scraps-is-busy:

knightofnights:

wanlingnic:

gabnab:

lexistentialism:

aes-of-spades:

Disney vs. Original

The last one is the most important.

^^

Nooo, babies no. The Pocahontas one is very important, but can we also focus on two others?

• Notably the Mulan one is wrong! Mulan never dies in any other version of her other than the Sui Tang Yanyi version (which we all know was historical fanfiction). 
• We can’t pass of that version as the ‘Original Version’, because it’s as fictional as the Disney movie. And, while it gives her an honorable death, Mulan’s heroism is cut short with the tragedy of her life. 
• I’m 100% certain the Disney version takes its plot from the 1939 film, Mu Lan Congjun. (Where Mulan returns to China as a hero and is offered a place in the imperial court, but chooses to go home and marry her true love). Consider that just as canon. 

Originally posted by fa-dynasty

Also the Beauty and the Beast one is wrong, too. 

• The list references a different fairytale under the Aarne Thompson Fairytale classification system: “The Beast Husband” is AT425C but, “The Beast that Eats his Wife” story is AT311-312.
  
• This difference is important! AT312 contains stories like “Bluebeard” “Mr Fox”, “The Bloody Chamber” and “Fitcher’s Bird”, where the Beast is not always animal-like, but sometimes just a regular serial killer. 
• Like an episode of Criminal Minds, the heroine must outsmart her Beast Husband before she is eaten - and she usually does! She calls for help, she plots her escape, she outwits her husband in a court of law. 

The version called Mr Fox involves an arranged marriage between a young maiden and a scary monster called Mr Fox (he’s never described, and some artists literally draw him as a werefox):

Here is the maiden showing everyone the hand of Mr Fox’s last victim as proof that he’s been killing his Belles throughout the story; thus allowing the girl to escape his marriage with her life. 

• Saying the Beast just “eats Belle” erases her escape, and all the empowering autonomy that it is worth!

Be careful when you see some “Disney vs Original Fairytales” lists out there. It’s true Disney sanitizes these stories, but sometimes, these lists like to go for the opposite: gore and shock value. They leave out the fact that the originals are just as powerful, empowering, and magical as you’d find in a cinema today. 

I actually did a double take at the Mulan one because I’m Chinese and I’ve heard/read two versions of Mulan (and please note that there are numerous versions of her story so there’s even more than listed) and neither of them were the one listed above.

I had to look it up but the Sui Tang Yan Yi is, as its name implies, a novel about the time period between the Sui and Tang dynasties (from the late 500 to early 600′s) and I’m pretty sure is an entirely different story. I didn’t read the whole thing (you don’t just sit down and read chinese historical fiction trust me, you better have a few months set aside) but it’s a three part story about the ending of the Sui dynasty and beginning of the Tang and honestly the only part that maybe they’re getting this from is the last part about the romance between Emperor Xuanzong and his concubine…maybe.

The Beauty and the Beast one is wrong. The original story had Belle reveal she’s a fairy princess.

The story was about social politics, with the Beast being a beast mostly because the fairy that cursed him was evil.

The Disney version was actually DARKER than the original!

THe hercules one isnn’t accurate either. In the original, hera convinces hercules wife that he’s cheating on her and says that to wash his tunic with the blood in the jar hercules keeps. In the jar is the blood of a centaur that had been killed with hydra venom years before. Unknown to hercules, he wears the tunic and is put through days of excruciating pain as a result of the venom until he sets himself on fire which was less painful than the venom. Wrecked with grief and guilt, hercules wife kills herself.