#this is an AU where monsters from fairy tales and folklore come to life

[trashpocket]

I run away from everything that's good for me When every voice that you hear is the same one All you can think to do is run Make no mistake I'm everything I say I hate Hypocritical, lost individual, no longer worth your faith - my grave is mine to dig (wage war) art for my monster hunter steddie fic “My Grave is Mine to Dig”, where new mysterious neighbor Steve Harrington moves next door to Eddie Munson, hailing from that strange town, Hawkins, acting like he has something to hide. 

Maybe he does.

[dayseternal-blog]

Hiiii <3 do you happen to know any fairytale naruhina fanfics? I've been craving them lately. Thank you in advance :)

Fairy Tale NaruHina fics :DDD sure!... okay, so genre is a complicated thing, and I don't want to confuse Fairy Tale and Fantasy....although the two are often related....um. idk. I'll just use Disney Princesses as my measurement for fairy tales.

ROYALTY/REGENCY AU

“What the Heart Wants” by @vegebulsoup​ - Rated E, Royalty AU, Two-shot. King Hiashi Hyuuga of the Land of Fire is proud to announce the engagement of his eldest daughter, Princess Hinata to the honorable Prince Toneri Otsutsuki of the Moon Kingdom. (It’s a shame her heart belongs to someone else).

“Blue Moon” by suryass - Rated M, Royalty AU, Multi-chapter, Ongoing. He was crazy. He could admit that, because the only thought running through his mind was asking her not to go back once everything settles. He wanted her to stay here, with him. He really was out of his mind.

“Arranged Marriage AU” by @magmawrites - Rated M, Royalty AU, One-shot. They would both do their duties. And surprisingly this would be a change they would full heartedly accept.

“Pillowtalk” by @linisen - Rated T, Royalty AU, One-shot. Soulmate au where if you’re both in bed thinking about each other you can hear each other’s voice.

“forced marriage au” by @jadeandonyx​ - Rated G, Royalty AU, One-shot. Ever since she was a child, Hinata knew this day would come.

“Monster of the Tales” by @utsus - Rated T, Royalty/Monsters AU, Multi-chapter, Complete. Her heart races in her chest and her feet race to match its rhythm. She lets her heart lead her.

"One Small Action" by @myaekingheart - Rated T, Fairy Tale AU, One-shot. Princess Hinata is a caged bird. Naruto Uzumaki is a struggling rogue. There is only one thing on either of their minds: the Byakugan tiara. The crown that traps a princess, and could mean wealth for a thief.

"Thank You Fic #1" by @flowerslut - Rated T, Royalty AU, Short one-shot. Hinata discovers the lost heir, Naruto.

"January - Toward the Future/Vision" from "Still Falling for You" by @chloelapomme - Rated M, Royalty AU, One-shot. Sick of a unknown disease which paralyze his body little by little, the second prince of Uzushio, Naruto Uzumaki, has lost interest in life until the day a pretty street-dancer makes her entrance in his bedroom and gives him hope to have the future he wants to have.

"Snow White" by @nightowl27-writer - Rated E, Folklore AU, One-shot. He was supposed to kill her, not fall in love with her. But he was only human, and she surely was something much more divine.

and my own fic “Catskin” - Rated M, Fairy Tale AU, Multi-chapter, Incomplete. She’s a nameless girl. Strange in dress, appearance, and accent in a foreign kingdom. She stowed away on a merchant ship, running from a certain future much worse than just losing her name.

and my "Little Samurai" is also technically classified as a fairy tale au - Rated E, Folklore AU, One-shot. He's young, brave, motivated. He's lived through countless dangers and accidents. But he's brushed off as a sheltered maiden's plaything. He's much too small for his dreams.

MERMAID AU

“Saving Each Other” by basmah-chan - Rated T, Pirates AU, One-shot. An unmotivated fisherman dreams of the open ocean.

“Naruhina Mermaid” part 1, part 2, and part 3 by FelgrandKnight34 - Rated T, Royalty AU, Multi-chapter, Incomplete. Prince Naruto, next in line to rule over the Caribbean Sea, unwittingly finds himself in deep trouble.

“The Little Mermaid” by Lexar - Rated G, Royalty AU, Multi-chapter, Complete. Mermaid Princess Hinata longs for the human world. She saves Prince Naruto from a shipwreck and falls for him. In order to become human, she trades her voice to the sea witch for legs, but there is a catch. She has to get the Prince to kiss her in 3 days.

"Day 21: Disney/Dreamworks AU" from "They Define Us" by gl22 - Rated T, Little Mermaid AU, One-shot. Hinata's always dreamed of going out to the surface.

