TW:
SA
Child SA
Y'know, after learning the origins of the story Little Red Riding Hood, I'm kinda disgusted by all the Little Red x Wolf stories, romantic or platonic.
Don't get me wrong, Hoodwinked is an AMAZING retelling.
But the original story of Little Red was a warning that there are charming deceitful wolves who will trick you with kindness, and you will only learn their true intentions at The End.
In the original story, Little red had to be around 8ish. The wolf tricks Red into thinking he's kind, goes to her grandmother's house while Red is being a wandering child, he kills granny, eats her, and puts the remains of her meat into a pie and her blood in a cup. Red later shows up, and there's the iconic pointing out the oddities. But in the original, the wolf tricks Red into eating the meat pie and cup of blood and she never finds out what it actually is. Right after, the wolf makes her, an 8 year old, undress in front of him and lie in bed with him. He ends up eating her then and there. But I think in another version, he doesn't, but does tell her if she has to pee, then pee the bed, and she convinces him to let her pee outside but she has to keep a rope tied around her ankle. She ends up going out of sight, tying the rope to a tree, and escaping.
So to have stories making them best friends (Again, still love Hoodwinked because it's cool. But still) or straight up lovers takes away the message; that there are real wolves who will do such horrid things to you if given the opportunity, so be careful of who you trust. The author himself wrote a letter about it when people were upset with how it ended (with Red dying)
A lot of the retellings are interesting but, again, it does nothing with the original message.
It's a story about stranger-danger, about being careful about who you tell what (which a lot of people still need to learn today, including on here), but it gets squished down into a love story or something.
I want to see a story where it does leave a mental weight on Little Red, but she decides to do something about such wolves when she's older and stronger. I don't want to see her aged up and making goo-goo eyes at a werewolf no-emotion-on-his-face man. I want to see something that keeps the original message but a new twist that adds more to the story, a different Ever After.
