Fairy Fails - The Tale of Snow White

I’ve just had a full week of school, and I’m really tired. Do I really have the energy to do a fairy fails right now? We’ll see.

So Snow White starts out as a fairly normal fairytale. A king and nice queen have a baby whose hair is as black as ebony, whose skin is as white as snow, and lips as red as blood. The nice queen dies, and a year later the king marries an arrogant woman who’s obsessed with being ‘the fairest of them all’. This woman basically just wants the ‘miss world’ title, and then she’ll be happy.

So she’s got this magic mirror that she asks every day, ‘mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ And every day the mirror replies ‘you are’. I don’t think she’s genuinely asking, I think she’s like that one annoying friend that we all have, that always looks completely and utterly gorgeous no matter what they have on, but always asks ‘do I look ok?’ Knowing full well that they look unbelievable, just so we all go ‘Oh Shut up, you look so pretty!’ It’s not a genuine question which is why it’s such a slap in the face when one day the mirror replies ‘actually, you’re not the fairest in the land anymore, you’ve been overtaken by a seven year old.’ Snow White is now seven years old, and hotter than the evil queen.

So the queen hires a huntsman to have Snow White killed. It’s so over dramatic! All she needs to do is wait a few years until Snow White’s a teenager and acne will solve all of her problems! Also what sort of a mirror is that? If all you want is to be told that you’re more gorgeous than anybody else in the land, just enchant your mirror to tell you that whether it’s true or not. Now, looking at this story, it doesn’t seem like there is any passing of time at all, so Snow White is still seven when the queen hires the huntsman to kill her. But not only kill her, he needs to bring back her heart, lungs, and liver as proof that she’s been killed. Why doesn’t the queen just ask the mirror? If you ask the mirror ‘who’s the fairest of them all’ and the mirror says ‘you are’, you know that Snow White’s been killed.  If the mirror says ‘nope, still snow white’, then you know that she’s still alive.

The huntsman doesn’t kill her; otherwise there would be no story. He kills a boar, and then takes the heart, lungs, and liver from there and gives them to the queen, who then eats them. Bear in mind that she still thinks that that’s Snow White. She’s eating Snow White. Cannibalism. You can see why they cut that out of the Disney version, right?

So this is where she meets the seven dwarves. The dwarves are about to have a massive go at her for breaking and entering into their house, (which is a pretty big deal,) but then they see her, and see how pretty she is, and swoon over her, and immediately just forgive her. SHE’S SEVEN. She’s lived for as many years as there are creepy old men standing around her bed watching her sleep.  Now the queen goes to her mirror and asks ‘who’s the fairest of them all?’ to which the mirror replies ‘well Snow White is still alive, so her…’ The queen then devises a plan to where she’s going to kill Snow White herself. She dresses up as an old woman selling corsets. Not apples, corsets. And basically the queen makes her try on this corset, (sidenote: she’s seven. Wearing a corset.) And then the queen does it up so tight that Snow can’t breathe and leaves her there to suffocate. But the dwarves come home in time, see her passed out and save her.

The queen is quite proud of herself as she thinks that she’s killed her, and asks the mirror the question again, and I can imagine the mirror being like one of those chocolate bar wrapper competitions, where it just says ‘better luck next time, try again’.

So the queen disguises herself as a different old woman selling poisoned combs. So combs this time, not apples. And hair combs, like to brush your hair combs. You’d think that Snow White would remember what happened last time she let a stranger into the house, but nope, she lets this old woman in too, no problems. She lets the old woman put the comb in her hair, and immediately she passes out. Now luckily, the dwarves come home in time again, and they take the comb out of her hair, and she immediately wakes up. That’s not how poison works. The queen gets the better luck next time speech from the mirror, and decides that this time she’s going to do it properly and poison apples. There we go. We know this works.

This time, the dwarves have forbidden Snow White from letting anyone into the house, but she still accepts an apple through the window. It’s like she’s just being snarky now. ‘Well technically I didn’t let anyone in the house’. So Snow White takes a bite of the apple and immediately dies, she’s dead. Definitely dead. But for some odd reason, her body doesn’t decay. The dwarves put her in this coffin and they strangely don’t bury her. Convenient. And no fairy tale is complete without a prince. He’s a little bit late, but better late than never.

