Once Upon a Blogger: "The Three Little Men in the Wood"

So there's this widower and this widow, see? Bonding over their shared experience of dead spouses, they decide to get hitched, with the widow promising to treat the widower's daughter even better than she treats her own.

You can just imagine how that turns out. The widower's daughter bathes in milk and drinks wine for about a day before her stepmother gets tired of being Not Evil and starts right in on the child abuse, while her own daughter remains free to bathe in and drink any bizarre combination of popular beverages she fancies.

Where is the widower in all of this? NOBODY CARES.

Anyway, during a blizzard, the stepmother gives her stepdaughter a paper cloak and crust of bread and orders her into the woods to fetch a basket of fresh strawberries.

Stepdaughter: "But why? They're not even in season--"

Stepmother: "Because I'm trying to kill you, obviously."

Stepdaughter: "Well, then. That makes sense."

The stepdaughter wanders off into the cold, because really, what choice does she have? She comes across a little house inhabited by three dwarves, and asks for shelter. After warming herself, she returns the favour by sharing her crust of bread with the dwarves and doing some housekeeping.

While's she's outside shovelling the walk, the three dwarves convene.

Dwarf #1: "Man, her life sucks, and she seems like a nice gal. I know! I'll make her grow more beautiful every day!"

Dwarf #2: "I'll make it so that gold drops out of her mouth every time she talks!"

Dwarf #3: "I'll arrange it so she'll marry a king!"

As a bonus, the stepdaughter uncovers strawberries while shovelling the walk, and takes those back to the house.

Meanwhile, the Stepmother's real daughter becomes jealous, because she's ugly and hateful and smells of sour milk after a lifetime spent bathing in nonpasteurized dairy products. So she wanders into the woods herself looking for the same result, but when she finds the dwarves' house she acts like a spoiled little turd.

Dwarf #1: "Man, that girl is a hot-ass mess. I'll make it so she gets uglier every day!"

Dwarf #2: "Is it just me, or does she smell like bad cheese? I'll make it so that toads jump out of her mouth every time she talks!"

Dwarf #3: "I'll make it so that she dies a miserable death!"

Dwarf #1: "...wow. Dark. I like it!"

Dwarf 2: "Oh, Number Three, you're so bad!"

So now the Stepmother has even more reasons to hate her stepdaughter, so she sends her stepdaughter ice fishing. Because if it doesn't kill her, she'll still be cold and bored for a few hours. Fortunately for the stepdaughter, a King wanders by and, intrigued by her superb ice-fishing skills, takes her home and marries her.

A few years later, after the young Queen's delivered of a fine baby Prince, her stepmother and stepsister decide to come visit, and the Queen lets them in for some unfathomable reason but quickly regrets it when the two women throw her out a window and into the river. The stepmother then puts her daughter in the Queen's bed instead, wrapping her up in a sheet.

King: "Why can't I see my wife? And why does the room smell like mayonnaise left out in the sun?"

Fake Queen: "I'm on my period!"

King: "ENOUGH SAID! ... wait, why are there four and a half toads in the room now?"

Stepmother: "Every woman menstruates differently, my King. Some get cramps, some spontaneously belch out toads..."

King: "RIGHT-OH! I'll just go hunting until your orifices stop emitting blood and amphibians!"

Thankfully, the real Queen doesn't die - she turns into a duck (as one does). With much quacking and flapping of wings, she conveys her troubles to a servant, who fetches the King. The spell is quickly undone (I guess people turn into ducks all the time on that river), but what to do about the evil step-relatives and their incredibly short-sighted plan?

The King approaches the bedchamber and asks, "Hey, if I really wanted to punish someone, how would I do it?"

Fake Queen: "Ooh! I know! I know! Drive a bunch of nails into a barrel, then roll the criminal down a hill in it!"

King: "....wow. Dark. I like it!"

Stepmother: "Oooh, you're so bad!"

22 Toads: "Ribbit! Ribbit!"

Unfortunately for the step-schemers, that's exactly how they wind up punished. And the King and his Queen lived happily ever after.

Not Suitable for Children:

• Child Abuse
• Attempted Child Murder
• Attempted Queen Murder
• Rudeness towards Dwarves

Points For:

• Helpful Dwarves are like celebrity deaths: they come in either 3s or 7s. 

