Free Online Course on Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales for Late 2015 - Registration Open Now!

Note:this is a Repost of an Announcement (Additional images are by Helen Stratton)

Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales

Explore the fairy tale world of H.C. Andersen - the inspiration behind The Little Mermaid and Frozen - with this free online course.

ABOUT THE COURSE

This free online course will introduce you to some of Hans Christian Andersen’s most popular fairy tales, share the story of the writer himself, and discuss his cross-cultural importance today, as the inspiration behind many popular books and movies.

Interpret Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales with experts from his birthplace

You will learn with experts from the HC Andersen Center at the University of Southern Denmark – an internationally renowned research institution located in the writer’s birthplace, Odense.

Each week, these experts will guide a discussion, analysis and interpretation of one of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, including:

• The Tinderbox
• The Travelling Companion
• The Little Mermaid
• The Snow Queen (the inspiration for Disney’s Frozen)
• The Story of a Mother
• The Red Shoes

You will explore the themes of each story, and investigate how they both conform with and digress from the fairy tale. This genre became very popular in the period of literary history to which Hans Christian Andersen belongs, Romanticism, when childhood was discovered as an age that is important in its own right.

But what Hans Christian Andersen did with this genre is absolutely unique - there are no other writers of fairy tales like him.

Explore Hans Christian Andersen’s enduring, universal appeal

The majority of Hans Christian Andersen’s 157 fairy tales have been translated into at least 150 languages. They not only create a fantasy world for children, but also explore universal, sinister and more adult themes such as death, grief and loss.

Through this course, you will discover why his stories have such an enduring and universal appeal - for both children and adults.

Understand the writer’s life - from humble beginnings to global fame

Hans Christian Andersen often described himself as a “bog plant” - his roots were deeply anchored in mire and mud, but he constantly stretched up for the light of the sun.

Through the course, you will understand this analogy, reflecting on how the writer grew from humble beginnings, to achieve fame and acknowledgement as an artist in both Europe and America while he was in his prime. After his death, he became famous in Asia and all other parts of the world.

REQUIREMENTS

You will need a basic ability to read and understand Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in English. Otherwise, a curiosity about and a love for the fairy tale genre is the sole prerequisite for the course.

(CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS and to register. start date currently unknown, but will be later in 2015.)

Gaming: "The Little Mermaid" Meets A.I. in Upcoming Game "The Lost Pisces"

I'll be the first to admit this territory of advanced gaming is something I'm not very familiar with. I'm learning along with my kid (who's already much better than I am) and rarely play adult games so when it comes to what people are into, excited about and how this upcoming video game is so different, it takes me a couple of read-throughs to get it - why it's so "epic" and why people are looking forward to it, but once I got there, I knew I had to try and break it down, to bring you in on what's happening here (and with a fairy tale we know well) - because it's pretty.. well.. "epic".

Unlike you might expect, the new game "The Lost Pisces" does more than reference a fairy tale. It bases it's entire premise on Hans Christian Andersen's melancholy The Little Mermaid and then takes it a step further. I'll let them explain.

From OverclockersClub:

The Lost Pisces, or rather just PISCES, is "an experiment in connecting a gamer with an artificial intelligence," according to an interview with designer and artist Dan Rutkowski, just in a way that's different from past instances. PISCES draws its inspirations from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," where the mermaid is taken away and replaced with a machine that is simply terrified of disappearing. Rutkowski says this machine, the woman seen in the screenshots, is in search for a soul, much like in the original version of "The Little Mermaid," and wants to find that her life will go on after death. 

Sirenum (Edit: the Indie company creating the game) wants players to feel emotionally connected with the protagonist, especially since she learns from the players actions and becomes unique to each player. The team wants to create believable AI in PISCES, one that starts off as a blank slate, but learns and adapts from the player. The AI takes what we do and changes based on that, and if you happen to use a Kinect while playing, the faces you make while playing will reflect on the character. Playing with a Kinect isn't required, but perhaps recommended to get an even better connection with the AI.

