{"id":94,"date":"2014-06-09T18:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T18:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/?p=94"},"modified":"2014-06-09T18:44:28","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T18:44:28","slug":"fairy-tale-postmorter-hans-my-hedgehog-better-known-as-hedgehogs-ruin-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"Fairy Tale Postmortem: Hans-My-Hedgehog, better known as \u201cHedgehogs ruin everything.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

To celebrate the countdown to my modern fairy tale, \u201cFree Agent,<\/a>\u201d I\u2019m taking a look at some classic fairy tales you probably haven\u2019t heard or read. I\u2019ll recap the fairy tale, and note how in modern terms we at the Grimm Agency<\/a> would handle things better.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason for this you haven\u2019t read all of these: Some of these were written by a little old man who wandered into the wood and ate a bad mushroom.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the only reasonable explanation, and to prove it, I\u2019m kicking it off with a doozy: Hans-My-Hedgehog, with apologies to Heidi Shultz<\/a>, as “Hedgehogs ruin everything.” You can read it here<\/a>, or skip ahead for my summary.<\/p>\n

The Sad, Sad Story of a Hedgehog who could have used some counseling:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hans-My-Hedgehog is the classic, oft-repeated tale of a man who wishes he had a son, even if his son was a hedgehog. And his wife gives birth, but the child she gives birth to has the upper body of a hedgehog and the lower body of a man.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right, paranormal romance folks. The first hybrid was a were-hedgehog<\/em>.<\/p>\n

First off, let me point out that if this man had sought the help of the Fairy Godfather, we would have administered the most important treatment of all: A paternity test. Seriously, this guy\u2019s wife gives birth to a child who doesn\u2019t\u2019 resemble dad, and his first thought isn\u2019t \u201cYou know, I was out cutting wood late last month. Must have been lonely at the cabin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mother blames the father for the half-hedgehog son, because she doesn\u2019t want to admit that she was out drinking really late and woke up with a very dim recollection of what might have gone on the night before.<\/p>\n

(For the record, the hedgehog claims it was consensual).<\/em><\/p>\n

But regardless of how the boy got here, we move on to the sad story of his life. Poor Hans-my-hedgehog can\u2019t get anyone to be his godfather (apparently Knuckles the echidna wasn\u2019t available), and his mother sticks him in a pile of straw behind the stove. Because straw doesn\u2019t burn or anything.<\/p>\n

And Mom refuses to breastfeed him, on account of how it might hurt. I\u2019ve got news for her: Don\u2019t matter if the kid\u2019s got quills or not, the miracle of being a human feed-bag hurts. But anyway, he somehow lives. That\u2019s the thing about Fairy tales. They don\u2019t go into specifics, but we do know the father and mother were very poor, probably from buying hedgehog formula.<\/p>\n

Anyway, after eight years of wishing his son would die (no, really), the father goes to town and asks his wife what she\u2019d like. Then for giggles, he asks Hans. And Hans says \u201cBagpipes.\u201d Because if you\u2019re a were-hedge hated by your mother and father, what you really want is a set of bagpipes with which you can make everyone\u2019s lives miserable.<\/p>\n

And Dad buys them and brings them home, probably wishing Hans had taken up the ocarina.<\/p>\n

So next, Hans says \u201cYou know that bad-ass rooster of yours? Have the blasksmith put shoes on him.\u201d What would I not give to be a fly on the wall during that<\/em> conversation. \u201cYou, blacksmith, can you put shoes on a rooster?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re the one who\u2019s wife had that thing with the hedgehog, right? Sorry, can\u2019t help. You want Jason Ogg, Smith of Lancre, in the Ramtop Mountains. That man can shoe anything.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

So after trekking to an entirely different book series, Hans\u2019s father comes back with a metal clad cock which clinks whenever he walks. Yes, some of these fairy tales have serious sub-texts. But this one gets worse. When Daddy comes home, Hans-My-Hedgehog takes pigs and asses into the woods, where he roosts in a tree and watches them.<\/p>\n

Yup. The story says he sat around in a tree watching asses. Basically, Hans is just like every other man at the pool, only a little more spiny. Safely in the woods, Hans learns to play all the verses of American Pie on the bagpipe. He also is singularly responsible for the evolution of deaf pigs.<\/p>\n

And one day, who should come stumbling through the forest, but a King? Now, at the Grimm Agency<\/a>, we make sure all royalty have GPS units, but even you get lost, there\u2019s no need to panic \u2013 summon the Fairy Godfather and an agent will arrive to assist you shortly.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re like the AAA guy, but with guns.<\/p>\n

But this King is lost and hears Hans playing the bagpipe, and thinks \u201cI do believe in God Above. Also, I must have eaten some bad potato salad, because I think I see a tiny hedgehog man sitting on a cock.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Hans and the King strike a deal: Hans shows the king the way home, with the deal that whatever the King sees first, Hans gets. And the first \u201cthing\u201d the king sees is his daughter.<\/p>\n

Timeout: Yup, the daughter is a \u201cthing\u201d in the context of this fairy tale. But it gets worse.<\/p>\n