Points Deducted For:

• Seriously, where was the girl's father this whole time? He's never seen dying or running away or anything. 
• An evil stepmother who clearly has no sense of followthrough or longterm planning. Seriously how long would she have been able to fool the King that her cheese-scented daughter was really his wife?

And the Moral of the Story is: Don't fuck with dwarves.

Rating: Two Helpful Dwarves out of Three. 

Once Upon a Blogger: "The Twelve Brothers"

So there's this King and Queen, see? And they have twelve sons, with another bun in the oven waiting to bring it to a baker's dozen. However, the King's sick to death of boys at this point.

So he tells his Queen, "Let's just be honest - dudes suck. Sexism is real and with our society's outdated patriarchal norms, if we have a daughter, I'll have to murder our 12 sons and make her the sole heir just to even things out. It's only fair."

Queen: *gasps* "MISANDRY!"

But by this point, the King's already fitted out a special room in the castle with twelve pre-built boy-sized coffins, just to prove he's serious, singing, "Who run the world? GIRLS! Who run this mutha? GIRLS!" under his breath.

To protect her sons, the Queen orders them to hide in the forest and wait for her to raise a flag on the day her baby is born. If it's a boy, she'll raise a white flag and they'll be able to return. If she has a girl, she'll raise an overly-symbolic red flag, and the boys'll have to run for the hills.

Unfortunately, 12 days later, the Queen raises the red flag, dooming the boys' futures.

12 Princes: "OMG, women suck!"

Prince #1: "We should totally murder any women we come across! Because they SUCK so much!"

Prince #5: "Even better - let's sign a Lady-Murderin' Pact!"

12 Princes: "HUZZAH! This totally won't bite us in the ass later on!"

Ten years later, their sister the Princess figures out she used to have brothers (the room with the 12 empty coffins was kind of a giveaway) and goes into the woods to find them, eventually discovering her youngest brother (Benjamin) tending their cottage.

Princess: "Hey! I'm your sister!"

Benjamin: "OMG, and you don't suck!" Benjamin is overjoyed to re-discover his baby sister, and so are his 11 brothers - once he tricks them out of their Lady-Murdering pact. Because murder is terrible and everything, but breaking a pact is even worse!

So all the siblings live happily for a while in their cottage (and the Princess's parents never seem to notice she's missing, despite the fact that her dad was willing to butcher his other children in order to enlarge her inheritance), until the Princess fucks it all up because women suck. While in the garden outside the cottage, she spots 12 lilies and plucks them, hoping to make a tasteful centrepiece. However, the moment she does so, the house and garden disappear, and her brothers turn into crows.

12 Crows: "Caw, caw!" (translation: OMG, women suck!)

Random Old Expository Woman: "WTF?! Why'd you pick those magic flowers? You've cursed your brothers forever!"

Princess: "This is literally the first I've heard of this!"

Random Old Expository Woman: *rolls eyes* "Women!"

Princess: "What can I do?"

Random Old Expository Woman: "If you remain perfectly silent and never laugh for 7 years, your brothers will be cured, but if you so much as chuckle before those seven years are up, they'll all die!" *vanishes in a puff of smoke*

So our faithful Princess zips her lips and holes up in a tree with some late-career Adam Sandler DVDs for five of those years, until a King and his hunting party pass by. The King falls in love with the Princess and marries her, and for the next two years is creepily happy with a wife who never talks or laughs. However, the Princess' mother-in-law is hella creeped out and nags her son about it so much he agrees to have his wife burned at the stake just to shut her up (women, am I right?)

Coincidentally, the seven years run out just as the Princess is being lit on fire, so her twelve brothers become human again in time to rescue her and for some reason the King is okay with not-burning her anymore and people live happily ever after for no reason.

Not Suitable for Children:

• MISANDRY
• Sexism
• Child murder
• Child-Flower Murder
• Lady-Murdering Pacts
• Shade-Throwing Mums-In-Law

Points Added For:

• The Princess having to save the Princes - even if she manages it by literally doing nothing but not speaking.

