The 12th Night

         I have recently been thinking about a play that my friends and I had put on several years back. As the title would seem to imply it was the 12th night. Well traditionally Shakespeare was acted only by men. Well since it was just my friends and myself it was Shakespeare acted only by girls. Oh and as for using his words, we sortof did ad lib, but we followed the plot. Well, we followed the plot as often as we saw fit. We just followed the Hollywood tradition of basing something very loosely on something else.
         I got to be Sir Toby. I was a wonderful Sir Toby. One of my friends didn't think so, because I cut out the one "Romance scene" I had to do.  There wasn't even a romance scene for  Sir Toby in the original play! That would be slightly awkward.
         Actually the biggest miscast was my younger sister as Sebastian and the oldest girl there as Viola. Separately they would have done fine, but it was just the wrong combination, of everyone there they looked the most different. Any other combination would have been better.  Viola and I would have looked alright together as identical twins the same with her two younger sisters. I think Olivia would have been a very good Sebastion. Especially since it was difficult to lose the sword fight to my little sister since she was scared of the metal skewers we were fighting with. Olivia was than much better at sword fighting.
         I wish I really knew how to use a sword. There is no practical purpose in it. Although there is no practical use of football. What can you say ? I learned to tackle people playing football (what you had to play football to learn that).
        None of us got the characters right, probably. I mean we were all under the age of 17 and only two of us had probably read Shakespeare's plays. Still I remember that play fondly.

I am working on something

       really weird. Actually I am working on a novel, with some cooperation with my younger sister. It's something like a SciFi/Fantasy story. My sister took it upon herself to design the clothes for the world. Maybe she will post some if it.
         It is fortunately for me a very simple story. There is only one overarching story lines, unlike the seven or so that I was trying to work out in my last one. I am going to come back to more complicated one, when I have a little more experience. The experience is composed of what I will hopefully finish by the end of this year.
        I do not want to give  away to much, it needs to be a wonderful surprise (Fine than just a surprise). The story is turning out a little longer than I had originally intended, somewhere like a hundred pages, which would probably translate to being about two hundred pages in book format or so. It may be closer to two hundred pages, not in book format, but we will see. 
        I know most people know of many people who are writing there own book. What makes my book better than there's... Wellll...Because it is mine of course! (what you expect me to have a reason?) oh, and I don't write about sparkly Vampyres (which is definitely a big plus).
           In reality I think that the book will at least will be interesting and colourful. It can not be worse than the trash already out there (well maybe if I tried).  And it will be just a little bit Anglo-Saxony (Yes there will be sharp swords involved). What else is there to ask for? I may even write a battle scene (since I've been in so many of them).

Shaesphere and Dickens, German?

          No, he wasn't but apparently during WWII, the Germans claimed that he was. They must have claimed that every good author was German  In two different movies that I watched this was the case. They were of course British Propaganda movies.
          Well there was a Sherlock Holmes moving The Secret Weapon, with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. In the first scene that takes place in a German restaurant, Holmes is an agent for England, who is pretending to be an agent for Germany, disguised as a bookseller. As the German agent bookseller he pretends to try to sell his two German bosses a collection of Dickens. He was selling the Bismark Papers (Pickwick papers?) written by Charles Dickens "an old German writer". I had to re-watch that part make sure I heard correctly. Later, in the movie Holmes mentions that Dickens was a English writer, so it was not like the people in the movie did not know who Dickens was.

            The reference in the next one was "Pimpernel Smith. It was a 'modern' remake of the Scarlet Pimpernel.  The German villain was explaining that Shakespeare was actually a German, it was proven by someone or another. Then the undercover professor after expressing surprise at that said "still you must admit that the English translations are most remarkable". Yes, he was being a little cheeky. 
       

Two turtle doves

         It's the second day of Christmas. No school work. I have hours a day to write and read and draw and clean.And there was more 'and's' in that sentence than ever should be legal (Hey I'm my own grammar police).  life is never completely perfect. It would be no fun, than.
         Write now I am working on the "Club of Queer Trades" one of the stories in my volume of G.K. Chesterton, that I (ecstatically)  received yesterday.  Basically the premise of the story is that there is a club full of people who have trades that have never been made before.
          For example, the first member is the man who 'sells' adventures. The second is of the man who 'sells' wit. Now you have to read the rest to find out about the other members in this club. I'd recommend it although I proffered "Ball and the Cross" personally.

       P.S. For those of you who are wondering, I am a somewhat lax grammar police.

