Comment by kakacik

The place I come from in eastern Europe has tons of similar dark folk tales for kids. Every single one had something properly dark. Brothers killing each other (or kids their parents, or reverse), canibalism, envy and greed getting the absolutely worst out of people. Since its historically very poor region the hero often prevails, but bad unfair shit happens left and right in between. Grimms were definitely not darker in comparison, in contrary, but their stories had more depth.

When encountering cca modern western kids tales (so not grimm for example), it was shocking how over-sweetened and dumbed down they were, emshittification in Disney style, but everywhere. Shallow naive predictable stories.

It didnt make us bunch of psychos, in contrary ot felt very enriching compared to shalow monotone sanitized storytelling western kids had access to.