Being a pixie hollow fan and disliking romance books is not for the weak. I do not care about clarion and milori but I’m so starved for content that I might just have to read wings of starlight already
your "bad" photoshop edits are so much more beautiful than ai-generated graphics. your "bad" writing is wayyyyyyy better than ai-generated paragraphs/stories. fuck gen AI. grow as an artist organically by letting yourself be "bad" at what you do for however long period of time until you learn from them. authenticity matters most especially when it comes to art 💗
From Oral Tales to Orientalist Fantasy: One Thousand and One Nights Deserved Better
One Thousand and One Nights is such a rich and layered inheritance — stories passed down from oral tradition to the written form, like so many folk and spiritual tales across cultures. But at the same time, their journey through translation tells us a lot about colonial mechanisms in literature.
I'm an Indian Muslim living in Europe, and like a lot of us, I grew up listening to versions of One Thousand and One Nights. My dad used to tell me bits and pieces in Urdu, sometimes mixed with other Indian folk tales or Sufi parables. These stories are part of a huge shared tradition — Arabic, Farsi, Urdu — and they’re still very much alive in South Asian and Middle Eastern imaginations.
But growing up in Belgium, whenever I tried to actually read the original text (in French at first, since that’s the language I was educated in) I kept running into Antoine Galland. And let me tell you: that man didn’t translate the Nights. He basically wrote fanfiction (and honestly, calling it that is disrespectful to fanfiction).
He added stuff that wasn’t there — Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad? Not part of the original corpus. They were separate folktales that he included based on oral retellings. He also censored many parts, rewrote others, and modified everything to fit the European gaze. The result? A whitewashed, romanticized, orientalist version that Europe adored.
And because Galland was the first to translate the Nights into a European language, his version became the reference. Even the first major English translations were based on his retelling — not the Arabic manuscripts. And yeah, it bothers me. Because it shaped how “the West” sees this work — and by extension, how it sees us.
This isn’t just about a translation. It’s about power. About exoticisation. About how a literary tradition can be overwritten and distorted to serve a fantasy — a fantasy that flatters the colonial gaze.
It’s a textbook case of what Edward Said called orientalism: taking a cultural object from the Muslim world and reframing it to match Western fantasies — of sensuality, decadence, cruelty, mystery. And because it was dressed up as "authentic," it shaped generations of readers and their perceptions of “the Orient.”
Fun fact: Galland’s version was so off that Persian and Arab scholars never even treated it as a real version of the Nights. Instead, it was translated back into Arabic and Persian in the 19th century — not to reclaim it, but because it had become such a globally recognized product in the West. These translations circulated as a separate corpus, often under titles like Alf Layla wa-Layla wa Qisas Ukhra (A Thousand and One Nights and Other Stories). So yes, the stories had to be "re-traditionalized" in their own languages — while keeping a clear boundary between Galland’s fictionalized version and the authentic canon.
Also, sidenote: Europeans have long called it The Arabian Nights, but its roots are actually Persian. The original title is Hezār Afsān (A Thousand Stories), and the earliest manuscripts were in Middle Persian, before Arabic versions became dominant. Calling it “Arabian” erases the Persian layers completely. It came to South Asia through Farsi language actually.
Thankfully, more recent translators have tried to go back to the source. In French, we have René Khawam, who worked from original Arabic and refused to sugarcoat or censor anything. In English, you can check out Malcolm C. Lyons (Penguin Classics) or Husain Haddawy, who translated from the Muhsin Mahdi critical edition — both of which offer a much more respectful take.
These days, I’ve been reading bits and pieces from Khawam’s version, and also children’s Urdu versions — just to reconnect with what it felt like when my dad used to tell them. I hope to one day read the full thing in Urdu. I also have Haddawy's version on my radar.
Anyway. It just makes me mad. The white gaze is everywhere, especially in literature.
And the worst part is — most people have no idea.
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Further readings (for the nerds, like me)
If you want to dig deeper into how One Thousand and One Nights got reshaped — and how much it influenced Orientalist stereotypes — here are some great starting points:
Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion — deep dive into different translations and their cultural impact.
Edward Said, Orientalism — not just about the Nights, but essential for understanding the “white gaze” in literature.
Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights — brilliant on how these tales enchanted and distorted the Western imagination.
Rana Kabbani, Imperial Fictions: Europe’s Myths of Orient — sharp critique of how Europe mythologized “the Orient,” including Galland’s role.
Galland’s Legacy and the Politics of Translation — essay on the power dynamics behind translating the Nights into European languages.
A daily reminder that, when it comes to "One Hundred and One Nights", there is the specific cultural entity that is the European-One Hundre and One Night, and that it is a different one from the older, original set of tales known as "One Hundred and One Nights"
television peaked with Once Upon a Time, like I can watch Anna from Frozen try to convince Snow White's Prince Charming to fight evil Warlord Little Bo Beep and he's like 'You don't know what you're talking about Anna from Frozen, my dad died when I was six because he was an alcoholic' and be like that's not even the most insane moment of this episode
The Phantom of the Opera is a guy in a mask who pretends to be a supernatural creature to harass his opera house into giving him ransom money, causing disasters when they don’t pay him.
Clearly, they should have hired these guys to stop him:
Rumplestiltskin from the POV of Rumplestiltskin OR Snow White and Rose Red from the POV of the old dwarf they keep "helping".
