#fairytale retellings | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

adarkrainbow · 1 month

Text

I want to briefly talk about this book called "Gender-swapped fairy tales", by Karrie Fransman and Jonathan Plackett

I first saw it in several libraries translated in French as "Le Bel au Bois Dormant"

And I was quite interested by the idea. Take the classical fairytales, but change the genders, have heroic she-knights and princesses save men in towers and asleep princes. It is always a fun concept - and the illustrations looked weird and cool enough, with their Rapunzel-bears and drag-queen-looking wolves.

But I took a glimpse inside at a bookshop earlier and... Now please tell me if I am wrong but... it is just the fairytales retold with the pronouns changed, right? I mean I excepted a bit more of a rewrite than just copy-paste the tale by changing the pronouns, and yes there's slight changes like Rapunzel's hair being a beard and whatnot but ultimately... I can just take the original text, change myself the pronouns, and I have the content of this book. Right? Its just that?

Which is the whole point, I totally get it, it proves that fairytales in our modern world can exist beyond gender... But I don't think I am willing to spend that much money just to have a retelling I can literaly type at home on my computer.

(And they also did a gender-swapped Greek myths book apparently? And as a Greek mythology fan I can't help but ask... what's the point, beyond cashing on the trend set by this first book?)

At least the pictures are nice... But I think people are over-hyping way too much this book. They are selling it as like "the ultimate answer to fairytale misoginy" and I am like... Again, I can type this on my computer in two minutes. I just copy-paste the text and change the pronouns. Bam! Misoginy solved apparently? But please tell me if I am wrong, I just quickly went though the book...

#book #fairytale retellings #illustrations #genderswapped fairytales #genderswapped fairy tales #gender swapped fairy tales #hansel and gretel #snow white #cinderella #little red riding hood #beauty and the beast #rapunzel

23 notes · View notes

princess-ibri · 1 year

Text

Working on some early ideas for a Bluebeard retelling, so here’s some concept art (subject to change) Lucretia our Heroine

And Bluebeard our Villain

I’m basing their looks/names/time period off of what I could find from what Disney already had Bluebeard wise. Which was a tombstone with the names of Bluebeard’s previous wives and their/his date of death and a portrait of Bluebeard in Jake and the Neverland Pirates 😅

Plus some 1440s historical inspo. But yeah we’ll see how this goes!

#my art #disney #bluebeard #concept art #DisneyVerse #my OCs #Disney ocs #fairytale retellings #jake and the neverland pirates #good grief would not have expected Bluebeard Disney lore from that show xD #but could def make the egg that gets bloody (taken from the Fitchers Bird version) an egg from his bluebird familiar #there’s already a story idea I have of. why he’s killing all these girls #definitely gotta Fitcher Bird put them back together and come alive again after in this hypocritical Disney version #Disney Movie Concepts

81 notes · View notes

appleinducedsleep · 1 year

Text

Random Word BPC | January 2023

7. Set

#books #booklr #random word bpc #shadow and bone #a curse so dark and lonely #brigid kemmerer #katherine arden #the bear and the nightingale #book photo challenge #book photos #book photography #fairytale retellings #my books #booklovers #bookworm

147 notes · View notes

thegrimmlibrarian · 3 months

Text

#uprooted #naomi novik #spinning silver #agnieszka #sarkan #agnieska x sarkan #fantasy #book review #book blog #fairytale retellings #fairytale #folklore #polish folklore #fantasy books #fantasy standalone #books #the grimm librarian

7 notes · View notes

oracleofmadness · 7 months

Text

A very interesting fairytale retelling that focuses on the after story of Hansel and Gretal, now Hans and Greta, Greta begins preparations to bake a special gingerbread that will hopefully sell well. However, many unexpected things begin to happen.

This book is like a rollercoaster. At points, I was enthralled and at others, not so much. But I definitely wound up enjoying this! The creativity and strangeness of this tale won me over.

Out October 3, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!

#book #bookish #books #bookworm #book review #currently reading #read #bookblogger #reading #fantasy #hansel and gretel #fairytale retellings #retelling #After the Woods #Kell Woods

19 notes · View notes

queerenteen · 2 years

Text

under a different sea

(aka what if the little mermaid fell in love with the sea witch)

The Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid was nothing more than a greedy, evil woman who wanted power for herself and misery to befall the mermaid.

