Rec your fandom!

[crantz]

This post is for telling others why they should totally read/write/request your favourite fairy-tales!

Here's a simple format to follow:

<b>Story Name</b>:
<b>Story link (OPTIONAL)</b>:
<b>What makes this tale awesome</b>:



Example:

Story Name: The Girl Who Became a Boy (Albanian Fairy Tale)
Story Link: http://www.albanianliterature.net/folktales/tale_07.html
What makes this tale awesome: Not only does it have the girl getting the girl, this caper-like story features a sassy talking horse and tax-evading snakes. Also the importance of mother and son relationships. This is different from the also nominated Violet Fairy Book version in that no one gets murdered and again, the snakes. 


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Comments

if we were just looking for literary merit I would still rec Sappho's If Not, Winter tr. Anne Carson

[alexseanchai]

Story Name: Hymn to Aphrodite - Sappho
Story link: sacred-texts
What makes this tale awesome: The course of true love never did run smooth, but here Sappho prays for, and can be presumed to get, assistance from Aphrodite in smoothing the way. Come on, you know you want that femslash.

Story Name: The Fairest Thing - Sappho
Story link: sacred-texts
What makes this tale awesome: Screw everything men say is beautiful; go with what women say! (Very "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence" and "Poetry Is Not a Luxury".) Come on, you know you want that femslash.

Story Name: The Wonderful Weaver - James Baldwin
Story link: authorama
What makes this tale awesome: It's the Athena and Arachne story, only told—and I should note this is possibly a version of much more recent vintage than the version familiar from Ovid's Metamorphoses—in a manner that makes Arachne a much more sympathetic character.

[gehayi]

Story Name: The Samurai Maiden
Story link: http://japanlover.me/cool/kakkoii-information/the-legend-of-tokoyo-the-samurais-daughter/
What makes this tale awesome: Tokoyo, the titular samurai maiden, is all kinds of badass. She goes on a quest to find her wrongfully exiled father, saves a girl from being sacrificed to a cruel dragon, kills said dragon, and breaks a curse on the Emperor. And she does it all with courage, grace and style.

Story Name: King Lindorm
Story link: http://sacred-texts.com/neu/lfb/pi/pifb38.htm
What makes this tale awesome: Despite the title, most of the focus is on King Lindorm's queen, who breaks the curse on her husband (he was in the form of a giant snake for twenty years), endures three years of captivity with her two sons and exile into the wilderness with them with equal equanimity, and rides into a host of demons three nights running to retrieve a contract from Hell (the man who signed it having repented).



Story Name: The Death of Koschei the Deathless
Story link: http://sacred-texts.com/neu/lfb/re/refb06.htm
What makes this tale awesome: I'm fascinated by the characters. Prince Ivan lets his sisters choose who they'll marry (three shapeshifting rulers of birds, as it turns out), he himself falls for a warrior princess who has an evil immortal sorcerer as an enemy, and he ends up needing the help of the witch Baba Yaga to defeat said sorcerer. Ivan is compassionate to a fault, which creates many of his problems, but also provides the solutions to them. Oh, and he literally dies for his warrior princess...though his brothers-in-law know how to resurrect him, so he gets better.

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Story Name: The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl
Story link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/835790-the-cowherd-and-the-weaver-girl/
What makes this tale awesome: Like selkie-like transformations? Have a thing for (literally) star-crossed lovers? Want a romance so strong it lasts across a reincarnation? This story has all that and more!

Story Name: Journey to the West
Story link: Aaron Shep wrote a charming retelling of the first seven chapters here. You can find the rest here, or, since that's one massive PDF, here's the tl;dr version.
What makes this tale awesome: At its heart, Journey to the West is the story of a team of misfits who are on a mission to find Enlightenment--literally, in their case. It's sweet and hilarious at turns, and is practically made for crossovers and AUs--as many people have done, from Saiyuki to The Forbidden Kingdom to Dragon Ball.