the new adaptations
The Witch That Whirls in the Air: The Folkloric Roots of Walpurgisnacht in “Puella Magi Madoka Magica”
“On this night, I became a Magical Girl.”–Homura Akemi, Puella Magi Madoka Magica Drama CD: “Memories of You”
(The Witch Walpurgisnacht descends on Mitakihara.)
Walpurgisnacht casts a shadow—both literally and figuratively—over Puella Magi Madoka Magica from the very beginning, first appearing in Madoka Kaname’s dream as a looming figure floating ominously in the sky, while Homura Akemi tries in vain to defeat it (the scene accompanied by the appropriately ominous song “Magia”). It isn’t mentioned again until the sixth episode, when Homura tells Kyoko Sakura that Walpurgisnacht will appear in Mitakihara in a couple of weeks, and again in Episode 10, when its importance to Homura’s story and the overall plot are revealed. In the eleventh episode, Walpurgisnacht finally makes its appearance in the city, creating a supercell storm and forcing the civilians into a shelter, leaving the city abandoned while Homura faces off against it on her own. It appears in the middle of the storm, an upside-down giant of a woman dressed in medieval clothing, with gears where her feet should be, heralded by a surreal, circus procession, and accompanied by shadowy, ghost-like Familiars. While Walpurgisnacht may at first glance appear to just be a generic monster with a distinctive name, it has many roots in folklore, not just in its name, but also in its appearance and methods.
(Spoilers incoming.)
‘The Cold Heart’ from Wilhelm Hauff’s Fairytales, illustrated by Carl Offterdinger, 1869