#tales

There's a long history of anthropomorphic animals in Japanese literature. The so-called 'funny animal scrolls' were the first narratives in Japanese history, and the heroes of many folk tales have animals as their companions. ↗

— Stan Sakai

#companions #first #folk #funny #heroes

If I were to lock you up in a dungeon, I guarantee you would not be bored. ↗

— Priya Ardis

#chick-lit #coming-of-age #e-books #ebooks #fairy-tales

The last declaration he'd made to me hung between us. The L word. The one that had nothing to do with like. ↗

— Priya Ardis

#chick-lit #coming-of-age #e-books #ebooks #fairy-tales

The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end. ↗

— Priya Ardis

#chick-lit #coming-of-age #e-books #ebooks #fairy-tales

Marilynn...passed out black cases to everyone. I opened mine to find an iPad inside. Several candidates whistled. Despite my agitated state, it impressed me too. Maybe wizard school wasn’t going to be as lame as I had thought. “All of your schedules and assignments will be done on these,” Marilynn explained. “The whole school is on these. We’ve had them for awhile now. ↗

— Priya Ardis

#coming-of-age #digital-textbook #e-books #ebooks #fairy-tales

Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller. ↗

— Alice Hoffman

#art

The Walker towered over him like a half-built skyscraper with a bad attitude. Its bulbous silver head was home to so many weapons that Nick couldn't even count them. He couldn't even name half of them. ↗

— Peter James West

#science-fiction #tales-if-cinnamon-city #attitude

When assaulted by sexual knowledge for the first time, a girl plunges into a period of blackness, which is required in order to let her emotions catch up with her body. Sleeping Beauty sleeps. Cinderella waits, and while she waits she works her way through the darkness of depression. Snow White both works and sleeps before she is ready to open her eyes and find a Prince leaning over her. ↗

— Joan Gould

#fairy-tales #girls #puberty #sexuality #sleep

Maybe the witch thought she was protecting Rapunzel, not punishing her. Maybe she thought that if Rapunzel was locked away, no one could ever hurt her. Maybe the witch kept Rapunzel because she loved her, because she was scared that if other people could get to Rapunzel, they would hurt her. And maybe Rapunzel didn't understand the witch; maybe she was angry at her - but maybe she loved her too. ↗

— Alyssa B. Sheinmel

#rapunzel #witch #beauty

In England in the 19th century, advances in printing methods, combined with the rise of a prosperous middle class, engendered a booming new industry of books published just for children. Casting about for cheap story material, English publishers laid hands on the subtle, sensual adult fairy tales of the Continental tradition and revised them into simpler stories instilled with Victorian values. Although these simplified versions retained much of the violence of the older stories, elements of sexuality and moral complexity were carefully scrubbed away — along with the fiesty heroines who appeared everywhere in the older tales, tamed now into models of Victorian propiety and passivity. In the 20th century, the Walt Disney Studios watered down the tales further still in popular animated films like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, continuing the trend of turning active heroines into powerless damsels in distress. Walt Disney considered even the Victorian versions of the tales too dark for 20th century audiences. "It's just that people now don't want fairy stories the way they were written," Disney commented. "They were too rough." ↗

— Terri Windling

#fairy-tales-for-adults #feminism #magical-stories #stories #beauty