#folktale types

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Do you think that Rey's story (excluding episode 9 'cause that was a shitshow) could be interpreted as a Cinderella/Ash girl story?

I hope you realize asking me this is like throwing chum to a shark 😈. But the short answer is yes, to a point.

The long answer is more complicated, so to begin with, let's consult the Cinderella bible:

According to the Aarne Thompson Uther Index, there are five primary motifs to a Cinderella tale:

Persecuted heroine, usually by family

Help or helper, usually magic

Meeting the prince, usually with true identity disguised

Identification or penetration of disguise, usually by means of an object

Marriage to the prince

Rey is abandoned by her family, which is a form of persecution, and harassed by the inhabitants of Jakku like Unkar Plutt. Thus she clearly fulfills the first item.

As for meeting a helper, there are several for her, including Han Solo, Maz, Luke, and Leia. Any or all of these may be considered fairy godparents in the way that they offer her wisdom and material help. Further, except for Maz, they all die in the course of the story, which is consistent with many Cinderella tales in which the helper dies and their bones continue to offer wisdom and comfort to the heroine.

Next, meeting the prince. I mean

To the extent that Rey is "in disguise' here, it would be the extent of her force powers, her destiny as Ben Solo's dyad mate, and her role as the heir apparent to the Jedi (chosen by the Force to wield the legacy saber), all of which are obscured from Kylo Ren when he discovers her in the forest. Further, she is grimy and covered in desert sand, similar to how Cinderella is smeared with ashes that hide her true beauty.

So now an object penetrates the disguise. This is obviously the Skywalker lightsaber, which reveals Rey to be everything listed above, especially when she calls it to her on Starkiller Base, and again when she wields it on Ahch-to.

And lastly, marriage to the prince. As many others have pointed out over the years, Rey and Ben have almost too many symbolic marriages to count in the course of the sequel trilogy. They're extremely married, the Force said so.

BUT WAIT! Go back and look at that list again. Who ELSE fits all those criteria?

It's our boy! Consider:

He is indeed persecuted by family, most notably when Luke momentarily considers killing him.

Ben's helpers are both dark and light, as Snoke/Palpatine guide him in the dark while Luke guides him in the light (poorly). But note again what I said above about the bones of the mentor continuing to offer guidance and comfort after their death. Who should appear at Ben's lowest hour but his departed father, Han Solo? With a message of love, acceptance, and encouragement, Han's memory (because in fairy tales, bones contain memory) encourages Ben to at last cast off his beastly skin and become who he always was.

Next, meeting the prince/ss in disguise. He's wearing a literal mask when he meets Rey, so yeah.

An object penetrates the disguise? Rey slashed his face with the legacy saber, thus symbolically peeling away his mask. And I've argued before that the stabbing in TROS (which I still HATE, btw) is another cutting or burning away of the beastly skin.

And lastly, marriage to the prince/ss. As previously stated, that happened. Many times.

So yes, the Sequel Trilogy can definitely be considered a Cinderella story, with but one glaring issue: Cinderella's husband usually doesn't die at the end. But that's another topic that's been done to death, so let's all just read some more fanfic and forget about it. 👑 Thank you for the ask, this was fun!

[kiddokori]

his ass is NOT getting up for his 8am lecture

[bixels]

so how exactly does magic work in your au?

There are four main methods of magic:

Tonics – your basic potion-making/alchemy. The brewer must be able to disassemble and weave ingredients together into a greater sum of its parts. This type of magic must be ingested to affect a person's physical properties and traits. They're temporary.

Formulas – physical pieces of art with magic encoded in itself. These can take the form of woven charms, embroidered fabrics, or drawn artwork (often in art-nouveau, secessionist, or modern styles). A witch fluent in formulaic magic can read and translate these pieces into hexes. These are considered high forms of delicate art. Spellbooks will often contain pages of these instead of instructions or notes. Formulas affect an area indefinitely. Collectors will often frame or display them, especially if they offer good luck or protection.

3. Hexes – incantations, blessings, and curses. They must be spoken, usually in rhyming form. While blessings are temporary, curses must be broken or dispelled.

4. Spells – the softest and least complicated magic. Wave your hands and an object will float towards you. Spells come naturally to most witches and do not need to be uttered, as it only requires the will of the mind and heart to produce. Before long, casting spells becomes second nature and an extension of ones motor functions.

[fisheito]

wait. puss in boots rei? unfulfilled dream? as.. as in. kinda like. a last wish.? like. the last puss in boots movie.? perrito garu?????

