#retellings

[wordsmithic]

This guy is absolutely right. How can you "reclaim" voices from a culture that's not yours?? Ancient Greek women are not from your own culture - if you even recognize that Greek culture is its own culture, separate from yours.

On top of that, those authors have no idea about the History of Greek women. We have a voice of our own and you are not trying to amplify it. You just pretend you care so you can get your fame and money.

[ekbelsher]

Aw.

[finelythreadedsky]

your tags. yeah. it's not that they are progressive or feminist or even written by women -- but they are doing something with women that is complex and worth paying attention to, and in many cases they are the reason we have a version of a particular woman's story at all

yeah that's one of the marketing conceits of the myth retelling novel industrial complex that bothers me, it's the framing as if no one has ever paid attention to these female characters who are buried unnoticed in the myths when often the most complete or the most authoritative version of the character's story that survives from antiquity is in tragedy, a genre that is notoriously interested in bringing female characters out of the house and putting them on stage in active roles, and in using those female characters to explore issues of gender and the place of women in contemporary society.

like to a certain degree it makes sense for the homeric women who don't appear in (extant) tragedy, like briseis or the hanged women in odyssey 22, but we have stories where clytemnestra and deianira and medea insist on make narrative space for themselves to tell their own stories from their own perspectives, refusing to be silent about the violence their society inflicts upon women and the lasting damage it does. they're called aeschylus' agamemnon and sophocles' trachiniae and euripides' medea. and maybe you want to retell those stories for modern audiences, changing things or emphasizing different aspects of them! and that's great! but framing it as if they've been ignored and their stories are as-yet-untold is just not accurate, and it's a cheap way to paint your work as innovative and subversive.

[authorbreannawrites]

This isn’t really a problem on an individual level; it’s the trend as a whole I’m tired of. Like, there are some decent Peter Pan retellings where Peter is the villain.

But. Like. Why is that everyone’s go-to.

I have read the original book. Peter is manipulative, Peter is selfish, Peter is so fundamentally a child that it hurts. But he’s not evil. He flatters Wendy into going to Neverland with him because he’s convinced that she would love it there, because he loves it there, and she just needs a push. He is the kind of child who thinks that what makes him happy would make everyone else happy too.

(And he’s right, Wendy loved Neverland.)

He kills pirates, yes. He also goes out of his way to make it sporting and is horrified at the idea of attacking one who was sleeping. He and Wendy get trapped, about to drown, and when a chance of rescue arrives he sacrifices himself to save Wendy without a single hesitation. He thinks playing schoolboy is an awesome game. He cries for his best friend, Tinker Bell, and frantically begs the world at large to save her from poison.

He’s bossy and kind and always wants to be in charge of the game and is really bad at considering that other people have their own opinions. He makes friends with mermaids and has horrific nightmares and invents the “Second to the right and straight on till morning!” off the top of his head because he’s embarrassed he doesn’t have an address (which the narrator then notes is nonsense and you would never get to Neverland that way).

Everything always has to go his way because he is nine years old and that is the point of the book.

Meanwhile Tinker Bell’s main plot in the book is trying to kill an eight year old girl for daring to look at Peter. Why don’t the retellings ever make her the villain?

*No, the ages are not explicit in text. Peter and Wendy are old enough to read, young enough to be before puberty.   ** Yes, Peter can't read. But that's not related to his age.

[faer1etale]

I think more mythology-based/inspired works should explore religious syncretism rather than going "All religions are real" thing, which is sorta but not an aspect of syncretism. I just think it'd be more interesting to see how people of different religions interact and interpret things in ways that make sense to them, also it has historical basis, which is a plus

[cloudcreates]

Everytime a fan of a retelling reads the source material an angel gains its wings

[ares-on-trial]

Where are the Greek Authors in Greek Mythology Retellings?

Mythology retellings are a hot commodity in publishing lately. But where are the Greek writers of Greek mythology retellings?

An important article about Greek retellings and Greek authors/writers. As an Asian-American, I know what it is like to have people borrow from and even hijack my culture without understanding where the stories or traditions are coming from (e.g. people describing watching C-dramas as a "very Chinese time of their life"). To me, the lack of Greek writers in book recs or bookish spaces is both revealing and concerning.

I don't think non-Greek retellings are bad – and authors like Madeline Miller know what they're talking about, unlike myself – but this is a topic I'm keeping in mind while writing my own story inspired by Greek mythology.