Wonderlost Art: The Alice Project + Twisted Fairy Tales

**WELCOME*UPDATED**

~ Xanthic Eye ~ Wonderlost Art, The Alice Project ~

~ A NEW TAKE ON THE CHARACTERS OF WONDERLAND ~

ALICE IN WONDERLAND SYNDROME

Along With Some Xtra Alice Art Pieces

*AIWS or Alice in Wonderland Syndrome:

– Is a condition that is named after the novel authored by Lewis Caroll. It also goes by another name, Todd’s syndrome. It is a puzzling neurological state where it affects the perception of the human mind.

– Patients having this syndrome experiences distortion of sizes of what he/she sees also referred to as macropsia or micropsia. This temporary state is oftentimes linked with brain tumors, migraines and the usage of psychoactive drugs. It can also resemble as the first sign of Epstein-Barr virus, a virus belonging to the herpes hierarchy and is associated with certain forms of cancer and HIV. It is also suggested that AIWS usually happens at the beginning of sleep.

~ Alice in Wonderland Syndrome Symptoms ~

*Aside from the distortion of sizes as perceived by the patient, they are likely to experience other symptoms as well. Majority of which are perceptual disconnection such as:

Agnosia or memory loss – Although some believe that this is a side-effect of Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. The patient experiences difficulty in thinking about each movement and also difficulty in paying attention to other things, and even difficulty in remembering things.
Anxiety
General mismanagement or losing control of the limbs – This is the result of the distorted perception that the patient is experiencing in front of him/her.
Still continues to hear some sounds even when the sounds have already stopped.
Hallucinations of touch sensation occur; lingering sensations of touch also happen. This is the sensation that the patient still continues to feel the touch even if they have halted touching it.
Walking on sponges sensation. The patient feels that the ground is not firm.
Perception where only certain parts of the body are growing larger.
A feeling of walking for eternity without any goal – a feeling like walking on an endless road.
Sound distortion – Even a small movement gives the patient clattering sound. This makes the patient paranoid and scared to move.
Amongst the symptoms of Alice in Wonderland syndrome mentioned above, the most renowned is the perception of the alteration of the body parts. It gives confusion to the patient who experiences seeing the shape and size of their body parts as out of proportion or not normal.

~ Below are some possible causes of Alice in Wonderland syndrome ~

Typical migraine where pain is not essentially experienced.
Epstein–Barr virus which causes infectious mononucleosis. This is also known as mono or glandular fever.
Temporal lobe epilepsy – A condition portrayed by the repeated occurrence of uncalled-for seizures which originates from the lateral or medial temporal lobe. The person loses his or her awareness at the time of a multifaceted partial seizure due to the seizure spreading to involve all temporal lobes which results to memory loss.
Delirium Tremens
Epilepsy
Brain tumors
Certain drugs which include cough syrups that contain dextromethorphan.

– Diagnosis: Alice in Wonderland syndrome is more of a disturbance of the perception of things rather than a particular physiological change to the systems of the body. Presumably, the diagnosis is done when other causes are ruled out and at the same time the person shows symptoms together with migraines. Frequent onset of migraines and perception disturbance during the day could also point to AIWS, although it could also occur at night. The presence of sound distortion further leads to AIWS diagnosis.

– Although Alice in Wonderland syndrome is fairly common, there are only a few around the world who have encountered it and only a number of medical practitioners who have actually come across patients with the syndrome. There is scarcely few information before on how to cope with this syndrome but now there are hundreds of them.

– Alice in Wonderland Syndrome Treatment: Usually there is no treatment for Alice in Wonderland syndrome since the root cause of the syndrome should be the one treated. For most common causes such as migraines there are hundreds of remedies coupled with dietary restrictions in order to help alleviate the symptoms. Samples of medicines for migraines are anticonvulsants, calcium channel blockers, beta blockers and antidepressants. These medicines should be used together with a strict migraine diet.

– Anti-epilepsy treatments work as well. Majority of patients experiencing AIWS find a cure on their own that perfectly works for them. During episodes of the syndrome, they find some place nice and quiet where they can feel safe and which will help calm themselves. Others use headphones to block out sounds that have become too loud. Acute AIWS is impossible to treat and one must bear it until it wears off.

