An aside... (regarding folk tales)
Both "Bustle in your Hedgerow" and "Walkabout" are games about stories, and about the mythlore underlying reality versus the impact of individuals. Sort of...
...it's actually a fairly common theme through a lot of my games. So naturally when this came across my feed, it got my attention.
The first volume of the Grimmsā āChildrenās and Household Talesā was published in December of 1812. It contained 86 stories, including classics like āRapunzel,ā āHansel and Gretel,ā āSnow White,ā āRumpelstiltskin,ā āBriar Rose,ā and āLittle Red Riding Hood,ā along with extensive footnotes. Critics werenāt sure what to make of a collection of āchildrenās talesā that came with scholarly addenda and sexual innuendos. For the Grimms, what mattered was to be authentic, not appropriate, and fairy tales, across many literary traditions, werenāt always intended for children.
Then, there was the matter of the Grimmsā languageāsparse, hectic, visceral, unfiltered. In the preface, the brothers boasted of the collectionās fidelity to their sources: āNo circumstance has been poeticized, beautified, or altered.ā Well, that much was clear, complained the Grimmsā old friend Clemens Brentano. āIf you want to display childrenās clothes,ā Brentano wrote, āyou can do that with fidelity without bringing out an outfit that has all the buttons torn off, dirt smeared on it, and the shirt hanging out of the pants.ā
But the Grimms wanted to preserve the culture of the common folk, not to make the folk sound cultured. Their aim in collecting folkloreāalongside the fairy tales, they published legends, songs, and mythsāwas to create a cohesive national identity for German speakers. The brothers believed that shared language and cultural traditions could be the connective yarn of a people, their people. āAll that was needed was a fellow, or two, to come along with a spinning wheel,ā Jennifer Wilson writes. Read about the Grimmsā quest to bring forth an authentically Teutonic spiritāa story both enchanting and disenchanting:
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