[tearlessrain]

I think my absolute favorite underappreciated horse color is those really intense sooty chestnuts that almost look like a reverse bay. part of the reason it's my favorite is when I was a kid I came up with a horse oc that was that color and I had no idea a horse could actually look like that, I just saw a bay and was like ooh that would look so cool in reverse.

and then I found out real horses can look like that years later.

[valcaine]

The Flying Head

anyways there’s a popular tale of this guy where it ate coals so I had to doodle it

[bijoumikhawal]

A few weeks ago I had the idea of a maiden trapped in a dovecote tower. You could call her Rapunzel, but according to my folklore book you could also call her Louliyya

[georgekirrin]

Hey buddy!! For the ask game: 11) favorite myth? 24) what would you consider part of your personal aesthetic? 38) what is your love language? [And/or dealer's choice, if there's one you don't feel like answering and something else you'd rather answer!!] Have a lovely day <3

ohhhhhh hard questions lol

11) Favourite myth has to be Black Shuck. He's a giant spectral dog said to haunt the coastline where I grew up. There are only a few dates you're likely to encounter him, supposedly, and the story of how he got there changes depending on who you talk to, but it's agreed he's a death omen and whoever sees him will die imminently. He's supposedly the inspiration for Hound of the Baskervilles, but there are a lot of black dog myths in England and I'm pretty sure all of them claim ACD was inspired by them lmao

24) I don't think I manage to have a coherent aesthetic, mostly because the autism demands comfort over style. I definitely wear a lot of knitted looking jumpers, and my house is a jumble of blankets, fluffy socks, plants, notebooks and interesting rocks

38) Going off the original list, probably acts of service but I could psychoanalyse myself for that 😂 If I'm allowed to make some up, parallel play or going for walks. Basically if I deliberately spend time with someone and try to make their life easier in some little way that's me yelling that I care about them from the rooftops lmao

[classictetris]

im ngl i dont rlly like this years artfig.ht themes LOL

[sassinake]

oh! an analysis by the excellent Missy! I haven't read this one yet!!

The Death of Love and the Lonely Soul: Eros and Psyche in a Post-TROS World

This is the first of my follow-up posts to my series on Folktale Types in Star Wars, focusing on how the Sequel Trilogy retells (or fails to retell) the Eros and Psyche myth, and the potential psychological implications for our culture. This essay will frequently reference my original Reylo as Eros and Psyche post, though I will also occasionally refer to my other Search for the Lost Husband posts (2) (3) (4), so please consider reading those before diving in here.

To explain why I had a great deal of confidence in TROS being a classic happy ending to a Search for the Lost Husband tale (ATU 425), I have to share a little bit of what I learned about how folklorists view these tale types. A century ago, the popular theory about why myths and folktales were so similar all over the world was evolutionary: it assumed there was one origin tale, and that as humans traveled, they would carry the story with them and it would be retold and adapted by other cultures. This suggested there was one ancestral tale from which all the others developed, which accounted for the recurrence of the story’s basic plot and motifs.

Since then, however, advancements in anthropological research and the increasing appreciation for folklore in the study of human psychology has debunked the old evolutionary theory. It was discovered that cultures and societies existing at the same time in history, on opposite sides of the globe and which could have had no possible contact with one another, still told the same tale types with the same motifs. Details might be changed, but every culture had animal husband tales, or animal bride tales, and so on. This led to the now widely-accepted idea that universal human psychology accounts for the similarity in folktales. Basically, all humans tell each other the same stories because we all wrestle with the same fundamental truths, challenges, and transitions. This is why the swan maiden tales can be traced to male anxiety over sexual performance or the prospect of losing a wife in childbirth, or why animal husband tales can be traced to female power fantasies of taming a mate in a patriarchal society.

Based on all this, I assumed that even if Terrio and Abrams made a typically vapid modern action flick, they’d still hit all of the main beats of the Eros and Psyche myth because that’s what would come naturally to them. Obviously, Beauty’s love will return the Beast to his human form. Obviously, Psyche will complete her journey from child to adult and take her place as the true or metaphorical mother to the next generation. Obviously, they will end the story united for eternity to signify the end of the galaxy-wide conflict and the beginning of the true peace so long sought by the heroes of the Skywalker Saga.