Interesting, right? I've never seen The Little Mermaid paralleled so obviously with Artificial Intelligence before, but I can see how they got there. In a high powered digital world where you don't even know if the people you're friends with on the internet, whom you've never met in person, are truly who they say they are - or, to take it a step further, are even real - loss of identity, the feeling of aloneness while surrounded by millions and the feeling of anonymity that can happen though you are in full public view on the internet, can make people feel lost... And not real.

The game takes this idea that is, unfortunately, very prevalent among social media users on platforms that encourage social interactions to be boiled down to "likes" and "dislikes" (that is, Facebook) and gives it another metaphor. Somewhere between a mermaid's hunt for a soul and a little wooden puppet's longing to be real is a story people identify strongly with and for that reason alone, this game has the potential to make some very loyal and intense fans.

In fact, the initial exclusive interview with the creator was titled:
THE LOST PISCES – NEW UE4 ADVENTURE PROMISING AN EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE THAT STICKS WITH YOU LONG AFTER COMPLETION

Creator) Rutkowski says. “This is the Hans Cristian Andersen version, it’s a little bit darker. The idea behind The Little Mermaid, when he wrote it he had a strictly Christian background, and there’s this notion that nothing except for human beings have souls. So in The Little Mermaid, she’s not really after the Prince necessarily, like in the Disney story, what’s she actually looking for is a soul. So I was naturally attracted to that idea, because it was so in line with artificial intelligence. 

He continues: “If you follow the story of The Little Mermaid, she’s looking for a soul because she knows at the end of her days, she’ll die and turn into sea foam. That’s why she goes to the undersea witch, which in this story is actually more of a witchdoctor, rather than having malevolent intentions. So she trades all these things to become human, but the spell has a timeframe and you have to fall in love. But the undertone of trying to attain a soul is a beautiful idea, especially for this coming era of artificial intelligence; this notion of what makes up consciousness and what makes up a soul. It was a natural thing to graft the story of The Little Mermaid into PISCES. The story goes, that PISCES is The Little Mermaid, this machine that’s suddenly found a tiny bit of consciousness and she, no matter what, wants to gain a soul. She becomes terrified that at the end of her days, she might live for 300 years being a machine, but there’s nothing for her to go on to, no possibility of an afterlife.” 

...“One of the things that we’re going to show... is how powerful the PISCES character actually is. She can manifest these black shards that float around her and she can cast them out. Those shards can pull across the ground and create massive boulders that you can use to bash against the larger robots. As she turns more and more human, the thing is that she loses that ability, so she becomes weaker and weaker. What will happen is you will see her as more and more human. She’s evolving beyond just being a machine, and you have to take up the slack, up to the gamer’s character to fulfill that role.”

For the setting:

PISCES takes place in a technological Atlantis, but the end of it when the water levels are rising and people are heading higher up into the mountains.

There are a ton more details in the original interview HERE, that take you through the gaming specifics, what they're trying to achieve and the challenges in doing that, especially since, as the creator says, if they can't get the gamer to care about this character it's a failure. They're employing an unbelievably huge and complex system to make this work - from developing the visuals to be even more beautiful and dynamic, to motion and micro-expression sensors aimed at the players so that the "girl" can learn and develop her "humanity" from the gamer. It's a daunting task but sounds amazing if they can pull it off.

If anyone ever asks you if fairy tales can be relevant today in a fast-paced digital gaming and social media world, just point to this example. It's clear that no matter how society and technology change, people essentially don't - and we still have the same fears, loves and longings we've always had.

The official website for Pisces can be found HERE and to get a better idea of how things will look and play, follow them on Twitter HERE for lots of development and art updates.

Thoughts On Word Trails & No Longer Seeing the Forests for the Trees

I saw a wonderful scene this week. Bear with me as I share it and hopefully I'll explain what I believe it has to do with fairy tales:

The scene was from the show The Americans*. While I'd be hard pressed to relate this show to fairy tales generally, it makes interesting observations about the human condition, love, despair and choices. The following scene is of the main male character, Philip, with his KGB handler, playing scrabble. Philip, at this point in his journey, is questioning the wisdom of orders given to him and his wife, feeling that it is compromising him as a basic human being - as a father and husband:

[Scene: Philip and his Handler playing scrabble.] 

H: Stuck between a geode and a hard place. (shuffles tiles) "Amatory" -(counts points)  24 yes, - 24 -loving , devoted,adoring. 

