Beauty and the Beast: After the Beast

“I am always surprised to discover that when the world seems darkest, there exists the greatest opportunity for light.”

- from A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer (2019)

Sleep in the skies

Stars in the sea

And I won’t ever wake up from this dream

The Enchanted Snake Tattoo

Story: A poor woman longed for a child. One day, she saw a little snake in the forest and said that even snakes had children; the little snake offered to be hers. The woman and her husband raised the snake. When it was grown, it wanted to marry, and not to another snake but to the king’s daughter. The father went to ask, and the king said that the snake should have her if he could turn all the fruit in the orchard into gold. The snake told his father to gather up all the pits he could find and sow them in the orchard; when they sprang up, all the fruits were gold.

The king then demanded that the walls and paths of his palace be turned to precious stones; the snake had his father gathered up broken crockery and threw it at the walls and paths, which transformed them, making them glitter with the many coloured gems.

The king then demanded that the castle be turned to gold; the snake had his father rub the walls with a herb, which transformed them.

The king told his daughter, Grannonia, he had tried to put off this suitor but failed. Grannonia said that she would obey him. The snake came in a car of gold, drawn by elephants; everyone else ran off in fright, but Grannonia stood her ground. The snake took her into a room, where he shed his skin and became a handsome young man. The king, fearing that his daughter was being eaten, looked through the keyhole, and seeing this, grabbed the skin and burned it. The youth exclaimed that the king was a fool, turned into a dove, and flew off.

Grannonia set out in search of him. She met a fox and traveled with him. In the morning as the princess remarked on the wondrous sounds of the birdsongs, the fox told her the birdsong would be even better if she knew what the birds were saying: that a prince had been cursed to take a snake’s form for seven years, that near the end of the time, he had fallen in love with and married a princess, but that his snake skin had been burned, and he had struck his head while he fled, and was now in the care of doctors. The fox then told her that the blood of the birds would cure him, and he caught them for her. Then he told her that his blood was also needed; she persuaded him to go with her and killed him.

She went to her husband’s father and promised to cure the prince if he would marry her; the king agreed and she cured him. The prince refused because he had already pledged himself to another woman. The princess, pleased, revealed that she was that woman and they married.

Tattoo Idea

A snake curled around the wrist, the snake mid shed and three teardrop shaped gems or a crown at its head

Maid Maleen

Story: there was a princess named Maid Maleen who fell in love with a prince, but her father refused his suit. When Maid Maleen said she would marry no other, the king had her and her maidservant locked up in tower, with food that would be enough to feed them for seven years.

After seven long years, the food eventually ran out, but no one came to release them or deliver more food. The princess and her maidservant then decided to escape from the tower using a simple knife. When they finally managed to break free of the tower, they found the kingdom destroyed and the king long since gone.

Tattoo idea: Maid Maleen breaking through the brick to find her destroyed kingdom (which can be conveyed by over grown withered/dead vines)

ataurusinabookshop:

I just wanna cover my body in illustrated stories of mythology, folklore, fairytales and flowers.

Like, is there a tattoo artists that’ll make arm and leg sleeve designs of a collection of tales?

I want it so bad

List of Stories I Want Designs For

• Hades & Persephone
• Eros & Psyche
• The Legend of Princess Kaguya
• Beauty and the Beast
• BlueBeard
• The Little Mermaid
• Little Red Riding Hood
• King Midas
• Chang’e & Houyi
• The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde
• Vasilissa the Beautiful at the House of Baba Yaga
• The Legend of Yamata no Orochi
• Pandora’s Box
• The Story/Tale of Sim Cheong
• Urikohime
• My Lord Bag-O’-Rice
• Tam-Lin
• The Enchanted Snake
• Julnor at the Sea Born
• The White Buffalo Woman
• The Nightingale and the Emperor of China
• Journey to the West - Sun WuKong
• Fenrir
• Timbo Tree
• The Tale of Melusine
• The Crane Wife
• Maid Maleen
• The Story of the Dragon’s Pearl
• Gilgamesh and Enkidu
• The Fall of Icarus
• Orpheus & Eurydice
• Arachne the spider woman
• The Apple of Discord
• Legend of the Mistletoe Bough
• The Too Clever Fox
• The Witch of Duva
• Ayama and the Thorn Wood
• The 12 Dancing Princesses
• Small Favors (book by Erin A Craig)
• Thumbelina
• The Tale of Despereux
• The Folk of the Air/ How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories
• Gabriel’s Inferno

Feel free to add some folklore/ fairytales/ urban legends that you may like.