Sorry for not updating

          I have for the last week, more or less, been visiting a friend so I have not been able to put up any new posts. I need to find another book to read, but I am going to be so busy with writing my own book (novel?) and do other more practical things that I may have very little time for reading. However, I have been recently been thinking about an all but forgotten medium.
           Storytelling. Oral Storytelling.  Yes, I know it came before the 60's. But people have been doing it for thousands of years. And now in America it is almost obsolete.  It seems a pity to get rid of something that forms such a basic human tradition. I love books (you really couldn't tell?). But there is something more personal, more real, in the telling of a tale. Usually because it follows a stream of consciousness.  In the case of my stories sometimes the ending surprises me.\
             I have the fortune of having many younger brothers who are willing guinea pigs for my stories. Oddly enough they enjoy most are the ones that I tell them where the main character is an insane version of myself and some how or another they end in the story. In one case we were shooting marshmallows from a marshmallow gun. Of course the marshmallows were soaked in gasoline and lit when we fired them. What else would any normal person do?
         Ohhh! today's Christmas. I should have instead written about something christmassy. Like the Christmas Carol, The Nightmare Before Christmas, or maybe the first and second chapter of Luke. Oh well I still have more Christmas season left to write in.
          

Well I was talking to my brother, Chewie Louie

              Somebody in my family accused me a little while ago of being random. I am not random, I'll have her know.  Why are my fingers blue? Anyway, I wanted to write about The Nightmare Before Christmas. But I will have to do that another time, since my little brothers are clamouring to get on the computer
           "Get off we want to go on the computer"
            "No you can't. Your too heavy. Oii! stop hitting me!"
             "But it's my turn!"
            "You don't have a turn when I'm on the computer."
            "But I thought you were to heavy to be on the computer."
             "Oi! Don't call me fat, Chewie Louie."
            "I'm going to tell mummy"
            "Go ahead and while your at it get me some more blueberries, they are in the freezer."
            "Ohh, is that why your lips are blue?"
            "No, it's because someone forgot where he put the thermostat last."
             "But the thermostat isn't even removable."
             "Which makes it all the more pathetic."
      Well I leave you with that thought, or lack thereof. And hopefully I shall not be deaf because of thier wailing.
       

Ha..ha..ha

          I am done with finals! And I am still alive! Well, maybe I'd better check my pulse.
          I have a strange sense of euphoria at the moment. I'm sure it will pass, as does everything. Now I can write.  Well, I have just recently learned that Christmas is rapidly approaching. Oddly enough it is falling on the 25th this year. I seem to remember it doing likewise, sometime before. I don't know maybe last year.
         I have found recently about old time radio productions. Like something they listened to before the television was invented. I enjoy the Suspense stories, and it makes it even better that many if not most of them are on Librivox, which is perhaps the only site I enjoy as much as my blog. But there was some very interesting even clever ideas that they presented in the shows. Naturally they had their boring shows like the Westerns and a good deal of the comedies. I, in most cases find that the comedies where to depressing. No I am serious. I can trace a great deal of our problems back through the mentality presented in such shows. Although, I did find that "Our Miss Brooks" was enjoyable and not to depressing. But there is still nothing so good to elevate one's spirit as a good horror, mystery or suspense show. At the very least, you can rejoice in the fact that you do not have as many problems as the main character. Wait is that why some people read my blog?!?

Well I should be studying....

      I've decided that writing in my blog about what I am studying, is studying. The Battle of Maldon. As is true for most Anglo-Saxon poems there is no known author. The only two known authors of poetry are Keniwulf and Deor. And neither wrote it. Well anyway it is about Brydnoth, and his fight against the Vikings. He perhaps did one of the most idiotic (but honourable?) things that one could have done. He and his army were sort of protecting an outlet from the Vikings. Maybe from there they could have successfully repelled the viking hoard, or at the least they could have made it more difficult to get killed.
                  These Vikings after demanding payment from the Mercians to leave them in peace. They were obviously refused. Then they asked to be allowed passage through, they would not attack.
                  AND HE BLOOM'IN LET THEM THROUGH!
                 Obviously for such stupidity he had to die, so halfway through the poem he was dead. He died in the battle field with the Vikings. He died a very honourable and noble death of course. But one of his men turned traitor after his death and fled the battle field on Brynoth's horse. This caused others to retreat and the few men who were left to recklessly throw themselves at the enemy in a glorious but somewhat fatal charge.
              To be fair I enjoyed the battle descriptions completely. I am slightly worried that I have become perhaps a little to taken with this society. I just have to enjoy the way they seem to think.
       