SIREN AU

“The Silent Siren” from “Oranges and Lavender” by @journalist298 - Rated M, Fantasy AU, One-shot. In the middle of a dangerous ocean, there is an island of sirens. One is different from the rest. Rather than join her sisters in killing with their song, she resigns herself to a life of silence.

I hope these satisfy what you were thinking of!! Happy reading!

[prairiedust]

The Further Folklore of Supernatural

Here’s a little more folklore meta in light of how season 15 has been playing out if anyone is game. I genuinely thought that Moriah would be the end of the folklore stuff and tossed out “Folk the Author” as an “epilogue,” so this is probably less of an addendum than it is a waymarker as I try to continue to parse these themes into the last seven episodes.

Welp. *waves hands at everything* THIS is not how anyone expected 2020 to go. Things got a little bit big and I stopped thinking about Spn in light of needing that energy elsewhere. But I also don’t want this crapfest to ruin how I fan my favorite show, so here I go again. I will attempt a TL;DR, too!

If you’ve read my old “folklore” analysis here about how I think fairy tales and all their baggage fit into Supernatural season 14, you know that I believe Castiel has stepped into a Sleeping Beauty type story, and that coincidentally a few themes and symbolism from Snow White kept popping up around Dean. (I hold Sam to be a Protagonist in the modern “literary fiction” sense of the word, but emotionally, thematically, and narratively he’s always been a little inaccessible to me. I finally understood him when the death-of-the-author plot surfaced, and I’ll get to Sam eventually here. And Jack, there’s a little Jack in here, too.) 

If you would rather have the TL;DR than read several thousands of words about how folklore and myth *might* be abstractly connected to an American genre show, all I can say is that I tried. The textual support is all in the folklore posts. This is as succinct a summary as I could fabricate. At least I’m not gonna talk about Sam and bricolage and freeplay! This is an almost completely theory-free post! If you don’t want to read or don’t need a refresher and just want to know how this has been working in 15, you can scroll down to “END OF TL;DR”.

So, to catch up, I’m not talking about the folklore and mythology that this show has always relied on for plot and MOTWs. I wasn’t drilling down into urban legends like Hook Man or world folk monsters like shtrigas or pishtacos. By “folklore” I mean the study of storytelling tropes and tale types that have been with us for ages. One of the many subtexts of the end of the series. I’ve been tracking this because I think it’s fun to see how fairy tale imagery and mythology might layer preconscious suggestions into the text of the show. I personally think it was loud enough to be seen easily, but more than likely viewers felt unsettled, felt cheered, or felt like they knew what was coming? I’m curious to know. Anyway.

When we found out that Kelly Kline was going to name her baby “Jack” waaaaay back in season 12, things started chiming. Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack the Giant Killer. Jack Tales. Jack is a powerful Western character, sort of a cross between a noble hero and a trickster, featuring in stories that often blur lines and boundaries. He is both the poor man’s youngest son and the equal to King Arthur’s heir. Jack is both everyman and extraordinary. Jack is so cool, I wish I had more time to parse that but his qualities are not subtle in the text/subtext, anyway.

But back to my half-crack reading of seasons 14 and 15. 

Once upon a time in Supernatural, there were two fairy tales being told. Both fairy tales are found all over the world and in many forms, but they all can be grouped together because they all contain shared elements of the same basic plot or shared themes, and these two in particular are sister stories. So when I mention “Sleeping Beauty,” I’m talking about lots of different versions of the folk tale, and the same for “Snow White,” which can be found in one form or another in storytelling traditions all over the place. It is both helpful and irritating that these are both Disney movies, too.

Jack makes an allusion to Sleeping Beauty in 14x03 The Scar while talking to Castiel-- it’s the kind of subtextual flash that in and of itself means little and proves nothing, but then beginning with The Scar we got three stories in a row that dealt with “sleepers” of some sort-- Lora in 14x03 doomed to die because of a witch’s spell, Stuart in 14x04 Mint Condition in a coma because of a ghost attack, and Sasha’s father in 14x05 Nightmare Logic under the spell of a clever djinn. It’s powerful subtext, like a soft light that bathes these episodes in the color of fairy tale and makes Jack’s Dramatic Swoon at the end of Optimism all the more Dramatic-- subtext amplifying the plot. Jack goes to Heaven, but is eventually cornered by the Shadow, who wants him in the Empty where he will sleep forever-- the Shadow being an entity who has claimed the husks of dead angels since their inception and thus implies a “curse” laid on Jack from the moment he came into being-- but Castiel, who is ever a thief in oh so many ways, makes a bargain with the Shadow and essentially takes over the consequences of Jack’s Sleeping Beauty story (hence my rarely used but hilarious tag “Castiel Thief of Endings.”)