Nah, misogynistic, and honestly, boring and predictable.

Seriously Disney, pick a new tune.

The Sea Witch was a neutral party who simply granted the mermaid's wishes. She even included a caveat so that the mermaid could return to the sea even after the prince spurned her—telling her to reconsider.

But the princess chose to turn to seafoam rather than bathe in the blood of her beloved.

Morbid and kinda heartbreaking but Hans Christian Anderson wrote this in the aftermath of a friend's marriage: wallowing in his own misery so what else could one expect?

Here's the thing: The Sea Witch was a woman of great power.

Even the King of the Seven Seas feared her.

Women in power often get vilified.

We call her Ursula, but that was the name of the prince's beau, the one who won his favour over Ariel.

The old tales simply refer to her as the Witch.

But there's a name that mortal minds have forgotten—one that suits someone who rose from the hydrothermal vents and can control entire ocean currents with a lazy wave of her tentacle.

Maya.

Magic.

Maya is a Sea Witch. She has no traditional parents, but rather coalesced from the heart of the seven seas and arose from the vicious stream of the underwater volcano in a haze of ink.

Her power is great and everything she does comes with a price.

It is the way of the sea—nothing is ever free.

While Maya is magic, sparks and lightning flowing through her veins like holy fire, there is only so much she can do against the natural order.

So she waits in her lonely corner of the kingdom.

Eventually, she gains companions: great long moray eels with wickedly sharp teeth and even sharper humour.

They make the days feel less empty.

She's perfectly happy being left alone other than the vague: "Make an evil shark eat my ex's entire brood!" or "I win the hand of one of the princesses!" or god forbid "Please teach me your beguiling Sea Witch ways!"

Acantha and Surena (her beloved eels) eat the first kind, chase away the second and Maya hits the third with a memory spell that leaves them drooling messes caught in a sea drift.

Maya is set in her routine. It's hard being a Sea Witch and maintaining the steady equilibrium of seven different seas! She kinda wishes that the ocean would pop another kid from the volcano brewing in the Western seas but the last three such events hadn't bred any results so she wasn't really expecting much.

Shame.

She would have made a good older sister.

So Maya's brewing a potion that would increase the zooplankton because the blue whales were being hunted down (she had another cauldron with paralytic poison brewing at the back, one that would take care of those nasty hunters) when a cheery voice calls out: "Hello, is anyone home?"

Maya rolls her eyes. Real original.

She really hopes it's one of the first kind bastards because she needs to feed her girls.

Speaking of:

"Boss," hisses Acantha, needle teeth on display. "There's a pretty girl out front waiting for you!"

"You need to get out more," agrees Surena, whacking Maya's shoulder with the end of her tail.

"If she wants to be an apprentice—" says Maya threateningly, letting ink bloom around her.

"Pshaw," says Acantha, curling around her waist, the junction where deep purple fades away to light blue. "I think you'll be surprised."

"Fine," says Maya with a pout. They gang up against her too much. "I'll check it out."

"I can't make princesses fall in love willy-nilly, y'know—" begins Maya, exiting her cave with a flourish. "No matter what you knuckleheads seem to think."

There's a shrill squeak and Maya follows the sound.

"Oh fuck," she says, eyes still on her guest. "How have I pissed off the Big Guy this time?"

Because floating in front of Maya is Princess Ariel, the youngest daughter of the king.

Well, at least Acantha was right when she said pretty.

Ariel is pretty.

If you're thinking pale ivory skin, light green tail, a coin-sized waist and a fucking sea shell bra then you are sorely mistaken.

Like seriously, who the hell wants to wear a crab's home on their boobs?

And contrary to popular belief, girls need to eat too.

The only common denominator is the red hair, but even that's not what most are familiar with.

We should start from the beginning.

Years ago, King Triton of the Seven Seas fell in love with Athena.

She was—cue scandalous gasp—a commoner.

Triton himself was royal blood, a humpback of ye olden days—stoic and dignified.

Athena though—she was a tetra.

And she gifted her blinding neon beauty to all seven of her daughters.