Sorry for not posting in a long time. I am finding that finals are fairly time consuming. Hopefully I shall be able to blog a little more by this friday, no promises however.

Well let's see

             My younger sister is going through a Jane Austen phase. She's sortof dragging me along with it. I enjoy her books and many of the movies based of her books. But it always strikes me as interesting that her books  are not very romantic (What do you really think that I'd enjoy them otherwise?). It is a domestic novel that portrays marriage as an almost social contract. Which it is to a certain extent.
           I'm not saying that the characters are not in love with thier future spouse. But there was a certain practical element to the stories. Edward and Elinor wait till they have enough money to live on till they get married. Not  a great deal of money, at least by thier standards, but enough to get by. Jane Austen seems to think that one must have respect for the marriage partner and between the tw have enough money to live off of. However she seems scornful of woman who just marry for money. An example of that would be Charolette (In Pride and Prejudice), and more notoriously Lucy Steel (In Sense and Sensibility). She also does not seem to believe in just plain out love at first sight. She has many men who marry thier wifes for thier beauty and good humor, and as a result become bitter and unhappy because their wifes are silly and foolish. Mr Bennet, of course, (From Pride and Prejudice) and this man from sense and sensibility whose name I can not remember. Also in Emma, Mr Knightly, proclaims that men of sense do not want silly wives, after Emma had proclaimed that all men cared for really was beauty and good humor in thier wives.
           I have read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It was pretty awful. The idea was interesting, but the book was dumb and boring. It made uneccsesary and crude jokes, because the author could not think of anything else to amuse his readers with. It was not well written, and it was ridicoulous in an extremly boring way. The actual book of Pride and Prejudice was much funnier than that and it was not even meant to be a comedy like the other.
                

I feel...

               My father commented that whenever he heard a girl start a sentence "I feel..." he felt scared. Which I can hardly blame him for. But what I hate even more when people in a college English classroom start to say "I feel..." when they are talking about a text. This is a college class not a dorky little book club or some over-opinionated blog (what? do you expect me to have enough self-control to resist making fun of myself?). 
              No one cares about the deep inner passions that this book inspired in you. English classes are about your analysis of the book, it's meaning, it's characters, it's plot, and then whatever proof you can find to support it. If someone wants to analyze why some book inspires some emotion, then fine, more or less.
             My dad than envisioned, after my somewhat passionate tirade, me becoming an English professor. He could see me, on the first day, telling all my students "I do not care about your feelings. You are never to start a sentence with I feel." (I'm such a sweetheart.)
               Well, never mind the fact that it does seem likely that professorship will be very possible.
              Not that I am saying that books should not inspire emotions, much good writing does, but no one needs to go to a classroom in order to learn feel. One gets an education in order to think.
               That is one of the reasons I love a good English class. Not only am I overtly fond of literature, but I also like the analysing and the critical thinking skills employed in it.
              Going back to his original statement I had to agree with him that young ladies (especially in English classes) should eradicate the words "I feel" from their  vocabulary. It makes me shudder even more when a guy uses those words.
               Anyway that was a fun conversation.
           

             Well I am reading Beowulf for maybe the third or fourth time. For school, mostly. It is the majority of what poetry that remains from the Anglo Saxon period. Some scholars think that it started out as a pagan tale and then when the English people converted the text was converted to be a more christionlike. That may be true or it may be the whole thing was written by some christion scribe looking at the old days. I don't know, nor do I particularily care. Because face it, it's just a good yarn, in an Anglo Saxon violent way of course.  How many stories do we read now that have the main hero ripping off the villians arm?
         I have not watched any of the movies which I hear are awful, and from what I hear of the movies I have to think that I would agree with them. I don't think that we would be able to make a good movie based on it. Firstly it is a poem, hello, unless you want people speaking in verse, most likely it should be left alone. Second we like to psychoanaylize people from back than. Well that is just a sure way to ruin the movie. Beowulf is not a complicated character. He's an ideal Saxon leader, with incredible strength and courage, and perhaps not so much strength in his head.
            I have not even touched on the Grendel's Damn (a damn is the mother of a certain animal). In the movie, I hear she is an unclad woman in high heels. Umm... What makes you think she is even a human? I mean her son steals thirty or so men and eats them (Humans may be able to be cannabalistic but even canibals have a limit to how much they can eat). I got more of the impression that she was a humanesque beast. She does live underwater and hoards treasures there. Besides they did not even have high heels than and certainly not ones that you can swim in. As far as the rest goes... it just sounds  unAnglo Saxon. But I've never watched it so I don't know for sure.