Points Deducted For:

• Like, yay King for valuing his daughter, but at the expense of murdering his other kids? What the hell?
• The Princess is blamed for literally everything despite being responsible for nothing
• So ... do those 12 brothers keep up their lady-murdering pact, like, indefinitely? How many unlucky women dropped by their dude cottage before their sister happened by?

And the moral of the story is: women ruin everything.

Rating: 7 unjustly exiled brothers out of 12.

Once Upon a Blogger: "The Wonderful Musician"

So there's this Musician, see? And he's farting around in a forest, lonely and bored, so he decides to play his fiddle to attract a companion.

He plays his fiddle, and an appreciative Wolf appears, asking if the Musician can teach him how to play the instrument.

Musician: "Um, you're not really my type." So the Musician tricks the musically-inclined wolf into trapping his paws beneath a rock, and the Musician continues on his way.

He plays a bitchin' song on his fiddle again, hoping for company, and a Fox appears, asking for musical training.

Musician: "Oh come on now. Seriously?" So the Musician ties the Fox to a bush and flees.

Because the Musician has no clear grasp of actions and consequences, he plays his fiddle in the woods again and is frustrated when a Hare appears. He subjects a third animal to non-consensual bondage and continues through the forest.

By this time, the Wolf has freed himself, and rescues both the Fox and the Hare while following the asshole Musician's trail.

Unfortunately, by the time the vengeful animals track down the Musician, his music has finally attracted a human companion - a woodcutter with an axe. The entranced Woodcutter chases the animals away, while the deluded, racist, jerk face Musician sidles off into the sunset.

Not Suitable for Children:

• Animal Cruelty
• Douchebag Musicians

Points Added For:

• All those animals just wanted to learn how to play the fiddle! 
• Now I'm thinking about those animals starting a band - and now I'm angry that this didn't happen!

Points Deducted For:

• WTF is up with that jerkface Musician? Couldn't he have just said no when the animals asked for music lessons?
• Also, if he wanted a human companion in the first place, what the fuck is he doing playing his fiddle in the middle of the forest? Instead of, oh I don't know, a town or a village or a karaoke bar or something?

Rating: Two fiddle-playing mammals out of ten.

Once Upon a Blogger: "A Good Bargain"

Sigh. So there's this anti-Semitic fairy tale, see? Where the villain is a cowardly Jewish moneylender who gets the shit kicked out of him for being a meddling dickhole. You'll notice I didn't include the illustration at the top of this story - it's because I've only just now realized, with an adult's eyes and understanding, what the picture of the man with the large nose and full beard getting whipped is meant to depict.

Blah, blah, "the period in which the story was set," blah blah STILL RACIST. So fuck this story. I'll tell it my way.

So there's this Countryman, see? And thanks to watching too many Disney movies and being more than a little psychotic and stupid, he accidentally loses a wad of cash after asking a bunch of frogs in a pond to count his money (by throwing the coins into the water) and opening a line of credit to a pack of dogs sniffing after his butchered beef. Long story short, frogs and dogs do not sing, dance, or pay their debts, and in a rage, the idiotic Countryman goes to the King to demand justice.

The King's daughter laughs herself silly at the Countryman's story, and since she's never laughed before, by law this means she has to marry the Countryman. Because Reasons. The Countryman turns her down flat since he's already married and it already sucks. Offended, the King offers the Countryman another reward - a reward of "five hundred," if he returns the following day.

Thinking he's getting 500 bucks the Countryman wastes no time in giving it away - he promises 200 to a city guard, and 300 to a ... um, uh ... random dude of indeterminate ethnic origins. Yeah.

The Countryman shows up the next day for his reward, with the city guard and the Random Dude in tow. As it turns out, the King actually promised to whip the Countryman 500 times for dissing his daughter - and since the the Countryman gave his "reward" away, the city guard and the Random Dude receive his punishment instead.

Now, something quite different happens in the original fairy tale, but since the Brothers Grimm are being anti-semitic douchebags today - fuck their story. The Random Dude of Indeterminate Ethnic Origins takes his whipping stoically and promptly leaves the story (and the hillbilly kingdom of smelly, backwards, racist peasants) for greener pastures and much more lucrative and exciting adventures that may or may not involve punching a giant who bears a striking resemblance to Mel Gibson in the face.