This prince sees Snow White, and falls in love with her upon site. Of course. And wants to buy her and the coffin from the dwarves. What he wants from a dead girl, I don’t know, but what he does on his own time is his business I guess. The dwarves actually just give him the coffin, and sort of provide a removal van service where they all pick up the coffin and put it on their shoulders and start to carry it off to the prince’s castle. But one of the dwarves stumbles and jolts the coffin. And the bit of apple that was stuck in Snow White’s throat dislodges and she wakes up again. She didn’t choke to death on an apple! It was a poisoned apple, that’s why she died! She dies of poison not choking, so this story makes no sense. The author clearly cannot grasp what poison actually is. And there’s no kiss either! Where’s the fairy tale kiss that we know and love? It’s just so frustrating.

The prince, having not even spoken to her yet tells her that they’re getting married, and the evil queen gets an invite. Firstly, why? Secondly, why does she go? She actually turns up thinking it’s not going to be a trap, which obviously it is, and she’s made to wear hot iron shoes and she’s forced to dance until  she drops down dead. So yeah, not a lot of that in the Disney version.

Also, since Snow White’s body didn’t decay when she was dead, presumably she didn’t age either, So She’s still seven. And she’s married now. How old is the prince?!

Fairy Fails - Rumpelstiltskin Was a Twerp

I was going to do a blog post about fairy tales and how the original ones are much darker than the ones we know from Disney or kid's books. But I was searching the internet for original versions of fairy tales that I know, and I came across Rumpelstiltskin, which I've always liked until I read it again and realized just how stupid it was.

 A miller wants his daughter to marry the king, so he tells the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. Now first of all, if you're going to lie to someone to impress them, at least make it feasible. Why couldn't the miller just tell the king that his daughter was really pretty? Anyways, the king locks the daughter away in a tower with loads of straw and a spinning wheel and says 'if you don't spin all of this straw into gold by morning, I'm going to lop your head off.' So obviously, she gets a bit upset, because that's something that no one can do. But Rumpelstiltskin appears and says 'I will do it for you, if you give me something nice.' So she says 'I'll give you my necklace,' and he says 'I'll do that.' So he spins all the straw into gold, and the next morning the king is like 'wicked but let's see if you can do it again!'

She's done it once, she's proved she can do it, why make her do it again? That's ridiculous. And again she gets upset because she can't do it, and Rumpelstiltskin appears and says 'I'll do it for you, but what will you give me?' and she says 'I got a ring, do you fancy that?' and he says 'That'd be lovely', he spins all the straw into gold and the king's like 'Well hey that's great but can you do it again?' ...For some reason because twice just isn't enough. So again she gets upset, Rumpelstiltskin appears and says 'What will you give me?' and she says 'I have nothing left to give.' So he says 'How about if you become queen, give me your firstborn child?'

...... That's a bit extreme isn't it? You wanted a necklace and a ring before, how does a child come next in that sequence? But she agrees because she doesn't want to be killed, obviously. And she just thinks, I might not even have kids, so yeah you can have my "firstborn" child. Sure. So the king's really impressed that she's managed to turn all this straw into gold three nights in a row, and he marries her. Now, if you've promised someone your firstborn child, if it was me, I would make sure that I never had kids. But this woman decides a year later to have a kid. I don't know if she thought that the promise she made to Rumpelstiltskin just went away but it didn't. Rumpelstiltskin appeared and said 'give me your kid.' And she says no. You've made a promise, you can't just say no now, that's not how it works. Rumpelstiltskin, being a pushover, doesn't demand the child, he just says well I'll give you a chance, if you can guess my name within three days, we'll call it off.

So she gets a messenger to go and ask all of the town their names so she can have more of a range of names to guess from. Now this is the bit that really gets me, this really.. it just annoys me because it's so ridiculous. The messenger finds Rumpelstiltskin dancing around the fire and singing a song about how his name is Rumpelstiltskin. What? Why would you do that? If you've made it a challenge for someone to guess your name, Surely you'd want to keep that quite close to your chest, wouldn't you?

