Gretel - Tumblr Posts
After shoving Hansel in the oven, the witch turns to Gretel - who is currently fending the witch off with a gingerbread chair - and says:
“I can’t believe you thought a trail of breadcrumbs would save you. I mean, honestly, this is a forest! It’s full of animals. Honestly, the very idea that a dumb shit like you thought you could get the better of me is absurd.”
Gretel hits her in the face with said chair. To be fair to the witch, she takes the chairshot like a champ.
“Ow!”
“Did you know,” says Gretel, “that crows are capable of facial recognition?”
“Eh?” Says the witch, clambering to her feet and pulling a candy cane sledgehammer off the wall. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Not only that,” Gretel continues, “but they can remember both friends and enemies. And they’ll often follow people they remember as friends.”
The two fence with their sugared weapons for a moment, before the witch knocks the chair out of Gretel’s hands.
“Enough with the bird facts! Honestly, this whole attempted escape has been utter clownshoes. Get in the fucking oven!”
She seizes Gretel by the collar. Gretel immediately sandbags, letting her whole body go limp. This eminently practical defense forces the witch to try and deadlift her. Which is hard, as the witch often skips leg day.
“For example,” Gretel says, as the witch struggles and grunts, “if you feed crows a lot of breadcrumbs, they’ll probably start to see you as a friend and follow you in the hope of more food.”
The witch stops. Outside, she hears the thunder of wings.
“They’ll even bring you shiny things they find as presents!” Says Gretel, as a corner of the gingerbread ceiling is suddenly cut away by a large crow with a knife in its mouth.
“Oh shitballs.” Says the witch, as the crows descend. “I hope you know this is a great unkindness.”
“Technically,” Says Gretel, “It’s a murder.”
Are our own parents any different than the step mothers in the fairy tales?
I was watching a documentary series on Netflix called ‘Myths and Monsters’. At a point where they were discussing about ‘The Grimm's Fairy Tales’, which is a book of collected folktales of Germany by the Grimm brothers, they said that the brothers had actually modified the stories to make it acceptable to the children. And one such particular change was that in the story of ‘Hansel and Gretel’. Though worldwide we all know that the siblings were a victim to the cruelty of their stepmother, the original story tells otherwise. They were rather abandoned in the woods by their poverty driven parents.
Now the questions come: Why did the brothers exchanged the real parents with a stepmother? If it was so unrealistic or unacceptable for the real parents to have abandoned their own children, why would the original story has them in the first place?
The series also gave an idea to that. Basically the myths we know have some really deep morals into it. They usually portray the inner dark nature of humans through the images of monsters. So, it is not unlikely to put the real parents’ images as some cruel versions of humans. Because we humans, are capable of such cruelty. It is embedded inside all of us.
But since the civilizations started, we are trying our best to tame such nature within ourselves. As if the wilderness inside us is considered a taboo in the modern world we live in. So, we made another character to drive away this from ourselves. In this case, it is the stepmother. The stepmother has become a disguise for all the dark parts of a parent. Hence, we see this character in almost every fairy tales in the place of a cruel guardian.
Gretel meets Rapunzel
ignihyde gretel concepts