Now that we know from 14x20 Moriah that the Shadow and Billie the Reaper are, if not allies, at least working together when Jack is awakened in the Empty, does that mean that Castiel’s deal is still on the table, or has that fate been thwarted? *pounds table* Was Jack’s death and Chuck’s rise as a “greater threat” in 14x20 enough to shift Castiel’s ending? It’s the kind of subtextual question that lends tension to the narrative and it’s what I am here for. 

Well, speaking of thwarted expectations, Dean’s arc was being shadowed by a Snow White tale type. We all know Snow White but why don’t I sum it up anyway, since Disney messed up the folktale ending lol. Snow White is cast out of her home by her jealous stepmother (and echoes of the stepmother’s magic mirror show up in 15x02 Gods and Monsters) who sends her huntsman to kill her; the dude can’t do it and turns the girl loose in the forest instead. Snow White joins a band of outsiders who live in the forest-- in the Disney movie and the Grimms’ tale they are dwarfs, in some versions she happens upon a band of robbers-- and they love her very much and we presume she’s safe for the rest of her life; Michael mysteriously turns Dean loose to join Sam’s gathering of hunters, however we know, like Stepmom, Michael is still out there. The stepmother finds out that Snow White is actually alive and contrives to kill her herself. Eventually succeeding, Snow White appears to die and is usually laid to rest in a crystal casket/glass coffin. Her stepmother’s machinations have _stolen her agency_ (further paralleling Dean’s possession by AU!Michael.) A Handsome Prince stumbles upon Snow White, is besmitten with her, and he asks her protectors if he can have her, as one does. Leaving the Disney adaptation aside, Snow White awakens when whatever item that has caused her death-like state is dislodged (piece of apple in her throat) or removed (magic corset) or withdrawn (poisoned hairpin) by her protectors. Snow White is a story about the community of the dwarves of band of robbers or adopted family caring deeply for her, and when Dean starts making his own crystal casket, the ma’lak box, in which he will ride out eternity in tormented symbiosis with Apocalypse Michael, he has to rely on his family to help him see the plan through. However, here’s where Jack-- who is as much a chaos engine as his surrogate father Castiel if not more so-- steps in and ruins the ending. Jack smites Michael. Dean Winchester is saved. Again. To put the final nail in the coffin, so to speak, Jack later destroys the ma’lek box entirely. 

That was quite the surprise ending… for one of the stories.

Was the end of season 14 the end of the Sleeping Beauty theme, also?

END OF TL;DR

I quit writing about “folklore” for a while, but that doesn’t mean it stopped being a theme. It just stopped being fun to write about as the story got more and more dark, and when it transmuted into two parallel themes of “folklore” or storytelling by the people versus Death of the Author--or storytelling by a lauded authority-- and there was so much angst about the boundaries of Chuck’s powers, I just wanted to sit back and enjoy that. I did distill my thoughts about Sam’s new arc in the DotA plot, which I thought would subsume the folktale themes but hey, we still have folktales around, too. I mean, we have Sam and we have Dean, and we have two “literary” subtexts, or maybe rather two subjects about the nature of story, something that I thought was a little bit of a surprise.

Storytelling was a Feature of 15x07 Last Call, both in the sense that Lee and Dean swap new stories and tell old tales of their adventures together as they catch up, but also in the sense that we got additional “text”-- hints of a backstory where John and Dean hunted with Lee in that swampy long-ago “Stanford era,” and again we get storytelling when _Lee recounts how he ended up keeping a marid in his basement_. There is also an allusion to the Thousand and One Arabian Nights in that episode that I yelled about in a meta that I never put on the interwebs, but the “marid” is in a specific tale in many editions of that collection, and thus calls in not only a different folktale tradition but the concept of a framed/nested narrative, which I believe will be important to understanding the last episodes of the series, but that’s an aside. In 15x08 Our Father Who Aren’t In Heaven, Castiel _tells Michael the story_ of how everyone ended up where they are now to convince him to help. And Michael and Adam’s allyship, if not friendship, was probably the best subversion of any “storytelling” expectation we’ve ever had on this show. Belphagor set us up for “room full of crazy” or something, but, no. We got symbiosis. 

That almost sums up how I’ve been viewing the last “era” of spn. This wasn’t in the master post, but I shouted a lot about underworlds before 15x09 Purgatory 2: Return to Purgatory, and then stopped shouting because I had to ferment for a while. Also, as has been mentioned, the world turned to crap. But talking to other meta writers during the ramp up to the resumption of the season helped me realize just why this reading of myth to folktales to literature feels so right.

