Is it weird that I don’t really think of it as a plothole? I mean, the way I think of it, fairytales are meant to be a general framework, and like… yeah, text is a static medium, but since fairytales have kind of fallen in with this transformative, folkloric tradition, so like… you can imagine the storyteller telling this story to different audiences, and filling in gaps according to when the audience is like “Wait, but what about…[insert issue with the framework here].” So I feel like as part of the storytelling tradition, fairytales have never been these static things full of holes, but actively adaptable–I mean, hell, where do you think all these adaptations come from! But at the same time, everything is building on everything else, you know? And like… maybe a lot of interpretations of Cinderella come from frustration towards previous iterations, but I don’t know… I think maybe we should have some compassion for people in the past? Like… maybe it’s easier for us to believe that we’re so much more egalitarian and so much more smart and so much more emotionally complex than people in the past, but I don’t think that’s fair. Look at us now. We’re sitting here, I have consumed something fermented and I’m telling a story, and every so often someone comes in like, “Okay but what about ________” and I’ll think for a little bit and either go “Ah well that’s easily explainable” or “Shut up and let me continue the story.” We were doing this shit in caves back in the Paleolithic era. :)
Reposted from https://lies.tumblr.com/post/679301028454285312.
