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I figure yesterday's post is as good a segway as ever to detour out of the Eddas and fast forward a few centuries to the collection of the Brothers Grimm. When my little brother asked me to teach him how to play D&D, I made a little one off campaign for him, set in what's basically Bendy meets Disneyland, since he's a big fan of film history. So I drafted up designs for a few of the fairy tales used in the earliest days of the Mouse's studio. Of course, the first of these is Snow White (or "Schneewittchen" as it is in the native tongue) a classic German folk tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. Like many of the Grimm fairy tales, its exact origins are incredibly difficult to trace. Some say it was made up whole cloth by the Brothers or an associate, while German historian Eckhard Sander proposed in 1994 that it's actually based on a historical 16th century countess: Margaretha von Waldeck. Margaretha was apparently in a love affair with Philip II of Spain, which her parents disapproved of so vehemently that they had her poisoned in 1554, allegedly. I'm not very convinced by this, as it's one of those theories that gets copied word for word in each internet article you read, suggesting there hasn't been any follow up since 1994, and the similarities are pretty superficial. Either way, there's two main versions of the story published by the Brothers Grimm: one from 1812, and one from 1857, though both are more or less the same story with some minor differences.

You all probably know how this story goes, but you've read this far, so now you're in my trap. Mwahahaha. Once upon a time, there was a royal couple who, inspired by the snowfall, wished for a daughter whose skin was pale as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony. I'm fairly certain that would describe some sort of skin condition you'd need ointment for, but hey, to each their own. After confirming their character creation options, a baby with those exact features got popped out, and this was little Snow White. When Snow White was seven years old, the evil queen (who is her mother in the 1812 edition, and her stepmother in the 1857 edition) went up to her magic mirror to ask who was the hottest bitch on the block. Disturbingly, the mirror tells her that it is Snow White, the seven year old girl, and that kinda pisses the evil queen off. Honestly, I don't blame her. Children are disgusting. In response to this outrage, the evil queen sent her huntsman out into the woods to kill Snow White and bring back her organs for her to eat. Jesus Christ lady, I hate kids too, but even I draw the line at murdering them for dinner. Thankfully for Snow White, the huntsman couldn't bring himself to kill a child, and he instead sent her running into the woods. To make the queen believe the girl was dead, he brought her the organs of a boar instead. One wonders how the queen didn't pick up on the delectable taste of bacon, though I guess I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between pig and human if it was served up in front of me. Which is… not a realization I like to think about.

Snow White ran through the treacherous thicket until at last she came to a little cottage built for little people. It is here that she met the titular Seven Dwarves, who go unnamed in Grimm's telling. They allow her to stay so long as she does all the housework, and seeing as the alternative would be going back to her abusive household, she thought it was a pretty sweet deal. Unfortunately, when the evil queen went to ask her mirror again who the fairest of them all was, the mirror straight up rats out Snow White and her new address. Dick move, dude. Coming to the horrific realization that she isn't a cannibal afterall, the evil queen goes to the dwarves' place disguised as an old woman not once, but three times with different assassination plots, each one foiled when the dwarves return home and find Snow White on the brink of death. Getting real pissed off at this point, the evil queen goes to her chambers to magically enchant a "poisoned, poisoned apple", which I can only presume means it was like totally super mega ultra poisoned. Snow White was starting to get real suss of this old woman at this point, though, and refused to take the apple, which was white on one side and red (the poisoned side) on the other. To prove that this was a totally not super ultra mega poisoned apple, the evil queen ate the white half and gave the red to Snow White.

And well, you know how this goes. Bitch gets knocked out cold and stuffed into a glass coffin until a dashing prince comes along and is like yo, I want a piece of that. Interestingly, though I often see it cited that the Disney prince is like 32 while Snow White is only 13, I can't for the life of me track down the source of this factoid. It actually seems to be an urban legend blindly spread around the internet. The prince in the Grimm version isn't even given an age, so there's plenty of room to interpret him and Snow White as the same, very much less creepy age. In the 1857 edition of Grimm's version, Snow White is not woken up by a kiss but rather the piece of apple is just kinda heimliched out of her throat when the prince's entourage unceremoniously drops the coffin on the way back to his castle. In the 1812 edition, one of his servants straight up bitch slaps it out of her. I think we can all agree that this is the canon version. Either way, Snow White wakes up, the prince marries her, and they live happily ever after. They even spot the evil queen at their wedding and just kinda casually force her to put her feet into iron shoes turned red hot by burning coals until she dies. The moral of the story is if your magic mirror tells you a seven year old is more attractive than you, please call Child Protective Services instead of trying to kill the kid with a poisoned, poisoned apple.

Design notes, while I based that D&D one off on Disney and Disney history, I wanted to shy away from making my interpretation of these tales resemble the movie versions as much as possible. Both because it's just a little tired to turn Disney into the baseline for literally everything… and because I am batshit terrified of the Mouse and his phenomenal cosmic powers. I ultimately made her a combination of the illustrations of Franz Jüttner and Carl Offterdinger, both very much in the public domain, thank you Disney. It's not perfect, and indeed I must confess my Renaissance-era fashion skills have gotten a little rusty But also, it really is just a minor fairy tale when you get down to it. I don't like to come across as dismissive, because it is important world literature, but when the entire original story fits on my phone screen, I try not to get too hung up on coming up with something as grand as I would for say Alexander the Great. It's simple, it's based on historical sources, and it does its job. I'd show this to my hypothetical kid if I was reading the original story to them some day. I'd… probably leave out the hot iron shoes and liver eating, though. I know, I'm the squarest mom ever.