Underworlds and Otherworlds…. Everybody has crossed into an “underworld” or three in Supernatural, it’s really nbd. It was actually surface-level plot in season 13. By the time 15x09 rolled around, our heroes are just, like, strolling in and out of “sealed off” Hell after doing a level one spell and chilling with Billie in the Empty and even that Purgatory trip didn’t have the same feeling of danger that, say, crossing into the AU did. But also, we’re at the point where subtext is leading us to a _satisfactory_ ending. Where before we had serial text, like a cumulative tale type-- “The House that Jack Built”-- which just kept adding more and more plot, we’re hurtling o’er the apex of Freytag’s pyramid now and things are getting loud.

But they’re also getting very shifty.

I wrote a little bit about Sam Winchester successfully reviving Eileen in 15x06 Golden Time and the “Orpheus and Eurydice” symbolism of him keeping his back to her. (I’m not linking it because it’s so, so rough.) But because Sam is not an underworld hero, not completely-- I see him as a modern Protagonist coming to terms in a psychoanalytical model with things like mortality, fallibility, and mastery-- maybe bildungsroman, even -- he was able to subvert the tragic ending of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice because it is not “his” story. But if I were pressed to find a mythic or folk tale type to measure Sam against, I could. I would probably sideye “the sorcerer’s apprentice” trope (ATU 325-The Magician and his Pupil :D ) which began as a poem that entered European folklore on different fronts. (and weirdly, that story was also Disnified in Fantasia. That’s probably more my own limitation as a gen x american lol than anything coming from the writer’s room.)

Dean got his moment in Purgatory where he was able to finally come to grips with his anger and heal the rift between himself and Castiel because Purgatory is a different kind of underworld. Dean is a successful threshold-crosser, having crossed that boundary out of Purgatory before, but in 15x09, his prayer to Castiel is all a subtextual evocation of doing the emotional and mental work of therapy, which Sam, as a modern protagonist, is usually caught up in. The mythic hero also deals with mortality, failibilty, and mastery, but in different terms. I hope I’m doing an okay job peeling apart these nuances that I’m seeing.

Since Castiel accompanied Dean to Purgatory, and in the past made his own wildly successful incursion into and out of Hell with Dean’s soul, and was the one in The Trap who actually retrieved the Leviathan blossom, Castiel counts as an underworld hero, too, but you can pull the lever and send the tumblers spinning again and make him a fairy tale character in that he has made this Bargain with the Empty which is both in the “modern” tradition of subverting a fairy tale, and the tale type “deal with the devil.” Or he could be seen as a modern protagonist in that he’s lowkey grappling with questions of selfhood and identification. “I am an angel of the lord.” “I am no one.” “It’s Steve, now.” “You are nothing.” “I am an angel.”

We even got an episode that playfully explored the concept of “hero” by subverting our expectations (Sam and Dean were rescued by, of all people, an upgraded Garth.) It was called The Hero’s Journey, after the Joseph Campbell book about mythic heroes.... !!! Like, what??? !!!! I didn’t even have anything to say about that episode, it just rocked. The “meta” was just all out there in plot, like the olives and boiled eggs in a 1950’s gelatin recipe. 

Some of this slipperiness in the subtext points right at the study of folklore and the (admittedly Eurocentric at first) efforts to transform a “soft science” into something approaching scientific rigor. The Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale index is today a codifying or cataloguing tool, with which anthropologists and literature scholars can line up stories based on the motifs found within them-- it is useful for cataloguing tales, making comparative studies, and for trying to trace these stories back through human history to find the One First Story of that type, for instance the ur-story that led to Snow White. When did people first start telling that tale, where, how did it spread, and why are we still telling it today? The danger in using the ATU index is that by stripping a story down to it’s bones, we lose the story, if that makes sense. The beauty of using the ATU index is that you find many, many more interconnected stories. It’s sort of a paradox. Some scholars criticize the ATU, claiming that one could take a random selection of these motifs and shuffle them to create a story and, you sort of could? That’s the beauty of the system. 

So that brings us to Jack. I feel like Jack, as in Jack of all Trades, is anything that the narrative needs him to be. As far as I can find, “Jack” is not a “tale type.” He shows up alongside any number of them-- sometimes as a trickster, sometimes as a hero, almost always as a kind of slippery character. In the first folklore post, I invested many words in exploring Dabb’s obsession with threes-- AU Michael asks three beings what they desire, asks his human victim to guess his name three times, then we follow three sleeper stories, and so on. The original TFW was three people. But Jack makes four. 

What is Jack’s story going to be?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And speaking for a sec about the origins of myth and folklore-- what about ALL OF THE OTHER PEOPLE in the world? Are they lowkey churning the matrix of reality on their own and generating their own content, like Becky and her AO3 stories and mackettes? 

*¯\_(ツ)_/¯ intensifies*

It all just feels so good at this point, even the peril that I feel surrounding Castiel.

