to the world we dream about and the one we live in

poll because i remember arguing about this with a friend once

also please reblog after you vote i wanna see everyones thoughts

for the record i made this cus im in camp proboscis and i need to see who agrees with me

It wasn't until maybe last year I realized the proboscis version was considered silly or childish or didn't even occur to most people. I thought everyone in existence always assumed the fangs were hollow straws and that this was taken seriously :(

I will judge you based on your favourite greek god

Paying two extra drachma to be seated in the splash zone of the greek theatre so Clytaemnestra can douse me in agamemnon's blood

Bitches are in my Labyrinth. Trying to fuck my minotaur.

all these stories about how the modern day dionysian ritual is going out and murdering someone in the woods…the true modern day dionysian ritual is drunkenly going to taco bell at 3 am and i dare anyone to tell me otherwise

Modern Day Dionydisian Ritual:

thinking about how orpheus turning to look back at eurydice isn’t a sign of mortal frailness but a sign of love

“Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?” ― Ovid, Metamorphoses

This is true no matter the version you're reading.

1. Eurydice trips and Orpheus turns to help her because he loves her.

2. Orpheus cannot hear Eurydice behind him, and fearing that he's been tricked, turns to make sure she's there.

3. Orpheus makes it out of the Underworld, and so full of love and excitement to be with Eurydice, turns to embrace her, forgetting that they both need to be out of the Underworld.

No matter what happens in the story, Orpheus loses Eurydice because his love for her compels him to look.

I’m tired of hearing people say “Disney’s Cinderella is sanitized. In the original tale, the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to make the slipper fit and get their eyes pecked out by birds in the end.”

I understand this mistake. I’m sure a lot of people buy copies of the complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, see their tale of Aschenputtel translated as “Cinderella”, and assume what they’re reading is the “original” version of the tale. Or else they see Into the Woods and make the same assumption, because Sondheim and Lapine chose to base their Cinderella plot line on the Grimms’ Aschenputtel instead of on the more familiar version. It’s an understandable mistake. But I’m still tired of seeing it.

The Brothers Grimm didn’t originate the story of Cinderella. Their version, where there is no fairy godmother, the heroine gets her elegant clothes from a tree on her mother’s grave, and where yes, the stepsisters do cut off parts of their feet and get their eyes pecked out in the end, is not the “original.” Nor did Disney create the familiar version with the fairy godmother, the pumpkin coach, and the lack of any foot-cutting or eye-pecking.

If you really want the “original” version of the story, you’d have to go back to the 1st century Greco-Egyptian legend of Rhodopis. That tale is just this: “A Greek courtesan is bathing one day, when an eagle snatches up her sandal and carries it to the Pharaoh of Egypt. The Pharaoh searches for the owner of the sandal, finds her and makes her his queen.”

Or, if you want the first version of the entire plot, with a stepdaughter reduced to servitude by her stepmother, a special event that she’s forbidden to attend, fine clothes and shoes given to her by magic so she can attend, and her royal future husband finding her shoe after she loses it while running away, then it’s the Chinese tale of Ye Xian you’re looking for. In that version, she gets her clothes from the bones of a fish that was her only friend until her stepmother caught it and ate it.

But if you want the Cinderella story that Disney’s film was directly based on, then the version you want is the version by the French author Charles Perrault. His Cendrillon is the Cinderella story that became the best known in the Western world. His version features the fairy godmother, the pumpkin turned into a coach, mice into horses, etc, and no blood or grisly punishments for anyone. It was published in 1697. The Brothers Grimm’s Aschenputtel, with the tree on the grave, the foot-cutting, etc. was first published in 1812.

The Grimms’ grisly-edged version might feel older and more primitive while Perrault’s pretty version feels like a sanitized retelling, but such isn’t the case. They’re just two different countries’ variations on the tale, French and German, and Perrault’s is older. Nor is the Disney film sanitized. It’s based on Perrault.

Op is now my most favourite person in the world and I want their knowledge.

My favourite fairy tales were rumplestiltskin and the pied piper, and I want to know how they began.

I don’t know about Rumplestiltskin, but the Pied Piper is REALLY weird because a reference to it appears in the real town of Hamelin’s historical record (a written mention and a now lost stained-glass window, apparently) and nobody’s sure what exactly happened

When talking folktales, there is NO SUCH THING AS THE “ORIGINAL.” There just isn’t. We can talk about the “oldest recorded version,” we can talk about the “most widespread,” we can talk about “most influential,” but none of those mean “original.” Folklore doesn’t work like that: it’s not like the game of telephone, where there’s a correct singular version and everything else is a bastardized descendant. It’s more like–multiple versions spring up at different times and places and travel and crossbreed with each other.

When people started writing down fairy tales, we also have to consider who, when, and for what audience. Perrault was writing in France, in 1697; he was part of a group of (mostly female) writers known as the “salon writers,” who were engaged in one of the key intellectual debates of the day: which is better, ancient Greece and Rome, or modern France? Perrault, as a “modern,” collected and rewrote multiple existing folk narratives as his entry in the debate: his versions were witty confections with semi-ironic morals, aimed at an educated courtly audience. He, like his fellow salon writers (and their Italian predecessors Straparola and Basile) were deliberately tarting up existing folk narratives to appeal to haut-bourgeois readers.