So obviously then the messenger tells the queen, she guesses his name, and he gets properly annoyed. All I learned from that story is:
A. Don't let people go back on their promises, and
B. If you've made it a challenge for someone to guess your name, don't turn it into a sing-a-long.

Also if you don't know yet I've also started posting more blog bits to tumblr, so here's the link:  http://drrosetyler.tumblr.com/

Socially Unacceptable Sneezes

So I’m staying at my grandma’s house while my parents are away on their third honeymoon...

Anyways I found this rubix cube in the cupboard and I was like ah, my friend was trying to teach me how to do this the other week! I’ll give this a go! It’s friggin hard. It is so hard. I didn’t think about how hard it would be when I picked it up. I picked this up at around half of eleven, and I still haven’t done it, I’m so close though.. I’m just so scared of doing any more to it in case I screw something up again, because I’ve come this close about 3 times and in the last moves that it shows on the internet I’ve screwed it up. But I’m seeing my friend how knows how to do it tomorrow and I’m going to just had it to him and be like, ‘please help me?’ Never, ever try to do a rubix cube unless you have about a good 6 hours to do it because I am definitely never doing that again. Ever.

So I was on break the other day at work, and there is a considerable limit of space in the restaurant so I had to sit opposite of this woman, and I don’t want to judge but she gave me the dirtiest look I have ever seen. It was a real, who do you think you are to sit in my presence kind of look, and I’m going to be honest it made me dislike her a little bit. But then she did something that I couldn’t forgive her for. She sneezed.

Now usually when people sneeze I’m the first to say bless you. Even if I don’t know who it is because they’re not by me I will still say bless you because I find it quite amusing that this person will just hear this voice and not know where it came from. Usually me saying bless you is met with a really weird look, and or an awkward silence. But I still do it anyways because it’s just nice and polite and common courtesy. But this woman had already annoyed me a little bit so I… I didn’t say it..

As soon as I made the decision not to say it I felt so guilty. So guilty! It was the same feeling that I get when I accidentally step on a ladybug. I felt awful, so awful that I immediately wanted to say it but too much time had already passed since the sneeze and it just would have sounded weird. Plus, about 10 seconds after she sneezed, she blessed herself sarcastically. “Bless me.” Which made me feel even worse because usually I’m the first to say it. And usually it’s unexpected, but because this woman didn’t expect it and I didn’t say it… it’s the one time someone actually wanted it, and wouldn’t give me a weird look and I didn’t say it. I carried that guilt with me for the rest of the day.

Now, yesterday was an exception, and it’s a mistake I won’t be making again because I always say bless you, and I will continue to say it to people. But whenever I’ve said it before, it’s always met with a look. It’s a look that shouldn’t be given when someone’s being nice and said bless you. It’s a look that should be given when you’re handed a dead puppy. Saying bless you is a nice thing to do when someone sneezes and it should be met with a thank you. But somehow it’s weird when you say it to someone that you don’t know. So I was just wondering when this happened yesterday, when it became socially unacceptable to say bless you to strangers. Kind of made me a little bit sad as well.

Fairy Fails - Would you date a Disney prince?

I am a massive Disney fan. I've been to Disneyland, seen all of the movies, and I'm in love with Prince Aladdin. But, the other day I started thinking about Disney men, and what they would be like if they were real guys in real life. I can safely say that I wouldn't date any of them.

Prince Charming from Cinderella is the guy that gets totally wasted at the party, tells you he loves you, but then can't remember what you look like the next morning.
Aladdin and Pinocchio would be compulsive liars. "I'm a Prince!" "I'm a real man!" ... Would you believe them?
And the beast would have anger issues. On a side note, is it just me that's a little disappointed when the beast turns back into a prince? He looked better as the beast!
Peter Pan constantly has Tinkerbell around. That's like if I started dating a guy, and he's still lived with his ex! That's a little bit weird, no?
Tarzan in real life would be a naturist.
The Princes from Snow White and Sleeping Beauty both like their girls when they're asleep, so they'd be the guys walking around the party spiking everybody's drinks.
Hercules seems to like Pegasus a little more than he likes Meg. Guys who prefer their cars to girls are never the way to go.
Shang from Mulan only likes you if you're one of the guys.
John Smith would always be bringing his friends around to your house and wouldn't leave.
Prince Eric likes his women seen and not heard.
Robin Hood and Flynn Rider would just steal from you.

