#natalie haynes wrote some half-decent stories in a thousand ships but none of them were better than the trojan women.

[wizardysseus]

i am theoretically very interested in retelling beauty and the beast 1,000 different times if i have that many ideas, but interested in retelling greek mythology 0 times

i know i landed at this point after reading a lot of uninspiring greek mythology retellings but CRUCIALLY i have ALSO read a lot of uninspiring beauty and the beasts — more, even — and honestly i just think the characters i know from homer and the tragedians (which is where the greatest part of my interest lies) are already so well-drawn that i don't know what i have to say about them through the lens and means of another story. yes, there is often something broken in the story, but i wouldn't know how to fix it without making it worse. and neither does anyone in publishing

whereas fairy tales tend to be more vague and held at a distance. in my view fairy tales are more about themes than characters (and plots, but the plots don't have to make sense). which makes them hard to flesh out into novels in a different way, but also leave way more room to demonstrate understanding without needing to be faithful