Cinderella hated her job but she was too broke to quit. A part of her didn’t care enough to quit anyway. What else would she do? It was stupid to think she could really be a photographer. Better to just accept her life and get used to it.

Then one night as she lay awake listening to the mice scratch against the walls, she closed her eyes and said quietly,

“A dream is a wish your heart makes,
When you’re fast asleep…
I don’t need everything to go right in my life,
I just wish I could care again.
Please. I just need to believe it’s possible.”

Little Red Riding Hood put up a profile on OkCupid, but all she got were these creepy messages from wolves.

“Well that was disappointing,” she said to herself, then went out and bought a vibrator.

Puss In Boots dressed in the best clothes and ate in the best restaurants now, but he still stayed true to his roots. On Friday nights he met up with his old cats in the alley and they ate leftover cans of tuna.

The Little Mermaid was a human now but she never knew what to say when somebody cracked a joke making fun of merpeople. Should she tell them she was offended? But it would require so much explanation. And nobody would believe the part about the octopus witch.

Rapunzel cut all her hair off and everyone was totally into it but one unexpected consequence was that she kept getting hit on by women.

After like the tenth time it happened she wanted to say to the girl, “Is this still a thing, that only lesbians have short hair? Can’t pretty much anyone have short hair now?” But then she was like, Eh, yolo, and they made out.

Tinkerbell thought she’d gotten over Peter Pan years ago but then when he told her he broke things off with Tiger Lilly, it was crazy, all of a sudden she wanted him again. She could feel it all like it was totally new. 

Does this mean the feeling is real or does it mean I’m just a fucking idiot? she thought, and wished that someone would clap for her.

The prince and the pauper unfriended each other on Facebook because neither one could stand the other’s political status updates.

Wendy got back from Neverland and had kids right away. Then she was too fucking tired to do anything else.

Aladdin really wanted to win Jazmine back but he didn’t know how to do it. He googled tips for meaningful apologies and texted with the Genie for more ideas. He even read an article called “14 Ways To Get Her Back,” which he really thought would do the trick.

Finally, he closed his laptop and wrote her a letter by hand, telling her honestly how he felt. But he couldn’t find a stamp so he just texted her, “srsly babe im so sry.”

Thumbelina never got much bigger but she did get her own reality TV show, so that’s cool.

The crazy thing is that eventually even Alice began to doubt whether what she’d seen down the rabbit hole had ever really existed. And it didn’t make her sad, there was nothing overly dramatic about it, it was just that now she understood how the world actually worked.

But then she was tagged in a photo by an old friend, by the White Rabbit. It was a faded picture of her and the Cheshire Cat, and, wow, it just brought her right back.

Jack kept climbing beanstalks but none ever got him as high as that first one.

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.

Peter Pan knew he had to start being more professional, so he got a Twitter account to stay better connected with his colleagues. For his first tweet he wrote: “Productive day. Kicked Hook into crocodile AGAIN. #Bangarang”

(fairy tales for twentysomethings is officially on twitter! follow @fairytalefor20s)

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.”