I *think* this will be the last of the longform metas before the end of the series. I mean, I can only hope so. I’ll drop some stuff about individual episodes that might be applicable as I rewatch, and I might clean up my post about Last Call and drop it on here, but I just wanted to kind of hold this up as a mile marker before the Final Seven air.

[forthegothicheroine]

Dear 2020 Yuletide Author...

Hey, I’m RobberBaroness on AO3, and thank you so much for offering one of my fandoms!  I say that every year but I especially mean it this time, since I picked more obscure stuff than usual.  Now, let’s get to it!

General likes: Fairy tales, gothic literature, film noir, revenge tragedies, bodice rippers, melodrama, dark comedy, heroine/villain/hero love triangles, heroine/villain dynamics, rescue romance, mythology, maledom (non and dubcon are welcome), bdsm, bondage, character studies, what-if AUs, genre swapping AUs, vampires, folklore, knight and lady dynamics, epistolary fic,  interactive fiction.

DNWs: Pushing away female characters, fetish universes, character bashing, fully mundane AUs for fantastical settings, unrequested identity headcanons, Christmas or other Christian holiday-themed fic, abrupt character death (character death fully earned and explored is fine), a focus on bodily fluids or byproducts in porn.

I’m open to both Crueltide and Yuleporn, but I’m also okay with getting neither of those.

Waxwork (1988)

Sarah, China, Dracula, Marquis de Sade

Such a fun, silly movie!  And absolutely perfect for anyone who likes to read or write Problematic Fanfiction.  You can write about all four of those characters, or just focus on one of the two heroine/villain ships (China/Dracula or Sarah/de Sade.)  The movie (and its sequel) have lots of references and homages to classic horror movies, so that would be fun to see here!  In any case, this is a great place to pile on all the gothic tropes and aesthetics your heart desires.

Some ideas:

Sarah and China are very much positioned as the Virgin and the Whore, respectively, but surely there must be some more to their characters than that!  What if they were the two survivors who had to rally troops of monster-hunters against the forces of darkness?  (Mark can be there too if you want, I have nothing against him.)  How would Sarah deal with being put in a position of leadership?  How would China deal with having to think about the well-being of people other than herself?

Tell me about the women whose situations the girls found themselves in, Dracula’s victim and the Marquis’ plaything.  Tell me how they ended up in those situations.  Alternately, what if they found themselves in America in the 1980s when Sarah and China took their places?

Explore the darkly sexy situations Sarah and/or China were in if the camera hadn’t cut away (China) or Mark hadn’t been there to rescue them (Sarah.)  Straightforward porny stuff is fine, or you could spin it into a full story of the aftermath.  (I know the Marquis plans to whip Sarah to death, but I’d rather that didn’t happen- he can spare her life or she can escape, whatever you want.)  This can be a seductive dom-sub scene, full on noncon, or anything in between.

Dracula and/or the Marquis de Sade don’t get killed and have to adapt to the modern era.  Will China and/or Sarah pledge themselves to hunting them down, or grudgingly and grumblingly help them adjust?

The sequel has characters hopping between times and alternate universes, so if you want to bring that into the events of the first movie, that could be fun.  Sarah and China find themselves running from one sexy horror movie scene to the next, having to deal with a whole range of hot villains interested in them!

Dragonwyck (1946)

Nicholas Van Ryn, Miranda Wells

I love Vincent Price and I love Gene Tierney, and I really love them together.  Movie Nicholas seems a lot less cold-hearted than his book counterpart, and I think he probably was in love with Miranda before grief over his son’s death and opium addiction drove him mad.  (Which is not to excuse murdering his first wife- he’s still a very bad man!)  Another thing I like about the movie adaptation is that there’s a lot less blame put on Miranda for daring to want to leave the farm, and an understanding of why she’d be dazzled by the Van Ryn’s lives.  For this canon, I’d really like to explore more of Nicholas and Miranda’s relationship, doomed though it may be.

Some ideas:

Seduction!  Either before or after their marriage, Nicholas tempts Miranda with the pleasures of sin.  This can involve sex, or just sensual pleasures (kisses, fine wine, scandalous poetry.)

Is there any way Nicholas and Miranda could have had a happy ending?  If he and his first wife had divorced (with all the trouble that would have caused at the time), if he hadn’t accused her of being barren, if he had gotten better after their marriage instead of worse?

A darker look at their relationship, with obsession and possessiveness and madness inspired by beauty.  (Would rather this didn’t involve physical abuse, but sexual or psychological is okay.)

What if Nicholas had tried to corrupt Miranda to be his partner in crime?  Would she have stood firm against his temptations, or find herself weakening towards sin?