And Ariel, Athena's beloved Ari, was a Cardinal.

Her tail was a brilliant fiery red, with a streak of iridescent blue scales down one side.

While Athena and some of her daughters had rich brown skin, Ari's was golden, a blend of both her parents.

And her hair, a stunning shade of coral red, was streaked with a deep ocean blue just above her right temple.

Pretty honestly didn't do her justice.

Ari turns her glowing blue eyes, just like her father's, towards Maya who groans dramatically.

"Nothing!" insists Ariel sweetly, and Maya knows better than to believe that.

"Yeah right. What do you want?"

Ariel takes a deep breath.

"I want to go to the human world."

"I'm sorry," says Maya, dread flowing through her veins. This is going to be a disaster. "You want to go where?"

Okay, so Ari has entered this whole 'make a bargain with a Sea Witch' with a skewed perspective.

To be fair, no one really talks about her in the Palace, and whatever rumours Ari has heard painted her as a gluttonous monster who had wicked minions that liked to hunt down her enemies.

So Ari does the sensible thing and carries a harpoon strapped to her back.

Like Mama always said, be kind but ready to stab a bitch if necessary.

But Acantha and Surena are so sweet, and Ari has started to doubt everything she had ever heard.

And then the Sea Witch enters.

"Her name's Maya," Surena had mentioned ever so helpfully.

And Ari knows then and there that all the blather she had ever heard about Maya was born out of jealousy.

Because honestly, everyone and their mother knew how powerful the Sea Witch was.

Add a voluptuous figure with striking, gravity-defying white hair that curled around Maya's face, her inky purple tentacles and her eyes: an eerie burning green like greek fire on water; no wonder people felt inadequate.

"I can't make princesses fall in love willy-nilly, y'know," says Maya casually, and Ari wants to laugh because she definitely can.

If Ari's sisters were here, they would be having trouble picking up their jaws from the seabed.

Maya rubs her forehead.

This whole thing is exhausting.

"Okay, start from the beginning?"

Ariel—call me Ari, the only person who calls me Ariel is Dad when he's mad—Ari, hums.

"I collect mortal things," she says, rummaging around the knapsack at her waist and pulling out—a fork? "A seagull told me they use this to comb hair but that doesn't seem right."

Maya rolled her eyes. "Seagull brains are ninety per cent feather what did you expect? It's a fork, it's used to eat."

"Oh!" said Ari, examining the rusty metal with newfound gusto.

"Get to the point—"

"Right, so remember the storm the other day?"

Maya scoffs. Remember the storm?

It had taken a whole fucking lot of effort to calm down Squidward, the giant Kraken living in the trench next to the Capitol. The last thing she wants is for the humans to launch a manhunt for him.

He's kinda grumpy but no sea creature under her protection was going to be hunted.

"Yes," says Maya tersely.

"Yeah, I might have snuck out that day—"

"Of course you did."

Winter is fast approaching, which meant Queen Athena has made her annual voyage to the Southern Seas. And everyone knew that the King knew jack-shit about corralling his children.

"A ship got wrecked in the storm."

"They're made of wood, not really durable in thunderstorms in the middle of the sea. So, you looted it or something?"

Maya hopes she found some of those loose leaves that humans boiled and drank. Tea, that's what it was. You couldn't find that stuff underwater.

Boiled seaweed didn't really taste appealing.

"No!" says Ari, appalled by the very thought.

How her mother was Queen Athena, who met King Triton after successfully stealing the Deep Sea Pearl straight from the royal coffers, Maya would never know.

"Then?"

"I..." The rest of her sentence was an incoherent mumble.

"Speak up," says Acantha, and Ari startles like she forgot that Maya's eels were there.

"I might have saved the prince's life?" says Ari sheepishly and Maya resists the urge to facepalm.

She knew it was going to be some bullshit.

"And what, now you want legs to go see if he remembers you or something?"

"Well, I just wanted to explore? And the prince owing me a life debt seems like a good place to start."

"It's not some love at first sight bullshit, is it?" Please, please don't be love at first sight bullshit.

Maya would hate to explain to Queen Athena why her daughter doesn't remember a week of her life.

Triton can go suck a cuttlefish.

