Ok, now I’m vastly amused. Sarah said that at a workshop she went to, someone said that a person’s favorite fairy tale as a child tended to greatly influence their writing later in life. And I write Beauty and the Beast stories all the time. *laugh* Sarah didn’t know BatB was my favorite fairy tale, but she was *really* not surprised by it.
Nor was I terribly surprised to hear that Sarah’s favorite is The Little Mermaid (the original, not the Disney version). That’s pretty funny. :)
So she asked me what my favorite 3 fairy tales were, in that case, and out of traditional fairy tales, I’d have to say BatB, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White & Rose Red (which is another transformation story). If you step a little outside of the bounds of “traditional fairy tale”, my list would have to be Beauty and the Beast, Tam Lin (which isn’t exactly a fairy tale), and the other story that leapt to mind is one from my book of retold (or possibly wholly invented) fairy tales, Enchanted Tales, called _The Wounded Lion_, and it’s another BatB transformation sort of story (shepherdess finds an injured lion, braves helping him, learns he’s a prince, goes through a quest of increasingly difficult tasks to save him).
Now I shall put on my Predictable Hat. :)
Hmm… I wonder if arabian nights count as fairy tales…
Sarah included Aladdin in hers, so I dunno why Arabian Nights wouldn’t qualify. :)
Personally, I’m quite keen on the Emperor’s New Clothes, which I must admit is appropriate for the way I tend to approach life (seeing myself as the little boy who blurts out the emperor’s nekkid, not the nekkid emperor, silly you! *grin*)
My favorite is, you know, that one? That one with the people who were doing that stuff and it wasn’t going right, but they were trying anyway because of some curse or maybe promise or something, and a couple of people died because of it, but in the end everyone realizes that life is really pretty harsh.
*laugh* Great, Mary Anne, I will forever think of you as the nekkid emperor, now. (Okay, not, but it’s funny. *laugh*)
that’s just like you, theno. :)
Y’know, I’ve never been able to figure out what my favorite fairy tale is, for all that I’m crazy about the things, and have scores of retellings of various tales, and essays and studies and and and.
Beauty and the Beast, but I’m not sure that’s not because of Belle in the Disney version, since _I_ walked around with my nose in a book, so had fun mapping over the boorish fools in my high school to other characters in the movie…pity I never had a Beast of my own. And, hmn.
East of the Sun and West of the Moon, in at least some retellings; I like a chick character who has spunk.
Uh. Damn, this shouldn’t be so hard. Guess I know what _my_ next reading project is!