Revenger’s Tragedy (2003)

Gloriana, Vindice, the Duke, Lussurioso

I know for sure one kind of fic I’d want- Gloriana lives fic!  I’m very sweet on Vindice’s devotion to her, and I’d like to know more about the woman herself!  (I once saw someone call her a Mary Sue, which baffles me- how can she be a Mary Sue if all we know about her is that she was pretty and nice?)  Mind you, this doesn’t necessarily mean a nice and happy story.  The bloodthirsty nature of Revenger’s Tragedy is one of the reasons I love it, after all!  If you don’t want to write that main prompt, you could write something where any of the nominated characters reflects on Gloriana, or where the revenge plays out in a different fashion.  You can come up with something gruesome enough for a Jacobean playwright, I believe in you!

You can write these stories without Lussurioso, but he’s fun if you do include him.

Some ideas:

Instead of poisoning Gloriana, the Duke drugs her for his own ends.  Or, if you don’t want to get that dark, he does poison her but she survives after a period of illness.  Either way, she joins Vindice in his crusade of revenge.

Role reversal!  When the Duke makes a pass at Gloriana, Vindice interferes and gets killed for his efforts.  Now Gloriana is the one setting out to destroy the entire ruling family.

The movie seems to take place in a vaguely post-apocalyptic setting, so dig into that if you like.  Worldbuild away, so long as you include the characters!

For any of the above scenarios, what part might Lussurioso play?  Would he take over as the main villain after his father is dealt with, or could disgust towards his family’s actions (which he does seem to canonically show) lead to him rethinking his life and switching sides?

[prairiedust]

Red or Green? The literary and folk themes of Oroborous

Red or green is the official state question of New Mexico as ratified by the legislature in 1996. Order anything at any restaurant, even a burger in some places, and you’ll likely be asked “Red or green?” Do you want red chile sauce on your entree, or do you prefer green chile? The “state question” can sometimes reveal geographical origins-- red sauce is supposedly favored in the northern half of the state, while green is more popular in the south (I lived in the south, and you could easily get either one anywhere so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .) The best green chiles are grown in the south, so maybe that has something to do with it-- like wine grapes, chiles from different parts of the state have different flavor profiles. Green chiles from the Hatch area are world famous.

But it’s important to remember that the sauces are made from the exact same fruit. The difference is all in the timing. Green chiles are harvested early, unripe, then roasted and chopped up and canned or put in the freezer, whereas red sauce is made from chiles that have been allowed to ripen fully and are then (typically) dried.

It’s all about timing. Let your chiles stay on the plant too long, and you miss your chance at the magical elixir that is green chile sauce.

Timing.

The sister stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are, to a great extent, about timing. They are about waiting, about vigils, and about being at the right place at the right time-- or the exact wrong time.

(If you have not already read this rundown of Snow White in season 14, I suggest at least reading a few of the translations of the original folktales here or here. And cw the Sleeping Beauty story called Sun Moon and Talia is dark. I’ll be discussing the difference between the original material and the Disneyfied stories somewhat. Usual disclaimer that this is lit crit and not spec, why you ask, because I am a hundred years old is why.)

I want to say first that Steve Yockey in Ouroboros did a truly wonderful job allegorizing the story of Snow White, which has been teased for a while now. In the Grimms’ Snow White, as in other tales of that type, Snow White has been 1. run into the wilderness by her stepmother, B. taken in by a group of dwarfs, Three: then poisoned by that stepmother and fourthly laid to rest in a glass coffin. While the story has been poked at over the course of several episodes, Yockey sums it all up again in this one.

Dean-- along with the rest of TFW 2.0-- has been traipsing around New Mexico looking for a peculiar monster. Trope one. From the screen shot it looks like they’ve possibly been through Clovis, Roswell, Albuquerque, and finally made it up to Raton. As far as wildernesses and in-between places go, New Mexico is the most liminal state in the union-- many people in the country think it’s part of Mexico and if you think that’s a joke when I was a senior looking at colleges I had two well respected schools send me their foreign student applications. Roswell. AAAAaaaaahhhh Roswell. Roswell is the city that straddles reality and science fiction. They fry ice cream in New Mexico, they eat both ripe and unripe chiles there, and they have old mountain forests and arid white sand deserts within fifty miles of one another.

Another nod to the Snow White story is the Ma’lek Box that Dean mentions again-- B-- it can be seen as an allusion to Snow White’s glass coffin (in other versions, it is merely ornate or sometimes bedecked in rare gems but it is definitely something that she alone can not get out of… being dead and all...)