While this was true to a limited extent in The Rise of Skywalker, several of the reveals and the final moments of the film not only departed dramatically from the structure of the Search for the Lost Husband myth, but the movie even fails to align with the commonly more sorrowful Quest for the Lost Bride. In a cruel and baffling twist, the story erases its hero and returns its heroine to childhood in a barren underworld. There is, frankly, no historical folktale I can find that matches this pattern. Even stories featuring preadolescent children are about disassociation from parental figures, not deeper dependence. (Note: Marie-Claire and Ty Black of What The Force and Wit and Folly have done some exploration of how TROS reflects the so-called “American Monomyth.” This is a valid interpretation but for the purposes of this analysis, I’m continuing to use stories more commonly recognized by the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification of folktales.)

Rey’s Regression and Psyche’s Tasks

As a quick refresher of where we stood in alignment with the myth by the end of The Last Jedi, Rey is the mortal woman Psyche, and her force powers are akin to Psyche’s beauty in the myth. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is god of desire Eros, Psyche’s husband and the son of god of war Ares and goddess of love Aphrodite. In Star Wars, it is the Dark Side and dark force users who play the part of Aphrodite herself, attempting to control Ben Solo and jealous of the powerful Rey. The symbolic marriage of the lovers has unmistakably occurred multiple times, but when Rey attempts to force Ben into the light and to accept his true identity, he recoils and they are separated. She has broken the taboo of seeing his true self, and so her animal bridegroom has fled to the safety of the Dark Side, or “his mother’s house.” Finally, all of Rey’s illusions, help, and protections have been stripped away, so she must now learn how to rely on herself to obtain what she desires. When Rey discovers her own worth, independent of anyone else, she will achieve womanhood. When Ben Solo accepts his full humanity, both dark and light, he will achieve manhood. Together, they will reach adulthood.

Keep reading

[nemossubmarine]

Helsinki book fair book haul, yay!

[charlemane]

"i could fix him" "i could make him worse" ok well i could catch his dying breath and his immortal soul in an old sack and carry it all the way up to heaven to beg St Peter to let my poor sinner of a husband come in. and when St Peter says no i'm asking to talk to his manager. and when Jesus Christ says no i'm asking to talk to HIS manager. and when God Shimself comes to the door and says no, wtf, we're not letting your husband in here, that dude sucked- i'm throwing the soulsack straight over God's head and direct into Heaven. it's the perfect heist because God doesn't have the jumps to block me

[fanged-fanfics]

Since Reqs still open, can I request Shadow Milk x Beast!Singer!Reader?

Reader was a Virtue of Harmony, then got corrupted like them, They were once a folktale singer/nature dancer into a evil popstar, being associated to generations but surprisingly got liked by every cookie because of her song? Beast of Fame or whatever? Yeah that's what I could think of-

☆ Razzle Dazzle, Glitz and Glam — Shadow Milk x Beast!Singer!Reader HCs ☆

Genre: Fluff || pronouns for reader || No warnings needed

──────.𖥔 ݁ ˖˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ──────

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Shadow Milk, once being freed from his containment, was glad to see many old faces. Revenge was the first thing on his mind, but he couldn't help feeling his train of thought stutter at seeing your face. A colder demeanor massively contrasting the kind smiles he once recognized

ᯓᡣ𐭩 You looked... so much different now. He remembered a time where he knew of your songs, hearing how you'd comforted many cookies with your melodies. He even used to confide in them himself, a soothing balm to the troubles in his mind

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Seeing you now, on such a similar standing to him, made an odd feeling bubble up in his chest. He felt a flicker of deep concern that was forcefully smothered with glee. Finally, someone who looked like they really got him!

ᯓᡣ𐭩 He delighted in offering an alliance with you, telling you that you didn't need to worry about anyone else. He knew you better than any other Cookie, your stories so similar they may as well be intertwined. He promised you freedom from what you were before, a way to make Cookies see you for who you now are

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Your drive for a public presence was something Shadow Milk giddily helped you obtain. You were both showy types, and the opportunity to add your wonderful songs to his bombastic tactics excited him

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Shadow Milk's minions found you greatly interesting as well. You fit in like a piece of a puzzle, so snugly joining their group that it felt.. right. Maybe more than anything had before. These Cookies accepted you so wholeheartedly, encouraging you and granting a home you haven't felt in what seemed like ages

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Shadow Milk, for all his perceived shallowness, checked in with you frequently. He included you in all his conversations, and would always circle back to your side no matter how ahead he'd get of himself. In a way, he was seeing himself in you. Every time he checked on you was a moment where he knew in your spot he'd wished someone had done the same

ᯓᡣ𐭩 "Hear that?" He once asked, standing with you before entering a waiting crowd. They'd all gathered under your combined influence, a sea of cheers awaiting you. "They'll love you, I know they will" he said, giving you a wink with a very wide grin "I know I do"

[alexidoesart]

Many folktales throughout different cultures feature a heroine being given the impossible task of sorting through grains/seeds-- whether that be picking them from the ashes, from between each other, or from their rotting counterparts.