By this point, the King is kind of amused by all this and offers the Countryman a real reward - he can go into the treasury and fill his pockets with all the gold his coat can hold. The Countryman pisses and moans some more because he's a moron, he narrowly avoids corporal punishment for a second time, and by this point I couldn't care less about what these people do because racism makes me tired.

Not Suitable For Children:

• Overt and hateful Anti-Semitism (for reals)
• Flagellation

Points Added For:

• I got nothing

Points Deducted For:

• Racism
• The general douchebaggery of everyone involved in this story

And the moral of the story is: don't give your money to animals, that's just stupid.

Rating: Zero Cultural Stereotypes Out of a Billion

Once Upon a Blogger: "Faithful John"

So there's this servant named Faithful John, see? And he's served the King for many years. When the Old King is on his death bed, he begs John to look after his young son. He also warns John to keep him away from the room at the end of the corridor, since it contains the portrait of the daughter of the King of the Golden Palace - a girl so desperately hot and unlucky that his impetuous son will doubtless fall in love with her and die trying to win her.

The new King's a sweet kid, but not the sharpest sword in the armoury and it's not long before he finagles his way past Faithful John. The moment he sets his eyes on the portrait, he faints dead away (likely due to a sudden rush of blood to a certain area) and wakes up in love with the daughter of the King of the Golden Palace.

So the King and Faithful John set sail for the land of the Golden Palace. With Faithful John acting as wingman, he and the King trick the Princess of the Golden Palace onto their boat with the use of shiny objects (unsurprisingly, the chick digs gold) and sail away. Thankfully for our bros, the Princess reacts to her kidnapping with a shrug and a, "It could be worse - at least you're hot."

But the King's not in the clear yet. While the King and the Princess are cozying up in the hold, Faithful John overhears three crows gossiping as they pass the ship. Marrying the Princess, it appears, comes with a curse. The first crow mentions that a horse will try to murder the King when he first disembarks. The second crow points out that if the King survives Attempted Murder By Horse, he'll likely be burnt alive by a poisoned bridal shirt that will be left in his chambers. The third crow states that if the King survives both of these, the Princess will collapse during the first dance and die, unless someone squeezes three drops of blood from her right breast.

Oh, and anyone who tries to warn the King or explain the curse will be turned to stone.

Once the ship returns to port, poor Faithful John turns into the World's Worst Wingman. First, he shoots a sweet-ass horse that appears on the dock. Then he sets fire to the King's fly-as-hell bridal shirt. The King is willing to overlook these sins because of Faithful John's years of service - until the new Queen takes a nosedive during "Wind Beneath my Wings" and Faithful John's caught copping a bloodfeel on her right boob. Wait, is that a thing? Who am I kidding, it's the Brothers Grimm, that's totally a thing.

The outraged King condemns Faithful John to prison, but when Faithful John explains himself, he turns to stone. "Oh, bummer," says the King.

Years later, the King and Queen have a pair of adorable twin boys, while Faithful John's statue collects bird poop in the garden. One day, the statue talks to the King and tells him that if he really wishes Faithful John was alive again, he'd decapitate his sons and pour their blood on the statue.

"Hmmm," says the king. "This inanimate object is telling me to murder my children so that it may live again. Seems legit." He lops off the downy, freckled heads of his innocent toddlers without delay, and lo and behold - Faithful John leaps to life like a childblood-soaked Frosty the Snowman. He also re-capitates the king's sons, because childblood makes you Jesus, and they frolic happily off to face absolutely no psychological ramifications later on in life.

To surprise his wife, the King hides Faithful John and his kids in a closet.

King: "Hey, what if I told you that we could resurrect Faithful John if we murdered our kids?"

Queen: "Well, we did get him turned into stone. Fair is fair."

The Two Princes: "Wow this is totally not going to mess us up later in life."

King: "Surprise! Everyone's alive!"

And they all totally lived happily ever.

Not Suitable for Children:

• Kidnapping
• Murder by Horse
• Murder by fly-as-hell Shirt
• Murder-Enabling Statues
• Decapitation of Children

Points Added For:

• Faithful John's selfless heroism

Points Deducted For:

• Faithful John enabling the King's obvious impulse-control problem (kidnapping some random chick, murdering your kids)

And the moral of the story is: real-life consequences are for suckers.