About the name...

             Many times in life one finds oneself asking herself deep and mysterious questions about life and death and why in the world did I give my blog this name?  I mean it sounds just a little pretentious (or obnoxious, I have not made up my mind yet).Yeah, I chose it pretty much because I liked the sound of it and the blog title 'this too shall pass' was already taken. Admittedly I am not particularly talented in any type of lamentations.  Nor have I as of yet,  abandoned the blog. Addmitedly I have to wonder why would someone create a blog in order to abandon it.
          That may be a reason why no one had taken this name yet.
           I've never tried to write anything that could be classified as a lamentation, I believe. Well except a depressing farie tale that I wrote the day before my spanish final, which I really ought to have been studing for instead. Laments are much easier to write then romantic poetry. I have written one, but it contains a rather unfortunate line in it.
             "Your intelligence shines in your eyes as it melts out your ears"
                  Okay maybe I could have tried a little harder. Okay maybe I could have tried, still  I think you can appreciate the difficulties involved in romance writing.
                I think I would be safer staying away from all forms of poetry. Maybe I can handle Dr Suess, oh and anglo saxon poetry. Which surprisingly enough have many similarities.
                Both can be hard to understand and both are written for people with a tendency towards ADHD. Uhhh... Ahhh.... another battle scene.. Yeah! And another! You mean that you didn't think that the biblical Judith was bloody enough?  No we need another battle scene hacked on at the end. It is so brillant.
           Someone should write a book something like a 'Psychologist in King Alfred's Court'. By the way the Anglo Saxons would completely win.
           Now do you realize why I say I should be kept away from poetry?
             
          

If you want to look intellectual...

     If you want to look intellectual say you love Shakespeare. Or you can quote the overused "to be or not to be" or "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo". You can say that he was the height of all English thought and etc.  Well it's not that I don't like Shakespeare, I do (well more of a love/hate relationship, but you get the point). But the fact is, he made me like his writings despite myself. I was determined not to like his work, mostly because everyone else liked it (Hey, I never claimed to be perfectly logical)    
            But to say that  he is the best English writer seems like a gross overstatement. Maybe he was the best playwright (maybe), he has brilliant poetry, he can be funny and a little crude (more than a little), and has brilliant poetry, and some really good characters. I think however that the source and summit of all of Shakespeare's works are his insults. Those alone make Shakespeare worth reading. Anything with sweet Jack Falstaff and Hal together is just brilliant.
           However, going back to the gross overstatements, it is nearly impossible to compare Shakespeare to something like Middlemarch. One is a novel and the other is a play, what is better, well the authors intent is different in both works. Middlemarch may be the most brilliantly structured novel in the English Language, Shakespeare steals his stories from all over and his plot lines are not particularly impressive.
           In other words I think that a person should analyze a few works of Shakespeare before they determine if he is brilliant or not. Do I understand everything of Shakespeare? No, I always have had a hard time deciphering his works, although reading it out loud helps out quite a bit.
           Actually I find Chaucer a little more easy to understand, oddly enough.

Moving On.....

           Although it would perhaps be possible to keep on about the origins of novels for I don't know a month, I think I will move on, because the majority of readers have not read stuff like Pamela. Which people of the time loved. I personally know that it is not particularly well-written, although the parody written of it (Shamela) almost makes it worthwhile. Never mind that. Actually I have no idea what to write about.
            Well for school I had to read and watch The Dollhouse by Ibsen. It was amazing. I can hardly understand how in the world the man can make selfishness look so noble! She became truly herself by leaving her three children and her husband. One of the characters in the play said of helping other people out that she would never make that mistake again (she'd never make the mistake of helping anyone else again). And within the context of the play she was 'justified'.  It's like 'what!'. Let's think this through ( or is that against becoming truly yourself?) By that type of reasoning you can say that anything in heck is justified. You can justify spray painting the prime ministers car, kidnapping and murder by this philosophy. I mean what if  murder always made me feel more completely myself than anything else. Would I be repressed because the government exerts it's cruel dictatorship against me and punishes me for a natural and healthy expressions of my true self hood? It can also justify a person's writing an obnoxious blog. Sort of like this.... Well at least I am not hurting anyone by it, well at least I am not scarring anyone for life (I hope, oh dear).
                Again moving on.....
             One of the more interesting arguments that people had was that the play was against the norms in the day that it was written. In other words it had deeper meaning because it was against the conventions of that day. Well... whether or not it was against the conventions does not make it right or wrong. Besides the conventions have changed and now everyone is for 'free love'. 
               Love is free?
          Well when people give out stuff for free that means that they do not really want it usually.I mean the only stuff we get for free is cheap, easily broken items, that are not even worth the space they take up in the trash can.
              I think that  I want to spend something on love in that case.

