Lately, we’re surrounded by a fantasy world. Books and movies all center around ancient classics that we’ve grown up with, and so have generations before us.
Fairy tales.
Those magical stories that kept us awake, bewildered, till the wee hours of the night. Those peculiar characters that reincarnated among us when we played Barbie dolls, dress up, or role play. Stories our parents read to us, mostly to entertain us or to put us to sleep, but also to teach us a valuable lesson. That’s perhaps why the big movie screen and authors go back to fairy tales and incorporate them in their new novels and films. Some examples of modern remakes are Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror, Mirror, and Cinder, Book One of the Lunar Chronicles, only to mention the most recent ones.
Why this fascination with fairy tales? Well, I can give you my reason. As a child you lose yourself in a fake, magical world and it’s perfectly okay. Things don’t have to make sense but better yet, the confusing feelings of selfishness, love, hate, jealousy are intensified ten times fold. Fairy tales taught us that there is a strong sense of justice, that the bad guy always gets ‘his’ at the end. Then there’s the happy ever after, the one where the princess finds her true love, gets the castle (and the money), and of course what every little girl dreams of…gowns and tiaras! But there’s more hidden under the veils of fantastical purpose. There’s an intricate weaving of mystery, of lunacy, of courage. That’s where we truly experienced what we’re made of, indirectly of course. We pictured ourselves walking in the thorny woods, late at night, shadowed by the cloud of night….and the big, bad wolf. We darted through a majestic ship, swords in hand, waving our bravery and mockery against a hooked pirate. Then of course, we waltz into the late hours of night, while a mean stepmother danced in heavy iron shoes, paying for the pain and humiliation she inflicted.
Fairy tales were our first mental playground and whether we turned out to be doctors, writers, or musicians we have all taken from it. We’ve all borrowed a small piece of that bravery, sense of justice, or twisted humor. It’s not that hard to believe that even as adults we are still drawn to those fairy tales. They bring us back to a safe heaven, a place where we can identify with. They are a part of us and they don’t leave.
So for generations to come, we read the same stories to our children. Selfishly we indulge in the story telling as we narrate, but we bask in the glory of passing them down. We know their importance. We understand their meaning. We welcome them back in our lives, in traditional forms or modern remakes, and hope to take out of it the same feeling we did as a child. It’s our comfort zone, our security blanket, and why shouldn’t they be idolized and welcomed? Don’t they deserve that for everything they’ve taught us? Even the darkest of tales can teach us an important role in life. What magical, twisted or adventurous path will we choose?
I’m working hard to become a Fantasy author, so I can totally relate to this post! I could do nothing but restate everything that you have. Great post!
It is so true. I love reading to my kids the stories I loved. I find it facinating to see how the kids react to the twisted Grimm versions versus the Disney versions. Thanks for sharing.
I agree with you about fairy tales are always a part of us,even when we grow old. But I feel like fairy tales sometimes impose a boundary on us,making it quite challenging for us to accept the reality,like the concept of “happily ever after,or a charming prince with a white horse,only pretty girls got to be happy,etc…”.There is a time I wonder if I should tell my kids the fairy tales.
hi tamara! very well said!
very often, in my case, when i was a wee babby, we were told home=made stories…like little people only as tall as your hand, living underground…magical animals that helped you in your hour of need etc etc!
and as you say, from those stories, we became what we are today i suppose…its those stories that gave us knowledge of hidden things, as well as the world at large, good and evil and so on.
great post…well deserved to be freshly pressed!
I found your blog at precisely the right time. I was discussing this with my twin just yesterday
love how you write, so inspiring!!
can you check out my blog please, its new and i would love your feeback!
Thanks and love the posts, really !
Nice post and congrats on being FP. I have to admit that I still try to escape into a fantasy world sometimes when life get too harsh or boring. I am then walking amongst ordinary people and none of them have a clue that I have got super powers. XD
Reblogged this on joyziland.
I agree. A lot of what you see now or read is fantasy. That is the world we need right now, to be able to get lost in.
Congrats on Freshly Pressed! I’ve always loved fairy tales, and still read them. Some of my favorite books are my hardbound collections of fairy tales. That’s probably why my favorite genre these days is fantasy
great tales! Thanks for the nice time i have passed..
Great musings!! Every little girl is a princess and every grown woman still has that little girl inside of her!!!
A wonderful post! Of course, one has to be careful to avoid the particularly awful fairy tales, the ones with terribly sadistic things happening in them, lest we inflict preposterous nightmares upon the little ones.
Reblogged this on I WIN.
wooww!! lovely post.. you made my day!!
Reblogged this on Saleyha Ahsan and commented:
I can relate to this blog especially the Fairy Tale post.
I will never stop wanting to live in a fantasy world, to have things be a little more mystical. I’ve always felt that, at least in fairy tales, everything had so much more meaning, even if it wasn’t all blissful and happy.
Daydreamers need a fairytale place to serve as an escape.
Reblogged this on well bull frog.
Those are the worlds where in we can be all that we want to be
Wonderful post !
You summed it up so well
I grew up reading the classic fairy tales, as well as the classic fantasy stories. They probably formed my love and passion for writing fantasy
All of us used to love fairy tales, that’s for sure. I guess that there should be created more true to life fairy tales. When we become adults, we sometimes really try to behave like those favorite characters without understanding that life is absolutely different. And the choices we make are also based on those happy-ever-after plots. And they do lead us to complete disappointment and desperation.
