So, if you’ve seen some of my posts before, you might be vaguely familiar with a world that I’ve developed for my current WIP, which I plan to expand with future stories. It’s loosely based on fairytales, with characters, plots, and details that are inspired by these stories (most of them ones that Disney has done because I love Disney ). As I’m looking to expand the world, I’m looking for more fairytale inspiration!
I’m open to any and everything, but if you have some less known or non-European fairytales or folklore, I’d be especially interested in that! Here are some stories I’ve pulled inspiration from so far:
Sleeping Beauty
[name_f]Rapunzel[/name_f]
[name_m]Peter[/name_m] [name_m]Pan[/name_m]
[name_u]Snow[/name_u] White and the [name_u]Seven[/name_u] Dwarfs
Arabian Nights
[name_u]Brave[/name_u]
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
[name_m]King[/name_m] Midas and the [name_u]Golden[/name_u] Touch
[name_f]Rapunzel[/name_f]
Rumplestiltskin
Beauty and the Beast
[name_m]Hansel[/name_m] and [name_f]Gretel[/name_f]
The Buried [name_f]Moon[/name_f]/The Dead [name_f]Moon[/name_f] is a lesser known story with rather an unclear history but I definitely suggest you read it, you can find multiple versions online and it’s a story I’m rewriting with a friend so I really like it haha.
Little Brother and [name_m]Little[/name_m] [name_f]Sister[/name_f] is also a really interesting one
Nail Soup is less of a typical “magic” vibe but I love it
Changeling stories are well-known but I still find them interesting (think brewing of eggshells and such)
Here are my favorites, most of them are not well-known
The 12 Dancing Princesses
The [name_u]Seven[/name_u] Swans
[name_u]Snow[/name_u] White and [name_f]Rose[/name_f] [name_u]Red[/name_u]
[name_u]George[/name_u] and the Dragon
The [name_f]Princess[/name_f] and the Pea
The Selfish Giant
Whatever the story is about the princess who would not cry and all the wise men and everyone tried to and then the little serving girl brought her an onion and made her cry
So many great ones have already been suggested, so I’ll try and suggest some different ones. I’ll choose legends with magical elements.
Rama and [name_f]Sita[/name_f]
[name_f]Janet[/name_f] and Tamlin
The Death of Balder
The [name_u]Willow[/name_u] Pattern Plate (kind of a made up legend, but still nice)
Three [name_u]Strong[/name_u] Women
The [name_m]Laird[/name_m]’s Lass and the Gobha’s [name_m]Son[/name_m]
Kupti and [name_f]Imani[/name_f]
The [name_u]Legend[/name_u] of Knockmany
The [name_u]Red[/name_u] Shoes
The [name_u]Juniper[/name_u] Tree
I love the twelve dancing princesses. I just love how you can play on every one of the princesses to make her different from the rest.
Have you thought of doing fables? I think that could be really interesting.
Also, have you looked at any of the original Brothers Grim fairy tales? They are a lot darker… but that could be interesting too. I know the ones they publish now are the happier versions (even if they are still sad…). I haven’t actually ever looked at the originals, I just heard about it in a podcast the other day.
btw I LOVE the Grimms fairytales originals. Me and my family read them when I was about 8. I have always loved them and russian fairytales. Maybe I’m just a dark person
Oh I loved the 12 Dancing Princesses when I was younger! I had a gorgeously illustrated copy of the story that I kept well into my teens because it was so aesthetically beautiful. It would be difficult to differentiate them all to keep them unique and identifiable but oh, what fun it would be to name them! I loved @EJpuddlejumper’s set!
I’m definitely interested in fables! Fairytales, folklore, fables, myths, all of it, especially when I explore cultures where fairytales were less common in favor of fables or myths.
Side story, in my first creative writing class in high school, our final project was to write a short story in the style of a famous author and I chose [name_m]Hans[/name_m] [name_u]Christian[/name_u] [name_u]Anderson[/name_u] as my inspiration! Unfortunately, I’m not sure I could find the project because I wrote it on my high school’s portal, but I read several of his original fairytales to draw inspiration from. I have to say, I prefer the stories with the happy endings lol (my own story had a happy ending), but I can appreciate the darkness
I think you could add some inspiration from the Buddhist Jātaka tales.
[name_f]Molly[/name_f] Whuppie is a Scottish take on the “children-abandoned-by-their-parents” ogre story.
Did you know that [name_m]Hans[/name_m] [name_u]Christian[/name_u] [name_m]Andersen[/name_m] actually wrote a self-insert mermaid AU as a metaphor for his unrequited love and eventual rejection by another man? Why not make a sapphic mermaid who, when her human girlfriend marries another woman, throws herself off the castle balcony and evaporates into sea foam?
Japanese folklore has Momotarō, the boy born from a peach.
I was led to investigate [name_m]Andersen[/name_m]’s “The [name_u]Snow[/name_u] [name_f]Queen[/name_f]” back in 2013 or 2014 after a certain animated film *eh-heh-HEMMM* came out, and I was hooked.
Hans [name_u]Anderson[/name_u]:
The little mermaid
The nightingale
The swine herd
What the moon saw
Irish/folktales
The white trout
Teig O’kane and the corpse
The three ladies in white
Fair, brown and trembling
Others
[name_m]Prince[/name_m] [name_u]Vivien[/name_u] and [name_f]Princess[/name_f] [name_f]Placida[/name_f]
Sleeping beauty
The [name_f]Flower[/name_f] [name_f]Queen[/name_f]’s daughter
Beauty and the beast( the original story!!!)
What the [name_f]Rose[/name_f] did to the cypresss
[name_m]Fairer[/name_m] than a fairy
All of these are VERY random but I’ve loved them all and they’re a bit more of the obscure fairy tales!
). As I’m looking to expand the world, I’m looking for more fairytale inspiration!