Philip: Where do you come up with this stuff? 

H: I love words. They leave a trail. For example, amatory is from the Latin word for 'love'. While wedlock - the condition of being married - is Norse, Norwegian: wed, lock. Which means perpetual battle. 

Philip: Your point being? 

H: Love and marriage in many ways are antithetical: one is a bolt of lightning, an epiphany, and the other is planting, tilling, tending. It's hard work. 

Philip: (glares at H) I'm trying to concentrate here. 

H: Oh sorry. 

Philip: (puts down scrabble letters)  

H: (reads) "sphinx" - excellent. 59 - bravo.**

Such a great exchange.

He's right. Words leave a trail.

At Myth & Moor yesterday (Terri Windling's wonderfully mythic and inspirational blog) Terri talked about the sense that our stories are disappearing, like many of the world's forests. She was quoting the book Tales Of Faerie and I have started discussing (From the Forest by Sara Maitland) and began by referencing a passage that caught my attention too - about the frustration parents have with the lack of response when they ask their children what happened in their day, ie. "Nothing." My reaction when reading this was so strong I went and grabbed a pencil, underlined it and bookmarked it to read to my husband later.

It finishes by explaining: "... but the 'nothing' is a cover for "I don't know how to tell a good story about it, how to impose a story shape on the events.' "

by Banksy (one of my favorites!)

Using words to tell stories is hard now. We're not only out of the habit, most people don't grow up with this; it's not as common a developmental skill as it used to be. For many, there just isn't time. At least, not to tell stories in that form. For others the gap between everyday expression and "word "smithing is just overwhelming and intimidating. Since oral stories (and general yarns and tale telling) have fallen out of everyday use, being able to tell tales is no longer a common-man thing to do. Whether or not it is true, to many it feels like telling stories are the territory of "true writers" only, so people just... don't. (Using myself as an example, Myth & Moor is full of beautiful, inspirational and thought provoking writing - I highly recommend it - and the comments on Terri's posts range from articulate to poetic - so much so, I often feel unable to comment, certain that I have nothing to add, even though I've always been made welcome there. And this is from someone who does write every day, adores words and has a rudimentary understanding of Latin and other base languages.) As a result, the people who understand those trails of history and stories within the words seem to be fewer and fewer every day. When it comes to tales, people not only get tongue-tied, the stories they stumbling-ly tell, lack vitality, the tales become muddied and, in some ways, they start to die.

The Grimms were motivated to write down fairy tales because they felt their language and tales were disappearing rapidly in the cultural clime. And they were right. Their work in stopping this from happening altogether is often underestimated but we owe them much.

Today we have the same sense, that stories and tales are disappearing, along with our language. Forget correct grammar, people don't even use full sentences anymore. (See? Just like that.) We resort to catch phrases, memes and emojis to communicate and express sentiments. We summarize in infographics. It's alarming in many ways but the lack of words doesn't mean language and stories are disappearing. It means they're changing shape.

In an age of the internet, in which we need to navigate the constant press of information overload, we've turned the bulk of the words off altogether and begun processing everything the fastest way possible - visually. And it works. After all, visuals are processed 60 000 times faster in the brain than text. We now live in a visual culture and there's no escaping it.

What tends to happen as a result though, is that WE DO LOSE STORIES through the gaps. And tales, and those word shapes with their trails. So what do we do?

"Knock Knock" by Hilary Leung

This is something I've been looking at seriously for a good couple of years now - the impact of visual communication and visual consumerism on storytelling. In many ways, this new form of language has opened up new forms of stories to people who weren't interested in telling tales before (for whatever reason). People who always responded with "Nothing" now fill their Tumblr accounts and Pinterest boards with fan-made images and quotes, blending ideas and sentiments, suggesting avenues of thought and inspiring conversation.

by Raquel Aparicio

"The hyper-visualisation age is now upon us, where any visual media object can act as a portal to other media." (source)

A truly interesting thing (and hidden treasure) is this: the best forms of these new "stories" (however fractured and incomplete they are) lead to words. And more words. The image shorthand is being used like a filtering system in an age of information overload. And the best, most useful "filter caught" images, usually use words too.

