History YMMV / BrazilianFolklore

* NightmareFuel: Several oral stories are frightening, both as a way to scare children and for adults. Behave badly and the Cuca (an alligator-headed witch), the Papa-Figo and others come to get you. Poach on the wrong forest/river and Caipora/Curupira/Boitatá or some other comes to whip you, make you go crazy, turn you into an animal to be hunted by your own fellow men or kill you. Then there are stories such as the vengeful girl of a blonde girl who haunts schools' bathrooms, and a [[MonsterClown creepy clown]] who kills those who refuse to give it a smile. Oh, and two different tales of disembodied heads that roam around the night scaring people. Not to mention the Corpo Seco, the zombie of an evil man rejected by both Heaven and Hell who haunts the living. And a giant-headed river being that kills and eats girls named Maria to lift its own curse.

** One illustration pattern has been portraying the Brazilian werewolf as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maned_wolf Maned Wolf]], as a way of facing foreign Hollywood and European influences and praising national culture. However, there aren’t any versions portraying the werewolf as such, since Maned Wolves are normally pretty solitary and shy animals who, at worst, eat farm chickens. The traditional Brazilian werewolf, coming from the Iberian version of the creature, actually has little to do with wolves, both the Maned and the European ones, and much more to do with rural animals like dogs and pigs, and occasionally mixes between them (more rarely, some old versions even had donkeys). Similarly, it also is invulnerable to silver bullets and transforms in Fridays instead of full moon nights.

* NightmareFuel: Several oral stories are frightening, both as a way to scare children and for adults. Behave badly and the Cuca (an alligator-headed witch), the Papa-Figo and others come to get you. Poach on the wrong forest/river and Caipora/Curupira/Boitatá or some other comes to whip you, make you go crazy, turn you into an animal to be hunted by your own fellow men or kill you. Then there are stories such as the vengeful girl of a blonde girl who haunts schools's bathrooms, and a creepy clown who kills those who refuse to give it a smile. Oh, and two different tales of disembodied heads that roam around the night scaring people. Not to mention the Corpo Seco, the zombie of an evil man rejected by both Heaven and Hell who haunts the living. And a giant-headed river being that kills and eats girls named Maria to lift its own curse.

* ValuesDissonance: As it is expected from a reflection of the country’s centuries of History, a few myths bring overtones that don’t resonate well with modern and urbanized audiences and may carry bigoted and patriarchalist connotations.

** Despite being often seen as a nuisance, the Saci actually also has overtones of freedom and liberty of black people. The red cap was seen as a symbol of freedom after the French Revolution, and a version says the Saci was originally a chained slave who preferred to cut his own leg off and achieve liberty than living in abuse.

** A famous origin story for Iara says she was an indigenous warrior who was [[GreenEyedMonster envied by her brothers]], who tried to kill her in her sleep. She killed them in self-defense, but was sentenced to drown in the river by the the leader, where she was saved by the fish and became a mermaid. The legend got famous across the internet thanks to its empowering messages, but, however, there aren’t any sources proving this is a real documented version. Moreover, the myth of Iara was never solely an Indigenous legend in the first place, only coming to be heard of after Portuguese colonization.

* ValuesDissonance: As it is expected from a reflection of the country’s centuries of History, some myths bring overtones that don’t resonate well with modern and urbanized audiences and may carry bigoted and patriarchalist connotations.

* ValuesResonance: Despite the above, some myths also have several tones that might seem progressive for the day:

** Despite being seen as a nuisance at best, the Saci actually also has overtones of freedom and liberty of black people. The red cap was seen as a symbol of freedom after the French Revolution, and a version says the Saci was originally a chained slave who preferred to cut his own leg off and achieve liberty than living in abuse.

** A famous origin story for Iara says she was an indigenous warrior who was [[GreenEyedMonster envied by her brothers]], who tried to kill her in her sleep. She killed them in self-defense, but was sentenced to drown in the river by the the leader, where she was saved by the fish and became a mermaid. The legend got famous across the internet thanks to its empowering messages, but, however, there aren’t any sources proving this is a real documented version. Moreover, the myth of Iara was never solely an Indigenous myth in the first place, only coming to be after Portuguese colonization.

