Ahhh...this is perfect ! I can't sleep and am passing the time refurbishing old axes, knives and whatnots. Just the thing to listen to while doing so. Thank you for sharing these with us.
With Lassie and her Godmother... I've heard of relinquished guardianship rights in Fairytales before, as payment for a mass generation of wealth under duress when their life was on the line ala Rumpelstiltskin, as recompense for theft when food was stolen out of desperation when starving ala Rapunzel, but in exchange (under duress... kind of) to get a Christening- a completely optional cultural practice that has no real benefit to them nor consequence for skipping bar societal judgment has to be the weakest reason I've heard yet. What did the Godmother want the girl for anyway? Didn't trust the parents to raise her right and thus made executive decision to take charge of her upbringing? That might make more sense if we had more reason to believe they were unfit parents, but we have none, we know nothing about the parents save for the fact they were too poor to afford a Christening- which I didn't even realize was a service that was changed for. And unlike those Rumpelstiltskin and Rapunzel, this relinquish of guardianship rights wasn't framed as in the wrong, because the godmother was secretly the Virgin Mary the whole time? That twist makes no sense at all, I can list multiple ways that twist doesn't make sense. And why does she just... _have_ a star, the moon, and the sun locked in random rooms in her house? That kind of thing REALLY warrants explanation. And I can understand taking her children, but why frame her for cannibalism that was never committed? Just to make the punishment more extra? If teaching someone a lesson involves them being narrowly saved from execution, I don't think you're in the moral right, even if they have a really bad disobedient streak. She wasn't even a bad kid, it's not like she was a juvenile delinquent or something, all she did was free the celestial bodies whose imprisonment and significance thereof were never clarified. I'm not sure the story really works without understanding the weight of freeing the celestial bodies. The story's whole premise is horrendously dated, I don't think there's any way to make it make sense to modern audiences without either heavily revising it to the point it's barely recognizable, or commenting on how dated it is. For the Bronze Ring, the witch specifies 3 little dogs, each a different color who need to be burned and ashes contained and spread separately, but never specifies any order to spread them in. Weirdly specific magic tends to require a specific order and process to trigger. What significance do the dogs have? Was the king cursed and the dogs formed as some kind of byproduct whose dispel requires their reincorporation? Are they evil dogs who cursed the king and whose own power must be used by converting them into ash to remove the curse they cast? It seems weird that these 3 random dogs that have nothing to do with anything are required for a youth-restoration spell. And what he did to the Minister's son was the most backhanded favor I've ever heard, he went out of his way to rub in his opponent's predicament and feign letting him win only to rip it away from him. Sure, the guy was a jerk, but that was needlessly cruel. Then the Sorcerer becomes a new antagonist out of nowhere and the gardener's son threatens the mice he'd already wronged to get his ring back. WTF? That was downright cold and heartless, showed zero remorse for all the lives he unintentionally cost, on the contrary he threatened to taker more on purpose. This is the hero? And then the ending is so abrupt. The more I heard of that story, the weirder and worse it got. What's up with Sleeping Beauty in the Wood? It's starts off just being Sleeping Beauty, skips the part about the prince having his way with her comatose form and instead has her wake up right away, but then the prince hides this from his parents and his mom is an ogress- the prince has been half-ogre the whole time but wasn't mentioned before now? And she wants to eat her grandchildren? This story took a hard turn. This feels like a completely different story tacked-on. Why did the giant sisters have that enchanted bed? Having their captive bound to something like that is practically asking for them to escape. Why did they even want to marry him? Usually an imposed marriage contract like that is needed to break a spell to shed their cursed form and take on their true form, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Or being fae they're trying to earn a human soul or something, but again not the case here. The life egg is a weird, out-of-place weakness. Sure, I've read giant lore that says they tend to have a random body part that's the source of their magic that grants a random power, but not their life force contained in something outside their body. Koschei the deathless had his life force in a magic egg, but that was way off in an obscure location with layers of protection where no one could access it, like a horcrux, but the giant sisters carry it on their person and play with it in the open- which is like the worst possible way to handle a horcrux. Is it even a horcrux? Because if it is, why did they make it only to not have any kind of protection for it? If it isn't, then how is their life force bound to something outside their bodies? Fairytales like this have a bad habit of raising worldbuilding questions it has no interest in answering. The husband who was to mind the house is just mean-spirited, needlessly depressing. The Ale of the Trolls feels like a Japanese short story about a tanuki prank, but it's so short and ends so abruptly.
