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

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Perfect example.

I feel like DWJ did that trope more than twice, but I can't think of other examples.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yah, it took me an embarrassingly long time to make my brain cough up Polly. "C'mon, I know there's something else . . . what the heck was it . . . ." I'll keep poking, and see if others fall out.

Oh! Sophie! (DUH.) It's kind of the way she works magic.

[skygiants]

Yes! I can't believe I forgot the DWJ. Also Tanaqui in Spellcoats, who is weaving her story into a robe, which is in turn translated into the-book-we-are-reading. The book actually ends with her in the act of weaving in her desired ending and saying "WELL I HOPE THIS WORKS."

Also also Mig in Black Maria, which -- I can't remember if she actually explicitly affects anything with her storytelling now, but here again the book we are reading is her story as she is telling it, and there is tons about gender and the power everyone is fighting over is the power of creativity, so there's got to be something in there.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

<headdesk headdesk headdesk>

I blame the fact that I read everything she wrote in a year flat for my inability to make my brain cough these things up.

Yes, obviously Tanaqui, and less firmly Mig. (Also some of her male characters, but those aren't relevant here.)

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

In the Chrestomanci universe there's a kind of magic called Performative Speech, where you cause something to happen as you say it.

And isn't that how the Cwidder in Cart and Cwidder work? You tell it a truth and then what you want and the want becomes true? I may have that a bit wrong.

I think it's one of DWJ's favorite forms of magic, which makes sense, since she's the writer changing the world.

I love the Witchweek example because she's not the one doing the magic, by explaining what happened, she convinces the others to help the magic be made. It's a wonderful scene.

I *know* I know more! I'm thinking there's something in Wood Wife by Terri Windling? (and why doesn't she write more novels?). There must be more in DWJ. Land of Laughs? It has been *so* long since I read that, but that's a characters from a book coming alive thing, possibly different.

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

Oh, forget Cart and Cwidder, that's a boy.