Recs: Women Creating Their Story

[rachelmanija]

This is for a possible Sirens presentation. The theme this year is "retold tales."

Can you recommend to me fantasy media or myth in which female characters, in some sense, alter reality by telling stories about it?

This "altering reality" doesn't have to be magic in itself; the ultimate example is Scheherazade, who changes the world by telling stories. There's also Martha's world-changing storytelling in Doctor Who.

The other examples I thought of were magical: Paperhouse (girl creates spooky new reality by drawing it), Fudoki (a dying princess of the Heian court writes a story about a cat who becomes a woman; she may or may not create a reality in which the story is true), The Secret Country (kids create a fantasy world, then travel to it and find that it is and isn't as they imagined), The Tricksters (characters from a girl's lush fantasy narrative show up, again not exactly as she pictured them), Voices (Annals of the Western Shore) (spoilery but sort of fits), Witch Week (the entire climax depends on a girl telling a story which alters reality.)

Can you think of others? Especially, examples from myth and folklore, and examples which aren't about white girls?

ETA: If you rec something, please explain how it fits.

Comments

[staranise]

Two white-girl examples: Widdershins by Charles de Lint (woman uses story to alter the landscape of fairyland) though now that I think of it it's a recurring trope in his stuff, like a painter in Memory and Dream; Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, where the protagonist has the ability to make things real by reading them aloud, then applies this ability to reading things she's written.

Actually, spoiler for Memory and Dream: the painter ends up painting a version of herself which comes alive and leaves the painting--with a similar version of another woman, to give them a chance at a romantic relationship real life denied them.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yes, Inkheart! I should have thought of that one.