"I don't think so?" says Ari and that's not very promising.

Maya tips back her head and groans.

#fairytale retellings #fairytales but make them gay #the little mermaid #me getting my grubby sapphic hands onto fairytales #this isn't remotely similar to the disney version #fuck disney #there's gonna be more eventually so stay tuned for that #sapphic #f/f #queer #okay the fuck disney thing is more to do with their policy for all things queer and less this story specifically

150 notes · View notes

imaginedreamwrite · 2 years

Text

Ugly

Summary: What if the tale you knew about Cinderella and Prince Charming was wrong? What if the heroine was really the villain? And the prince…he was under the spell of the fairy godmother.

The stepsisters had been cast as one part of the villainous trio, the evil stepmother the final piece. However they were the victims, they were made to be pawns in the historic tale of cinderella.

She was the monster; you, an ‘ugly’ stepsister were meant to be Prince ‘Charmings’ bride. You, and the Prince, and the royal guard, were meant to be a trip.

But after the fair godmother got involved, you and James were cast aside and she had the dashing prince to herself.

Everything you knew was wrong; Cinderella was no hero.

172 notes · View notes

ekbelsher · 1 year

Photo

Redrew it for instagram, arse cropped out. It got banned anyway 😂

#beauty and the beast #monster boyfriend #fairytale retellings #retellings #fairytale art #fantasy art #book characters #monster romance #beauty and the beast au #monster lover #ekbelsher

1K notes · View notes

theboarsbride · 1 year

Text

SCREAMING AT THIS BEAUTIFUL, HAUNTING FAUX COVER BY @butterfingersbookbinding !!!!!!!!!!!!!🥀🦋

This has the perfect gothic vibes, it just feels so spooky and haunted GAHHH!!!!!! THANK YOU AGAIN!!!!!!!😭🥺❤❤❤❤❤❤

#WIP : the monster and the butterfly #gothic art #gothic romance #gothic #beauty and the beast #retelling #book cover #gothic horror #fairytale #fairytale retellings #dark fairytale

178 notes · View notes

ijustkindalikebooks · 11 months

Text

Currently reading.

#charming #jade linwood #arc #books #book cover #book covers #fiction #fantasy #fairytale retellings #bookblr

11 notes · View notes

adarkrainbow · 1 month

Note

thoughts on this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD96BSaZCW4

I cannot give a full review for now because the video is 34 minutes long so I need to free some time to watch it fully, but having watched the first quarter (before the sponsor part) I do think it is a very interesting video and a fascinating premise! Myself I was quite curious about the YA trend of "fairy stories".

I am not at all a YA reader. And I'm not going to share my thoughts about YA here - but I did mention in a previous reblog of mine, somewhere down the line, that recently I was shocked by the amount of "fairy stories" within the YA section. I was to the library, they had put up this new shelf for YA, replacing the old one, and it caught my eye how every of these stories was about fairy courts in deadly politics, and fairy princes romancing girls, and other teenage girls losing themselves in Faerie - all with the distinct "fae" aesthetic that rose up recently through works such as the Mortal Instruments/Shadowhunters, or the Dresden Files, etc etc... (I say recently because I do consider it quite distinct from a slightly older "fae" aesthetic that could be found in works such as Pratchett's, Gaiman's or that one "Faërie" horror book by the author of the Riftwar series - but I am digressing here).

And, as I said before, I was quite interested by this phenomenon, this sudden boom of fairies in the YA genre. Not interested enough to actually go read these books - I've got too many already to read - but interested enough to hear someone else talk about it. And this precise video about the fairytale retelling trend in the YA genre and how it reflects the 2010s is exactly the kind of stuff I am looking for and interested into.

If you want a more complete "review" I can give you one after watching the full video, though I won't be able to bring more information since I am here like a pupil before a teacher when it comes to the YA genre.

And while the video so far is very interesting, I have just one nitpick to make as a French person - not talking about Perrault when it comes to how oral fairytales became literary, ESPECALLY when the picture shown is that of Disney's Cinderella which is based on Perrault's version, not the Grimms... But anyway I'm going to have a lot of fun looking down this video :3

#ask #video #ya fairytales #fairytale retellings #ya novels

11 notes · View notes