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

[rymenhild]

Both of the storytellers, the characters who are able to change reality specifically by writing it, in Princess Tutu are male. But the two primary female characters (and at least one secondary female character) have moments when they declare they refuse to act in the way the story and its tellers demand of them, and these refusals in themselves change the story's direction. When Duck says (rot13), "V ershfr gb inavfu!" at the end of the first season, and when Rue qrpynerf gung fur ybirf Zlgub, guhf serrvat Zlgub sebz uvf fcryy, jura Qhpx jnf fhccbfrq gb oernx gur fcryy naq inavfu vagb n fcrpx bs yvtug, near
the end of season two, they change and improve the stories in which they participate.

[genarti]

I was going to mention Princess Tutu -- the literal storytellers are male, yes, but several of the characters are very aware that they're living in a story shaped by a storyteller, and both Rue and Duck consciously choose not to go along with the story, but to take agency in their own lives instead. (Edit: and arguably Uzura, too. Who doesn't have a storyteller's role, but she still has story-related powers and choices.)