Grimm - Edited
And welcome! This is our second reader request. Even though this story is not from fanfiction I have decided to edit it just because it is hilarious. This story is based off of the fairy tale we all know and love Little Red Riding Hood. I would like to thank Snowy the Sane Fangirl for this story. I would also like to give her a round of applause for not capitalizing the 't' in her username. I would also like to say that, yes, this story is in the present tense. You can write a story in the present tense even though it's not normally done. I have decided to leave this in. Partly because you can write in pretty much any tense you want to, partly because I really don't want to change it all to past tense. And here we go!
"John! Janey is so sick." Roxy leans over John.
The stench of scotchka radiating from the girl makes John want to vomit.
Surprisingly enough, scotchka is actually a word. It's slang for a drink that is equal parts whiskey and scotch. Thank you urban dictionary. At first I thought that it was a really stupid typo, but evidently not.
He chokes down the foul substance. Roxy slurs, "Rose and I would bring her the goodies from the bakery, but…" She laughs. She doesn't even attempt to fix any of her mistakes. Rose walks over to John, but she only stumbles.
What mistakes? Are we talking about the drinking or the stumbling? Guilt over getting drunk? Was laughing her mistake? Baking? Maybe she's a really bad baker and she thinks that trying to bake in the first place was a mistake. Maybe she thinks she ruined the scotch by mixing it with whiskey.
"You're drunk," answers John with a sigh. He always expects Roxy to get drunk, but Rose? He hasn't gotten used to this new habit that his friend has picked up. Rose puts a red cloak on John's back and a basket of goodies in his hand. She smells like a lemon drop martini.
Are you telling me that Rose drank lemon drop martinis? You need a cocktail shaker to make this. These people live in the middle of the woods, how did they get their hands on a cocktail shaker? Also, why is the author telling us what specific drinks they drank? Do we need to know this? Do we need to know that we can make a lemon drop martini and scotchka to save the day? Does the cocktail shaker come in handy later? All of this information is unnecessary, all we really need to know is that they're drunk, which we already know. And how did John correctly identify the scents of scotchka and lemon drop martinis? It doesn't sound like he does a lot of drinking.
"Go through the woods to Jane's house for us."
Unceremoniously, John is shoved outside. John stops to think. This is like the beginning of some clichéd movie! Nah!
Nah? Seriously? I'm impressed that the accent is on the word 'cliché' though.
He ventures into the forest because if this is a movie, he must be the protagonist. That means that shit is about to go down.
I'd make some joke about breaking the fourth wall, but this isn't really breaking the fourth wall because this isn't a movie. However, I feel obliged to give you a funny quote. How's this for breaking the fourth wall?
"Bullseye: Deadpool, Deadpool, Deadpool… How long has it been?
Deadpool: Issue sixteen. Greece… What's up, Bullseye?"
- Taken from a comic, issue unknown
After five minutes John is ready to tear the cloak off of his back, but Rose wants him to wear it, so he will.
Why are we being sentimental about the drunk sister?
The hood keeps getting stuck on branches and bushes. It is a very inconvenient piece of clothing because he is adventuring.
If he were not adventuring his cloak getting caught by all of this would be ok.
It gets caught on a particularly stubborn bush and pulls him backwards. He trips and falls.
"John! Are you okay?" A hand grabs him and helps John off of the ground. John sees that it's just his sweet sister who just happens to be prowling about the mysterious woods by herself. She is not with some creeper.
You don't think she's just taking a walk? Does she have to be prowling? Theoretically, she is just standing there and helping him up. Why does he assume that she's prowling? And why is he mentioning that she's not with a creeper? Does his sister spend a lot of time with creepers? If she is prowling through the woods for no apparent reason, isn't she a creeper? In this case it's good that she's not with a fellow creeper. Who ever heard of creepers who creep around in packs? Creeping around forests is obviously a solitary job in this story. John is pleased that his sister is creeping around correctly.
Wait a minute, who were Roxie and Rose? Are they also his sisters? Bakers who live nearby? Do they rent a spare room?
"Thanks Jade!" John smiles as he takes her hand and gets up. Something is wrong with Jade. She looks different. Her skin is darkened and her dog shaped ears are more pronounced than usual.
Does John also have doggy ears? I never thought that I'd say this, but we need some more character description. I don't even know how old these people are. I can't even guess. Also, John got off of the ground twice.
"What are you doing here John?"
"I'm taking food to Jane since she's been so sick," John answers. He pats his basket of goods.
Actually you're taking food to Jane because Roxie is a drunk, bossy, b***h. But nice cover story.
