[b]Terry Pratchett
People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.[/b]
Still, I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest the possibility it is a complex intetwining of both.
The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about “a handsome prince”… was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for “a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long”… well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don’t want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told…
Cue, among others, the media industrial complex.
I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are good people and bad people. You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.
That can’t be good.
People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as “Is this the laundry?” “How do you spell surreptitious?” and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.”
You know, if there are any librarians left.
Lots of people would be as cowardly as me if they were brave enough.
See if you can think that through.
…and the funny thing was that people who weren’t entirely certain they were right always argued much louder than other people, as if the main person they were trying to convince were themselves.
Of course sometimes it’s not really funny at all.