the geography of fairy tale land
Jul. 17th, 2014 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatellihas got to be pretty weird. Not only do you have heroes crossing thrice nine lands to reach the thrice ten kingdom, you have kingdoms so close that a king and queen can marry, each one with a daughter, and those two daughters are easily able to walk to a third.
And then there are the sudden appearances of major geographic obstacles. Every time the girl helps the hero flee -- well, not every time, sometimes she changes her and him instead -- but a lot of times, she throws about mountain ranges and rivers and seas and dense dark forests -- always enough to be an obstacle to an ogre or equivalent. She and he always manage to charge through plenty of wasteland for it too. Perhaps it's the ogre that keeps it bare.
And the prince, gallivanting along, never does have much trouble reaching the areas where mysterious old hags or talking beasts can give advice. And the princess never has much trouble reaching the North Wind, or the Sun, or whoever it is that is going to declare that no one has been there for years. . . .
Fairy tales tend to be weak on the passage of time, too.
And then there are the sudden appearances of major geographic obstacles. Every time the girl helps the hero flee -- well, not every time, sometimes she changes her and him instead -- but a lot of times, she throws about mountain ranges and rivers and seas and dense dark forests -- always enough to be an obstacle to an ogre or equivalent. She and he always manage to charge through plenty of wasteland for it too. Perhaps it's the ogre that keeps it bare.
And the prince, gallivanting along, never does have much trouble reaching the areas where mysterious old hags or talking beasts can give advice. And the princess never has much trouble reaching the North Wind, or the Sun, or whoever it is that is going to declare that no one has been there for years. . . .
Fairy tales tend to be weak on the passage of time, too.
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no subject
Date: 2014-07-19 04:20 am (UTC)If you give few enough details, you CAN'T be contradicted!
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Date: 2014-07-19 04:41 pm (UTC)But you can't get away with things in a retold tale as you can in a folktale.