Why did they have to give Frankenstein a different brother?

[theladybelle]

Anyone who knows Frankenstein will know that he had a younger brother, William. So why in heaven’s name did they give him a different brother in Once? They could just have changed William’s age and make him an adult instead of a child, then it would make sense.
Could it be something to do with right? That they could only get to use the character if they did go for a straight-foward retelling of the story?

[Nobody]

I choose to not focus on details like this for this show and here’s why…In the show, the stories with all their twists and turns are the “real” versions. The stories we grew up with are the fictionalized version. How their stories made it to our world I don’t know but it’s like the game telephone…things get distorted and changed and embellished. I don’t think of it as the writers changing things as much as restoring them to how they were supposed to be. 🙂 It keeps the English/History major in me happy.

[ceege]

Kellyn1604, I like the analogy of the game of telephone!

In truth, though, it’s not the first time they changed details of the stories to suit the needs of their own story. After all, I don’t remember Little Red Riding Hood having a boyfriend, or being a werewolf.

[evilqueen]

“William” just doesn’t sound German enough! 😆

[Phee]

@Kellyn1604 wrote:

I choose to not focus on details like this for this show and here’s why…In the show, the stories with all their twists and turns are the “real” versions. The stories we grew up with are the fictionalized version. How their stories made it to our world I don’t know but it’s like the game telephone…things get distorted and changed and embellished. I don’t think of it as the writers changing things as much as restoring them to how they were supposed to be. 🙂 It keeps the English/History major in me happy.

That’s how I look at it too. It’s like K&H have come to be in possession of newly discovered historical documents that actually have the facts of what happened, instead of the distorted versions of the truth we’ve previously heard in stories that have been told and retold over the centuries.

[timespacer]

@Phee wrote:

That’s how I look at it too. It’s like K&H have come to be in possession of newly discovered historical documents that actually have the facts of what happened, instead of the distorted versions of the truth we’ve previously heard in stories that have been told and retold over the centuries.

That’s what I thought initially but I reconsidered that interpretation when I thought about the fact that they have introduced more modern (19th Century) stories like Pinocchio and Frankenstein which have well known origins (unlike the folk tales which have evolved over centuries; the story of Cinderella for example evolved from the tale of Rhodopis which goes back to around 500 BC). So, I decided to believe that there is some sort of mental connection between the worlds in which some of the thoughts of people in Frankenstein’s world, Pinoccio’s world, or any of the others wind up bleeding over into the subconscious of authors like Mary Shelly and Carlo Collodi, who gave us Frankenstein and The Adventures of Pinocchio. This idea is not original – I stole it from Neal Stephenson’s novel Anathem, but I like it and I’ll stick with it unless K&H give us an alternative explanation.

[Phee]

@TimeSpacer wrote:

So, I decided to believe that there is some sort of mental connection between the worlds in which some of the thoughts of people in Frankenstein’s world, Pinoccio’s world, or any of the others wind up bleeding over into the subconscious of authors like Mary Shelly and Carlo Collodi, who gave us Frankenstein and The Adventures of Pinocchio. This idea is not original – I stole it from Neal Stephenson’s novel Anathem, but I like it and I’ll stick with it unless K&H give us an alternative explanation.

I believe that too. The stories had to make their way over to our world somehow. Maybe the Sandman made it happen. Maybe he was able to travel between all the different magical worlds, witnessing things, and then he was able to tell the stories to writers in our world through their dreams. But as with any recounting of a dream, the details are never completely clear. So the author would write down everything they could remember, and fill in the blanks themselves, so it wasn’t 100% factual. And then over the years, certain stories were retold numerous times, and each time it got a bit further away from the truth. But now we’re getting the stories lifted from actual historical documentation from another world, so we’re finally getting the true facts, without misinterpretation or embellishment that happened when they originally made it over to our world, many years ago.

[playarita]

I have noticed that a lot of artists talk about how they see it in their dreams (either at night or daydreaming) , or perhaps through meditation, lsd etc where it expands their consciousness to see glimpses of things that can only describe in their limited vocabulary. What these people “see” is a distorted, limited view of other worlds. Sort of like on a hot summer day and the heat waves ripples through the air distorting the image… perhaps our own human limitation (in this world) ripples with enough strength that seeing the worlds with clarity is difficult…

I think of it this way: how would someone, say from the Victorian era, think to consider a car (horseless carriage), a plane etc. So these people who connect briefly to the other world might see such short snippets that there pieces lost in translation (or interpreted in a way that fits their world–so a German name because English since Mary Shelley was English), or described in a limited vocabulary or description or forced to fit a given time’s social climate

[Author]

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