Rating: Six beheaded babies out of ten.

Once Upon a Blogger: "The Pack of Ragamuffins"

So there's this Cock, see? I mean a rooster, you dirty birds. So this Cock takes his sweet lady Hen up to a hill to eat a bunch of nuts. But by the end of the day, the Hen is too full to walk back home.

Hen: "Why don't you make these nutshells into a carriage and drive me home?"

Cock: "Why don't you make these nutshells into a time machine and keep yourself from eating so damn much?"

But the Cock knows his access to his Hen's all-white meat chicken breasts will be pretty limited if it he doesn't come up with something. Thankfully, a Duck appears - enraged at the Cock for eating all of the nuts on her hill. She attacks the Cock but gets her ass royally handed to her and winds up hitched to the nutshell carriage in punishment.

While they're driving along, they also pick up a Needle and a Pin who are hitchhiking by the side of the road because they're too drunk to drive themselves (for reals), and eventually come to a stop at an inn whose keeper is kind of a racist, at least against non-human sentient creatures/objects. They bribe the reluctant innkeeper with the promise of eggs from the Hen and the Duck in return for a place to stay.

Of course, the Cock is kind of a dick, so the next morning, he and his Hen eat their egg, stick the sleeping Needle in the innkeeper's towel and the sleeping Pin in the innkeeper's chair and hightail it out of there without paying a damn thing. The Duck wakes up soon after, thinks, "I am not going to jail again for this!" and flies away.

So instead of getting payment, the innkeeper gets slashed in the face by the towel-Needle and jabbed in the ass by the chair-Pin - which doesn't sooth his non-human prejudice one little bit.

Not Suitable For Children:

• LOL, cocks
• LOL, nuts
• LOL, chicken breasts
• LOL
• Poultry-on-Poultry violence

Points Added For:

• The idea of a Pin and a Needle sharing a beer with their local Tailor is just so adorable. Get on this, PIXAR!

Points Deducted For:

• Dude, while it must suck for the Needle to wake up to find a bloody human face all up in its business, WTF did that poor Pin do to deserve waking up beneath a gigantic human ass?

And the moral of the story is: Cocks are dicks.

Rating: Three inebriated inanimate objects out of five.

Once Upon a Blogger: "The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats"

So there's this Mama Goat, see? And she's a single mum to seven little kids, which sounds like a hell of a job. Because Papa Goat is clearly a deadbeat loser, Mama Goat has to go into the forest to get some food, but before she goes, she warns her baby goats to watch out for the Wolf, best known for his scratchy voice and black feet.

This knowledge protects the kids for a while, but the Wolf catches wise to the Mama Goat's warnings and covers his feet in floury pizza dough and swallows an entire chunk of chalk to make his voice sound smoother. Despite the chalk-breath and the feet that smell like pizza, the Wolf is able to fool the little kids into letting him inside their house. Desperate to wash the taste of chalk out of his mouth, he gobbles up all of the helpless kids but the one that hid himself in the grandfather clock. I guess the Wolf never checked there because he's used to checking his time on his iPhone. Who knows.

Anyway, the Mama Goat comes back to find herself six-sevenths childless and is understandably horrified. Learning about the Wolf from the surviving kid, she rushes out and finds the Wolf sleeping off a food coma and what must be a killer case of the meat sweats. Inspired by that one time she marathon'd through the Alien trilogy and season 1 of Grey's Anatomy when the kids were asleep, she slashes open the sleeping Wolf's stomach and six still-kicking baby goats leap out like fluffy, bloody chest-bursters.

Mama Goat apparently also watched The Human Centipede, as she decides to punish the Wolf by surgically inserting enormous, jagged rocks into his abdominal cavity before sewing him back up again. The Wolf wakes up muddled, heavy, and in pain - and when he bends over a stream to drink, the rocks in his stomach cause him to lose his balance, fall in, and drown.

Damn.

Not Suitable for Children:

• Attempted child murder
• Surgery without anaesthesia or patient consent
• Body horror

Points Added For: 

• Goat badassery
• Obedient kids
• GLORIOUS REVENGE

Points Deducted For:

• The wolf is able to go to all of these businesses and just buy chalk and pizza dough over the counter. Couldn't he have just gone to a local butcher shop and ordered up a nice set of lamb shanks? Would that have been so hard?