(FYI, there’s a standard piece of bullshit often trotted out about Perrault’s “Cendrillon,” that the glass slipper was a mistranslation and it was “originally” fur: NOT TRUE. Perrault loved including all sorts of details about luxurious dress and decor, and “glass slippers”–beautiful, fragile, completely impractical–is exactly what he said. Again, stop with these claims about the “original” versions, there’s no such thing.)

The Grimms, writing a century or so later, were coming out of a radically different intellectual tradition: they were Romantic nationalists, and saw the stories and beliefs of peasants as containing the True Spirit of Germanness (Volksgeist). Their goal was to take down the stories, unchanged, straight from the mouths of the dirtiest rudest peasants they could find. (They didn’t actually do this–many of their informants were middle class–but they claimed that that was their goal and method.) Their first edition (1812) was aimed at scholars, but then when it proved to be a hit, they started expanding and further editing the collection for a more general readership–the seventh and final edition came out in 1857. There’s literally mountains of scholarship that’s been done on the increasingly intrusive editing that the Grimms did, to better fit with bourgeois sensibilities, vs. their actual field notes.

(There’s also the fact that, during the Grimms’ lifetimes, the concept of children as a separate and unique audience, who required stories designed specifically for them, was solidifying; “children’s literature,” as we know it, really starts taking off during the 1800s. Most fairy tales are far older than this, and were told by and for all ages. The changes made to the later editions of the Grimms’ fairy tales reflect this. It’s not surprising that Disney, coming after 150 years of increasingly more intense policing of what stories children should and should not see, chose the Perrault version.)

Given all that, from my position as a folklorist, I’m prepared to say that the Grimms’ version of the story is almost certainly closer to the folk versions of “Cinderella” that would have been circulating in Western Europe from the medieval period onward: not because it’s omg bloody and gruesome, but because we know how Perrault worked, and he deliberately was changing and fancifying stories for a highly specific elite audience.

For anyone who’s interested, I highly recommend Jack Zipes’s great collection The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: versions of Little Red vary even more intensely than Cinderella does (LRRH has 3 possible endings, all radically different), and there’s a great essay about the history of fairy tale writing and collecting.

I’d recommend everyone look into Tale Typing, which is used to figure out which themes are present across folk tales and folklore.

Absolute History on YT has a series called Myths and Monsters that talks about stories in Europe and how they intertwined with history, societal anxieties, and the purpose of stories in human culture. It’s really neat and you should all watch it if you’re at all interested in this!

Literally obsessed with this image.

I found this youtube comment and honestly,,,, true

winter is tough, but this is the price we pay for persephone being able to peg her husband in peace, so just accept it

@saintvampyre

what does it mean when you have a whole bunch of crows hanging out in your backyard

asking for a friend

it means you have new friends!

are these good new friends or “death is coming” sort of new friends

yes!

@saintvampyre

Do any of you know about that one painting with Aphrodite being born out of lava with a black swan by her side or did i completely hallucinate that? Been searching for a while but i can’t find it for shit.

I tried googling that description but no luck either, anyone might know what painting this might be (or if it does exist? cause it sounds sick lol)

It took a bit of googling magic, but I think I’ve found it.

This is “Kindled” by Laura K. Cannon, which is part of her portfolio that can be found here: http://navate.com/2wk6im1sartc92iwza7il07bxq2mk5

Is this what you were looking for? @sakyubaso

I’m in love.

@saintvampyre

Fun Vampire Fact; the reason that Vampires traditionally cannot see their reflections in a mirror is because mirrors used to be backed with a reflective layer of silver — which, as the metal of purity, would not ‘interact’ with Vampires, who are the Devil’s work.

However, modern mirrors have used aluminum as their reflective backing for many years now — and aluminum is not a ‘picky’ metal at all. So Vampires are able to see their reflections in modern mirrors.

All I can think about is a vampire used to not seeing their reflection in mirrors for centuries, and one day they are just walking along and unknowingly pass a mirror backed with aluminum and THEY NEARLY SHIT THEMSELVES.

And film was exposed using silver in the emulsion fluid for old photographs. But with more advanced photographic technology and things like digital cameras theres no need to use silver in the printing process.

I can imagine old vampires being super into selfies because they never got to keep pictures of themselves before.

persephone: whos a good boys?? cerberus: :0 ??? :O ???? :o ???? persephone: youre a good boys!! all of you!! such good boys!! cerberus: :D!!!!!!! :O!!!!!!! :Dc !!!!!!!!!

Persephone is a good dogs mom.

A HAPPY DOGGO

@duonysus

oh, shit

wheres the video of the Danish news reporter and the car falling into the lake behind him and he goes “Oh!… shit. Okay.”

No, seriously though, in Norse mythology this was the fist sign of Ragnarok, aka the Final Godly Beatdown Warmageddon.

are we finally getting a REAL apocalypse I’m getting real tired of being let down