In the fantasy world, these guys are perfect, but in real life... I'm going to have to say no thanks.

Love is...

So I haven't posted anything in about a week, and I honestly don't have any idea what this post will be about... I think it should be relevant to things that are going on in my life, so I'm going to talk about... love. And I know it sounds cheesy and really ridiculous, but it is relevant. I'm going to try and make it as non-cheesy as I possibly can because there is so much cheese on my blogspot already that maybe it's time for... a little bit less.

I've had some conversations with people recently kinda just about love and what love is to them, because love is different to everybody. People feel it sooner in relationships than others, I mean, people can go years without ever feeling in love with the person that they're with. Personally I'm someone who falls in love quite quickly, because I'm very emotional and I'm very passionate, and as soon as I find someone that I really like and have a lot in common with and want to share experiences with, I suddenly get attached to that person and that just becomes falling in love with them.

But when I look back at the times I've said 'I love you' to someone.. the actual phrase I love you, in hindsight, I have actually said it without meaning it. I've said it because I feel like I love them in that moment, but as soon as that moment's faded, I suddenly realize that why I said has been quite extreme and quite intense and that I didn't actually mean it long term, I just meant it in that moment. That's quite a big thing to admit as well, especially with the people that I've said it to. But then again, I'm sure that people have said it to me and felt exactly the same way as well so.. it works both ways I guess.

I don't know if anyone knows about these, but there used to be these posters around London that said 'Love is...' and then a picture of a man and a woman showing someone's depiction of what love was to them. They were things like, love is giving her the last chocolate in the box, or love is kissing her even when you know others can see. I used to love looking at those posters on the internet because I loved seeing them, and I don't think there was one that I didn't 'awwww' at.

So I thought I would do one of my own. I think that love is being the most 'you' that you can be around him. If someone loves you, they can't expect you to change, they need to love you and who you are when they fall in love with you. I don't think it gets any better than being entirely yourself around someone. Those little bits that you hide from other people, those little secrets from family or other friends, that you don't have that with this person. They know everything, they know all the ins and outs, they know all of your secrets, you can't hide from them. And they always know when something's wrong.

So yeah, that's what I think love is. I don't know, I just thought that this was a relevant subject because I've been meeting a lot of new people recently, I just thought it would be nice to talk about it and also get your views, so write in your comments 'love is...' and then write your idea of love.

Adventures in Waitressing

Recently I was hired on to a local restaurant as a part time waitress. And let me tell you, there is never a dull moment in waitressing. Tonight in particular was one of those nights where I just wanted to get off work and curl up with my teddy bear and Dragon age and never go to work again. Then again, I guess everyone has their days at work like that. But there are several things that bug me about waitressing, and I am most definitely going to be sharing them with you.

So tonight I had a table of six people they ordered very complex things, and I managed to get all but two right. And to be fair, one of them wasn't really specified, because she said she wanted cheese fries with her burger, and the burger comes with fries so I just did that, then she decided she wanted a platter of cheese fries. so I had to go do that. But anyways, apparently one of the woman's eggs wasn't cooked enough, so I took it back to the kitchen and asked that they cooked it a little longer. Now, at the time we were fairly busy so the kitchen was running a little slow. So it took about 15 minutes for the egg to come out. In that time, the rather overweight family had managed to eat all of their food and they told me that because I took so long they wanted me to make the manager have her food rung up free.

Ok. So let me get this straight. You got hash-browns, a waffle, bacon, sausage and toast for 8 bucks and because you didn't get the 99 cent egg... you want the meal for free. RIGHT. Now, I didn't say that, I said "I can't do that, our managers not here at the moment." "well you had better go find one." she said. So I got our shift supervisor who really had the same amount of authority as I did. She listened and nodded her head and ended up giving her the meal for free. What she told her though was totally wrong. She said I hadn't brought out ANY of her food, had gotten every single order wrong, was rude, and blamed it all on the kitchen.

