The Red Shoes By Hans Christian Andersen

I'm not feeling up to more Allecto today, so it's another fairy tale. Today I bring you a tale called The Red Shoes, and if I remember correctly, it's pretty sadistic and freaked me out even when I was little, and not even Bluebeard did that.

So there's a little girl named Karen who's really poor. We know she's poor because she has to go barefoot in the summer and in the winter she has to wear these ginormous wooden clogs which hurts her instep. One day a shoemaker's wife makes her some shoes. Karen wears them for the first time at her mother's funeral. Then this random old lady is like, "I'll adopt her" and takes Karen home. So the old lady gives her clothes and the mirror tells Karen she's beautiful (apparently he is on loan from the witch in Snow White). Then a queen and her daughter come to town and the princess is wearing beautiful red shoes.

I think it's hilarious how in practically every Hans Christian Andersen tale, there is a strange fixation on SOMETHING. Back in Little Claus and Big Claus there was the weird thing about the sexton, and now red shoes. Doesn't matter what kind. Just that they're red.

So Karen is now getting confirmed and has to get new shoes. Karen wants this pair of red shoes and the old lady buys them for her, but she can't see so she doesn't know they're red. The old lady would never let Karen get confirmed in red shoes. I can tell this isn't going to turn out very well.

And EVERYONE is staring at her red shoes. Karen thinks that even the mountains are fixated with her shoes. She can think of nothing but these shoes. SERIOUSLY. I like my low tops with little aliens on them, but I don't think about them every single minute of every single day.

Then a bunch of bitches at the church tell the old lady that Karen was wearing red shoes and she freaks out and makes Karen wear black shoes to church from then on. I'm just going to throw this out here: I'm not sure God cares.

So at church Karen wears her red shoes again. Because that in no way will get back to the old woman. Some crippled beggar says some shit like, "Pretty dancing shoes! Dance!" and slaps the soles of Karen's feet. And everyone once again stares at her shoes, and once again they are ALL that Karen can think of. Then they leave the church, the beggar once again goes, "What pretty dancing shoes!" and then Karen can't help herself: she starts to dance and she can't stop. And they won't even dance in the direction she wants to go; these shoes dance the opposite. You'd think she could use reverse psychology, but no. So she keeps dancing and dancing and she can't take the shoes off and she's dancing and can't stop.

And as she danced past the open church door she saw an angel there in long white robes, with wings reaching from his shoulders down to the earth; his face was stern and grave, and in his hand he held a broad shining sword.

“Dance you shall,” said he, “dance in your red shoes till you are pale and cold, till your skin shrivels up and you are a skeleton! Dance you shall, from door to door, and where proud and wicked children live you shall knock, so that they may hear you and fear you! Dance you shall, dance—!”

Whoa, that's a pretty harsh punishment for wearing red shoes to church. It also seems to me that there are better things to do than punish a little girl for wearing red shoes instead of black. Like, I don't know...achieving world peace? Also, I love how this angel came down from heaven seemingly to tell her that she has to dance, which she kind of knew already.

So Karen dances to this executioner's house and he threatens to cut off her head but she's like, "No, cut off my shoes!" and he cuts off her feet. She finally feels clean and keeps wanting to go to church but the red shoes are there dancing and she gets scared. This happens a few times until she begs God for mercy and the scary angel comes back and transports her to the church. I'd be like, "Thanks, angel, but uh, do you think byou could give me my feet back?" But apparently her sin was too horrible: The sin of wearing coloured shoes.

Then she randomly goes to Heaven.

I'm going to begin implementing a new conclusion for these stories. The moral that we are supposed to learn, and the moral that we actually learn.

Moral of the story: Vanity is a sin and will keep you from God.

Moral I learned: Do not, under pain of eternal damnation, wear red shoes to church. You will be forced to dance and then get your feet cut off.

A few more things before I end the post:

My weird, weird dream. It's in the sidebar but I want to tell it in detail. First thing you should know is that I just finished writing a short story using Kate and Asher, two characters who have starred in almost forty of their own stories now, and that one took place mostly at their graduation. So anyway, I dreamed that I was at graduation and Asher was there and also Fred Durst. Now, I don't know why I dreamed about Fred Durst. He's kind of a douche and I don't listen to Limp Bizkit. Like at all. But anyway, Fred Durst had this huge crush on me and he kept wanting to dance with me but I made Asher dance with me so I didn't have to dance with Fred. Then I decided to tell Fred that Asher and I were dating. So we did and he was sad, and he told me that he was going to propose to me in a hot air balloon the next day. Instead, he gavce me his class ring and I was like, "Don't you want to keep this? We're not even dating" and he's like, "oh right..." and he looked around and finally decided to give it to this other girl and then he handed me a belt buckle and Asher was like, "Because that's what we need....the smell of Fred Durst's crotch." Then there was a secondary little dream where I was in a hot air balloon with my brother and then it got blown away and Jonas wasn't there anymore and I landed in some trees and I had to climb down and Fred Durst was there AGAIN, except his head was put on the body of a mouse. It was weird.

Also, I'm working on a novel right now and I've had really bad writer's block for like the past two or three weeks. My philosophy is, writer's block? Add a fight scene! So I added the most random fight scene ever, and it kind of fucks up my continuity a little bit, and the person they're fighting isn't even supposed to be bad. I kind of hand waved it away. But yeah, I put in a random fight scene. I love novel writing, because every day is an adventure.

I also just remembered that I wore shiny red shoes to church...on Christmas EVE, no less. They were high heeled too, so I guess that makes me even more of a harlot. Shit, my soul is damned now.