I might make posts about each story and the tattoo that would represent it

Tam Lin Tattoo

Story: When a young woman, usually called Janet or Margaret, goes to Carterhaugh and plucks a double rose, Tam appears and asks her why she has come without his leave and taken what is his. She states that she owns Carterhaugh because her father has given it to her.

In most variants, Janet then goes home and discovers that she is pregnant; some variants pick up the story at this point. When asked about her condition, she declares that her baby’s father is an elf whom she will not forsake. In some versions, she is informed of a herb that will induce abortion; in all the variants, when she returns to Carterhaugh and picks a plant, either the same roses as on her earlier visit or the herb, Tam reappears and challenges her action.

She asks him whether he was ever human, either after that reappearance or, in some versions, immediately after their first meeting resulted in her pregnancy. He reveals that he was a mortal man, who, falling from his horse, was caught and captured by the Queen of Fairies. Every seven years, the fairies give one of their people as a teind (tithe) to Hell and Tam fears he will become the tithe that night, which is Hallowe'en. He is to ride as part of a company of elven knights. Janet will recognise him by the white horse upon which he rides and by other signs. He instructs her to rescue him by pulling him down from the white horse, so Janet “catches” him this time, and holds him tightly. He warns her that the fairies will attempt to make her drop him by turning him into all manner of beasts (see Proteus), but that he will do her no harm. When he is finally turned into a burning coal, she is to throw him into a well, whereupon he will reappear as a naked man, and she must hide him. Janet does as she is asked and wins her knight. The Queen of Fairies is angry but acknowledges defeat.

Tattoo Idea

The Janet embracing proteus-Tamlin

The Witch of Duva Tattoo

Story: Nadya’s town is being tormented by the mysterious disappearances of local women. The incidents arise after reported missing girls from nearby towns. This is followed closely by a harsh winter that forces Nadya’s father to sell his modes of transportation in order to support his family.

Soon after the third local disappearance, Nadya begins to suspect Karina, a local baker, of being a witch and luring the girls into the woods. Karina marries Nadya’s father, Maxim, and begins to torment her. She starves Nadya, locks her in her room, steals the food she finds, and prevents her father from showing her affection. Nadya runs away and lives with a kind witch named Magda in the woods. The witch turns her into a raven temporarily, at her request, so that she might spy upon Karina.

Nadya flies home the following spring and is sent with a gingerbread creation made in her image. The ginger girl approaches her home and meets with Maxim and Karina. Karina responds sadly, stroking the girl’s cheek and excuses herself to visit a friend. Maxim hugs his daughter and begins to kiss her, apologizing desperately all the while. He begins to eat the ginger girl, whom he believes is his daughter, and gorges himself on her flesh. He is found dead in the morning and is convicted for the deaths of the other girls. Nadya realizes that Karina had been sacrificing herself to hold Maxim’s attention, allowing Nadya to escape.

Her father is buried without a religious ceremony, and Nadya becomes a powerful witch under the tutelage of Magda, the kind witch in the woods.

Tattoo Idea

Nadya at a large cauldron with a raven on her shoulder and missing 2 fingers, the ginger girl in the cauldron mirroring Nadya, the cauldron bubbling over with candy, pastries, ribbons, mushrooms, a nute, spider, bones, eyeballs, and nadya’s missing fingers

Thumbelina Tattoo

Story: A woman yearning for a child asks a witch for advice, and is presented with a barley which she is told to go home and plant (in the first English translation of 1847 by Mary Howitt, the tale opens with a beggar woman giving a peasant’s wife a barleycorn in exchange for food). After the barleycorn is planted and sprouts, a tiny girl named Thumbelina (Tommelise) emerges from its flower.

One night, Thumbelina, asleep in her walnut-shell cradle, is carried off by a toad who wants her as a bride for her son. With the help of friendly fish and a butterfly, Thumbelina escapes the toad and her son, and drifts on a lily pad until captured by a stag beetle who later discards her when his friends reject her company.

