Today I decided to dive into that weird Grimm fairytale where some kid doesn’t know what fear is. Honestly, kinda weird premise right? But anyway, here’s exactly how I tackled it.
The Starting Point
First I grabbed my dusty Grimm book collection off the shelf. Had to blow actual dust off it man. Flipped through like 50 pages before finding “The Boy Who Learned to Fear.” Reading it again was wild – this kid straight up laughs when zombies come at him! Who even does that?
The Deep Dive Part
Then I hit Google hard. Searched “stupid brave Grimm character” and “fairy tales about fear” like ten times. Found out some crazy stuff:
- Original German title translates to “The Story of a Boy Who Went Forth to Learn Fear” – mouthful much?
- Disney’s tangled took inspiration from it – seriously?!
- There’s like 20 different versions where he sleeps in haunted castles anyway
Checked YouTube too. Found this guy ranting for 30 minutes about how it’s actually a metaphor for puberty. Not sure I bought it but whatever.
Putting It All Together
Started writing around coffee #3. Kept thinking “this story makes no sense but whatever.” Made bullet points:
- Kid doesn’t get scared of anything – even ghosts
- His dad tries to teach fear and fails miserably
- Dude literally gets buckets of fish dumped on him by ghosts and laughs
Hit backspace so many times trying to explain the haunted castle part. How do you describe a dude whistling while corpses play bowling with skulls? Seriously.
That Weird Afternoon
Around 4pm I realized Disney completely changed everything. In the real story:
- No magic hair or singing animals
- Kid “wins” by getting a bucket of ice-cold fish dumped on him
- He finally feels fear because… cold water? So anticlimactic
Started ranting to my cat about this. She wasn’t impressed.
The Final Stretch
Around midnight I went down a rabbit hole about other cultures’ fear stories. Found one Japanese folktale where people get scared by rice cakes. Like, are you kidding me? But apparently it’s a thing. Humans are weird.
Posted everything with this long ass title about “quest to learn fear.” People actually liked it? Got comments saying “TLDR but cool” and “never knew Disney copied this.” Mission accomplished I guess. Still don’t understand why cold water gave him chills though – so stupid.