A Magician's Name
Fifty-seven years I served the crown! But did my experience get me any respect? Recognition? Loyalty? Not on your life! Just when my skill had grown to the point where I could really be of use, Old King Douglas died, and his son, now the Great and Illustrious King Wendell, decided that he'd rather not pay for the expertise of a trained court magician, so he sent me packing, and he hired five barely-magical boys off the street who'd work for a pittance.
I could have cursed him well and good when I went out the door, but I'm too much of a professional for that. He'd have punishment enough when he learned just how much I'd been doing to keep the kingdom running without his noticing--and then he'd be begging me to come back.
After a few months without my magic multiplying the castle stores, the king's expenses were growing and his coffers were shrinking. I kept watch for the king's messengers every day, sure that he'd be begging for my return. But wouldn't you know it, just as Wendell was getting desperate, he heard some miller boasting about how his daughter could spin straw into gold, and our boneheaded king thought this was the solution to all his problems. Why pay for a man who can subtly multiply your stores when you can get mounds of gold from a peasant girl for the low, low price of one threat of execution?
Anyone who knows anything about magic could tell you that no peasant's daughter, however magical, could create gold. It's a complicated trick that requires years of practice. I'd learned to do it only a few months before Wendell fired me. But if Wendell knew anything about magic, none of us would have been in this situation. Before you could say, "Alakazam!", the girl had been taken from her home and thrown in the dungeons with mounds of straw that she had to turn to gold by morning if she didn't want to lose her head.
Now, I'd have been happy to let Wendell learn his lesson by letting the girl fail, but with the girl's life on the line, I had to do something. So just after sunset, I came to the castle, cut a path through the magical defenses those idiot boys had set up--my grandmother's blind cat could have done better--and spirited myself into the dungeon where the girl was being held.
I could tell at a glance that the girl had a spark of magic in her--she was a golden-haired beauty--and could also tell that she'd never done more than parlor tricks in her life. Having magic gives you beauty, using magic--well, it makes you look like me. Fifty-seven years as a court magician shows up on your face. It should have given me the respect my wisdom deserves, but people don't respect wisdom these days. The girl took one look at my face and screamed.
To be fair, that may have been partly because I'd shown up without warning. Once I explained how I'd come in and how I planned to help her out of her predicament, she turned friendly. I took a ring of hers as payment--an out-of-work magician needs to eat (I can't make food out of nothing)--and got to work. I was finished before the sun rose.
My good deed done, I left the dungeon, and hoped the girl would be home by the end of the day. But fifty-seven years at court should have taught me that monarchs never do the decent thing. By noon, I'd learned that King Wendell had declared the girl would only keep her head if she spun another room full of straw into gold.
Another night, the same story--straw comes, girl cries, I show up, take my payment, and do the work that should have been mine this whole time. I spent the whole night hopping mad over the king's idiocy.
The story ended the same way this time, too. Girl thanks me, I go home--and the king demands another room full of gold. This time, though, he sweetened the deal. He must have figured having that much magic in the bloodline wouldn't be a bad thing. If she did this deed tonight, he'd never make her spin straw again--he knew enough about magic to know that feats like this only come in threes--and, as a reward, she could marry the king's only son.
Well, I definitely had to show up for that. It would serve the king right if his son were forced to marry a common girl. And, well, you don't serve at court for fifty-seven years without getting a taste for well-wrought political revenge. A curse on the royal line would have been beneath me, but now I had the chance to demand payment. For my third and final performance, I didn't ask for a gold trinket off the girl--I demanded her firstborn child. The heir to the throne, the continuation of the royal line, would be in my power, and I could bring him back to make his claim on the throne whenever it suited me. You have to admit it was clever.
The girl agreed--what else was she supposed to do?--I spun the gold, the prince married her, and a year later--a newborn prince.
I showed up for my payment, the girl cried, the baby cried--and my revenge was looking a lot more complicated than it had at first. I'm a court magician, not a nursemaid. Besides, what I really wanted wasn't the child--it was recognition. Every magician wants to make a name for himself. Wendell had replaced me, erased me and my accomplishments from the court. I wanted him to know just who had truly been the wonder-worker. I wanted acknowledgement that I was a first-rate magician.
So I told the girl she'd be released from her bargain if someone could tell her my name. I figured Wendell would take a look at me, solve the mystery, and recognize my worth. I would have my satisfaction, and everything would be over.
It took them three days to remember my name! And even then, they only knew it because I practically spoon-fed it to an eavesdropping servant girl. I know that court magician names seem complicated to laymen, but by professional standards, Rumpelstiltskin is not a difficult name!
They did remember my story, though, and they weren't too pleased by my political plot, so I had to do some fancy maneuvering to magic myself out of there before I got a blade through my neck. Made it nice and fiery, too--a dramatic exit worthy of a master magician.
And that's how I cam here. Exile's not too bad. I've found contentment in a quiet retirement--especially now that everyone knows my name.
Actually making your selfinsert overpowered and friends with all your faves and a hybrid of the coolest species and in a relationship with your crush and the long lost sibling of the villain is called having fun and its cool as fuck
so I've seen this rumor going around for the last week or so
and I've been pretty disconnected from the fandom/franchise for a while now so, anyone who's been more active than me these days, aside from the novels that came out, has there been any evidence or signs of this? please confirm
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