** One illustration pattern has been portraying the Brazilian werewolf as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maned_wolf Maned Wolf]], as a way of facing foreign Hollywood and European influences and praising national culture. However, there aren’t any versions portraying the werewolf as such, since Maned Wolves are normally pretty solitary and shy animals who, at worst, eat farm chickens. The traditional Brazilian werewolf, coming from the Iberian version of the creature, actually has little to do with wolves, both the Maned and the European ones, and much more to do with rural animals like dogs and pigs, and occasionally mixes between them. Similarly, it also is invulnerable to silver bullets and transforms in Fridays instead of full moon nights.

** Boitatá is said to have come from a normal snake that, after surviving an enormous flood, adquired a taste for eating the eyes of the animal corpses left when the water subsided. The snake consumed so many eyes that the sparkle of light left in each one accumulated inside of it, making the serpent burst into flames. However, this version was actually goes back only to 1913 by the writer from Rio Grande do Sul Simão Lopes Neto, who dedicated his works to study the culture of his region. While this flood version got so famous it was eventually incorporated into popular culture with time, the Boitatá myth on itself is much older than Lopes Neto's tale, being one of the very first myths ever documented in the country's History, right in the 16th century by José de Anchieta, in which it is described as ''baetatá''. It's origins were not set in stone, as some post-colonial versions used to say they were the errant ghosts of non-Christians, for example. Furthermore, its status as a protector of the forest and punisher of arsonists also is a more recent association.

** A couple of characteristics associated with the Saci nowadays -- such as they becoming mushrooms after dying -- came from Monteiro Lobato's 1921 book [[Literature/SitioDoPicapauAmarelo O Saci]], as his research about different versions of the myth across the country didn't include those. Other aspects, while already existing, were [[TropeCodifier codified]] by the version of the book, making what were many different versions of the same creature (there were Sacis with two legs, with horns, with a goat foot etc.) one single identifiable and unique character.
** Iara is actually presumed to have come from a conflation of European beliefs of mermaids with Indigenous beliefs instead of Indigenous culture alone, as her first stories were only registered centuries after the start of colonization (in contrast to the Curupira and Boitatá, for example, who were registered by the priest José de Anchieta in 1560, only sixty years after Portugal's arrival). Native people had a similar being called Ipupiara, this one mentioned in Anchieta's letter, that might have had influence in the river mermaid -- however, they were more bestial than Iara, being covered in fur and possessing whiskers, more akin to sea-lions than fish. They used brute force instead of seduction to attack humans, turning over their boats so they could eat their noses, eyes, fingers and genitalia.
** Boitatá is said to have come from a normal snake that, after surviving an enormous flood, adquired a taste for eating the eyes of the animal corpses left when the water subsided. The snake consumed so many eyes that the sparkle of light left in each one accumulated inside of it, making the serpent burst into flames. However, this version was actually created in 1913 by the writer from Rio Grande do Sul Simão Lopes Neto, who dedicated his life to study the culture of his region. While this Flood version got so famous it was eventually incorporated into popular culture with time, the Boitatá myth on itself is much older than Lopes Neto's tale, being one of the first myths ever documented in the country's History, right in the 16th century by José de Anchieta, in which it is described as ''baetatá''. Some post-colonial versions used to say they were the ghosts of non-christians, for example. Furthermore, its status as a protector of the forest and punisher of arsonists also is a more recent association.

** The Headless Mule is a woman who gets cursed to become a hellish beast for having intercourse with a priest. Despite both being equally participants in the transgression, however, [[DoubleStandard the priest rarely receives any punishment at all]] in most myths, and even when he does, most of the blame still always falls on the woman alone, [[AllWomenAreLustful seen as a promiscuous being in need to be tamed]].