Sometimes trying to find what you want is like opening a Matroyshka doll - layers within layers within layers... and sometimes it seems more like hunting Koschei's soul which was hidden inside of a needle, inside of an egg, inside of a duck, inside of a hare, inside of an iron chest,buried under an oak tree, on a island, in the middle of the ocean... but ultimately, the words - and the tales - they're in there.

(There are hundreds of articles explaining to business people and marketers just how important the use of images with the right phrase is.) But it can't be just any words. They specifically use 'the right ones', the succinct ones, the ones that, in conjunction with the image, tell a spare story with a lot of resonance; very much like fairy tales always have.

People are drawn to the life in words (and trees), to the history in them but it's hard to know, when there is so much in front of us demanding our attention, what we should pay attention to. (Why should we care about this tree here when there are so many more?) 

Images help filter. Not too surprisingly, when you figure out it's not really 'words' people don't like, it's the tidal wave of text that feels impossible to process, people can start to sort out just what it is they want to pay attention to - and they go word hunting. Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and many other publications still do exceptionally well publishing multiple page essays. Novels are devoured in print and ebook form alike - perhaps more than ever. People want to read. They want words, and stories and forests and tales. They just want to choose their path so they don't feel so lost.

But how do we get people to the start of these paths and tales so they choose to walk them, themselves and, in doing so, keep them alive?

More specifically, what is a writer to do? How do we preserve our beloved fairy tales from becoming distant memories, footnotes in essays or forgotten tales in out of print books? 

The answer is simple. We have to find new ways to tell them. 

That also feels exceptionally difficult to figure out how to do. 

(The reason this post has taken as long to get up as it has is due to my search for appropriate visuals to include - and I'll be the first to admit, this whole post would have been better received had I been able to present it in a much more visual manner. I wish I had the skills to pull together reaction gifs and create "visual poems" to capture the essence of what I'm trying to communicate but I didn't grow up that way and don't have those skills... yet.)

Interestingly, dealing with this exact issue in their own times is, I believe, exactly why the Grimms, Andersen, Perrault and Wilde are still known today. (I have a post on this coming on this shortly - how these fairy tale writers made their tales truly live.)

We know, in principle, that fairy tales are very much a living thing. It's ironic that writing them down to preserve them serves to help them stagnate, almost as if they "solidify" in their written form. Often, it requires these coma-like story forms to get a jolt, usually from another media source, to wake up these 'sleeping beauties' and have people notice and love them again. And perhaps some savvy use of available tools in this "visual era" can help.

I know. It sounds exhausting and I'm right there with you. Can't we just sit in our corners and write our words and have them there ready for when people want them? I wish we could. But if we want to be part of making sure tales stay alive we need to be active as they're being redefined and retold. We need to be part of the 'telling'. The best historians don't just dig into the dusty past and tell us what happened, they explain why things happened the way they did and show us the direct connection to ourselves, how we can learn from history to learn about the world as it is now and to make a better future. Otherwise why bother with history at all?

Eventually, when the noise of the world is sorted and people know what they want to focus on, words become even more precious than before. It's then that they ask for more words, more tales. 

People will continue to come back to words. The trick is to keep the trail visible.

____________________________________________________________________

For those looking to learn more about this 'visual era', here's a short list (really!) to get you started, The ones with the orange stars are super quick, informative skims. The purple stars are recommended reads over the rest if you're short on time:

The Guardian: The New (Visual) Culture: how to produce quality in a world of quantity
*WallBlog: Turning advertising into a service: brands must embrace the hyper-visual landscape
*Social Media Examiner: 4 Businesses Leveraging Storytelling With Images
* Business 2 Community: Why Image Trumps Everything in Today's Visual Age
FastCompany: The Rise of Visual Social Media
Marketing Magazine: Brands Should Take the Visual Web Seriously, says Facebook's EMEA Boss
* Cyber Alert: Visual Storytelling Campaigns That Inspire, Motivate and Generate Action
MindFire Communications: It's A Visual World. Show Your Story
* LinkedIn: Market Researchers: Do you Speak Visual?
* MDG Advertising: It's All About the Images (Infographic)
* Wishpond Advanced Lead Generation Marketing Blog: 10 Reasons Visual Content Will Dominate 2014
SteamFeed: Why Visual Content Will Rule Digital Marketing in 2014
NeonTommy: Visual Poetry Collection 'Kern' Meshes Literature And Art

* It's one of the few shows I think is brilliantly done in every aspect and which I do my best to keep up with, even if I can only see 10 minutes of a show at a time. It's very brutal at times but I love the juxtaposition of a couple working on their relationship and raising an American family against the background of being KGB spies in America.