Finally, when the Gorgon knocks him out and Michael escapes, Sam tends Dean’s wounds while he is unconscious, which fulfills the traditional Snow White requirement for someone other than the king/prince to affect a physical change in the heroine’s state-- cutting off an enchanted dress or jostling the coffin so that the bite of poisoned apple can be coughed out-- in order to bring her back to life. Walt Disney and his studio added the “first love’s kiss” into the Snow White matrix in 1938, not even a century ago, but it quickly took over the narrative-- Disney also brings the story into a more accessible reality for modern viewers, he introduces the prince into the actual storyline earlier than in the folk tale, and then has him awaken her with The Kiss. Which do we, as an audience, prefer? The rabbit-hole of darker, more psychological Snow White tale types, or Disney’s recent and overwhelmingly iconic romantic reimagining?

Red or green?

Yockey gave us green, the version that has not ripened into what most people know as Snow White through the Disney cinematic behemoth.

The other duality in this episode is that we have Sleeping Beauty being referenced simultaneously with Snow White’s allegory.

Sleeping Beauty is Cas’ story and elements from that tale type can be seen in how the Gorgon stalks and overcomes his prey. The Gorgon uses sex to snare a human for consumption-- he says he’s an opportunist but that women have begun to be more cautious now that they are “waking up” from a long period of oppression. Sleeping Beauty’s deep sleep comes as the result of a symbolic sexual awakening-- in the more recent stories that awakening comes from the machinations of an enemy, so it is more a violation than a sudden innocent awareness. Where am I going with this? I don’t even know, this seems like it belongs in a different essay. What I’m trying to say is that the Gorgon uses sex to put people into a state of paralysis, and the evil fairy (known in the Disney movie as Maleficent) used a sexual metaphor to lure Briar Rose to her doom before she was ready for that kind of encounter. We are asked to contemplate the symbolic aspect of the Gorgon’s predation because he also uses a symbolic act-- eating eyeballs-- to see into the future and thus subvert the natural order of time.

In Sleeping Beauty, the evil crone/Maleficent also subverts the timeline by jumping place in line. She was not invited to the party in honor of the infant princess, but after nearly all of the other wise women have given Briar Rose their blessings, she breaks in to curse the baby. There is always one fairy left who, while not powerful enough to nullify the curse, can modify it to a deep sleep instead of death. In Ouroboros, TFW2 exploits the fact that Cas and Jack exist outside of the workings of Fate to defeat the Gorgon, but not without great cost.

Which brings us to The Wrong Kiss. I didn’t even want to meta the Sleeping Beauty stuff because of the kiss, seriously. So. What happens to Briar Rose is tragic, but in the three most famous versions of the story she comes out of her enchantment because a prince falls in love with her. Jack, here, as a result of Cas’ deal with the Empty, is no longer in the Sleeping Beauty story, he is not a Prince but a Giant-Killer once more, and the antidote he administers to counteract the Gorgon’s venom will not work. Once he activates his giant-killing powers, he can heal Castiel. (In the reciprocal, Cas is an agent of the SB story and the antidote works on the dude the Gorgon was about to eat because Cas administers it. It’s a very meta way of treating the folklore theme by both subverting it and keeping certain characters strictly within the parameters.)

Jack finally lives up to his name as a Giant-Killer when he takes out Michael. In Appalachian and English Jack Tales, Jack is always clever, sometimes to the point of unscrupulousness, but in the story Jack and the Beanstalk he is a naive picaro who betters his circumstances through reliance on his simple nature as much as his wits. Often “Jack” does not change as a result of his adventures, as most fairytale heroes do, but like many other mythological tricksters he operates outside the bounds of normal morality. Jack Kline has managed to hold onto his innocence despite initiation into the Winchester clan. Now that Jack has, presumably, burned off some large portion of his soul, it will be interesting to see how his picaresque nature might actually change. Because the story of Jack the Giant-Killer? Not the same story as Jack and the Beanstalk. The Giant-Killer is the story of a deadly clever young man who defeats several giants as well as Lucifer using mainly his wits and is afterward given a place on King Arthur’s Round Table. The story in its entirety borrows from Cornish, Welsh, and Briton mythology, echoing other simple folktales as well as hearkening to high heroes of the Mabinogi. Jack has become larger than life. (AN I started this before Peace of Mind, I’ll get to that one by the end of the season maybe :P )

In a less meta sense of course, this episode is one huge mythological allusion-- Cas refers to Dean’s imprisonment of Michael as a “herculean” feat, the MOTW is a Gorgon (and traditionally gorgons were a trio of cursed sisters in Greek legends,) and Dean enthusiastically references the 1981 Clash of the Titans film twice. In a /more/ meta vein, Andrew Dabb quotes the more recent Titans movie in a tweet on this ep’s airdate. I find that exciting because the story of Perseus in CotT features a descent into the underworld, and again while I flirt with speculation here I would REALLY like to see these nerds freaking raid the Empty.

As for Snow White and Sleeping Beauty now? Red or green?

