#retelling

[sarafangirlart]

Something about retellings removing any negative traits from female characters (or at least traits perceived as negative) despite the fact that characters are supposed to have flaws.

Lady Macbeth isn’t power hungry, Maleficent isn’t evil, the Witch of the West isn’t wicked, Cassiopeia isn’t vain, Hera isn’t a jealous wife, Clytemnestra isn’t an abuser and Andromeda isn’t scared to die. Meanwhile male characters have their flaws made cartoonishly worse or given new flaws.

[kdpartworks]

How I met your mother - but it's Poseidon and Amphitrite - ep. 10

The next episode will be the last!

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (1997)?

yes

no

I didn't finish it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onFeb 6

[the-monkey-ruler]

Adventures from China: Monkey King (2006) 西游记 (神界漫画)

Author: CHEN Weidong Illustrator: PENG Chao Publisher: Xiao Pan Publishing House / Kuaikan Manhua Format: Paperback Genre: Action / Adventure / Comedy / Drama Date: 2006 Number of issues: 20 Pages: 176 ISBN: 9788994208459 ASIN: 8994208453 Language: Chinese / English / French Also known as: Monkey King Adaptation: Retelling

Summary:

Monkey King is a twenty-volume comics series based on the legendary Chinese novel The Journey to the West. It is a magisterial work that took seventy people over six years to complete. The Journey to the West is at once a comedy, a drama, a satire, a meditation on faith and discipline, and a fantastical dramatization of China's history. Its creation covers many centuries and several dynasties. Begun during the Song Dynasty (10th~13th century), Journey is set against the backdrop of the 7th century Tang Dynasty, and tells the story of a priest named San Zang, who introduces China to the Mahayana Buddhist scriptures of India, and his trio of the monkey king Sun Wu Kong, the gluttonous pig Zhu Bajie, and the quiet but noble sea monster Sha Wu Jing. The San Zang who appears in Journey to the West is a specialist in Tripitaka, and is based on a real priest, named Xuan Zang. Xuan Zang lived from 602 to 664, and have traveled the western lands and traded with other countries along the western border from 627 or 629 to 645. More than three hundred years later, a story based on Xuan Zang's adventures, first appeared. The Journey to the West originated from this story. The Song Dynasty was founded in 960, yet because the only known author of Journey to the West, Wu Cheng en, died in 1582, during the Ming Dynasty, the story is considered the result of collective creation spanning five hundred years. The story also traveled through several countries and includes at least four different timelines. The events of Journey to the West, which include epic battles and threatened palaces and imperiled kings, could resonate with readers during almost any age, but the story focuses on portraying a peaceful society where deviance is ultimately trumped by enlightenment, violence defeated by benevolence. It is this balance, between depicting familiar events of conquest and telling a story about the search for truth, that makes The Journey to the West so beloved today. The author, Mr. Wei Dong Chen, is a highly acclaimed and beloved Chinese artist and an influential leader in the New Chinese Cartoon trend. His company, Creator World in Tianjin, is the largest comics studio in China. He has published hundreds of cartoons, which have been recognized for their strong literary value throughout the world. In 2005, he undertook the monumental effort of translating four classic Chinese novels into serialized comic form. After six years of great and enthusiastic work, he completed his dream, which now consists of 12,800 pages of beautiful drawings and epic storytelling. Monkey King is one of the four novels. Monkey King is a new landmark of comic artistry in China, and is a bold and exhilarating treatment of one of the definitive works of Chinese literature.

Source: https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E8%A5%BF%E6%B8%B8%E8%AE%B0/55685262

Adventures from China: Monkey King (2006) 西游记 (神界漫画) — Journey to the West Media

Author : CHEN Weidong Illustrator : PENG Chao Publisher : Xiao Pan Publishing House / Kuaikan Manhua Format : Paperback Genre :

[uwmspeccoll]

✨🌹Fairytale Friday🌹✨

A Fairytale with Teeth

This week, we’re visiting a familiar fairy tale through a slightly stranger, more theatrical lens with our first edition copy of Beauty & the Beast, retold and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein. Published in 1989 by E. P. Dutton, this picture book embraces the older, darker bones of the story rather than the softened versions many of us grew up with.

Mordicai Gerstein (1935–2019), an American author, illustrator, and film director best known for his Caldecott Medal-winning The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, approaches the tale as both storyteller and stage designer. His Beast is no gentle hybrid, tusked, horned, feathered, and tailed; he looks like a creature pulled straight from a medieval bestiary. The pen-and-wash illustrations are deliberately stylized, with period-inspired clothing and expressive linework that heighten the book’s slightly uncanny tone.