**  I thought the riddle response was a great touch too.

The Rose Elf by Veronica Dye Johnson

Illustrator Veronica Dye Johnson, recently sent me an image of one of her latest personal works and has kindly given me permission to share it with you all, it being inspired by a fairy tale.

Have you heard of this one, The Rose Elf? It's another Hans Christian Andersen one and used to be much better known.

The tale has always struck me as being a little bit of a split personality. As you can see from the above, beautifully rendered image, it has quite the dark side to it. This is of a girl holding her lover's head, after she dug it up out of the snowy wood, where her brother had buried it (after he'd cut it off). Sounds a little soap opera-ish in many ways but it actually has a lot of tragic romance to it.

(Note: Forgive me if I get the details wrong - I'm going from memory here.)

The girl, having just found out who killed her love, secretly takes the head home and buries it in a flower pot, over which she weeps every day. Her brother, who lives in the same house (and whom she keeps it for) has no idea why she's so sad but at least he doesn't have to worry about her taking off and getting married anymore.

Rose Elf in progress

She grieves greatly, pines, dies, and is reunited with her love in heaven BUT her brother, seeing this amazing plant that she's been keeping in her bedroom, decides all that was hers is now his, and he takes it to his room and puts it beside his bed. The plant, having grown on tears of anguish and with a wish for revenge, plunges poisoned barbs into the man while he sleeps, killing him rather painfully. His body is discovered shortly after and in the horror of the scene, the flower pot is knocked onto the bed and breaks, where the skull inside is revealed and so is the brother's secret. I believe he's then buried in an unmarked grave.. (it's been a while).

But I haven't told you the weirdest part.

How does the girl find out in the first place? Because of a 'rose elf'. He lived in a rose that wouldn't open and let him in due to the cold one night, so he went seeking shelter, finding some blooms near these lovers meeting where he overhears their love, their story and their trials. He finds that sweet but then through some slip or accident, ends up in the man's pocket. He's with the lover when he's murdered, escaping by holding onto a dead leaf that's floating through the air in the ruckus, only to land back on the hat of the brother-murderer and end up back at the girl's house. He whispers in her ear what happened when she's asleep, citing that she'll know this is true by the proof of a dead leaf on her chest when she wakes. She wakes, there's a dead leaf, she goes and finds the head, you know the rest now.

Rose Elf early color test

Isn't that just the oddest juxtaposition? You have this happy little elf looking for flowers, floating around so small he's undetected on one side (and there's a whole bit about him going to find the Queen Bee to tell her what happened too) and this macabre plant growing out of a lover's skull on the other.

It just doesn't feel to me like it was constructed by the same person (and when you read it, the language is bizarrely different too). I always felt I had heard the part about the head in the pot with the plant before somewhere - that feels really familiar to me and sort of Slavic too. The Rose Elf character just sounds.. like a construct.

I haven't researched it but it's like someone edited together part of a Disney film and part of an adult epic. Perhaps I'm wrong but in a weird way, it's the plant that feels most fairy tale like to me. The elf just kind of gives me the creeps.. I presume he ends up OK though? I can't remember.

Let me go find a link for you, so you can read the proper tale... HERE.

Anyway, I can see why such a tale inspired illustrators though I don't think I've seen an image of the girl holding her lover's head quite like this before. Thanks Veronica! There's a lot of interesting stuff about this tale that it's definitely worth remembering for.

Veronica Dye Johnson is a working and published illustrator who specializes in narrative images that showcase the human figure. You can find Veronica's website HERE, see more about her process of creating the illustration HERE and follow her and her work on Twitter HERE.