And the moral of the story is: Don't mess with a single mom with a Netflix subscription.

Rating: Six Devoured Kids out of Seven

Once Upon a Blogger: "A Tale of One Who Travelled to Learn What Shivering Meant"

So there's this father, right? And he has two sons - a smart, cowardly one and a complete fucking idiot who is only good at, like, opening really tough jam jars and doing any errands the smart son is too chicken to do.

Finally, the father asks his idiot son what he wants out of life, and the son replies, "I want to learn how to shiver!" When a helpful pastor tries to scare the kid and winds up thrown down a flight of stairs for his trouble (for reals), the father banishes his son to his own fate.

So our none-too-bright hero wanders around looking for something to scare the pants off him (since he's too stupid to take them off by himself) and eventually hears of an enchanted castle that has killed all who sleep in it overnight. The King has promised that whoever can survive three nights in the castle will gain the princess' hand in marriage.

Our hero thinks this is a grand idea and spends three nights in a castle stabbing ghost cats, bowling with human skulls and thigh-bones, humping corpses, and beating an undead old man with an iron bar - all without the merest shiver of unease. After three days of the this, the evil spell on the castle gives up in exasperation and the moron wins the princess' hand and becomes a prince.

He's still disappointed at not learning how to shiver, until his much-smarter wife pours cold water and live fish on him.

Not Suitable for Children:

• Desecration of corpses
• (Ghost) Animal Abuse

Points Added For:

• Bowling with human bones!

Points Deducted For:

• The hero getting into bed with a corpse when he mistakes it for his cousin. Can't decide which part of that sentence is worse.

And the moral of the story is: if you're too stupid to know when to shit your pants from terror, have some free stuff! You're clearly deserving of fame and comfort!

Rating: Three desecrated, burned, hanged corpses out of ten.

Once Upon a Blogger: "The Woodcutter's Child"

So there's this woodcutter, right? Only he's not a very good woodcutter, because he's dirt poor and can barely feed his infant daughter. Luckily for him, Angelina Jolie the Guardian Angel of All Christian Children drops by and offers to take the child off his hands and raise her in the land of Happiness.

The woodcutter goes, "Sure, why not?" and for fourteen years the girl lives in bliss and comfort.

When the Woodcutter's Daughter reaches puberty, her Guardian Angel gives her a chatelaine of 13 keys to the 13 doors of the land of Happiness. She tells the Woodcutter's Daughter that she's free to open 12 of those doors, but the 13th is forbidden for Reasons.

Having apparently learned nothing from that whole Garden of Eden fiasco, the Guardian Angel leaves on a journey and the Woodcutter's Daughter does exactly what we think she's going to do. When the Guardian Angel asks about the door, she denies everything, and winds up booted out of the land of Happiness and stripped of her voice.

The Woodcutter's Daughter sleeps in a tree and eats wild berries and lets her hair grow out for a while, as one does, before a King wanders into her patch of Desolate Wilderness and falls in love with her. He wines hers, dines her, and weds her, and nine months later she gives birth to a boy.

The Guardian Angel shows up once again, and demands that the Queen confess to opening the 13th door. When the Queen refuses, the Guardian Angel steals her baby, and the mute Queen falls under suspicion of infanticide.

The rumours die down eventually and she gives birth to another boy. The Guardian Angel shows up again, because she's clearly got a fever, and the only prescription is to Abduct More Children. She demands the truth about the 13th door, the Queen tells her to fuck off, Baby Number Two disappears, and the kingdom is once again super suspicious.

The Queen gets pregnant again and the Guardian Angel pops into the royal maternity ward with her baby-snatching sack over her shoulder and the usual speech, "yadda yadda, 13th door, truth will set you free, so on and so forth, baby please?" When she absconds with the Queen's daughter, the Queen's exasperated subjects accuse her of murder and condemn her to burn at the stake.

Only once the flames are licking at her toes does the Queen think, "oh for fuck's sake, I opened that damn door!" Down comes the sanctimonious serial child-stealer from the land of Happiness with the Queen's three offspring in tow.

Guardian Angel: "There now, don't we feel better?"