Interested, Jade tries to look inside the basket. "Can I have some?" she asks with a smile.
May I is the correct question. This is another pet peeve of mine. Is she actually asking John if she's capable of eating cookies or whatever's in the basket? There is an enormous difference between 'can' and 'may'. Learn it.
With a step back, John shakes his head. "No can do, these are for Jane."
With a quick frown she bares her teeth. They are as sharp as pinpoints. Jade asks again, "Pretty please, John. For me?"
"They're for Jane!'
Jade snaps as she lunges for the basket. "John!" she shouts.
There's no way she wants the basket badly enough to bite her brother. Not with those fangs.
John runs off before Jade can get off the ground. He has to protect the basket.
When did she ever get on the ground? Did she fall? You have to tell us these things. Why is he more worried about the basket than the fact that his sister is trying to bite him?
Like a leaf in the wind, John flows through the woods until he is sure that Jade is gone. He then starts his way towards Jane's in a casual walk.
Evidently John is used to his sister's homicidal sugar induced tantrums.
It's not long until he gets to Jane's house. He walks into the house without even knocking, because he does that sort of shit, and finds Jane sitting on her bed. She is wearing an ugly tiara and her eyes are black and red. John pities her. How sick she must be.
"Oh John, Roxy told me that you were bringing some food over," Jane says. Her voice is flat and dead.
Whaaaat? When did Roxy do this? Did she send her a message using really fast, well-disciplined carrier pigeons or something? Why didn't she send the basket this way instead of making John walk through the forest? Wow, she really is a b***h.
"Jane, what red eyes you have." Jane stares emotionlessly at John.
"Better to see you with." That's a strange for answer for someone who is sick, John thinks. "The cloak is new. Trying on Dave's color?"
Who the h**l is Dave? This story is three pages long, how many characters do we need?
"Jane, what weird clothes you're wearing." Jane looks down at her red nightgown. She is wearing pajamas.
How is this strange?
"Better than your blue pajamas and red cloak." Looking down, John feels insulted, but the comment is true.
He wore pajamas when he went walking through the creepy woods? Also, if this insults John, why the h**l is he saying this kind of stuff to Jane?
"Touché."
The tiara that Jane is wearing glows. It grows brighter and frames Jane's face.
"Jane, what a big tiara you're wearing."
You're supposed to give her the basket, not give her sass. Come on John, play nice. Why the h**l are you amazed at all of this stuff anyways? Does John do this all the time?
"Better to control her with." John hears a sound from the closet. Jade walks out of the closet. In a flash Jane is one side of the red cloaked boy and Jade is on the other. Clutching the basket, John calls on the wind again to escape. It gives him a head start.
Whaaaaat? Problems I have with this paragraph:
1. Why is Jade in the closet? It's ok to assume that she got to the house before John did (he was walking casually), but why hide in the closet? Is she trying to scare or startle her brother?
2. Since the brainwashed Jade tried to take the basket earlier, it is safe to assume that Jane wants the basket. If so, why doesn't she just let John give her the basket? She doesn't have to go to the trouble of controlling Jane. She can just sit there and smile. She doesn't even have to smile because she is supposedly sick. She could just lie in the bed and cough a few times. What is her plan exactly?
3. Why does Jane want the basket anyways? Is it magical?
4. Why is John calling on the wind? Is he some sort of magical wind boy?
5. Why would the wind help John?
6. How is John calling on the wind?
7. Why didn't John call on the wind when Jane tried to bite him earlier?
8. How did the wind give John a head start? Did it make a sort of pressurized wall around Jane and Jade?
9. Why did the wind suddenly bail on John in this time of need? Clearly the wind is very mean if it's going to let John be hunted down and killed over a basket of baked goods.
10. Why weren't we told that John called on the wind earlier? That information would have been useful.
11. Was saying that John floated through the forest like a leaf on the wind supposed to alert us to the fact that he has magical wind calling powers?
Blindly he runs through the forest with no goal other than to get away from his family. Why couldn't they just be drunkards like the Lalonde-Strider bunch?
I shouldn't even bother asking how the Lalonde-Strider bunch got into this. Partly because I don't care and partly because I can't find any useful information about them.
He makes it to a waterfall in the woods. Someone grabs his hood and pulls him into a cave hidden behind the cascading water.
Brace yourselves ok? This is more confusing than the bathroom filming scene in My Immortal.
"Dave? Dirk?" As luck would have it, the two boys stand in the cave. There is nothing unusual about their appearance.
