Fairy Tale

"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

– C.S. Lewis

Before Martin brought us to the Seven Kingdoms, Before the Workshop crafted it's first Game, before Gygax Mastered his first Dungeon and even before Professor Tolkien wondered what sort of hole a creature called a hobbit would dwell in, there were Fairy Tales. Fanciful stories involving a variety of supernatural or otherwise fanciful creatures and beings with exotic powers.

Nowadays when we hear the term, we imagine simple stories that are read to children at bedtime, though historically this was less pronounced. The Brothers Grimm published the (probably) first written collection of fairy tales in 1812 - Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), gathering up oral stories that had existed for hundreds of years. Despite claims of Disneyfication, the sanitising of fairy tales started with the Grimm's themselves in their second edition as much of it was considered unsuitable for children. (The wicked stepmothers in many of the tales were originally biological mothers, but the brothers loved their mother too much to keep that in). Fairies themselves were also not just twinkly little things that helped baby birds learn to fly and other cutesy naturey things, but could seriously fuck you up if you did not comply with their wishes and their odd sets of customs. While Disney might get some of the blame, the process began with the Victorian notion that a serious minded educated modern man in this new age of science and reason had no need for such childish frivolities.

Fairy Tales were designed at least in part to try to spread and reinforce the "Common Knowledge" that "Everyone Knew". As such some of the old fairy tales can have some values that modern readers (or at least ones that are not /pol/tards) would find objectionable.

The Fairy Tale Aesthetic

There is a particular mindset which distinguishes fairy tales from most modern fantasy. Modern Fantasy has, in broad terms, a modern academic outlook and it's fantastic elements are something you could lay out on a chart. Middle Earth has a Long Ass History, including linguistic evolution. When Samwise muses about what the Orcs eat in the volcanic wasteland of Mordor, Tolkien mentions that there are slave farms around the sea of Nurnen and the logistics of Thorin's party or the Fellowship of the Ring (split or otherwise) are significant plot points. In A Song of Ice and Fire, Spice and Wolf and other such series the plot is often driven by Economics. Similarly rules of magic in many works are explained with limits, in the case of Tabletop Games you can calculate how many fireballs a wizard can shoot a day and how many meters they can travel. As fantastic as the world may be, it can be to at least a degree understood.

Fairy Tales in contrast were not made from that perspective. The specifics of where magic beanstalks came from or the history of the kingdom of the fair folk are not elaborated on nor are pertinent to the story. Things are usually left vague beyond general principles and details can easily be contradictory. One who stumbles into this situation at best has a vague idea what to do with few points of folkloric data to work on at best. Fairy Tales often work on Dream Logic and are not only fantastic, but surreal.

See Also

• Mythology - A more religious take on fairy tale.

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