The ShadowBear Story Sessions

This week's story session features Nasty Flax Spinning, a tale about a kingdom that revolves entirely around linen, but everyone except the king absolutely hates it. Dive on into this week's story session! Welcome to the dark, strange, hilarious world of The ShadowBear Story Sessions. Each week host Zach Stewart digs into the dark, twisted, brutal original versions of the folk tales, fairy tales,...

This week's story is The Three Little Men in the Forest, a tale about a girl who stumbles upon three reclusive old men in the forest and somehow that's a good thing? Things promptly go insane and it only gets weirder from there. Dive on into another story session! Welcome to the dark, strange, hilarious world of The ShadowBear Story Sessions. Each week host Zach Stewart digs into the dark, twisted...

This week's story is Rapunzel, the first big recognizable name of Grimm's Fairy Tales! Of course, the original is much more twisted and nonsensical than modern retellings and it's debatable whether anything is actually better at the end of the story than at the beginning. I don't want to spoil it, so go right ahead and dive right into another story session! Welcome to the dark, strange, hilarious...

Little Brother and Little Sister, the next of Grimm's Fairy Tales, features some classic fairy tale tropes and some new twists - evil stepmother, animal transformations, and ANOTHER king finding a maiden in a tree in the forest! Just when you think you know what's going on, boom! Ghost! And of course it wouldn't be a classic folk tale without a good dose of casual murder. Dive on into another stor...

This week's episode features the next of Grimm's Fairy Tales: Riffraff, an absolute mess of a tale following two ne'er-do-well chickens who rampage across the countryside subjecting their neighbors to theft, violence, forced labor, and harmful pranks. Also, some sewing supplies get drunk. How? Shut up, that's how! Dive on in! Welcome to the dark, strange, hilarious world of The ShadowBear Story Se...

This week's episode features the next of Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Twelve Brothers, a tale of a family torn apart by a king's refusal to have both sons AND daughters (apparently it has to be one or the other... the reasons are unclear). Get ready for more of the nonsensical murder we've come to know and love from these stories as well as a whole bunch of twists and turns nobody would ever expect or...

This week we've got a triple-header! Three short stories all packed into one episode. The origins of an adorable generations-long blood feud! A morally dubious, money-obsessed ghost child! A reclusive, cutlery-lending elf! Unpack all of this insanity and more in this week's story session. Welcome to the dark, strange, hilarious world of The ShadowBear Story Sessions! Host Zach Stewart digs into th...

We continue our journey through Grimm's Fairy Tales with the fifth story in the collection, The Wolf and the Seven Kids. This story is an odd combination of The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood. A wolf repeatedly tries to fool seven little goats into thinking he's their mother and letting him into their house, gradually assembling a disguise that involves eating chalk and covering his...

We continue our journey through Grimm's Fairy Tales with the fourth story in the collection, Good Bowling and Card Playing. Buckle up, folks. This one's a bloody mess. Simple premise: a king says anyone who can stay in his castle for three nights can marry his beautiful daughter. But the castle-sitter that shows up is a psychopath who chooses violence and verbal taunting at literally every opportu...

We continue our journey through Grimm's Fairy Tales with the third story in the collection, The Virgin Mary's Child. This isn't a particularly religious story and doesn't teach a religious message, so it seems odd to have Mary as a character. Particularly when the story mostly consists of Mary making the child's life a complete nightmare. Abandon the child in a desolate tree in the middle of winte...

We continue our journey through Grimm's Fairy Tales with the second story in the collection, The Companionship of the Cat and Mouse. So many questions with this one: Why would a cat and mouse decide to be roommates? Why would they store their food underneath a church? How many times can a single cat be asked to be a godfather in one summer? Why do cats attend so many christenings? None of these qu...

We begin our journey with Grimm's Fairy Tales, and this week's episode is the first story in the collection, The Frog King or Iron Heinrich. It has all the staples of a classic fairy tale: a princess, a talking frog, attempted murder, and medieval surgical implants for overly emotional friends. This isn't the classic tale of "sweet princess meets her true love and transforms him from a frog into a...