King #1 says \u201cAin\u2019t no way any daughter of mine is getting her spiny freak on.\u201d And Hans? He\u2019s the honey-badger. He don\u2019t care. He just gets on his cock, goes back up a tree, and continues to stare at swine and asses all day. In other words, we think he worked at Starbucks.<\/p>\n

The whole King-Lost-In-The-Woods thing repeats, and this King gets home, and what do you think he sees first? A pile of rotten garbage? Nope. His ex-wife? Nope. His daughter? You got it. And this king, he says \u201cYou\u2019re an adult, and matters of your love life are none of my business, but I support you in being whoever you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, not really. He says \u201cYou and spiny dude are a thing now, if he shows up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flash back to the forest, and a tiny hedgehog man riding a cock. He\u2019s grown a ton of pigs. Basically, like an entire South Texas worth of pigs, and he mails Dad and says \u201cI\u2019m coming home.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Dad realizes he was a bad father, begs forgiveness, attends counseling and reconciles.<\/p>\n

No, not really. Dad says \u201cI thought he died a long time ago. Damn it, now I\u2019m on the hook for child support.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Hans-My-Hedgehog rides back with a flock of pigs and has them all slaughtered. And strangely, everyone likes him now, because, well, bacon. Bacon cures everything, something the folks at the Grimm Agency know well.<\/p>\n

Ok. So Hans-My-Hedgehog takes his money, says Hi to Dad, and says \u201cAll I want is for you to go get more shoes put on my cock.\u201d Which the father does. And according to the story, Daddy is happy: Hans-My-Hedgehog is leaving for good.<\/p>\n

In what will be a recurring theme, parents are real jerks.<\/p>\n

So Hans rides off to claim his bride and rides to King #1\u2019s castle, where they try and get all stabby. My guess is that King #1 lived in Arizona and Hans didn\u2019t have his citizenship papers. But when Hans gets past the guard, the King says, in essence \u201cIt\u2019s you or me, Daughter, and while I may have experimented with a badger in my college days, I\u2019m an older, wiser King now. What will the other folks at the church think of me?\u201d<\/p>\n

So he sends his daughter off with Hans-My-Hedgehog.<\/p>\n

And right here, a story that has a were-hedgehog riding cock with metal shoes on it goes from weird to even worse: Hans takes off her pretty clothes, and right when you think he\u2019s going to get all romantic with her in a \u201cMark of the Tala<\/a>\u201d moment, Hans stabs her with his quills.<\/em> Yup. He stabs her until she bleeds and drives her off, since she wasn\u2019t honest with him.<\/p>\n

And Hans-The-Psycho-Hedgehog drives to King #2\u2019s castle. King #2 says \u201cHey, I owe this dude a daughter, and I\u2019ve got a whole stack, so if he shows up, let him on in.\u201d And the daughter, when he arrives, says \u201cYou know, my experience on the Bachelorette didn\u2019t work out, so why not?\u201d<\/p>\n

She goes with him.<\/p>\n

Now, when evening came, it says, she was afraid of his quills. Which were bloody from the last wife he married that day. So, you know, it\u2019s kind of a valid fear.<\/p>\n

But Hans says to the King, \u201cIt\u2019s my wedding night and all. I know this is your daughter we\u2019re talking about, but I\u2019m about to go creeping into her bed, and what I really want is for you to station four men by my door. So they can report to all the townspeople about what a stud I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, not really. The four men are supposed to wait, and when Hans creeps into bed, he\u2019s going to take off his hedgehog skin. And the four men will burn it.<\/p>\n

NOW, HOLD ON<\/strong>. If Hans could do that, why the hell didn\u2019t he just take it off the first time?<\/p>\n

But it gets worse.<\/p>\n

The trick works. The men burn the hedgehog skin, but it burns Hans, and horror of horrors,<\/em> he turns out to be like a black man. So the fairy tale thus far is weird, sexist, psychotic and now racist. But hang on, we\u2019re not done yet.<\/p>\n

A physician comes and treats him, and Hans turns white again. Whew. There for a moment, I though the worst thing in the story that features cross-species relationships, treating women like possessions, a violent plural marriage, was that Hans would turn out to have a decent amount of pigmentation.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re not done yet.<\/p>\n

Because nowhere does it ever say Hans turned to normal size. It says he was a handsome man, but this is a guy who was riding a rooster. But their marriage is \u201cproperly solemnized,\u201d and I guess it goes to prove it\u2019s not what you\u2019ve got but how you use it.<\/p>\n

Hans re-unites with the father, who loves him now that he\u2019s white and married to a princess and not spiny. The mother is never mentioned again. We assume she ran off with a nice English Hedgehog and had a whole litter with him.<\/p>\n

Why you should always contact The Grimm Agency<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Fairy Godfather would have insisted on a paternity test. Then marital counseling, followed by parenting classes. Litlle Hans-My-Hedgehog may have turned out to be a tiny, psychotic king, but not every fairy tale ends so nicely, as we shall see next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To celebrate the countdown to my modern fairy tale, \u201cFree Agent,\u201d I\u2019m taking a look at some classic fairy tales you probably haven\u2019t heard or…<\/p>\n

Continue readingFairy Tale Postmortem: Hans-My-Hedgehog, better known as \u201cHedgehogs ruin everything.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fairy-tale-postmortem","category-the-agency-series","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/authorjcnelson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}