In this task, she often does as much as she can before submitting to a higher power, whether that power recognizes her virtue or she directly asks for help varies based on the culture and tale.

Featured are eight such tales, most of which can be categorized into “Snake Bride” (ATU 425) type tales or “Cinderella” (Both often ATU 510 in the folklore index-- Cinderellas are specifically ATU 510A)

The circle puts them in no particular order, as “origins”  and lineages are muddied, and many of the current incarnations have been influenced by each other, though Ye Xian is the oldest known “complete” version of Cinderella.

Snake Brides:

Psyche, Eros and Psyche (Greco-Roman)

Sukkia, The Snake’s Bride (India)

Donan Sampakang Tale about Gansaļangi and Donan Sampakang (Indonesian)

Cinderellas:

Aschenputtel (German)

Tam, Tấm and Cám (Vietnam)

Unnamed Heroine The Wonderful Birch (Finish & Slavic)

Ye Xian (Chinese)

Neither (ATU 480B-- Stepmother and Stepdaughter)

Vasilisa, Vasilisa the Wise (or Beautiful) (Slavic)

[little-noko]

Another Folktale inspired fakemon! This time of the legend of the Saguenay blue pig, a spirit manifestation of the hatred men had fighting over a loot of money they had stolen. Saguenay being known for their copper mines as well, I decided to mix the two elements together~ #041 Oxpot| Steel/Ghost Type The piggy bank Pokemon

Oxpot is known for being greedy little ghost inhabiting a piggy bank, they tend to hold unto money and keep it inside of their vessel which gets digested overtime to coat their inside with a sturdy metal shell.

#042 Borox| Steel/Ghost Type The blue pig Pokemon

While Oxpot has a friendly personality, Borox are the very embodiment of greed, and they'll fight anyone who attempts to steel their treasure. If not trained well enough they'll attack and steal money from anything or anyone who has any in sight.

Art & Kehbek Region© @little-noko

[deadbaguette]

Day 2: High Fantasy ft. Sorcerer!Odysseus and Witch!Penelope with some AU ramblings

(Everything for this month will be very quick and not rendered most likely! So please take my doodles <3 )

High Fantasy AU:

I LOVE HIGH FANTASY! But I am too uncreative to actually give this the love and lore it deserves 😭 But I will do my best to give the details I have thought about:

The gods are still gods in this AU! But I would love them to look a lot more eldritch and don’t take human forms very often. As a result they get mixed up in a lot of the folklore of their respective regions of influence

Sometimes the gods will take on apprentices of sorts, and depending on what type of god they are, they will teach them the ways of their craft. Often times thought this is through magic or fighting/weaponry

Odysseus in this AU was picked up by Athena hence why he is a sorcerer. He did not inherently know magic, but was taught it by Athena. Sorcerers are quite rare since magic is a sort of gatekept art form, and it’s not common for non-witches to know magic

Diomedes is also in this AU because I can’t not have him.. He’s also under the apprenticeship of Athena but he’s a knight. He’s not currently serving under any royalty, and instead has just taken to travelling around with Odysseus wherever he goes. Athena is a master with weapons and Diomedes is as a result really REALLY fucking strong. If Odysseus’ spells don’t work, Diomedes will brute force it

Penelope is a witch! Her mother was a sea witch, so her medium of magic is often channeled through water. I don’t know if anyone knows Witch Hat Atelier but you can think of her magic as similar looking to Qifrey’s!

Folktales are SUPER important to this AU! Despite it being high fantasy, I do like the thought of a lot of creatures being in obscurity. If you’re not 90% human looking, the likely hood of you being part of the active civilisation is small. Things like merfolk, dragons, etc are all part of tales im the area believed to be extinct or not real. They ofc are, but live much deeper in the thick of a magical place otherwise more difficult to reach. The gods have created these creatures/are in contact with these creatures which often leads to their connections in folktales as previously mentioned

I would normally rapid fire some characters and their roles but that would in case only to actually make me think about lore to back it up so I cannot this time HAGSGHSG.. might come back with some concept art tho

Prompt list below the cut!