Novels Continued

                       Two part blog enteries, what will they think of next, sliced bread?
          Right back to novels. Well another book that Daniel Defoe wrote (he wrote Robinson Crusoe) is Moll Flanders. I had thought that the Puritans were stuffy until I read this book. Now I realize that they were just a bit of a hypocrites. I mean that book is riske. It is about all of the adventures of a woman of morally ambigious character. Fine she is not morally ambigious, she just lacks morals of any sort. Well fine, but do we need to go into every single detail of her love life. Yes apperantly we did. I personally prefered the part were she turned to crime. It was better than her wierd marriages and afairs.  Anyway people were reading it for her conversion and thier own moral edification. Yes, well... the last five pages of the book were about her sortof conversion. The rest is about well her crimes and so on. How much edification can it really give you anyway?
           I got more moral edification watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas", which I think has a far deeper meaning that anyone gives it credit for. Well maybe not but it I can easily find messages in it that I have a feeling the authors did not intend. Obviously I have been in far too many college English classes. Let us find meaning in a text that proably does not mean this but we want it to anyway, so we will make it mean it.  Well maybe it is not quite that simple.
              Oh and I wanted to talk about Pamela and even better Shamela.  Oh well until tommorrow or whenever I write next.

novel beginings

      Okay really dorky title. But it does give a hint of what I am writing about today. I am considering all the proto-novels that I have read. Guess what, I dislike every single one of them. I love novels and I am glad I read the earliest novels, but I mean seriously the first novels were written by and for a bunch of middle class puritan snobs (and before you ask, I'm not a puritan, I'm just a middle class snob).
         Firstly there is the ever famous Robinson Crusoe I hate that book with a passion to great to be expressed by words (but that's never stopped me from trying). First of all it is preachy, in the most annoying way possible. Secondly no matter how much the Crusoe thinks he has changed, and goes on about his own wickedness earlier on, he hasn't really changed he just got wealthier and more self righteous. Also all of his religion faith, belief was focused upon himself, solely. So he was a jerk. And then there was the prosperity gospel going on. When he was good he was successful and when he was bad he wasn't. But it goes even deeper than that, when he was successful that meant he was good and when he was not successful that means that he was being bad. Finally, it was also just boring.
         Oh dear, I seem to have run out of time. Germino!

Of technology and the lack thereof

        Well I have not written for awhile. I have a few papers almost due (well sort of, but I like getting ahead). Actually I have been wondering about something my mass communication teacher pointed out. There are movies, books, music, and well a great deal of other stuff that is considered great works of art. But what about computer games? I wonder is it possible to make a computer game a great work of art (by computer games I of course mean both computer games and video games).  I mean I have never really played much (any?) of either.
        I almost want to try to do that. But I am going to try to stay with literature, and the more traditional art forms I think (wow.. did I just suggest that movies are a traditional art form?). Mostly because of my general unfamiliarity of all technology.
       I mean why in the world does anyone need the internet on their cell phone? I much rather be able to type a paper on my cell phone (oh wait I don't have one). Or why do we need to have an entire new language for texting?
          Next they will put computer games on calculators (actually that would be kind of neat, not sure if math teachers would be particularily pleased). You see the interesting thing about media now seems to be that it consists not of really inventing new things nor of really improving things. Its more of putting technology we already have and than converting it to something else. Now you can see the movies on the internet, read books on your tv (well you know what i mean), internet on to your cell phone. But those things have already existed before, it's just they did not exist together.

