For Challenge # 079 - there's plenty of stories with something worming closer and closer to the heart, before true love cures the problem. The one I'm using here directly flavours from the snow queen - where it's actually a shard of mirror in his eye that makes him see ugliness everywhere. Which lets me use the old-magic "Ice means blue!" and also channel Unstable Mutation a bit. Probably activation is too low.

I don't THINK the theme of "It makes you stronger now but kills you in the long run" is very fairytaleish; but it probably appears somewhere. The flavour I like the subversion of, since in the original the queen was being nice and witholding the third kiss;not threatening it as here.

On this being a fairy tale item: You know, that's a really interesting question. I've been wracking my head for a fairy tale with an artifact that works, but will slowly kill you, but I can't think of one.

So I went on the hunt at TvTropes, figuring I could center on The One Ring from the Hobbit... which is almost a fairy tale in its own right, but kind of isn't. Really, it's an early precursor to modern fantasy... it carries tropes from both worlds... but the Artifact of Attraction has much closer ties to fantasy. (See also: Stormbringer or The Dark Side of the Force). Even Alladin's lamp, which was only written in the 19th century doesn't really contain an Artifact of Attraction, like more modern renditions of the movie would have you believe. it's just an item of incredible power... there's no down side to using the lamp.

So it seems to be a defining trope of modern ironic or dualistic fantasy. But I'm sure there's some fairy tale exceptions that I can't think of. At the very least, the spinning wheel that turns straw into gold in Rumpelstiltskin is a bit of an Artifact of Attraction... even if the wheel itself isn't causing the problem.

Mmm, well - older tales of Djinn do rather include the whole "And then the Djinn gets to kill you horribly" bit.

There's the bag containing death, for the age old "This seems really good, but is actually a freaking bad idea" moral - which is relatedly similar, but not quite right. (And of course, the ring of the ring saga but that's probably counted as a modern fairytale too.)

Sorcerers apprentice? Kind of?

Sorcerers Apprentice is an excellent example. The story of Faust seems apt as well.

Many of the tales from the Arabian Nights aren't. 'Then the Djinn gets to kill you horribly' bit is generally because a person encountered a bad djinn, and he did bad things... he wasn't corrupted by a djinn that offered him good things, but slowly lead him down the path of corruption.

There's plenty of that sort of thing going on in The Bible/Torah/Koran... but fairy tales are a casual oral tradition, while holy book stories were trapped in Latin/Ancient Hebrew/A Perfectly Memorized Arabic Oral Tradition. I'm not arguing from a point of strength here, since I'm an amateur in this field. But it seems to me that the concept of corruption doesn't really strike a nerve with people until the printing press printed enough Bibles and the public was literate enough to read them. But, you know, that's mostly me BSing. I couldn't tell you if that's true or not.

Do you have a spam problem on this site I also am aeeedbe

Not before you turned up; no.

Alex? Why can't I delete this comment? I can see the 'x' to do so...

Ok, wtf? I see: "an hour ago: Alex deleted a comment on Shard of Ice"

But I still see the spam.

Very nice site!

At least he likes the site.

do they come from the same IP address? maybe block that IP.

If people reply to a spam or discuss its contents, I usually don't delete them so that the discussion makes more sense when looked at afterwards. So I left the comment you're discussing, and deleted (so far) 2 others.