Thumbelina tries to protect herself from the elements. When winter comes, she is in desperate straits. She is finally given shelter by an old field mouse and tends her dwelling in gratitude. Thumbelina sees a swallow who is injured while visiting a mole, a neighbor of the field mouse. She meets the swallow one night and finds out what happened to him. She keeps on visiting the swallow during midnight without telling the field mouse and tries to help him gain strength and she frequently spends time with him singing songs and telling him stories and listening to his stories in the winter until spring arrives. The swallow, after becoming healthy, promises that he would come to that spot again and flies away saying goodbye to Thumbelina.

At the end of winter, the mouse suggests Thumbelina marry the mole, but Thumbelina finds the prospect of being married to such a creature repulsive because he spends all his days underground and never sees the sun or sky even though he is impressive with his knowledge of ancient history and lots of other topics. The field mouse keeps pushing Thumbelina into the marriage, insisting the mole is a good match for her. Eventually Thumbelina sees little choice but to agree, but cannot bear the thought of the mole keeping her underground and never seeing the sun.

However, at the last minute, Thumbelina escapes the situation by fleeing to a far land with the swallow. In a sunny field of flowers, Thumbelina meets a tiny flower-fairy prince just her size and to her liking, and they wed. She receives a pair of wings to accompany her husband on his travels from flower to flower, and a new name, Maia. In the end, the swallow is heartbroken once Thumbelina marries the flower-fairy prince, and flies off eventually arriving at a small house. There, he tells Thumbelina’s story to a man who is implied to be Andersen himself, who chronicles the story in a book

Tattoo Idea

A bloomed tulip with a cracked walnut inside and (a girl with) fairy wings hovering over the flower

The 12 Dancing Princesses Tattoo

Twelve princesses sleep in twelve beds in the same room. Every night, their doors are securely locked by their father. But in the morning, their dancing shoes are found to be worn through as if they had been dancing all night. The king, perplexed, asks his daughters to explain, but they refuse. The king then promises his kingdom and each daughter to any man who can discover the princesses’ midnight secret within three days and three nights, but those who fail within the set time limit will be sentenced to death.

An old soldier returned from war comes to the king’s call after several princes have failed in the attempt. Whilst traveling through a wood he comes upon an old woman, who gives him an enchanted cloak that he can use to observe the king’s unaware daughters and tells him not to eat or drink anything given to him in the evening by any of the princesses and to pretend to be fast asleep until they leave.

The soldier is well received at the palace just as the others had been and indeed, in the evening, the princess royal (the eldest daughter) comes to his chamber and offers him a cup of wine. The soldier, remembering the old woman’s advice, secretly throws it away and begins to snore loudly as if asleep.

The twelve princesses, assured that the soldier is asleep, dress themselves in fine dancing gowns and escape from their room by a trap door in the floor. The soldier, seeing this, puts on his magic cloak and follows them. He steps on the gown of the youngest princess, whose cry of alarm to her sisters is rebuffed by the eldest. The passageway leads them to three groves of trees; the first having leaves of silver, the second of gold, and the third of glittering diamonds. The soldier, wishing for a token, breaks off a twig of each as evidence. They walk on until they come upon a great clear lake. Twelve boats, with twelve princes, appear where the twelve princesses are waiting. Each princess gets into one, and the soldier steps into the same boat with the twelfth and youngest princess. The youngest princess complains that the prince is not rowing fast enough, not knowing the soldier is in the boat. On the other side of the lake stands a castle, into which all the princesses go and dance the night away.

The twelve princesses happily dance all night until their shoes are worn through and they are obliged to leave. The strange adventure continues on the second and third nights, and everything happens just as before, except that on the third night the soldier carries away a golden cup as a token of where he has been. When it comes time for him to declare the princesses’ secret, he goes before the king with the three branches and the golden cup, and tells the king about all he has seen. The princesses know that there is no use in denying the truth, and confess. The soldier chooses the eldest princess as his bride for he is not a very young man, and is made the King’s heir. The twelve princes are put under a curse for as many nights as they danced with the princesses.

Honestly, fuck that soldier for ruining the princesses fun

Tattoo idea

12 different colored dancing slippers around the calf or thigh just above the knee

okay maybe I do like wearing yellow | IG

“And I shall seek you endlessly, for

I am a moth, and you’re my flame

Knowing that I’ll burn at your touch

I return, for you’re a fire; untamed

- Zubair Ahsan

Image chosen separately…

"Moth Girl” series

Photography and Retouching by Laura Sheridan

@studio.sheridansart

Cinderella aesthetic

My will reads as such: “Bury me in this dress, throw the rest of my belongings in this trunk. Xo”

Snow White aesthetic