This is my final project for GERM 014: Into the Woods. Below is the official write-up for that project. If you'd like to visit the deployed site, click here!

During the term, we learned about how stories evolve over time, sometimes transforming into versions that are completely unlike their predecessors. Some versions are created through retelling stories in various countries; some versions are created through switching morals or characters; some versions arise by adapting the story for a younger audience. Some examples of these are The Snow Child, which has many versions from multiple geographic locations, and Little Red Cap, of which the class read three versions this term, each with a different moral, intended audience, and tone. Finally, we also discussed at great lengths the “right” to own a story, speaking about the Grimm brothers rewriting stories and Walt Disney’s “disneyfication” of stories. Through this, I centered my project around how a story “outlasts”, with certain versions surviving more frequently because of adaptable traits–almost like evolution. Thus, my project is titled “The Forgotten Story” and allows a user to create a story that will both survive and remain true to the story’s origin.

My project is based off of two tales, both of which have many versions—some versions being more popular than the others. The first tale, The Snow Child, is a story about a couple and their trust. The husband goes out at sea for a year, but then returns to find his wife with a newborn that could not possibly be his; she claims the child was born from snow, so the husband takes the child with him, later reporting that the child “melted” at sea. This is the general premise of the story, but through different versions, there is varying amounts of dialogue, more or less explicit suspicion of the wife from the husband, the child being born from either ice or snow, and more differences. The second tale’s premise is made up of three stories: “The Story of Grandmother”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, and “Little Red Cap”; from here, I will refer to this tale as Little Red Cap. This tale features a child disobeying her mother as she delivers items to her grandmother, who is eventually eaten by a wolf, due to the child sharing her destination with the wolf. In the three versions, however, there are varying amounts of gore and blood, different morals, and varying levels of appropriateness for children. This, along with the class’s general motif about stories and whether or not they will be remembered, serve as the basis for my project.

For my project, I coded an interactive website that allows a user to create your own version of The Snow Child or Little Red Cap; the website also allows a user to create your own tale entirely. To do this, the user is prompted with multiple questions, such as “Where are you telling the tale from?” and “What is the moral of your story?”. The user chooses one of the given answers, and after the user has answered every question, the website tells whether or not the story survived. Results vary, as the story could survive, be forgotten, survive but only in certain contexts (like academia), survive but be completely rewritten, or survive but only as a Walt Disney story. There are many different results, and each is calculated based on the combination of the answers provided by the user. This allows the user to truly see what characteristics lead to a story’s survival, and what characteristics are becoming the downfall of a story.

The main screen, allowing you to choose which quiz you would like to play.

A question in the “choose your own story” path, where the user has selected medium length

An example result where the story the user has created has survived as the original.

Creating this website took quite some time. First, I re-read the story versions, noting the differences between them, such as location told, moral, main characters, length, and child-audience appropriateness. From there, I planned out the possible endings for each quiz, such as survival, forgotten, disneyfied, and more. After planning the endings out, I wrote each question and the possible choices for each question. Then, I started coding. I began by installing a starter-pack that I use often for my repositories that allows me to easily put together dependencies, which thus allows me to begin coding (this starterpack has none of the functional code; it just allows me to use the language I need to code in without spending an extra hour setting it up). From there, I created a React web-app, utilizing HTML, SCSS, JavaScript, and React to design a fully functional and interactive web-app. I created each component myself and designed the entire website, making sure it had a fun and attractive color scheme, as well as hover effects and clicking effects. Overall, the website’s creation probably took anywhere from 8-10 hours.

This project tells a story of how tales are becoming increasingly more child-focused, “disneyfied”, and forgotten. This project relies on the fact that any tale has multiple versions, but only some of those versions are well-known. For instance, The Story of Grandmother is not nearly as well-known as Little Red Riding Hood, and because of this, The Story of Grandmother can often be forgotten. Likewise, some stories become lost because someone later has decided to rewrite those stories, making them very different. Both Walt Disney and the Grimm brothers did this, taking stories and making them more appropriate for children, thereby accidentally dooming the original to be forgotten. The project attempts to show this by having the user choose to work with the Grimm brothers, Walt Disney, both, or neither. Doing so normally gives their story a better chance of survival, but at the cost that it is rewritten and is not akin to the original. This shows how there is a tradeoff with a story’s popularity: for it to become more popular and “survive”, it may need to be rewritten and changed—and is that tradeoff worth it? That is for the user to decide. Likewise, making a story long on the website leads to that story having a decreased chance of survival, since many stories now are for children and are short, making them much easier to digest. Thus, the project attempts to show how storytelling is changing drastically, and for certain stories to survive, they may have to endure the cost of being rewritten. By having the user create their own stories, they can experience the pain of having your story forgotten or rewritten, and thus, they will begin to care about the danger that is the forgotten story.