Prompt 4: Favorite Fairy Tale (and why)

Prompt 4: What is your favorite fairy tale and why?

Guys I got stuck in a rut so I'm just going to rush through this one. Rather than try to decide which fairy tale is the most magical and means the most to me, I'm just going to go with a Russian one I've encountered recently that amuses me. Russian folk tales are pretty stellar, by the way.

Ivan Tsarevich and the Grey Wolf. Via.

This particular fairy tale has many manifestations, but the core story is marked by at least one continuity: somebody is told to go somewhere they don't know where, and get something they don't know what. They fall under the classification of "Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What." Don't actually read the synopsis at the Wiki page I just linked to, it's long and involved and weird. The point is that there is always somebody who is sent on a silly, absurd quest.

Now, the whole reason I even know about this is because of these very clever and funny Russian animated movies, and one of them mixes two fairy tales: "Ivan Tsarevich and the Grey Wolf" and "Go I Know Not Whither." Here's a link to the movie, which is hilarious and sadly has no English or even Russian subtitles.

No need to cite where I get Russian stuff. Just from the internets. Nothing is copyrighted or owned.

Basic plot: Ivan Tsarevich is a pretty normal, sensible, good-looking bro who stumbles into a neighboring kingdom on accident. In this kingdom there's some weird shadow dude who wants to take over the kingdom, and he has the king's steward in thrall. There is also a big grey wolf that also serves the king for some reason, and he is much cooler than the annoying, evil steward. The king is a crotchety old dude with an intelligent, pretty daughter named Vasilisa, and he wants her to get married. She doesn't want to get married.

The not wanting to get married.

He gets frustrated and tells her she's going to get married to the next man he meets. Due to a series of wacky and improbable events, Ivan gets into trouble in the village and is catapulted out of there (can't remember what makes him fly) but he lands right in front of the king and promptly falls unconscious. Ivan is apparently the first man he meets, so the king has him thrown in jail. The jail room happens to be right next to Vasilisa's room for some reason and when he wakes up, he hears her crying in the next room and they start chatting.

They obviously sort of hit it off without seeing one another.

They both say that they didn't know about this marriage thing though, and they both promise that they won't get married to one another. During this time the king has second thoughts and decides that he actually needs to figure out a way of getting rid of Ivan because he thinks his daughter maybe shouldn't marry some random dude. This all falls apart though when they actually see one another and are like, yeah actually let's make this happen. But too late -- the king has already decided that Ivan will "go somewhere I don't know and go get I don't know what!" So Ivan teams up with the wolf (who can talk, btw) and they set out on their little nonsense journey.

The movie is surprisingly funny and clever. And I'm not sure why, but when the old king yells at the steward to make Ivan "go I don't know where and go get I don't know what!!", it kills me. Kills me every time. So maybe it's not my favorite fairy tale of all time. But I really like it.

Yeah, it still kind of centers on the old "guy must pass obstacles to get the girl". And the hero undertakes the quest out of love, but the quest itself is a journey into the unknown. It's about discovery and seeking something just out of sight, or understanding. Pretty much everybody has to take a journey like this at some point: to head out who knows where and to go get something. I hate to muck this up with the mundane, but how about a job search? This resonates with me. I know that I need a career. But I'm not sure where it is, and I'm not sure what it will be when and if I find it. But we all feel the call at one point or another: Go whither, I know not where! And bring back I know not what! And the reward is both in the seeking and in the finding.