NOW. Ok, I blamed the fact that the egg took so long on the kitchen because I cannot control what goes on in the kitchen. Secondly, I did not get all of your orders wrong, I got 2 pieces of a specific meal wrong and quickly fixed them no charge. And lastly, you did get your food. Or I don't know what you were shoving into your mouth hole 5 minutes ago.

It's people like this that make me hate waitressing, living off the charity of strangers really bugs me, because they might not be particularly nice people, meaning I don't get that much money. I would really like to take all of those people who don't leave me tips, or leave me penny tips and make them work one single hour of my shift, and I'll pretend to be them for an hour. I think it would work out well for everyone.

Annoying salespeople

So I've been saving up for this wig for a costume I'm planning on doing this summer and it's super awesome. I finally got it last week and I am very excited. But I would be even more excited if the process of getting said wig would have been a bit easier. I went to this shop, I won't say which because it is regularly a very nice shop to get things from. But I have been there before and gotten a wig there before and loved it.

I went in and the wig I wanted was sitting there on display, and there was a woman nearby and I said I want that one please. And she said ok, and I said you do a price promise right? Now a price promise is where if you find a product cheaper somewhere else they will match the price and give it to you for the same price. Now this shop goes one step better and will match the price and then give you ten percent off whatever the price is there and what the price was at the other shop. Now the wig I wanted in this shop was $60 and since I had been saving up for it I was prepared to pay that much, but when I shopped around it was $30 cheaper in all of the other stores. then I checked to see if the shop was selling a slightly better wig, but it wasn't, I checked and it was exactly the same wig but for $30 more.

if it would have been like $10 I probably would have just payed it. But since I am a poor college student and it  was $30 I felt like it was the difference between me being able to afford this wig and me just dreaming I'd be able to afford this wig. So before going to the shop I printed off the price of the wig from another shop so I could show them and be like Why?

The reason I just didn't go to another shop and buy it for that price was because if I went to this shop and got the price match I would get another couple of dollars off. So it would be cheaper than the cheaper stores. So I presented this woman with undeniable evidence and said to her: it's $30 dollars cheaper at all these other stores, can you match it? and she said to me, 'no we only price match store to store.' and I said 'no on your website it says you have an online price promise.' That is genuinely the headline. It even says in the terms and conditions that the item on the website must be in stock and available for delivery. On their website. Which means it's an online price promise. It's website to website. So she called over the manager who continued to tell us the same thing that it was in store and not online. And then he continued to tell us all the reasons we were wrong. It wasn't an opinion! If you state on your website that you do something then you need to actually carry that out and actually do that because that is one of your companies policies. It felt like they put this 'price promise' thing on their website so people thought they were this really great company doing really nice things, but they didn't think anyone was actually going to put that policy to the test. And now that somebody had they were panicking.

 So in the end I said well if you're adement that it's an in store price promise can you do that? Can you call one of the competitors shops and see if they have it in stock? And then if they do, then can you do the price match? She said yes we can, so she called one of the other competitor's shops and they had it in stock. So I said right, now can I have that wig at the competitor's price? And she said no, we don't have that wig in stock.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We'd been in this shop for like half an hour or more, if she had just said to me at the start when I said I wanted the wig that they didn't have it in stock.... I can't buy a wig that isn't there! We had just spend the better part of an hour price matching a wig that wasn't there. What is going on?

So she called another store and they had it in stock, we went down to this store, and when we got there we said can you match it blah blah blah blah blah? And what did the guy say to us? No. We only do in store price matching. So we had to go through the whole ordeal again and explain to him that's what it says on your website, you say you do an online price matching therefore that's what you should be doing. But if you're so adement that you don't do an online price match then can you call another store and see? Luckily there was a competitor's shop right next door and he went in and asked and they had it in stock. So finally, I got my wig for $30. However, in their price promise they say they'll beat it by 10% of the difference which they didn't do so I'm a bit annoyed about that. Plus the guy serving us was really jerkish in the second shop and he said to us; 'do you want carer's insurance?' we said no. He said, 'oh, you'll be happy when it gets ruined then won't you?'

Ugh.