Proppian Fairy Tale Generator

As I was researching Propp's narrative theory for my Media work (narrative theory is a really pain in the japside) I found a Proppian Fairy Tale Generator which uses all aspects of Propp's narrative structure, and lets you choose which ones to use in your fairy tale. So, I decided not to begin with "The hero leaves the house" but instead try and form the most sadistic tale I could. Here goes.

What aspects of Propp's narrative structure are we going to use then?

Violation sounds pretty weird, so we'll select that first.
"I forget sometimes what people tell me to do or not do. What they tell me slips away into the backwaters of my memory where it drowns in all other memories forgotten."
That doesn't sound like someone's been violated, but we'll continue.

I'm going to add reconnaissance now because that sounds cool.
"I stepped outside with father's boots on, feeling the heaviness of his feet in mine. The people in my country's soil then clawed into his boots and pulled me down until I could no longer breathe in anything but dense thick soil and earthworm particles traveling into my mouth. The spirits of my land traveled through me as well. They drifted in and out of my body, trading places and laughing, laughing at me and my sad predicament.


Suddenly all the people of the land appeared before me in spirit form. They shouted, "Where are you going to?" howled "Where are you coming from?" and voraciously attacked me with their voiceless screams. "Why are you here? How do you get up there?" "
If I'm honest, I'm a little freaked out now.

Okay, let's up the ante with some trickery.
"I forget sometimes what people tell me to do or not do. What they tell me slips away into the backwaters of my memory where it drowns in all other memories forgotten.


"Tell me what it is you have come here seeking," he growled through clenched teeth.


One of them who came forward looked nothing like the others. She was dressed in white fluff and smelled clean. Her eyes were like a child's. "I'm in need of assistance," she said softly. "I need some help and I think you can help me." "
That doesn't actually follow a story arc, so let's hope it gets better.

I'm adding villainy now, just because villains are supposed to be dicks.
"I sometimes forget what people tell me to do or not do because my mouth, salivating and unruly, thinks for me. So I did what I was not supposed to do. I ate the last bit of food. And when I finished the little morsels left on my hands and mouth burned into my skin to render me shamed forever.


"Where did you get those shoes?" he asked me.


I told him I was only a callow youth with two foolish feet. "I'm old and half blind, and couldn't care for eating the likes of you. But in exchange for your shoes and satchel I'll tell you how to avoid the people who smell the anger running down the mountainside. Didn't your father tell you? The people who run down the mountain to the valley only come to eat youths with foolish feet like your own."


From the corner of my eye, I saw the man from the mountain open his razored jaw and draw a poisoned needle from underneath his tongue. I watched the needle fly from his finger through my father's ear and out the other, turning all his fluids into ones of pure jade and stone. Then the foreigner strapped my jaded father to his back and continued to ride into forbidding wastelands."
Fuck to the me.

Liquidation is next on the sadistic list, so let's see where this takes us.
"I sometimes forget what people tell me to do or not do because my mouth, salivating and unruly, thinks for me. So I did what I was not supposed to do. I ate the last bit of food. And when I finished the little morsels left on my hands and mouth burned into my skin to render me shamed forever.


Suddenly all the people of the land appeared before me in spirit form. They shouted, "Where are you going to?" howled "Where are you coming from?" and voraciously attacked me with their voiceless screams. "Why are you here? How do you get up there?"


The man smelled my skin and laughed. "You smell like fresh meat," he said. "You smell like you expect to be killed and eaten alive. What kind of boy would run around this fog like that?"


The men of the earth hungered for my people's flesh. If I did not provide them with a sacrifice to abate their sorrows, they would take my body and walk amongst my people like one of the undead. They would find ways to sip their lives into their own empty souls.


As soon as my parched, cracked lips touched the cool water of the clear spring, my tongue began to hungrily lap the coolness into my throat to fill my stomach, to fill my blood. The last time I had coughed with a wet throat or laughed with a satisfied stomach had been so long ago. The rushing of the waterfall that fed the spring I was drinking from drowned all sounds from my ears so that I was left in a world where all I need worry about is swallowing this fountain of nourishment. When I had had my fill, or as much as I could handle at the moment, I stood and viewed the paradise that surrounded me: the lush vegetation that yielded precious ruby apples and pears yellow with inviting ripeness. All around me were luxuries I had never imagined I would live to consume."
As it turns out, liquidation means to expose the false hero or villain, and we want people to die, not complete this story with a happy ending.

Hopefully this'll round off our story with a punishment. Yup, that's next on the list, and of course the last option is wedding, and we don't want that to happen. Oh, because I'm now bored of reading and commenting, I'm going to throw in the difficult task option as well, just to spice it up.
"I stepped outside with father's boots on, feeling the heaviness of his feet in mine. The people in my country's soil then clawed into his boots and pulled me down until I could no longer breathe in anything but dense thick soil and earthworm particles traveling into my mouth. The spirits of my land traveled through me as well. They drifted in and out of my body, trading places and laughing, laughing at me and my sad predicament.


"Tell me what it is you have come here seeking," he growled through clenched teeth.


One man stumbled towards me as if under a drunken afternoon spell. His mouth hung open, saliva pouring down. When he came beside me he spat into both my eyes and I screamed, falling to the grass beneath my feet. I saw black and smelled drool and could not open my eyes.


As the cinnamon fell on my eyelids I felt a burden shift onto my shoulders. I could not open my eyes but could tell my knees were sunk halfway into the weak soil. I heard the old woman exhaust her laughter into my ears, filling them with tones of mockery and deceit.


As I reached the mountain's top I took my father's bones and held them to the ground. The people of the earth relinquished their skins and flesh taken over the years of people passing over their home. The skins attached the bones and rose, forming into the figure of a man I knew from when I was young.


"If you are my son then where are your father's leather bottomed shoes and ring?"


The needle from my tongue flung towards the lying man and struck him in the heart. It gave him poison at the place where it would hurt the most, and soon the man became a limp purple figure of stone."

Well, that was that. I hope you enjoyed my introduction to Vladimir Propp's narrative structure, by removing all the bits that sounds like things could go well for the hero. In the end though, it kind of sounded like the hero (or the hero's father) is actually a cold blooded murderer who keeps poisoned needles under his tongue, ready to strike like a snake. Well, that's a fairy tale for you.

See you on the flipside.