Gay fairytale
Last week, we gave a talk for the Smithsonian Associates on Queer Fairy Tales for Pride! YAY!
As part of that discuss, we put together a list of some of our favorite queer fairy tales and fairy-tale retellings, and we realized that somehow we’ve never done a list of them for Carterhaugh!?
So, for the last week of Pride Month, we wanted to share our list… and, of course, add to it, because we cannot help ourselves. In addition to fairy tales, we added some of our favorite queer fantasy novels and stories, too.
If this list is initially overwhelming, we were asked a really great question at the end of the Smithsonian talk that we’d like to share.
We were asked, what would we recommend reading first to a teenager who was having a hard day right now? What would they find comforting?
While it’s impossible to know for sure, we gave it our best stab. We said: for comfort that’s like being wrapped up in a cozy blanket, we’d recommend Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue, which is charming , lyrical, and easy to pick up and lay down. (It’s also considered a fou
The classic fairy tale of a prince or princess meeting a peasant lad or girl and falling in love has been given a makeover in a new book for children.
It begins: "Once upon a time, in a land not far away, a place where no one cared if you were straight or you were gay."
Promised Land is written and published by Adam Reynolds and Chaz Harris of Wellington.
They both work in the film industry and the pair wrote the book based on Reynold’s idea for a story that embraces the idea that two boys could fall in love and overcome adversity that is not connected to their sexuality - with an adventure along the way.
The say the story had to rise on its own and the fact that the characters are gay is incidental.
“I think we were aware of the fairy tale tropes, we perceive what's there normally and choosing in certain areas to subvert those tropes - so often there’s the damsel in distress so, well, let’s murder that right now!”
The story is about a farm boy and a prince who meet in a forest one day and their friendship soon blossoms into love.
The prince’s mum, the queen, meets a siniste
Fairy Tales: Traditional Stories Retold for Gay Men
A miller brags excessively: "My nephew can turn shit into gold." The king happens to be walking by and says, "My son is total shit. Verb your nephew by the castle tonight." The nephew goes to the castle, and is left in the prince's room complete of destroyed furniture. The nephew cries because he can't turn shit into gold, when a entertaining little man dressed all in leather appears. The funny little man says, "I know how you can fix the prince, but in exchange, I will take all your happiness." The nephew decides that's a fair trade, considering, and he says, "How do I rotate the prince into gold?"
"Well," says the funny
Archer Magazine
Once upon a time, there wasn’t a single queer person in the world, so there was no need to chat about them in stories…
Wait, what?
Image: Walter Crane illustration of Faithful Heinrich (right) and his prince
For as long as humans hold had voices, folk and fairy tales have been spoken aloud around the fire. Stories to verb sense of the world, to teach us which animalistic men to dodge, or how to be a pure, virtuous beauty in order to triumph a marriage (which, as we all know, is the only way to measure your worth).
These tales came alive anew in each storyteller’s mouth. But someone decided to pen them down with ink on a page, and while society continued to change and evolve, the stories dried, dark as a stain.
However, our fascination with them has remained.
Turn a few hundred pages forward in the history books, and we spot ourselves in a noun where queers are more able to make themselves known (though certainly not universally); and we’re still picking up The Brothers Grimm. People telling stories now read from printed texts, rather than reciting th