My fav as a kid was Andersen's Little Mermaid. Not a happy, Disney ending, let me tell you what. But, oh, how I loved it! (Still do, truth be told.)

Yeah, I liked that one a lot too. The part that stuck in my mind was how when she walked on her feet it felt like she was walking on razor blades - the pain was so intense. But she did it for love... yep, I loved that one. How did it end? Wasn't she with the guy for just one day?

The part that stuck in my mind was how when she walked on her feet it felt like she was walking on razor blades - the pain was so intense. But she did it for love...

Yes! Exactly! In the end, she didn't get him to love her and she turned to sea foam.

Didn't all of her sisters cut off their hair so that she could spend that one day with him?

(Hmmm, Christmas Ghosts. . . sounds like a job for the Winchesters.)

That story is awesome.

THEY EAT THEIR FATHER.

You're not right.

Jamaicans eat Solomon Gundy. Not sure if it's herrings in our case, since I don't remember eating herring outside of the nasty sour salty fish paste my mother once called "Jamaican caviar" and served it on toast points at New Year's.

Totally gross.

Huh. Guess ours is herring.

Years ago I read some essay lamenting the fact that children's stories today have almost none of the morbid, depressing stuff of Hans Christian Andersen and other old stories. I don't remember what the author thought was the reason for that.

The Disneyfication of children's stories could be to blame. But I wonder if morbid children's stories are just less necessary now that childhood mortality rates are so much lower than they were in the 1800s....

There's a collection whose title played on Grimm/grim and had the gorier versions of all those tales--I used to own a copy and have no idea where it is, or what it was called so I can put it on a wishlist somewhere.

I don't remember what the author thought was the reason for that.

We value our children more and want them to grow up feeling safe and loved and that happy endings are the norm.

Or some such shit.

Then they get HBO and The Daves fuck with their minds anyway. Pay now or pay later, you feel me? But when I get nightmares now, I'm far less likely to scream, so there's that.

Goodness-- I didn't know anyone else knew Solomon Grundy-- but I loved it too

I only know Solomon Grundy from the Superfriends [link]

Grimm & Grimm, the originals, are pretty effin bloody. For some reason, the German peasant-folk had a thing for pretty little girls getting their hands cut off (and then praying to the Lord and getting them replaced). Cree pee, I say.

THEY EAT THEIR FATHER. You're not right.

Oh, pshaw. They eat a duck. (Or possibly it was a goose?) It's not like they get their hands cut off or anything.