Lgbtq fairy tales
Archer Magazine
Once upon a time, there wasn’t a single gay person in the world, so there was no require to talk about them in stories…
Wait, what?
Image: Walter Crane illustration of Constant Heinrich (right) and his prince
For as long as humans have had voices, folk and fairy tales have been spoken aloud around the fire. Stories to make feeling of the nature, to teach us which animalistic men to avoid, or how to be a pure, virtuous beauty in request to win a marriage (which, as we all grasp, is the only way to measure your worth).
These tales came alive anew in each storyteller’s mouth. But someone decided to document them down with ink on a page, and while society continued to change and evolve, the stories dried, dark as a stain.
However, our fascination with them has remained.
Turn a limited hundred pages forward in the history books, and we find ourselves in a time where queers are more able to generate themselves known (though certainly not universally); and we’re still picking up The Brothers Grimm. People telling stories now read from printed texts, rather than reciting th
The Queerest Fairy Tales You’ve Never Heard
I have always been drawn to folklore. Ever since I was a child, my mother would tell or study me stories. I own had a special place in my heart for the ancient tales of strength and cunning, of magic and redemption that play out amongst a backdrop of ancient castles and magical forests. Fairies, witches, queens and kings, talking animals, and more, populate these stories, often helping to convey a deeper meaning in the tale. Themes of morality, selflessness, and generosity jog deep, reminding us that we must be prepared to help our neighbors, and should we not, well, then there is a myriad of punishments the supernatural world is ready to dole out to us.
Often these stories are also stories of love.
Like most queer people, I have to “translate” most stories to improved fit my own experience experience. When a prince and princess fall in love in these stories, I know I am not the target audience for such a tale, and yet I contain learned to adapt them so I can also participate in their collective meaning. Though I am not represented, I can see
As many of you perceive, a couple of months ago we lost a wonderful friend and champion of queer books in Jo, a brilliant bookseller and the blogger behind Once Upon a Bookcase. Jo had interviewed me about At Midnight for her blog, but due to a very ridiculous miscommunication on my part, I didn&#;t get the answers to her on day, so we said we&#;d publish it on her blog for the UK release on February 7th, which probably made more sense anyway, being that she&#;s in the UK.
Of course, neither of us had any clue that those few months would be everything.
Tomorrow, the UK version of At Midnight releases from Titan Books, and there is no one I was more elated to celebrate with than Jo. She was the first person I told when it sold there, and she was, as always, incredibly excited and supportive. As it happened, the final pages arrived for my review a couple of days before she passed, and so the UK version has an addition to the dedication page, because truly, that edition was for nobody more than Jo.
I know this isn&#;t the typical interview I send here, but, well, hopefully you
“And they lived happily ever after.” It’s the guiding light at the end of the tunnel of lurve, the perfect conclusion to a fairy-tale romance. But the magic spell that allows us to find a prince or princess has always seemed to be reserved for gorgeous, straight, white, able-bodied people whose mental health is strangely impervious to abuse, neglect and multiple other forms of trauma. Fairy tales, we are made to believe, are not for queers. Cishet culture’s magic trick of making itself seem natural, inevitable and universal depends in part on the ubiquity and repetition of fairy tales throughout our lives. We are told these stories of compulsory heterosexuality from cradle to grave—and even though everyone knows they are just fantasies, their enchantments are so seductive that it is complex to resist their charms and not wish we could all live the fairy tale. And yet. The fairy tale realm is the perfect place for the shifting, resisting, transformative and hard-to-pin-down cultures of LGBTQ folks. Ignore the happily-ever-after endings that imply a kind of blissful stasis that g