Grimm' fairy tales,

How It All Goes Down FYI, the tales don't go in any particular order, so feel free to skip around. That being said, a lot of the better-known tales are clustered in the beginning, so keep that in mind as you poke around. The details differ in each tale, but in most of 'em, the good guys win and the bad guys are punished. It sounds stale until you start looking at who's good, who's bad, and why. We see a lot of wicked witches, evil stepmothers, and mean fairies, but not so many straight-up evil dudes. Well, except for some giants and cannibals. But you get the idea. A lot of the antagonists are "bad" because they violate a social more or two, and they're punished horribly at the tales' ends. The protagonists are the downtrodden, the innocent, and mostly young characters. You know 'em when you see 'em: youngest sons and daughters, orphaned kids, usually clever, sometimes adorably naïve. If you're a girl, it helps to be beautiful, patient, and domestically skilled, because, gee, how else would you nab yourself a husband? If you're a guy, you'd better be aggressive and paranoid, because your brothers will try to leave you in a ditch or poke out your eyes or otherwise dispose of you. There aren't a lot of king's daughters to go around, you know. Usually what gets the protagonist from awful to awesome is the intervention of a helper figure. We're not just talking fairy godmothers, either. For example, if you bury a dead dude then his ghost will totally help you out when you encounter roadblocks. Being nice to animals also does the trick. And if you're lucky, you'll get yourself a talking horse who helps you figure stuff out.