It feels as though the Snow White story has possibly been tied up and tucked away now, solving the riddle of the “red or green” sister stories. Michael, Dean’s evil rival, is dead. Pretty sure. Whether his grace is contaminated and will have an adverse effect on Jack remains to be seen. See drsilverfish’s lovely analysis of the oroborous symbolism in the last two episodes for more discussion about what it means for Jack to have consumed Michael’s grace. But. Unless there is a Ghost of AU!Michael coming up, he’s gone.

We are left, however, with Cas’ deal with the Empty-- he gets to operate under normal parameters as long as he does not exceed the minimum threshold of happiness (and I want it to be an accidental or unexpected moment, unlike a lot of meta writers, but then that isn’t spec it’s just what I hope for.) And what does that mean for destiel subtext? I don’t know. Honestly, this is a little too intense for me, I am not “canon positive” or “endgame positive” and this episode freaked me out. Analytically, though, it places the subtext at a really interesting place. It means the princess who gets rescued from an enchanted doom is still on the loose, still avoiding Fate, and the prince is still out there having Adventures in the Woods. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[forthegothicheroine]

Dear Yuletide Author

It’s that magical time of year where we write up weird fanfiction requests, and you chose one of mine!  Hooray!

In general, I’m okay with crueltide or yuleporn, but I’m also happy with upbeat or clean stories.  I like gothic horror, film noir, fairy tales, Jacobean revenge tragedies, mythology, maledom (non or dubcon are okay), bdsm, bondage, character studies, what-if AUs, genre swapping AUs, vampires, folklore, knight and lady dynamics, heroine/villain ships, heroine/villain/hero dynamics, hard-won happy endings and beyond!

(I’m robberbaroness on AO3 if you want to take a look at what I’ve written and been gifted in the past.)

I don’t like the fridging or otherwise pushing away of female characters, bdsm or a/b/o universes, or unnecessary character bashing.  Character death is okay as long as it’s earned in the story.

And if anyone’s doing the Interactive Fiction challenge, I would be thrilled to receive a game.

So, on to the specific fandoms!

Arthurian Mythology

Characters: Arthur Pendragon, Guinevere, Gawain, Ragnelle

You don’t have to include all four of them in a story, but feel free if you have an idea!  I generally ship Arthur/Guin and Gawain/Ragnelle, but feel free to play around with that.  The Gawain in my head is more along the lines of the Pearl Poet’s Flower of Chivalry, but feel free to throw in a little bit of Mallory’s Human Disaster if it’ll make for a good story.  I also lean towards an idealized vision of Arthur, but go ahead and play around with that if that’s where the story is going.  Some ideas in particular:

Speaking of ships, what if it was Gawain that Guinevere had an affair with?  The hot-tempered, weirdness magnet leader of the Orkney clan?  What kind of clusterfuck would that have unleashed?

What was Gawain and Ragnelle’s life like after the curse?  How did she adjust into the Orkney family?  Did they go on quests together?

For Arthur/Guinevere ships, I’m happy for there to be a world where she never had an affair, but I’d also happily read a story where she did and they’re reconciling.  His conscience isn’t entirely clean either, after all.

How do all of them survive and escape-or not- the fall of Camelot?  Mordred is always a good villain here, as totally evil or as tormented and conflicted as you want to write him.

Frankenstein- Hammer

Characters: Victor Frankenstein (Hammer Films), Elizabeth Lavenza (Hammer Films)

This version of Frankenstein is my ultimate villain crush, and I’ve always wondered about Elizabeth.  He more or less forces her to marry him, then ignores her in favor or abusing the maid.  Can he only enjoy sex if it’s coercive?  And what’s with his threats to introduce her to the monster, only to save her life at the end when it finally happens?

This is a good place to get into some dark and twisted ship dynamics, but if that’s not your jam, maybe you could write a scene where they actually connect and become something akin to friends?  Frankenstein needs more friends who don’t enable his monster-making.

Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty: A Gothic Romance

Characters: Aurora, Caradoc, Leo

This ballet was just made for me, just absolutely made for me.  A love triangle between a kindhearted maiden, a predatory vampire and an innocent youth?  That’s just my favorite dynamic ever!  And everything was so pretty!  Here are a few ideas it spawned:

Give me the darkest, wickedest captivity story about Aurora and Caradoc.  Rescue at the end by Leo is welcome but optional.

If Leo has rescued Aurora, where are they going to go from there?  How are they doing to heal together?

Caradoc just impotently pining is fun, too.

Flesh out a bit about the vampire world.  How are a pair of sweet kids like Aurora and Leo going to adjust to what they have become?  Will they be outcasts in vampire society or come to rule it?

How will all the characters integrate- or not- to waking up in the 20th century?