Weekly thingy and The Ten of Wands/The Goose Girl

I drew the thing, huzzah!

I have no clue how well known the goose girl is and y’all are going to need the backstory so: (you can also read the whole thing here and you totally should, it’s fucking wild)

Princess and her maid set off on a trip to a neighboring kingdom along with, for some reason, the princess’ talking horse, Falada. On the way, the maid announces that she’s tired of being a servant and they’re going to swap clothes and jobs and just, y’know, lives. I suppose I’m supposed to feel bad for the princess here, but luckily I don’t have to try because the whole natural world is constantly telling her how sad her old mother would be to see her being horribly tortured by doing some basic manual labour and wearing servant clothes. Seriously, she has to drink out of a stream without using her golden cup and it’s all ‘If this your mother knew, alas, her heat would break in two’. So far my sympathy is squarely with the maid.

So ok, they get to the palace, the betrothed prince carries the maid away to be cosseted and such and the princess is sent off to help a slightly creepy gooseherd who keeps trying to steal a couple strands of her hair. The maid has Falada killed so he won’t talk and look, I am not a fan of killing horses, but also that horse was really propping up the monarchy and snitches get stitches I guess.

The princess bribes the knacker to hang Falada’s skull over the passage where she walks every day (instead of maybe bribing him to not kill the damn horse? I dunno, benefit of the doubt, maybe that would have been more expensive) and the creepy fucking talking horse skull keeps on alternately telling her how sad mommy would be and keeping the gooseherd away from her shiny shiny hair.

Anyway: the maid finally gets what this story wants us to think is her deserved comeuppance, and BTW this part definitely reads like SOMEbody knew the story of Purim, it’s the exact trick they use on Haman. The prince asks the maid what punishment a traitorous servant should face, and if the talking horse skull wasn’t gruesome enough for you, this is where things get really gross. She basically says to stuff the servant in a barrel studded all over inside with sharp nails and have her dragged through the streets like that till she’s dead. And yeah, that is bad. If she really thought they were going to do that to some poor servant, that is real psychopath bullshit. But look, she knows she’s a maid surrounded by fancy bitches and what I hear there is the escalation of someone trying to cover. Like in her head it’s {Oh fuck what would a real princess say? These people are soooo fucked up, what would they do? I know, shove the servant in a barrel! (They don’t look satisfied yet) With nails! And like, drag it behind horses, I dunno! Yeah, that’s it, that’s what a real princess would say.}

And then they gruesomely murder the maid and get married and live happily ever after, presumably while Falada sings creepy dead horse songs of joy, the end.

Places to buy stuff!

• TEEPUBLIC: mostly t-shirts, a few other products.  Watch for sales, when shirts drop from $20 to $14!
• REDBUBBLE: Just, I don’t know, a ton of different stuff.  T-shirts are more expensive than Teepublic, but there are a lot more options.
• AMAZON: Home of the Geeky Gals Coloring Book!  Daydreams and Whimsies!  AND NOW, The Neurotic Owl Compendium!
• ETSY: paper dolls, a knitting bag pattern, and a bunch of vintage dolls of various sorts from my collection

Did I miss something?  I think that’s everything.

What’s making me happy this week:

Iiii’m taking a while off from any personal details. Yay that IATSE is hopefully not going to be forced to strike after all, please support them if they do, the end.