Reblogged this on Fictional Fantasy.
I’m loving that so many fairy tales are getting the movie treatment again in recent years. It’s perhaps one of the only upsides of the bad economy; all of the tales are in the public domain, so no one has to buy the rights to them in order to make a film.
I love this and I often escape into a good book and you can often small references to some of our fairy tales. I admit I am a little sad that things dont quite work out exactly the way they do in fairy tales. I still have my old book of fairy tales and it now sits on my kids book shelf and they enjoy reading them too. The book doesn’t look like its going to make it another generation but I am sure by the time I have grandchilden (in the very far future) I will re-buy them and read them as well.
Love the post and the photo! I am a medical herbalist with an Irish heart so… fairy tales etc really touch me!
Thank you! Fairy tales are the core of every childhood, I believe.
I still watch the disney fairytale/fantasy films, I’m in the process of slowly rebuiling my collection on DVD.
Still have to keep watching it though to make sure good does win over evil eventually 
Also, the TV show ‘Once Upon a Time’ is another example – although it’s good it’s going on FOREVER.
My husband and I began to watch Once Upon a Time. Unfortunately due to time restraints we never could keep us with it. Thanks for stopping by.
Thats so great! I luv it. And fairy tales are so awesome
Nice thoughts and insight. Your picture choice is perfect and complements your post well. I, also, am a fantasy lover and writer.
And a little editing help from one writer to another… It’s “whether” not “weather” in the first sentence of the second-to-last paragraph.
Thank you…I guess I was too hasty in reviewing
Thanks for stopping by.
thank you
All you said, all true! I love fairy tales! I have a lot of favorites =>
Hello Tamara,
Thank you for your post. I also grew up on fairy tales, creation tales and imaginative stories. As an adult I threw in my career as an economist and became a storyteller. I work 50/50 performing for adults and children. I too believe fairy tales take us to a place where everything is possible and magic is possible. They are a healthy step away from reality and inform our approach to life if we let them.
I have recently blogged on the increased adult audience at my children’s storytelling sessions and the love they express of fairy tales and storytelling in general, http://lillistory.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/back-in-business/
I look forward to reading more from you.
Beautiful post! Unfortunately, there are monsters in fairy tales too. And we don’t have potions to kill them… I wrote about this today too.
http://wp.me/p2uEVw-aH
Reblogged this on the lass with the coffee mug and commented:
I love this post! ♥ When life sometimes brings you harsh and unhappy moments, well, you’ve got to escape reality for the meantime and get lost in fantasy world. ☺
Fairy tales are indeed my first mental playground. Love this post.
I love how you refer to fairy tales as our safety blanket. I know exactly what that’s like. I still try to escape into that fantasy world, to escape the pressure and boredom of real life. I’m currently planning a piece of writing that’s a twist on Cinderella, and it makes me extremely happy to have that connection to a story I loved so much as a kid and was able to act out in high school.
Imagination seems to be increasingly compromised in younger generations. I really hope fairy tales continue to kindle at least a bit of fantasy in children, and that the original stories that inspired so much in the audiences of the past don’t get lost in remakes that make them more “relatable.” A princess in a land full of dragons and magic is way more extraordinary than a prom queen in a land of mean girls and shallow expectations. Who wants to leave the real world to disappear into a fictionalized version of the real world?
Great post!
written so well!! i love fairy tales
and congrats on getting freshly pressed..
Pingback: Tamara Rokicki’s Blog « My Favorite Spaces
Reblogged this on PrettyGee and commented:
Fairy tales are indeed my first mental playground. Love this.
nice…………!!!!!!!!!11
Brilliant post. The wonderful thing about fairytales is that they speak to every age group. Their meaning shifts as you get older.
I am an aspiring writer, and I can say in all honesty that this blog helped me a lot! I learned a lot from it, and I absolutely love the way you write. Thank you for this post. I appreciate it.
Thank you for stopping by. Glad my blog could be an inspiration to others.
Interesting post, I recently saw “The Snow White and the Huntsman” and had the exact same idea you wrote about: why are they so popular? I thought to myself that the reason they r so demanded right now is because of the time we live in, the generation of people that is new and doesn’t really relate to the old fairy-tales as much as we once did. I guess the young audience needs to be set with a good example, but in terms of the reality that they percieve these days, because u can’t really teach a person who comes from a different era than you with the same tools that used to give u a role model twenty or more years ago. They simply have to be adapted to the present day. That’s my opinion anyway;)
This post was inspiring. I have never thought about fairy tales in this fashion, but once I read you post, it was like a “Well, yeah…I get that!” kind of moment. I have a two year old son, who will not go to bed without a story…and I have to agree with you…when I read him a new chapter each night and he dozes off in the middle…I continue reading because I want to know what happens next (eventhough I have to go back and read him the part that he had missed the night before). Thank you! I look forward to reading more of your posts!
Thank you for stopping by
What’s interesting to me is that there are all different types of fairy tales too and in that place we are actually able to be with angles we may not be able to in life yet. The tales do help, and also add a little magic to life.
Reblogged this on anyenglishblog and commented:
Great, Haven’t seen it this way…
There’s a saying… The truth about the human origins are encoded in myths & fairy tales. I feel there’s truth in that.
nice writing!
Beautifully written!! I stumbled on your blog looking for pictures of fairy tales … Do you write? You should.
Thank you for your kind words. I am currently writing a book, Aiken’s Wings, and I write for local publications. Keep stopping by for more updates