[DAY 35][OPEN][ALL][TEXT: NETWORK POST]

[grand_theft_moe]

In Advanced Literature we've been analyzing fairy tales. More specifically we're talking about how the author of a tale frames the text to produce a moral they agree with. This week's subject is Cinderella

Comments

[tunedout]

You actually have to take a class to figure that stuff out?

[grand_theft_moe]

Not all of us are born with your facility for art.

[tunedout]

[...agoehgorengoe. Aoiwefnjuvnfwe.]

I don't. It's. No good taking morals from stories.

[grand_theft_moe]

Why? That's what they're there for. You can disagree with the text but not the method of transmission. This is how we socialize children into obediant adults. Don't you remember them from childhood?

[tunedout]

No. ...No childhood. Make your own morals.

"I wouldn't be where I am now if I followed that advice."

[grand_theft_moe]

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to touch something sensitive.

[tunedout]

["It's not sensitive--" He deletes that. Wants to change the subject.]

It's fine. ...More importantly, it's kind of weird to judge people by their feet anyway. It's a metaphor about 'purity' built on superficiality.

[grand_theft_moe]

Purity's only part of it. It's one of the feminine virtues implied but not the whole of them. There are related ones (modesty, chastity) but also there are others (obedience, sweetness, mildness, all the characteristics of a calf about to be slaughtered)....All of these are implied. The foot is normally hidden, just like people's true natures. In exposing it, the Prince exposed the wicked stepmother and her daughters as false women: masculine in their cunning (according to the rules of fairy tales at least) and as cunning women, they recieved punishment, becoming blind beggars the rest of their lives.

But I wonder if there's such a thing as a different kind of Prince...

["Look. I think she's trying to imply abuse

[tunedout]

[He's not as good at 'hearing' between lines of text, not enough sensory data to catalog and understand, but her turns of phrase make him pause uncertainly.]

There's no such thing as a 'Prince' at all. Just people. Just you.

[grand_theft_moe]

Clothes do not wear themselves. That doesn't mean they don't send a message. Same as a role that's played.

[tunedout]

I'm not in the habit of pretending to be myself.

[grand_theft_moe]

Why do you think I talk to you?

[tunedout]

[ndgorjrgkiojworjwe. DGHNgngwoijs.]

Poor judge of character?

[grand_theft_moe]

Given what you know of me, do you really think i'd make that mistake?

[tunedout]

I... I don't know.

[grand_theft_moe]

Well I don't. And I haven't. So quit with the sulky self deprecation.