Tattercoats danced while the goose herder piped.

4. What book do you think it should be a requirement for you to be a consultant for if it was to be adapted into a play or movie or something?

Can I be in charge of an animated adaptation of "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" that lives up to my mental image of the fairy tale and plays up the religious parallels?

Which aspects you would like to explore and fuse of your favorite variants?

Hmm....

I might like to adapt the Norwegian tale of Katie Woodencloak and/or the near-identical French tale of The Blue Bull. These are the versions where the heroine's only friend is a talking bull who magically gives her food; then her stepmother plans to butcher the bull, so they run away together, but then the bull has to fight other beasts to protect the heroine (trolls or lions), and is killed. The girl then becomes a scullery maid at the royal palace, a la Donkeyskin or All-Kinds-of-Fur, and the bull's skin or grave magically produces her finery for the three balls. The fact that in so many Cinderella stories, her magical helper is an animal who is killed, but still helps her in death, stands out to me. So many Cinderella stories have a strong, poignant theme of death and loss (first her mother, then sometimes her father, and finally, in these variants, her only friend), yet the pop culture version of Cinderella downplays that theme because Perrault deemphasized it. And these two variants with the bull, where they run away to start a new life, only for the bull to sacrifice his life to save the girl's, are, IMHO, even more poignant than versions where her animal companion is just killed by the Stepmother.

As for other versions, I might also like to retell Finette Cendron. First of all, because it's a fascinating hybrid of familiar stories, starting out as (more or less) Hansel and Gretel with three sisters instead of a brother and sister, but then turning into Cinderella in the second half. Secondly, because Finette is defined by cunning as well as by virtue.

Tattercoats is another standout tale that I think deserves to be better known and has great retelling potential. First, because rejection by a grandfather might be more poignant than rejection by a stepmother. Second, because Tattercoats' "fairy godfather" figure, the gooseherd, is her best friend from the start, not a stranger who suddenly appears and makes the audience ask why he or she didn't help the girl sooner. Third, because this is a very rare Cinderella story (not counting many adaptations of Perrault and the Grimms' versions) where the Prince meets her before the ball and falls in love with her in her rags.

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01. The Search for the Lost Husband and The Persecuted Lady

Those are considered the two most widespread kind of folktales. What personally touches me the most about these stories is how they explore the resilience of its female heroines, wich we often underestimake as weakness in real life women.

The Search for the Lost Husband touches on the anxiety about arranged marriages, and how women feared they would be sold by their fathers to wild, monstrous beasts, specially because their husbands are full of secrets. Them the heroines break a taboo, discovering the secret, wich makes the husband depart full of fears and insecurity, while the heroine, having grown in love for the husband, reveals courage and confidence to go in a long, dangerous journey to, now in her own terms, win back her beloved. Rather than end the narrative with the marriage celebrations, this kind of story explores what it takes to keep the marriage.

The Persecuted Lady touches in the domestic drama of women who suffer familial abuse, be it the work force exploitation imposed by a stepmother, the appearance shaming imposed by a birth mother, the sexist neglect of a father or grandfather, or the sexual harassment committed by a father. In some tales, the heroines suffer in silence at their own homes, in others, usually under a disguise that makes her look ugly by societal standards (like a straw coat or an animal’s skin), she runs away and works in servitude in another place, also suffering abuse from the employers, until she has the chance to enjoy at least three festive occasions and catch the eyes of a handsome and young rich suitor (usually a Prince), who uses a piece of garment like a shoe or ring to identify the heroine and marry her. The heroine has a long time to cope with harsh situations, but keeps hopefull for better days, and finds the love and happiness that she didn’t had back at home.

My favorite Search for the Lost Husband tales are The Black Bull of Norroway, The Singing Springing Lark and The Iron Stove. My favorite Persecuted Lady tales are Dona Labismínia, Bicho de Palha, Maria Borralheira, Donkeyskin, Thousand Furs, Princess in a Leather Burqa, Florinda, The Three Sisters, The Tale of Popelka, Tattercoats and Cap’O Rushes.

02. The Story Inside the Story

This is when one character presents a fictional narrative to another character, and the narrative presented is just as engaging as the in universe “real” characters we have been accompanying. Sometimes the characters are just amusing themselves with a fun story, and other times the story has a thematic moral relevance to the “real life” situation they are living. The Story Inside the Story can take the form of A Book Within the Book, A Play Within the Play, A Movie Within the Movie, and so forward. The most famous example, and still my favorite, of Story Inside the Story is probably the One Thousand and One Nights book. Other famous examples include Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccacio’s Decameron.

03. The Family Saga

When the story stars being about a character, them this character dies and we move on to see the story of that character’s children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, all the while we see their different points of view about the political, cultural and societal changes troughout history. My favorite Family Sagas are the myth of The Mahabharata, the myth of King Arthur, Shakespeare’s Henriad and Rose Tetralogy cycle of plays, Érico Veríssimo’s novel Time and the Wind and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.

04. The Band of Heroes in a Quest

A group of people who in normal circumstance unlikely would meet and talk to each other is united by fantastical circunstances to go on a quest. The object of the quest varies: it could be a treasure, a search for spiritual enlightment, save an innocent in distress, destroy a cursed artifact or eliminate an ancient evil and save the world they know from doom.

My favorite examples Band of Heroes in a Quest are probably the Vampire Hunters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel, the Fellowship of the Ring from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novel and the Bronze Saints from Toei’s Saint Seiya anime.

05. Deal with the Devil

A human being who makes a deal, out of either desperation or pure ambition, promising his soul to the Devil. Sometimes the deal is selling the soul right away, other times the deal is a bet, where if the human fails at accomplishing a task, the Devil will take their soul  to suffer eternally in Hell. We accompany the main character’s journey as he asks: should I use what the Devil gaved me for my own benefit, or should I use it to help other people in need? If I use it to help people in need, so I am redeemed, or my deal with the Devil will forever tarnish me as an evil person? Was I wise in making this deal? Is the Devil truly evil, or is he just testing the evil I may have inside me?

Two of Wands. Art by Nara Lesser, from Neurotic Owl’s Faerytale Tarot.

Tattercoats is actually a story I used to know but had to reread recently – I had been lumping it in with Allerleirauh and All Kinds of Fur and Donkeyskin, and while there are strong similarities it lacks the whole wildly upsetting incest plot point and also the still pretty upsetting animal skinning stuff, so yay Tattercoats!