Narratively, this retelling stays close to early French versions of the tale, particularly the 18th-century tradition in which a single stolen rose sets everything in motion. Beauty’s choice to take her father’s place, her long stay at the castle, her troubling dreams, and her delayed return all unfold with quiet inevitability. This is a fairy tale that trusts its structure and lets the tension build at its own pace.

One of the book’s most striking features is its use of color; each page rests against a different background hue, giving the story a dreamlike rhythm and reinforcing the sense that Beauty is moving through emotional and moral territory as much as physical space.

What’s especially satisfying about this retelling is how it lets the story keep its edge. The Beast is still intimidating, the setting still feels strange and enchanted, and Beauty’s choices carry real weight. It’s a reminder that the best fairy tales aren’t just pretty, they’re a little unsettling, a little romantic, and always about change.

-View more Fairytale Friday posts

--View more from our Historical Curriculum Collection

---Melissa (loving stories that bite), Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

[stevieschrodinger]

Due to AO3 being maintained, I'm posting the first little bit of, what could be, the silliest thing I've ever written. The working title is 'Beauty and the Steve'.

Eddie does his best to dodge the morning traffic.

That crazy lady’s chickens are loose again, and it’s creating a minor amount of havoc. The baker always goes out of his way to say good morning to Eddie, and, when him and uncle Wayne had first moved to the little village of Hawkins, Eddie was sure he was just being polite.

Now Eddie thinks he may be a bit of an old lech. It’s no secret Eddie is the only male Omega in the village, but at least he isn’t completely alone. There’s three female Omega too; identical triplets though, which is just fucking weird in Eddie’s book. He’s sure that’s got to be somebody’s kink, right?

“Eddie, where are you off to in such a hurry?” The baker calls out of the window, and Eddie can clearly see his irritated mate behind him. She looks like she’s gearing up to skewer the guy with a baguette.

“Oh, just the bookshop!” And Eddie waves, trying to indicate politely that he’s done with this, slipping away in a confusion of chickens.

Eddie turns the corner, only to find his way blocked by a hay wagon, “good morning!”

“Errr…” Eddie, not for the first time, internally curses small villages, “morning, are you, uhm, moving?”

“Just getting ready to unload, won’t be long!” The man calls down cheerfully. Eddie eyes the bales, contemplates going back the way he has come, but he spies the bakers wife hitting the baker with a loaf, surrounded by chickens who appear to be excited by the prospect of violently created breadcrumbs.

Eddie climbs over the wagon.

Eddie makes it to the door of the bookshop, pulling hay out of his curls, cursing villages, narrow cobbled streets, the people who inhabit them, and the countryside in general.

“Ah! Eddie!” Owens calls out. He’s the old dude who owns the bookshop, the only shred of civilization that exists for at least, Eddie suspects, five days ride in any direction.

“Good morning! I've come to return the book I borrowed.”

Owens takes the book, “finished already?” he returns it easily to it’s place on the shelves.

“Oh, I couldn't put it down!” Eddie replies keenly, and he means it. He literally did not put it down because there's absolutely nothing else to do now that he's stuck living in the middle of nowhere. “Have you got anything new?”

Owens laughs good naturedly, “not since yesterday Eddie.”

“That’s alright,” Eddie assures him, because Eddie already knows exactly which book he wants to read again, and he knows exactly where it is, he takes a few steps up the ladder to retrieve it, “I’ll borrow...this one.”

“That one? But you've read it twice!”

“Well it's my favorite!” Eddie locks his boots either side of the ladder, sliding down the ladder, hopping off the last step, “far off places, daring sword fights, magic spells, and an Alpha prince in disguise!”

“Well, if you like it all that much, it's yours!” Owen’s tells him kindly.

“But sir!” Eddie starts to protest. He knows people are soft on him sometimes because of his designation. And the whole being an orphan thing, which, thanks to village gossip, spread like wildfire when he and uncle Wayne moved here, just the two of them. Eddie hates charity...but he really does love this book.

“I insist!”

“Well thank you...Thank you very much!” And Eddie is being sent out of the bookshop and into the sunshine. He’s pretty certain Owens doesn’t know how book shops are even supposed to work, considering he keeps letting Eddie borrow them – and now he’s even giving them away. Regardless, Eddie really shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

[madeleineengland]

The Ugly Stepsister (2025)