         I've found that I have only written about what I like, which my younger sister would proably think that I am giving the wrong impression of myself. Apparently, I'm always criticising, everything. Well I guess I may have high expectations of art.
       Anyway for school I have read a newer book The Things They Carried it was complete rubbish. Well not quite the author had a fairly engaging writing style (not brilliant but good), and he did some interesting things within the book.
         During the first few chapters I found that I was not enjoying the book. At first I just assumed that I did not like war stories. Than I realized that was not it. I mean I enjoy reading Anglo Saxon literature, to them everything is a battle or needs a battle somewhere within the context of the story. I also enjoyed various other wartime literature, such as the Coldtz Story.
          Ever since I was a young girl I had a healthy dislike of fluff. Of sappy romances. That is what that the story was, no it was not a sappy romance, it was depressing fluff. The entire reason the book was written was to convey the emotion of war. There was no meaning behind, there was a questioning of truth to the story,I must admit, but it is truth of the most juvenile kind. The conclusion of the questioning was about a persons own personal or emotional truth, as being the only kind. So it just goes back to his trying to make you feel.
        The story (it's not a novel, by any stretch of the definition) told the most bizarre stories in the hope that the audience would be appalled and feel what war feels like. Well I have read more bizarre and gory stories than that, so it did not have the same effect on me as it would on others.
        In other words I was not impressed.

Movies or books?

         I was not to sure what I wanted to write about today, my decision laid somewhere inbetween books or movies. I eventually decided to write about both. Well sort of....
         Some of my favorite books they have made into movies, for instance Sherlock Holmes. I'm not talking about the new movie, I've never seen that. Actually, I'm referring to the Basil Rathbone movies. I thought he was a very good Holmes, maybe a little too much on the nice side, but still pretty close. Whereas all the newer Sherlock Holmes (and by newer I mean in colour) He is too mean by far. Don't get me wrong Holmes could be mean and was on many occasions. But in those movies he was just consistently mean and neurotic. Holmes was not so much mean as unemotional and dry. He could be even nice. Like when he panicked when Watson was shot in "The Three Garriebs"actually he was mean there too, but someone had just shot his friend. My point is I do not usually like newer adaptions.
           Oh, and speaking of Watson (I was speaking of Watson, somewhere in the last paragraph), Nigel Bruce was absolutely terrible as Watson. Watson was not a doddering old man. He had fairly good intelligence, and he had a good education (he was a doctor after all) and a limited imagination. He was by no means a sparkling wit or anything of the like, but a good stolid British man. I must admit however, I do like Nigel Bruce's Watson to a certain extent. He was a terrible Watson, but he was likeable as a dumb side kick, and there are moments I can accept him as Watson, more or less, well maybe once, and that was only during the radio series.
         My new blog does not seem to be living up to it's name.

Greetings

           Well here I am, writing on my new blog. I am attempting to become a professional (or at least a paid) story writer. I enjoy books and movies and enjoy analysing them even more. So that will in all likelyhood be a great deal of what I will be writing about.
            One of the more pressing issues in my life is how do you write a fairytale? It has been preying on my mind. Anyway I have come up with what I think are a good deal of the rules needed to be followed to make a good fairytale.
            One is the fairytale can not have any specific setting. It can be a general setting such as medieval times or mordern times or Anglo Saxon Britan but it can not be set in new york city ( I am a rebel and I refuse to capatlize New York) in the year 124 BC. Besides thats being impossible, it is too specific. You can set  in England somewhere sometime in the 12th centery. It's all just supposed to be vague. Occasionally a person can get away with breaking this rule, but very rarely.
             Perhaps the most definite rule I can find is a certain simplicity of storyline and of morals. A character can be unmoral, but they are, wether they are a good guy or bad guy, they have to obey the rules. Maybe just barely or only technically but they still have to obey the rules. For instance if the devil makes a promise the devil keeps the promise, same for anyone. Or if there is a challenge in the story the person has to follow that challenge no matter what. But it's usually just the letter of the law and not the spirit of the law.
             I also just mentioned above the simplicity of the storyline. There is only one conflict and not usually a deep psychological conflict, more of a solid physical conflict. A person is trying to escape from death, a person wants to become rich, or marry a prince or so on and so forth.
              Numbers are important in fairytales. Mostly three (you need no examples here I hope) or seven (seven dwarves, swans, brothers, annoying hot dog eating men, oh wait). There is sometimes 12 (princesses, dancing flamingoes... oh whatever). Still numbers are important. Oh and why does everything happen on the sevententh birthday? I mean it could at least be the day after.
             And it has a happy ending, if it does it's generally just a moral story that the puritans told to scare children. Personally I think that most of america's (there I am being rebellious again... or just lazy) problems come from the philosphy of the puritans. Nevermind that now though. the fairytale may be an odd sort of happy ending like the little mermaid, were because she sacrifices herself and dies she is not turned to sea foam but does get to go purgatory for roughly three hundred years instead and then goes to heaven. So there is always hope at the end of a fairytale.
          Oh and in general fairytales are bizarre. Usually along the lines of seriously who thought of that anyway?