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

[skygiants]

YET ANOTHER: The Stories of Ibis, another explicit Scheherezade-echo, in which a female-identified robot tells fictional stories to explain the truth about the robot revolution to a human male who refuses to hear actual the history in case it turns out to be part of a CUNNING BRAINWASHING PLOT. This is the frame device; some of the stories themselves also contain women changing the world with narrative, including a female fanfic writer who saves her troubled RP-buddy by writing him the right story.

And I can't believe I forgot The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series (books and anime), in which Haruhi Suzumiya is the only one who is not aware that she has brought time travelers and robots and telepaths into existence by very firmly believing and explaining to everyone about how they have to exist. (Said time travelers and robots and telepaths, interested in studying the phenomenon, immediately vow to tell her nothing about it.)

Also, yet another, more sinister DWJ example: Time of the Ghost, in which the four sisters awaken the Morrigan by telling stories about her.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Monigan, and is it stories or their (not-so-mock) worship? Though obviously there is a fuzzy line there.