– Living a healthy lifestyle helps lessen the symptoms of Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Avoid stress buildup, dehydration and tiredness. It is also recommended to get help from occupational therapists to find ways to adapt to the environment for their needs; although it is also a must for these professionals to be familiar with and have handled cases of AIWS previously.

wpid-0239e21b3251a9f7ce6c13858693ab6c01.jpg.jpeg

wpid-ed3849c5de5d93355100ae0627dd1a6801.jpg.jpeg

wpid-9edc67d4267f13da198f36890b9ce46e01.jpg.jpeg

4 Bizarre Short Stories

+ The Original Twisted Tales, Before they were Disney, are after

~ Fairy Tales aren’t always nice cute stories where everyone lives happily ever after ~

THE KING WHO WISHED TO MARRY HIS DAUGHTER – IT’S LIKE CINDERELLA, WITH AN INCESTUOUS TWIST
– The King’s wife dies and he swears he will never marry again unless he finds a woman who fits perfectly into his dead Queen’s clothes. Guess what? His daughter does! So he insists on marrying her. Understandably, she has a problem with this and tries to figure out how to avoid marrying her dear old dad. She says she won’t marry him until she gets a trunk that locks from outside and inside and can travel over land and sea. He gets it, but she says she has to make sure the chest works. To prove it, he locks her inside and floats her in the sea. Her plan works! So she just keeps floating until she reaches another shore and escapes marrying her dad… only to end up working as a scullery maid in some other land.. and from here you can see the Cinderella similarity. She meets a prince, leaves her shoe behind, and he goes around trying to see who it belongs to. The End.
THE LOST CHILDREN – This French fairy tale starts out just like Hansel & Gretel. A brother and sister get lost in the woods and find themselves trapped in cages, getting plumped up to be eaten. Only it’s not a wicked witch, it’s the Devil and his wife. The Devil makes a sawhorse for the little boy to bleed to death on (seriously) and then goes for a walk, telling the girl to get her brother situated on the sawhorse before he returned. The siblings pretend to be confused and ask the Devil’s wife to demonstrate how the boy should lay on the sawhorse; when she shows them they tie her to it and slit her throat. They steal all of the Devil’s money and escape in his carriage. He chases after them once he discovers what they’ve done, but he dies in the process. The End
THE JUNIPER TREE – EVERY STEPCHILD’S WORST NIGHTMARE – Cannibalism, murder, decapitation, and freakiness abounds left and right in this weird Grimm story. A widower gets remarried, but the second wife loathes the son he had with his first wife because she wants her daughter to inherit the family riches. So she offers the little boy an apple from inside a chest. When he leans over to get it, she slams the lid down on him and chops his head off, yup decapitates the kid. Well, the woman doesn’t want anyone to know that she murdered the boy, so she comes up with a genius idea! She puts his head back on and wraps a handkerchief around his neck to hide the fact that it’s no longer attached… Her daughter ends up knocking his head off and getting blamed for his death. To hide what happened, get this: they chop up the body and make him into PUDDING THAT THEY FEED TO HIS FATHER. The acid trip continues and the boy is reincarnated as a bird, flies over and drops a stone on his stepmother’s head which cracks her skull, she drops dead and he comes back to life. The End
PENTA OF THE CHOPPED-OFF HANDS – I don’t know if incest was a commonn thing back then, but these old fairy tales sure do enjoy a healthy dose of it. In this Italian tale, the king’s wife dies and he falls in love with Penta … his sister. She tries to make him fall out of love with her by chopping off her hands, makes sense. When the king sees this he gets pretty pissed so he does what anyone would do, has her locked in a chest and thrown out to sea. A fisherman tries to save her, but Penta is so beautiful that his jealous wife does the same, has her thrown back to sea in the chest. Luckily, Penta is rescued by a king. They get married and have a baby, but the baby is born while the king is away at sea. Penta tries to send the king the good news of the baby, but for some reason the fisherman’s wife is still jealous and intercepts the message, so she changes it to say that Penta gave birth to a.. puppy.. (let that sink in) Then the evil wife figures that wasn’t enough and forges another fake message, but in the other direction this time. The message says it’s from the king, telling his servants that Penta and the baby should be burned alive. BUT this one actually has a semi-happy ending, the king figures out what this jealous psychotic wife is up to and has her burned instead. Penta (who has no hands) and the king live happily ever after. The End, and who knows what the moral of this tale was.

In the Original Story Pinocchio killed Jiminy Cricket, Got His Feet Burnt Off, and was Hanged and Left for Dead.

– Disney has a habit of taking dark, twisted children’s fairy tales and turning them into sickeningly sweet happily-ever-afters. The 1940 version of Pinocchio is no exception. Jiminy Cricket appears in the book, but doesn’t play as prominent of a role. He first appears in chapter 4 in which the Talking Cricket lectures Pinocchio and tells him to go back home:

– Well that pisses off Pinocchio who jumps up, grabs a hammer from the bench, throws it at the Talking Cricket, and smashes his head.. obviously killing him.

