Mr Cinder

Once upon a time in a land far far away there lived a man who was sought out far and wide for forging new words out of old stories.

Pardon my french but this is utter garbage. Neither am I living "once upon a time", but right now, nor "far far away", actually I am just around the corner from your fancy publisher and I am not "sought out far and wide" by anybody.

Well, yes, but this is an essay about an author who is famous for retelling our beloved fairy tales, so I thought...

First mistake. you shouldn't think.

Because I am a woman????

Because you are a writer or want to be. Writers write.

Yes, I know, but in order to write, I need to think before I put anything down on paper.

Wrong again. In order to tell the truth, you need to let yourself be taken by surprise. You need to write and find out what the story is about while writing.

Is that what you are doing? 

What?

Surprise yourself with your stories?

Of course not. The stories I write are facts. They don't surprise me because I am just retelling them.

But you are retelling fairy tales. 

So?

Well, fairy tales are not exactly facts. I mean, they didn't happen like that.

How do you know? Were you there?

Where?

When they happened?

No, of course not, but we all know that fairy tales are fables, myths, to clarify how the world works. I mean, they aren't real.

If you say so.

What exactly are you implying?

I am just amazed at the simplicity of your thought process, but then again, anybody can call herself "writer" these days I guess.

Look. I just came here to interview you to which you agreed due to a most generous fee. So if we could just get down to business, I'd be very grateful. 

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I will be recording this to write it down later and will send you a copy. We won't publish anything if you don't want it to be printed. O.K.?

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May I read your silence as "yes"?

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O.K. Recording now.

Mr Cinder, you are famous for your unusual retellings of our classical fairytales. How do you get your ideas?

What do you mean?

You know, how do you go about reinventing them. Like, say, Cinderella.

I didn't reinvent her. She did it all by herself.

What exactly?

Have you read her story?

I know the official version told by the Brothers Grimm.

That's the version they want you to believe.

The brothers?

Exactly. they didn't want the truth to come out. It would have been a scandal.

Please elaborate.

Well, let's start at the beginning: 

Cinderella was her artist's name. She was one of the worlds first feminists and activists: "I only respect two kinds of women. Women who are angry and women who are in an active coma. If you’re not angry, you better just have woken up from a very long sleep" this quote 

- today used by a famous author-

 is originally from Ella Cinder, Cinderella's real name. When she found out that her mother was quite happy with the world as it was, she couldn't respect her anymore, but since she felt that she needed to esteem her ancestor, she resolved to better kill her mother than to look down upon her. She was very consistent. Let's look at the first line:

A rich man's wife became sick-

And dies soon after. Why and how? We are never told the mysterious circumstances of her death. Not even a year later the father, unaware of his first wife's cause of death, remarried a single Mother with two daughters. They were beautiful, with fair faces, but evil and dark hearts. 

This is nonsense. Ella simply didn't approve of them because they were very much women of their times. After initially intending to put them into a coma or to kill them, she decided to first try converting them by parting from her own beautiful clothes and start a simple life on eye-level with her former servants. She wanted to set an example of a self-determined minimalistic but meaningful life. The Grimm's disguised these revolutionary deeds by falsely blaming the sisters:

She had to do hard work from morning until evening, get up before daybreak, carry water, make the fires, cook, and wash. The stepsisters scattered peas and lentils into the ashes so that she had to sit and pick them out again. In the evening when she had worked herself weary, there was no bed for her. Instead, she had to sleep by the hearth in the ashes. And because she always looked dusty and dirty, they called her Cinderella.

All true except that she chose that name and the kind of work and life herself.

Are you implying that the brothers made the whole story up? 

Not all of it:

One day it happened that the father was going to the fair, and he asked his two stepdaughters what he should bring back for them.

"Beautiful dresses," said the one.

"Pearls and jewels," said the other.

"And you, Cinderella," he said, "what do you want?"

"Father, break off for me the first twig that brushes against your hat on your way home."

As you can see, she wanted to rub it in. No superficial bric-a-brac for her.

Now it happened that the king proclaimed a festival that was to last three days. All the beautiful young girls in the land were invited so that his son could select a bride for himself. 

But when the time came to go to the ball Cinderella cried out: 

Oh dear, I have scattered a bowl of lentils into the ashes. If I can pick them out again in time I'll come with you, otherwise, I'll just stay home."

Wait a second, are you telling me she intended to stay away from the ball?

Of course, she did. Being married off to some prince, how unfeminist can you get? 

But then she thought of a better strategy. She would catch the prince and reform him. She called her tame pigeons to do the kitchen work for her, went to the hiding place where she kept her valuable clothes from her unenlightened past and put on a dress made of gold and silver. She also was quite good with makeup, so much so in fact, that

her stepsisters and stepmother did not recognize her. They thought she must be a foreign princess, for she looked so beautiful in the golden dress. 

The prince fell for her head over heels and then there was this whole shebang about playing hard to get which drove the poor lad mad:

On the third night, the Prince had set a trap. He had had the entire stairway smeared with pitch. When she ran down the stairs, her left slipper stuck in the pitch. The prince picked it up. "No one shall be my wife except for the one whose foot fits this golden shoe."

The two stepsisters were happy to hear this, but 

the shoe was too small for either of them. 

We all know how this ends, both mutilated themselves to become the Prince's bride but Cinderella's birds, who were militant vegans and could sense the blood in that damned shoe, called them out. When it was Cinderella's turn, she refused to try it on. 

The prince, impressed by her audacity, looked into her face, recognized the beautiful girl who had danced with him and cried out, "She is my true bride."

And they lived happily ever after?

Of course not: As soon as she was married she attempted to kill her stepsisters ("either angry or in a coma") but only succeeded in blinding them, allegedly for their wickedness and falsehood. That wicked act subsequently made the sisters so angry, that she could respect them from then on. 

The prince, however -first delighted by her fighting spirit-, eventually grew weary of it. He wandered off to find a more docile bride and fell in love with a beautiful corpse laid out in a glass coffin.  

The end.

Wow, --I--that's quite a powerful story, I- um - I had no idea-. She was quite severe in her views, I mean nowadays, she ---. She might be an influencer. 

Well-- I guess it just wasn't her time yet. How, um if you don't mind, how do you know all that?

None of your business.

Well, thank you anyway, Mr Cinder, for your cooperation.