Is this supposed to tell us that we can trust them because they aren't freaky wolf people?
"Jade and Jane are being controlled by Betty Crocker," Dirk says quickly. He gets to the point. "We have to break the curse."
Problems I have with the above paragraph:
1. Why is Betty Crocker controlling Jade and Jane? What is her plan? Why is she the antagonist?
2. How do the two people who quite literally live in a cave (hidden by a waterfall no less) know this?
3. Why do they even care about Betty Crocker's strange mind control scheme?
4. Why was Betty making Jane control Jade? Wouldn't it have been easier to just control both of them?
5. Thank you for telling us that this nasty curse should be broken. I was planning on just letting them run freely through the forest.
6. Actually, it's not a curse. It's mind control. Or is there a curse too? Maybe a curse would explain the dog ears Jade has, but otherwise I don't see how we can have both a curse and mind control in this story. Unless these two freaks are living in a cursed cave in a cursed forest. The basket is probably cursed too.
"How?" John asks.
The two brothers look at each other. Then they look at the basket.
"Rose thought ahead and gave you the green sun," Dave answers.
Problems I have with this sentence:
1. Roxie gave him that.
2. How can you tell a green sun is in the basket? Is the sun basket shaped?
3. How does Dave know this?
"Oh, that makes sense," John says with a smile.
"No it doesn't, which is why it will work."
At least the writer knows that this makes no sense. Why the writer kept it in instead of thinking of something that actually made sense, I have no idea. Also, how will this not making sense help them in any way? And no, you can't just laugh at how your own plot is stupid. Honestly…
The two girls jump into the cave.
It's amazing that they managed to find the secret waterfall cave. Even if they followed John's scent, all of that water should have made things a bit difficult for them. These two should get a medal!
Three vs Two are pretty good odds, John thinks.
"The basket, John," Jade demands. Her teeth are showing and her claws are out.
"I don't think so!" John cries. The green sun shines bright, blinding John as he takes it out of the basket. John throws the sun at Dave. He catches it and is unaffected by the rays due to his glasses. It burns brightly. Its light fills the cave.
Problems I have with this paragraph:
1. I wonder why a green sun wouldn't melt everything nearby. A green star would be 6,000 Kelvins hot. That's a lot of Kelvins.
2. Green stars don't actually look green. I'm not going to bore you all with the physics, but if a star is hot enough to be 'green', you won't see the colour green. The star will look white. Our eyes see all of these colours (the green star is still emitting rays of light of all sorts of fun colours) and mixes them up to produce white. Fun Fact: Our sun is actually white, not yellow. If it were really yellow, than the clouds and snow would both be coloured yellow instead of white. Wait a minute, I was trying not to bore you with science! D**n.
3. Glasses would not help Dave in this situation.
4. Why doesn't John use his wind powers now? It seems like the climax is a good time to use any magical powers you might have, but instead John is standing there and watching everything happen.
"No!" Jane and Jade scream as they're turned into their normal non-freaky selves.
Is this a mind control breaking star?
"Well, I'm glad that's over," John says as he puts the sun in the basket. He takes out some non-Betty Crocker cookies that were in the basket. He starts to pass them around to his grateful friends.
He's very calm all things considering… Wait a second; he didn't actually take part in the climax. He let Dave do all the work. Protagonists should be solving the climax, not letting other people do the work for them!
"Yeah, being controlled sucked!" Jade takes a cookie and eats it.
John being calm I can sort of accept because nothing ever seems to rattle him in any way, but Jade too! Really? Come on! You were just forced to attack your brother! Can we get a little feeling please?
The five of them sit in a circle, in a cave, in the woods, behind a waterfall, eating cookies when a yellow clad figure jumps through the water. Jake holds his guns and stares.
"Blimey, what did I miss?"
Thank you for telling us where we were again. I forgot where we were because of all of the non-existent action. Also, I did not ask for a gun toting British guy to shoved into this story just so we could get a cute joke at the end. Isn't anyone worried about the nefarious baker known as Betty Crocker? Who knows what she could be planning? No one seems concerned about her mind controlling abilities. Also, WHO THE H**L IS JAKE?
I would love to thank Snowy the Sane Fangirl for this story! It was a lot of fun editing this and I look forward to our third reader request Forbiden Fruit: The Tempation of Edward Cullen. Look forward to that, and remember, if you would like to make a request please PM me. Author and title will be required, and a URL would be appreciated, but is not necessary. Remember, grammar is important, so be sure not to mix tenses!
It has just occurred to me that I finally have a K rated story. Yes!