In Discussion: "The Brave Little Toaster" & HC Andersen's Tragic Anthropomorphized Objects

The Steadfast Tin Soldier Shigeru Hatsuyama for Thumbelina (and other tales) (Japan, 1925)

Yes! This is one of my favorite things: when passionate discussions of lesser-known fairy tales appear in (seemingly unrelated) social media and pop culture/geek discussions!

If I were fancy and extra organized I'd start a whole series or regular feature on this topic. As it is, I will just add a new tag: #PopFTDiscussions (aka #GOLD!) Hopefully this new tag will have a lot of use in future...

So what incited this particular one, you ask? It was The Mary Sue's article "Anthropomorphizing the Mundane: Five Fictional Objects that Messed Us Up" by Sara Goodwin. Under the following picture of the Brave Little Toaster, the article begins:

I was one of those kids who was absolutely convinced that my toys came to life when I was asleep and led full lives. Not only that, but I can remember getting out of bed to put a pair of shoes together so they wouldn’t have to spend the night alone. ... anthropomorphizing objects has been going on for many years in many cultures. Who doesn’t cry when they think about The Velveteen Rabbit and how badly he wanted to be real? 

"Tsukumo-gami,
Spirits of Used Articles"
by ITO Jakuchu
(1716-1800), Japan

Was Mary Poppins' Umbrella 100 yrs old?

And I was REALLY pleased to see that Tsukumogami was mentioned (the Japanese ritual/celebration of an object's 100th birthday), something which I learned more about last year and am completely delighted by. Another Japanese festival not mentioned is Hari-kuyo: Festival of Broken Needles which "is a solemn rite of respect and thanksgiving in which the worn and broken sewing needles used in the previous year are retired to a sacred resting place."

Interesting note: the most popular image representing Tsukumogami in general is an animated umbrella... *turns to look at Mary Poppins suspiciously*

In Japanese culture, there is a concept called Tsukumogami, which is popularly used to refer to an object that has reached its hundredth birthday and become alive. There seems to be a bit of a divide between the religious interpretations and the popular culture use of this word, but from what I can tell from some quick Google research is that it was commonly associated with religion in the past and has been adopted by modern cultures to describe a kind of anthropomorphism.  

Using animals, objects, etc. to tell a story can have practical uses beyond making us cry when we see a lamp that looks like that adorable, hopping Pixar lamp lying in a dumpster. 

It continues being a great read, complete with a list of Brave Little Toaster-like cousins we've all had tug at our heartstrings, so I suggest you hop on over there and read it in total. It succinctly looks at anthropomorphized objects on film we came to love, then cried for (hilarious), but then I began reading the comments and lo and behold, Hans Christian Anderson's name appeared, and not without a little rage attached! #painandtears 

The comments number well over 100 so I'm posting the HCA portion of the discussion here for your perusal. You can always go to the original page and join in the discussion if you become so inclined!
(Note: I have bleeped and asterix'd some of the language for gentler sensibilities and in an effort to redirect nastier versions of spam far, far away... and be warned that the spacing between comments is really, really weird. I don't have time to transcribe it all so it looks neat etc so please bear with the copy and paste results!)

by Kay Nielsen

Wauwy

Hans Christian Andersen was the -bleeping- worst with this, I swear to God. The man could have written a story from the POV of a tongue scraper and it would have been full of pathos, tragedy, and an unbearably sad ending.

^^ Edit FTNH: This sentence - now in bold, care of moi - is so true! ^^

F--- YOU HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, I AM NOT OVER THE FIR TREE OR THE STEADFAST TIN SOLDIER, AND I NEVER WILL BE

;A;

ETA: lmao I just checked his wikipedia page and look at this sh*t.

