I was going to stay up taking pictures, but decided I was too behind in my flickr account already

[porphyre]

Don’t Die Ding by Curiosity Group. Hit play or go to LinkI wavered over the Emily Dickenson, but I took Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman off the shelf instead and gently flipped through it as I sat on the bed, brushing my hair with my fingers, before deciding I lacked the proper background and putting it back. Paul caught me in

Comments

[skonen_blades]

Whenever I read about witches and kids a la Hansel and Gretel, I'm always reminded of the awesome fight that Homer Simpson has with a witch in one of the Treehouse of Horror episodes. He defeats the witch by taking bites out of her gingerbread house. He takes a huge bite out of an enormous candy cane and the witch shrieks "You idiot! That was a load-bearing cane!" and much collapsing of house ensues.

Load-bearing cane. Hilarious.

Maybe it's just me.

[porphyre]

You'll have to show me some day. My idea of Hansel & Gretel tends to come down on the side of the witch.

[lafinjack]

Those kids were little shits. Trespassing is against the law, she was protecting her property!

[porphyre]

There's a related story, though I don't think it predates it, but rather pulls from hansel & Gretel, about a madwoman who eats her children so as to keep them close to her forever, and then she mistakes all children after for her own.

[lafinjack]

"It was the seventh deadly sin. My children weren't righteous. They stumbled because I was evil. The way I was raising them they could never be saved. They were doomed to perish in the fires of hell."

Or the bathtub of hell, whichever.

[porphyre]

People Under the Stairs much?

I love how there's a section marked KILLS HER CHILDREN.

[lafinjack]

Wikipedia: the last bastion of tact.

[skonen_blades]

I think the original did as well. Wasn't it a horrifying cautionary tale about not doing what your parents tell you? Don't go off the path/into the woods or the witch will eat you. They go off the path/into the woods. A witch eat them. But they narrowly escaped even in the original, right? The witch is blind or something and Hansel keeps offering her a fingerbone from the child before him as proof of his skinniness/unfit-to-eat-ness before Gretel kicks her into the stove, right?
Or something. But I'd love to see it done properly.

[porphyre]

It's amazing you remembered the bone detail and got main thrust wrong. Hansel and Gretel are led out into the woods by thier father and abandoned. His parents are too poor to keep them. It's a common theme in a lot of older stories. Later on, it was decided that the father was heart broken about the whole thing and only doing it because the evil mother or step-mother, (to once remove the hateful female figure and soften the story a wee bit), has harangued the man into it, but that's the christian adaptation. (They're rather down on mums.)

[skonen_blades]

Yes, they are. Must be that whole "you're the reason that we have evil in the world. Or that we can recognize it, rather. Or that we have knowledge at all. Or that you took action while man was content to sit around and just be a beast. Or that you had the audacity to think for yourself when you'd been specifically told to follow the will of your big strong stupid man. Or something like that. Yeah. Down with moms!"

It is amazing that I forgot the main thrust of the story. It's coming back to me now that you mention it. Strange.

[porphyre]

The holy trinity used to be the mother, the father, and the holy child.

I can't see that there was much of a cautionary tale. The only message I can think of might be if you place the witch in the place of the lord to which the peasants placed fealty, so you could swing "damn the man."