Queen: "...."

Not Suitable for Children:

• Child abduction
• Angels being dicks

Points Added For:

• The Woodcutter, for finding a more practical way to abandon his child that doesn't involve breadcrumbs or a gingerbread house.

Points Deducted For:

• If the 13th door was forbidden - why didn't the Guardian Angel just give the Woodcutter's Daughter 12 keys? I mean really. 
• The 13th door doesn't even open onto anything interesting (just more angel dudes in a holy light). If you're going to make something a sin, at least make it fun, come ON.

And the moral of the story is: If at first you don't succeed, keep stealing babies. 

Rating: One abducted infant out of five.

Once Upon a Blogger: "The Three Spinsters"

So there's this girl, right? This girl is so freakishly lazy that one day, her mother completely loses her shit and beats her so viciously that the Queen, passing by in a carriage, hears her screaming from several dozen feet away.

"WTF lady, chill," says the Queen.

The embarrassed mother lies and tells the Queen that her daughter is addicted to spinning, to the point where her mother can't provide enough flax.

"OMG, calm down," says the Queen, who is also a closet spinning enthusiast. "I have plenty of flax in my castle, your daughter can come and live with me."

The Queen takes the girl to her castle and shows her three rooms full of flax. She tells the girl that if she spins all the flax in these rooms, she'll get to marry the Crown Prince, because being a hard worker is a helluva lot more useful than being able to sleep for a hundred years or run really fast wearing only one shoe. You go, Queen!

Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, this girl is allergic to actual work, so she just sits in one of the flax rooms and cries for three days straight. On the fourth day, she crosses to the window and sees three strange women passing by underneath - a woman with one enormous foot, a woman with one enormous bottom lip, and a woman with an enormous thumb.

The three women look up, learn the girl's predicament, and offer a trade: they'll spin the flax into yarn for her, and in return she'll invite them to her wedding and treat them like royalty. The girl agrees, the three women spin all three rooms in no time flat, and before you know it, the girl's getting married to a prince who is absolutely in love with how ambitious and take-charge and competent his wife is.

The girl does not forget the three spinsters, though, and invites them up to the royal table just as she promised. The prince, less than thrilled with their weird deformities, asks how they got such big feet, lips, thumbs, etc. The spinsters reveal their unique appendages are Darwinian adaptations to spinning, and the prince is so freaked out by it that he promises he'll never make his wife work again - because being industrious and self-motivated and goal-oriented is all well and good - but not if it makes you ugly.

"Sweet!" said the new Princess, who never worked again.

Not Suitable for Children:

• Child abuse

Points Added For:

• A surprisingly democratic Queen, who's perfectly willing to marry her son to a complete nobody provided she works hard enough.
• The Girl, who actually follows through on her promise to the spinsters, and winds up reaping greater rewards than she anticipated. More often than not, protagonists forget their bargains and end up creatively punished - I was pleased by this story's swerve.

Points Deducted for:

• the Girl gives up on spinning way too easily - it's not like the Queen gave her a deadline, or even asked her to spin it into gold. This story could have gone to worse places, believe me.
• the Prince is kind of an ass.

And the moral of the story is: with the right friends, you'll never have to work again!

Rating: Eight freakishly-big thumbs out of ten. 

Once Upon a Blogger: "The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership"

The Story: So there's this Cat, right? And he seduces this Mouse into shacking up with him and they're as Tina-and-Ike a couple as you would expect.

Anyway, in order to spend the upcoming winter living in comfort (and, presumably, inter-species SIN), the two of them procure a pot of fat and hide it beneath the organ in a church, with the intent of saving it for winter.

The Cat, unsurprisingly, is kind of a dick, and so he tells his little rodent hoochie mama that he's been asked to stand as godfather for one of his relatives' kittens. While the Mouse stays at home and irons his Cat-underwear and rakes out his litterbox, the Cat slips off to the church to eat a portion of the fat.  When he comes back, he tells the Mouse the kitten was named "Top-Off."

"Well at least it's not Apple," says the Mouse.

The Cat plays the godfather card two more times, and the Mouse never questions her feline boyfriend's sudden Catholicism nor the likelihood of cats supporting a sacrament that involves dunking them in water. She does get suspicious, however, that the godkittens wind up named "Half-Out" and "All-Out."

