Back in mid-September, I stumbled upon 's DevArt Gallery. Endling's a pretty damn amazing artist with a penchant for "twisted fairy tale" stuff. Now, the genre's not everyone's cup o' tea, but Endling's Ever After series is some of the best work I've seen in it, and it didn't take long for me to become a fan.

(and to develop a slightly-disconcerting lolicon crush on his concept art for Gretel.

Anyway, I was kinda in a slump, so I decided to whip up some random Ever After fanart just for the heck of things. Over the course of one pizza-and-Castlevania-music-fueled night of furious scribbling, what you see above is the result. Here we have Rapunzel, slightly tweaked to suit the Ever After universe. Even came up with a quick background story for her:

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Rapunzel is a cheerful, friendly young lass- not too bright, but there's only so much that can be said for one's education when they're locked away for most of their youth in a tall, tall tower with only their wicked witch captor for company.

She was saved from captivity by the Grimm City Police Department, who had come on orders from Fairytale Banking and Trust to forcefully evict the witch from her tower after four months of lapsed mortgage payments. When they arrived, they found Rapunzel sitting in her towertop bower, horribly underfed and undernourished and sleeping in a nest of what appeared to be cut-off hanks of her own hair. Though she still possessed a most amazing coiffure, someone had apparently given her a VERY rough haircut at some point. When awakened, she was just as cheerful as ever, speaking to the police and answering their questions without the slightest amount of guile or fear.

According to her testimony, she had been raised by the witch from youth, though it was clear she had been the victim of considerable neglect in the witch's care. Which, of course, is the kind of tragic parenting skill one has come to expect from witches. Approximately four months prior, Rapunzel and the witch had a heated argument- as to the subject, Rapunzel would only blush and look away, offering no clues, but it's clear that after the argument, Rapunzel never saw the witch again. Since then, Rapunzel had continued living in the castle, even though she had no access to food of any sort; indeed, her door was locked and barred from the outside, and the only window in her room was located some 40-odd feet from the ground outside, with a tangled nest of rose thorns at the bottom, making escape quite impossible. She had been sustaining herself on the cut-off chunks of her own hair.

It must be said of the Grimm City Police Department's officers- they are a brave crew. During Rapunzel's deposition and subsequent rescue, they were constantly menaced by... well, Rapunzel's condition. The condition that brings her to the hallowed halls of the Ever After institute. As stated, Rapunzel's a cheerful young girl, who only thinks the very best of humanity, in spite of her hardships. However, thirteen years of near-total isolation and constant emotional abuse is bound to have an impact on ANYONE; due to her innate cheerfulness, Rapunzel has repressed all those negative feelings, and as a result has manifested a completely separate personality. And due to her close proximity to the witch's arcane power, that personality has manifested itself as a beastly creature that resides in her inhumanly-long hair.

It is speculated that after Rapunzel and the witch's fight, Rapunzel's hair did away with the rotten old hag, possibly by consuming her. An investigation of the contents of Rapunzel's hair is currently impossible, but from time to time, bits of bone, jewelry, and ragged cloth will drop from Rapunzel's locks, supporting this theory.

Rapunzel seems to be completely oblivious to the creature on her head; similarly, though the creature attacks most other living things on sight, it seems to pay no mind to Rapunzel. It seems to function independently of the young girl's body, and remains awake and aware even if Rapunzel is sleeping or under sedation. Attempts have been made to cut Rapunzel's hair, or to try and subdue the beast with enhanced hair sprays, but all these efforts have ended... badly.

Rapunzel remains under observation in a comfortable but highly-secure ward of the hospital; barring a breakthrough in her psychoanalysis regimen, she is slated for lifelong internment.
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I've been poking away at this sketch for over four months now; it's been my between-projects project. Still, the more I ink it, the more obvious it becomes that there are some unreconcilable flaws in the basic structure of it. For one thing, Rapunzel's got shoulders that'd make an NFL linebacker die of jealousy. Sure, she's gotta have some pretty tough upper body strength to support that NIGHTMARE on her head, but GOODNESS GRACIOUS. She's also quite long/thick in the torso department, with scary-long arms and giant hands to match. And no, I STILL don't know what's up with her face.

I LOVE the hair monster, though, and it's consistently been the only thing keeping me from chucking the entire sketch and starting over. Still, I think that's the best course, given how HARD it is for me to so much as LOOk at Rapunzel without feeling pain in several parts of my body at once . I'll probably give this one another shot sooner rather than later; the concept's still fun to me, and it's been a refreshing change from the kind of thing I usually draw.