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(This post is cross-posted to [personal profile] capri0mni)

Preface:

This is in response to the Grimm Brothers tale The Frog King, or Iron Heinrich, specifically, which is not any more "authentic" than any other version you may have learned (regardless of the reputation that the Grimm fellows crafted for themselves, for political and commercial reason). Stories of royal men enchanted into the shape of frogs, who make some sort of deal with young women (or girls), abound all over Europe. But this is the version that bothered me the most. So this is the version I sat down to write an answer to.

Here's the translation that I used as my source material

The biggest thing that bothered me about this version is that the princess is child-coded (the youngest daughter, who weeps uncontrollably over the loss of a plaything), and yet, is objectified for her beauty -- the opening sentence (as translated by D. L. Ashliman) includes this line:
"the sun itself, who, indeed, has seen so much, marveled every time it shone upon her face."

And then, there's the fact that, instead of a kiss that turns the frog-shaped king back into a man-shaped king, it's this (again, the D.L. Ashliman translation):
With that she became bitterly angry and threw him against the wall with all her might. "Now you will have your peace, you disgusting frog!"

And once he's beautiful, like her, she's happy to go to bed with him, and marry him, at her father's command (still child-coded, remember).

(Aside: it's actually one of the folk motifs that pops up now and then, that, in order to free an enchanted someone from an animal shape, the animal body must be killed. But it's often after the talking animal companion/guide and the human protagonist have become close friends: "Please chop off my head, now" "Are you insane? I can't do that!" etc.)

Naturally, as someone who is demi-/asexual, aromantic, and desire repulsed reading this version with the critical eye of an adult turned this fairy tale into something that was not just unbelievable, but a horror story.

So I gave myself this challenge:
Without changing the components of the magical spell, or the span of time the Grimm version covers: rewrite it, and shuffle bits around, so the happy ending actually makes sense, even if the viewpoint character is aro-ace, like me.


Anyway, I thought it would end up being ~5,000 words. It ended up being ~7,500, which is straining against the bounds of "Short Story," and brushing up against "Novella." So I've broken it into chapters.

Under the Linden Tree (part 1/5; 1,615 words) )

(Chapter two tomorrow!)
soc_puppet: The original Gilbert Baker pride flag merged with the Philly pride flag, rotated ninety degrees, and ending in the Queer pride chevron at the bottom (Queerly Beloved)
[personal profile] soc_puppet
Phew, okay! I've got our community tags up. Or, well, as many as I can think of, at any rate. I'm sure there's a bunch I missed, and fandom tags in particular I'll have to add as we go.

Anyone who wants to is welcome to look over the tag list and request that I add something to it, especially if it's something I missed. This was just everything I could come up with off the top of my head, and while it covers a lot of stuff, I know I'm not perfect and didn't think of everything or everyone. Please also let me know if you spot any spelling mistakes or typos; I'm still not entirely used to the keyboard on my new laptop, which will account for some slipups, but definitely not all of them.

Let's see here, what else. Oh! CW is short for Content Warning, and warns for types of content that people might not want to deal with or, in the case of NSFW (literally: Not Safe For Work), is the type of thing they might get in trouble for having a record of on a work computer. Media is for reviews and shoutouts about various forms of media that have representation of us, good and bad. Everything else should be fairly self-explanatory, I think.

Since Dreamwidth has a tag limit of 1000 for free accounts (1500 for paid, 2000 for premium paid), there may come a time when I have to combine some lesser-used tags in order to preserve some more-used tags. We've still got close to 900 tags to go before reaching the free account limit, though, so I'm pretty sure we'll be okay for a while.

Thanks to everyone who's joined so far, and if you have any feedback, I would be very interested in it!

Edit: It looks like I have tags hidden somehow at the moment? Lemme go take a look around, see how I need to fix that.

Edit 2: Apparently all unused tags were marked as "private" in the tag management thing. There's probably a better way to fix that, but it's late and I'm tired, so my current workaround is: Literally tag this post with every single tag available. (For the record, I tried doing that and then untagging everything, but the tags went right back to being private, so that shortcut is a no-go.)

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