The catpoop hits the fan when winter hits, and the Mouse goes to recover the fat only to discover the Cat has eaten all of it. The Mouse calling the Cat on his bullshit is a bridge too far, however, and he springs on her and eats her.

Which, frankly, was the inevitable outcome from the star.

Not Suitable for Children:

• Abusive relationships

Points Added For:

• Um, diversity?

Points Deducted For:

• Seriously what did the Mouse think was going to happen? I mean really.

And the moral of the story is: You can't trust the pussy.

Rating: Three pots of fat out of five.

Once Upon a Blogger: "The Frog Prince"

The Story: So there's this king, right? And he had a lot of daughters, but the last one was the hottest of them all. How hot? She was so hot that the freakin' Sun was in love with her, and that dude is the hottest ball around.

Okay, so this princess is hot as hell but she doesn't exactly have a lot going on, because her favourite activity is to play with her golden ball by the cool waters of the castle fountain. Some girls needlepoint. Some play with balls. Get over it.

Anyway, she accidentally drops the ball into the fountain and loses it. So she sits by the fountain and cries, because she's hot as hell, and crying by things usually solves most of her problems. And voila, her tears attract a nearby talking amphibian, who is attracted both to her tears and, presumably, her ball handling.

He offers to get her toy back, but ball-grabbing don't come cheap. He wants the works: a seat at the royal table, a first-class meal, and a slumber party (s'mores optional).

The Princess agrees, but the moment the frog retrieves her ball, she's all, "LATERS, KERMIT LOOOOOOOL" and flees on her longer, human-sized legs.

Naturally, this all comes back to bite her in the ass when the frog hops the long-ass way to her castle and demands payment, pronto. The princess whines and cries, but her sun-attracting hotness has no effect on her Kingly father (thank God). The princess is forced to get the frog a seat, and let him eat off her plate, and she waits on him hand and foot, all the while choking back bile. The frog, for his part, enjoys her humiliation immensely.

Unfortunately, when bedtime approaches, the Princess freaks the fuck out because her sheets have a thread count of a thousand and frog-slime is a bitch to get out of Egyptian cotton and she'd really rather play with her balls by herself. In a fit of rage, she actually grabs the frog and throws him against a wall.

To her surprise, he turns into a handsome prince instead of a green-brown smear on the wallpaper. Turns out he was turned into a frog by an evil witch who totally thought kiss-cures for spells were for chumps. The prince must have some weird masochist thing going on because he's totally still turned on by the hot-as-hell princess who just tried to murder him.

The wedding is arranged, and the prince is reunited with Henry, his beloved servant who locked three iron bars around his heart to keep it from breaking when the prince was frog-ified. Weird. Actually, if this is a regular thing in the prince's kingdom, it kind of explains the his kinky frog boner for pain. Anyway, the iron bars keep breaking during the carriage ride home as Henry's heart rips off The Grinch and grows three sizes at a time.

Awwww. Also, ow.

Not Suitable for Children:

• Animal abuse

Points Added for:

• BALLS
• A witch NOT making a kiss the cure for her spell. Way to be original! 
• The King, for not putting up with his daughter's bullshit.

Points Deducted for:

• The princess winding up with a handsome prince despite being an animal-abusing brat who ultimately learns nothing

And the Moral of the Story Is: Crying can solve a surprising number of problems if you're pretty. 

Rating: Two golden balls out of five.

Once Upon a Blogger: AnimeJune's Summer Project

It's summer! Officially! And with nothing good on TV, it's time for my summer blogging project.

The book pictured above has been with me for most of my life. It's the Complete Illustrated Stories of the Brothers Grimm, and my grandfather gave it to me when I was two months old, on the day of my baptism. Despite my love of all things fairy tale, I've never actually read the whole volume all the way through - yes, it has the classics ("The Frog Prince," "Rapunzel"), but it also has all the weird stories that don't get nearly as much attention.

It's a pretty big book. But summer is a pretty long season. 

My summer project, therefore, is to work my way through this volume, story by story, until I reach the end.

And I also plan to review every story. Hopefully in an entertaining way.

I hope you all enjoy the weirdness! Comments welcome!