Thanks to Lori and Emily, here’s the best of the pretentiously-uncapitalized Tumbl Fairy Tales for 20-Somethings:

• arthur and lancelot moved to a railroad-style apartment outside of camelot. arthur didn’t even want to look at the sword he’d pulled from the stone, which he now kept wrapped in an old cloth in his closet. it had become a symbol of his shortcomings.

  one day merlin appeared at their door. “stop running away from your future,” he said to arthur. “accept responsibility for who you are capable of becoming.”

  “damn,” said lancelot from the couch, exhaling a bong rip. “shit just got real.”

• sleeping beauty wasn’t waking up till noon or even later. “i guess i’m depressed,” she told a friend. the friend took her out to a big party that night and sleeping beauty got a little drunk and made out with a cute prince on a couch. it was pretty great. the next morning, she woke up early, took some aspirin, and headed out to enjoy the day.

• little red riding hood was getting hit on by some wolf at the bar. she kept her beer close to her, and politely brushed the guy away.

  “are you okay?” asked the huntsman who approached her next.

  “ugh,” she said, rolling her eyes. “can’t a girl just go out for a drink and be left alone?”

• the emperor bought a new fedora but all his friends thought he looked really stupid in it.
• the little mermaid was a human now but sometimes at an upscale party someone would say to her, “that’s a very unusual accent. where are you from?” her past haunted her. she could never escape who she used to be.
• snow white and grumpy got a drink when he was done at the mine. they were having a great time chatting about the old days but then he casually left his hand resting on her knee and tried to hold her gaze. uh oh, she thought, awkward!
• the ugly duckling read obscure works of literature in other languages and listened to indie music even the guys in the record store had never heard of. if i’m not going to be prettier than anyone, she thought, i’m at least going to be better than them.
• The tortoise and the hare Facebook stalked each other. He might have a lot of money but I bet he doesn’t feel alive when he goes to work, thought the tortoise. The hare looked through the tortoise’s photos and thought, Being a writer in Brooklyn is so pretentious. The truth was that a part of each of them longed for the other’s life. How are you supposed to know you’ve chosen the right path?

• Beauty wanted to bring the Beast to meet her friends but she was nervous because they all had these super-hot boyfriends who worked in finance. She loved the Beast for who he was, she really did, but her friends were shallow and judgmental.

  “Maybe you should get some new friends,” Siri advised.

• After pulling the sword from the stone but before becoming king, Arthur went on a cross-country road trip / vision quest. He crashed on friends’ couches or, on a few nights, the back seat of his car. He went to Burning Man, stayed in the mountains of Montana for a few weeks, and learned to build a cigar-box guitar from some guy on the street in New Orleans.

  When he finally arrived home, a wiser man, he thought, “That shit was awesome. I gotta find a way to do that all the time.”