My BFF, the Tony to my Steve Rogers, the Holmes to my Watson, and the Kirk to my Spock made an interesting comment the other day about the concept of fairy tale stories and how people don’t really want a “fairy tale romance” in real life.

She made the comment that when most people say they want a fairy tale romance/wedding/life they mean the Disney version. You know, the handsome prince/hero and the lovely young lady who defeat evil and live happily ever after with a bunch of catchy songs that follow them on their journey. The Disney Princess line follows has followed the formula with a lot of success, but Disney didn’t event the fairy tale so much as they figured out how to make bank off of retelling them.

I mean, have you ever actually read a fairy tale? I’m talking the original brothers Grimm sort of thing where the penalty for not winning the princess’s hand was death (“12 Dancing Princesses”) and the step-sisters cut part of their feet off to try to shove that coveted glass slipper on their feet (“Cinderella”). Those stories are full of some pretty dark stuff. The Disney version was neatly adapted to a family friendly G version because no six-year-old girl wants to know how the original version of “The Little Mermaid” ended (although they have no qualms about killing off mothers as many of us have noticed). I’m really hoping that people don’t want all of that death and violence in their relationship, because otherwise, I’m going to be concerned. Like seriously.

So here’s to having relationships that aren’t fairy tales.