Description
I figure yesterday's post is as good a segway as ever to detour out of the Eddas and fast forward a few centuries to the collection of the Brothers Grimm. When my little brother asked me to teach him how to play D&D, I made a little one off campaign for him, set in what's basically Bendy meets Disneyland, since he's a big fan of film history. So I drafted up designs for a few of the fairy tales used in the earliest days of the Mouse's studio. Of course, the first of these is Snow White (or "Schneewittchen" as it is in the native tongue) a classic German folk tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. Like many of the Grimm fairy tales, its exact origins are incredibly difficult to trace. Some say it was made up whole cloth by the Brothers or an associate, while German historian Eckhard Sander proposed in 1994 that it's actually based on a historical 16th century countess: Margaretha von Waldeck. Margaretha was apparently in a love affair with Philip II of Spain, which her parents disapproved of so vehemently that they had her poisoned in 1554, allegedly. I'm not very convinced by this, as it's one of those theories that gets copied word for word in each internet article you read, suggesting there hasn't been any follow up since 1994, and the similarities are pretty superficial. Either way, there's two main versions of the story published by the Brothers Grimm: one from 1812, and one from 1857, though both are more or less the same story with some minor differences.

You all probably know how this story goes, but you've read this far, so now you're in my trap. Mwahahaha. Once upon a time, there was a royal couple who, inspired by the snowfall, wished for a daughter whose skin was pale as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony. I'm fairly certain that would describe some sort of skin condition you'd need ointment for, but hey, to each their own. After confirming their character creation options, a baby with those exact features got popped out, and this was little Snow White. When Snow White was seven years old, the evil queen (who is her mother in the 1812 edition, and her stepmother in the 1857 edition) went up to her magic mirror to ask who was the hottest bitch on the block. Disturbingly, the mirror tells her that it is Snow White, the seven year old girl, and that kinda pisses the evil queen off. Honestly, I don't blame her. Children are disgusting. In response to this outrage, the evil queen sent her huntsman out into the woods to kill Snow White and bring back her organs for her to eat. Jesus Christ lady, I hate kids too, but even I draw the line at murdering them for dinner. Thankfully for Snow White, the huntsman couldn't bring himself to kill a child, and he instead sent her running into the woods. To make the queen believe the girl was dead, he brought her the organs of a boar instead. One wonders how the queen didn't pick up on the delectable taste of bacon, though I guess I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between pig and human if it was served up in front of me. Which is… not a realization I like to think about.

Snow White ran through the treacherous thicket until at last she came to a little cottage built for little people. It is here that she met the titular Seven Dwarves, who go unnamed in Grimm's telling. They allow her to stay so long as she does all the housework, and seeing as the alternative would be going back to her abusive household, she thought it was a pretty sweet deal. Unfortunately, when the evil queen went to ask her mirror again who the fairest of them all was, the mirror straight up rats out Snow White and her new address. Dick move, dude. Coming to the horrific realization that she isn't a cannibal afterall, the evil queen goes to the dwarves' place disguised as an old woman not once, but three times with different assassination plots, each one foiled when the dwarves return home and find Snow White on the brink of death. Getting real pissed off at this point, the evil queen goes to her chambers to magically enchant a "poisoned, poisoned apple", which I can only presume means it was like totally super mega ultra poisoned. Snow White was starting to get real suss of this old woman at this point, though, and refused to take the apple, which was white on one side and red (the poisoned side) on the other. To prove that this was a totally not super ultra mega poisoned apple, the evil queen ate the white half and gave the red to Snow White.

And well, you know how this goes. Bitch gets knocked out cold and stuffed into a glass coffin until a dashing prince comes along and is like yo, I want a piece of that. Interestingly, though I often see it cited that the Disney prince is like 32 while Snow White is only 13, I can't for the life of me track down the source of this factoid. It actually seems to be an urban legend blindly spread around the internet. The prince in the Grimm version isn't even given an age, so there's plenty of room to interpret him and Snow White as the same, very much less creepy age. In the 1857 edition of Grimm's version, Snow White is not woken up by a kiss but rather the piece of apple is just kinda heimliched out of her throat when the prince's entourage unceremoniously drops the coffin on the way back to his castle. In the 1812 edition, one of his servants straight up bitch slaps it out of her. I think we can all agree that this is the canon version. Either way, Snow White wakes up, the prince marries her, and they live happily ever after. They even spot the evil queen at their wedding and just kinda casually force her to put her feet into iron shoes turned red hot by burning coals until she dies. The moral of the story is if your magic mirror tells you a seven year old is more attractive than you, please call Child Protective Services instead of trying to kill the kid with a poisoned, poisoned apple.

Design notes, while I based that D&D one off on Disney and Disney history, I wanted to shy away from making my interpretation of these tales resemble the movie versions as much as possible. Both because it's just a little tired to turn Disney into the baseline for literally everything… and because I am batshit terrified of the Mouse and his phenomenal cosmic powers. I ultimately made her a combination of the illustrations of Franz Jüttner and Carl Offterdinger, both very much in the public domain, thank you Disney. It's not perfect, and indeed I must confess my Renaissance-era fashion skills have gotten a little rusty But also, it really is just a minor fairy tale when you get down to it. I don't like to come across as dismissive, because it is important world literature, but when the entire original story fits on my phone screen, I try not to get too hung up on coming up with something as grand as I would for say Alexander the Great. It's simple, it's based on historical sources, and it does its job. I'd show this to my hypothetical kid if I was reading the original story to them some day. I'd… probably leave out the hot iron shoes and liver eating, though. I know, I'm the squarest mom ever.