– You might be happy to know that Pinocchio did learn his lesson quite soon after that—or seemed to. While he didn’t seem to feel bad about killing the cricket (in fact, he later tells Gepetto, “It was his own fault, for I didn’t want to kill him.”), he did seem to regret not taking the cricket’s advice as he runs into more and more trouble. At last, karma catches up to Pinocchio and he gets his feet burned off.

– Pinocchio was tired so he sat down on a little stool and put his feet by stove to dry them, but he fell asleep and while he slept, his wooden feet began to burn. Slowly, very slowly, they blackened and turned to ashes. Gepetto forgives him (again) and makes new feet, which is really more than Pinocchio deserves, when Pinocchio first became “alive” and learned to walk first thing he did was run off. What’s worse is that Pinocchio leads people to believe that Gepetto has abused him, which lands Gepetto in prison.

– You would think by this time that Pinocchio would learn to be a good, obedient little boy, but nope and the Talking Cricket returns as a ghost to tell Pinocchio not to get involved with some people who claim planting gold coins will result in a tree of gold. Rather than apologizing for throwing a hammer at the poor bug, Pinocchio scoffs at his advice once again. Pinocchio’s decision to continue to ignore the Cricket resulted in him finding more grief in the way of being hanged by the very people who had told him about planting gold coins:

– And they ran after me and I ran and ran, till at last they caught me and tied my neck with a rope and hanged me to a tree, saying, `Tomorrow we’ll come back for you and you’ll be dead and your mouth will be open, and then we’ll take the gold pieces that you have hidden under your tongue.’

– The hanging scene was actually where the story was meant to end. Basically, he wanted to convey the message that children could face consequences for being disobedient. However, the editor of the paper requested that Collodi continue writing—perhaps wishing for a bit more of a happily ever after himself—and that’s where the blue fairy came in to save the puppet.

– In the additional chapters, Collodi made it so that Pinocchio learned his lesson and decided to take care of his father rather than spend his time getting in trouble, playing, and running amok.

– In the end, the talking Cricket had a chance at revenge, but didn’t take it: Father and son looked up to the ceiling, and there on a beam sat the Talking Cricket (which is creepy if you think about it, a talking cricket’s ghost that seems to always be watching)

“Oh, my dear Cricket,” said Pinocchio, bowing politely.

“Oh, now you call me your dear Cricket, but do you remember when you threw your hammer at me to kill me?”

“You are right, dear Cricket. Throw a hammer at me now. I deserve it! But spare my poor old father.”

“I am going to spare both the father and the son. I have only wanted to remind you of the trick you long ago played upon me, to teach you that in this world of ours we must be kind and courteous to others, if we want to find kindness and courtesy in our own days of trouble.”

“You are right, little Cricket, you are more than right, and I shall remember the lesson you have taught me…” – THE END

~~ And those Disney endings where the prince and the princess end up blissfully married? Yeah, they don’t really happen in the original stories (or real life) either. To make sure kids go home happy, not horrified, Disney usually has to alter the endings. Here’s how the originals went down ~~

SLEEPING BEAUTY – In the original version of the tale, it’s not the kiss of a handsome prince that wakes Sleeping Beauty, but the nudging of her newborn twins. While unconscious, a Monarch strolls by and decides to “make love” to her and eventually the princess wakes up to find out she’s a mother of twins. Then her “baby’s daddy” triumphantly returns and promises to send for them later, forgetting to mention that he’s already married. When the trio is eventually brought to the palace, his jealoys wife tries to kill all of ’em, but is thwarted by the king. In the end, Sleeping Beauty marries the guy who raped her and they all live happily ever after.
CINDERELLA – In the oldest versions of the story, the slightly more sinister Cinderella actually kills her first stepmother so her father will marry the housekeeper instead. The twist is that the housekeeper’s six daughters move in and Cinderella becomes the new housekeeper with a never-ending chore list.
SNOW WHITE – At the end of the original German version penned by the brothers Grimm, the wicked queen is fatally punished for trying to kill Snow White. What’s weird is, she’s made to dance wearing a pair of red-hot iron shoes until she falls over dead.
THE LITTLE MERMAID – You’re likely familiar with the Disney version of the Little Mermaid story. Well, in Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale the title character can only come on land to be with the handsome prince if she drinks a potion that makes it feel like she is walking on knives at all times. She does, and you’d expect her selfless act to end with the two of them getting married. Nope. The prince marries a different woman, and the Little Mermaid throws herself into the sea, where her body dissolves into sea foam..