A very early fairy tale by Andersen called The Tallow Candle (Danish: Tællelyset) was discovered in a Danish archive in October 2012. The story, written in the 1820s, was about a candle who did not feel appreciated.

ridiculous.

by vacation-challenge

• Kris Smith  Wauwy • 

  
  

  That's because candles are ***holes. Especially Danish ones.
  • Snow Monet  Kris Smith • 

    
    

    And matchsticks just bring tears. 
• Ceaen  Wauwy •

  
  

  The Andersen book I have is broken up into thematic sections. There is an entire "Anthropomorphic Objects and Animals" section in that book.
  • Sara Goodwin  Ceaen 

    
    

    I remember that! The roots of my malady are slowly being exposed! :-)

  • 

    by Angela Rizza

• silaria  Wauwy • 

  
  

  The Tin Soldier story confused me so much as a kid. I couldn't understand the point of a story where no one rescued him.
  • Wauwy  silaria •

    
    

    The point is pain and tears. Regalli  Wauwy • 
    • 
      

      Isn't that the point of all of Hans Christian Andersen's work? Wauwy  Regalli • 
      • 
        

        Not The Snow Queen, aka best fairy tale ever!

        But yeah everything else lol.

         Regalli  Wauwy • 
        • 
          

          You forget: Frozen happened to that.

          
          

          
          

           Wauwy  Regalli •
          • 
            

            LALALALALA CAN'T HEAR YOU

            GERDA x KAI OTP, LITTLE ROBBER GIRL BEST SIDE CHARACTER, FABULOUS TRUE NEUTRAL SNOW QUEEN, CRYING AWAY MIRROR SHARDS AND SNATCHING UR FAVS' WIGS

            
            

            
            

             

             

            

            by Pedro Bascon
            • 
              

              
              Regalli  Wauwy 

              
              

              Please. Little Robber Girl/Gerda/Kai post-story friendship and eventual OT3 is where it's at. (SO p*ssed that they basically took all the side characters and turned them into Kristoff. YOU HAD A PERFECT CHANCE TO DO SOMETHING PROGRESSIVE WITH YOUR LINE FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE LIKE THE 1930S, DISNEY, YOU HAD DAMN WELL BETTER MAKE UP FOR IT IN THE SEQUEL.)

              (Seriously though I will forgive... not all, but like 65% of that movie's faults if they cash in on its mediocrity and give Elsa a female love interest. If we have to get a sequel, at least give us that.) 
              

              Cat C  Wauwy • 
        • 
          

          That has ALWAYS been my favorite!

          
          

          
          

          Sara Goodwin  silaria •
  • 
    

    The point was that he fed on the tears of children. 
• Sara Goodwin  Wauwy •

  
  

  Totally! I'm so glad you mentioned him and his anthropomorphic ways! That fir tree .... and the Steadfast Tin Soldier .... why, Hans C.A.? Why?

  
  

  
  

    

• 

  from the Andrew Lang Yellow Fairy Book (by Henry Justice Ford)

• 
  

  
  othellia  Wauwy • 

  
  

  OH MY GOD. I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THAT FIR TREE STORY FOR YEARS NOW.

  I had a picture book of it as a kid and I swear it's traumatized me for life as far as getting real Christmas trees go. I've told other people about it and no one else had heard of it. Their reactions to my summaries were pretty much all along the lines of "J---- C-----!" Looked on amazon and google for Christmas tree children's books, but do you know how many Christmas tree books there are?

  So thank you. (And omg I should have known it was HCA! *shakes fist*)

  ETA: No really. I even described to people how the Christmas Tree felt pain after it was chopped down but bore through it because it was so happy to covered in decorations and lights, just like the Little Mermaid when she got her feet. Fffffffffu- I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!

  • 

    by P.J. Lynch

  • 
    

    Wauwy  othellia •

    
    

    I'm happy to help you recall your childhood trauma.

    Mine involves a Mercer Meyer book about a sad rabbit whose friends all forget her birthday and okay I really can't talk about it. Even though they all throw her a surprise party at the end, it does nothing, NOTHING, to make up for the fathomless depths of pain she and the reader have suffered.
• Miss_Dahlia  Wauwy • 

  
  

  Apparently a friend of his made a bet with him that he couldn't write a story that would make people feel sympathy for a pin. Hans won the bet
  .
• *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

Studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1976

Ah yes:

"..he fed on the tears of children...".

Thank you Ms. Goodwin. I will never forget that throwaway comment now. It's fits so very,very well.. (Sorry Mr. Andersen. It was bound to happen when you made us love your characters and then- *neck slicing motion with SFX*!)

Here is an evil IKEA commercial (brought to our attention by the same Ms. Goodwin) that will not help you at all:

Told you it was evil. (You had to look...)