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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.
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.
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Bill Thomson's Chalk is a wordless picture book for young children, but I think it definitely fits here. It's about three kids (two girls and a boy) who discover a magic bag of sidewalk chalk. Anything that they draw with the chalk becomes reality - i.e. drawing the sun makes the rain stop, drawing butterflies causes real butterflies to appear, etc. Then boy in the group draw a dinosaur, which, of course, creates a real disaster. I think it was one of the two girls who figured out how to make the drawing that caused the dinosaur to disappear, but it's been a long time since I read the book so I could be wrong about that. Anyway, it's not about girls telling a traditional "story" in the sense that there's a beginning middle and end, due to the nature of the book - there are no words at all - but it's definitely about girls creating their own reality through visual story-telling. It's the girls who find the chalk, the girls who discover the chalk's power, and the girls who save the day in the end.