There's one I posted what I could remember of on the 'did I hallucinate this childhood memory' thread. My favorite was the Snow Queen, though I liked Snow White and Rose Red a lot too. Also faerietale elements for fantasy is my jam. Also reinterpretations of faerietales.
My favorite fairy tale is an Irish one regarding a farmer whose farm was failing. The crops were dead. All but one of the cows was gone and the remaining one was skinny and awful. Shit was bad. Him and his wife argued about whether or not to sell the last cow and he was eventually goaded into selling it. So he goes out to the fair with this cow and walks up a hill. Up on the top of the hill as he's walking he meets an old man. A strange one who tells him to give him the cow. Give him the cow and he'll give him this nice bottle. There's nothing in the bottle. It's a nice bottle but it won't sell for anything good like the cow might. So the man argues and insists that, no, he's gotta take the cow to the fair. He's gotta sell it to get money for his family so his kids don't starve. The old man is obstinate though and insists that he needs to give him the cow. Not only that but that the bottle will be the solution to his problem. The farmer finally gives in and gives the man the cow because this is ridiculous and the cow is shit anyway. May as well take our chances with the crazy man. Old man tells him that if he takes the bottle home and chants a phrase three times before opening it everything will be dandy. He doesn't explain anything else. So the farmer heads on back down the hill with the bottle. When he gets home and explains what happened his wife is very reasonably pissed. The cow's gone. The last source of meat and milk is gone, and that was also our last chance for money and all we've got is a bottle and the words of some crazy old man you met on a hill? Really? Farmer feels silly but he gives the chant thing a shot and lo and behold out of the bottle comes a parade of little fae beings carrying with them all sorts of food and drink in fine dishes. It's enough to feed the family. What's more there were extra platter and silverware left over. Enough to trade for some funds. He continues this each night for about a year and soon enough the family is back on track. More than that actually. They're damn right prosperous. Which gets the landlord fussy. He doesn't get it. The rent's always been an issue and he knows the land's shit so what is up. He goes on to the farm and asks about it. The man tries to talk himself out of this but the landlord demands to know where he is getting these things. Finally he fesses up about the bottle. The landlord being a greedy fuck then demands the bottle. The man tries to argue with him, but he eventually just gives up. I mean the landlord is stubborn and he's already got enough wealth to last. Right? Except he doesn't. Over the course of a year he and his family are back in the same situation they were before he got the bottle. So he's out again taking the last cow up that hill and he sees the old man from before. The old man doesn't call him over though like last time. Still the man rushes over and explains what happened and asks for another bottle. He's got to have another. After a bit of an argument the old man gives him another bottle and takes this cow too. When the man gets home though the parade doesn't bring plates but clubs. Clubs that they use to beat the man and his family with. He does manage to get them back into the bottle but not before their remaining dishes are broken and people are pretty hurt. Now anyone else might give up here and just decide whelp it's back to farming dirt. The man doesn't though because he has an idea. He takes his new bottle with him to his landlord's home. Goes in there and asks to trade the bottles because this one's better. The landlord refuses because even if this one is better why would he need it? He's got all the wealth he could want. Look at this fine feast he's holding for his friends and family! Man tries to argue again but he gets turned down yet again. So he opens the bottle and out comes the parade with its clubs. They start breaking everything in the landlord's home and beating him and all his guests. The man demands that his bottle is returned or he is going to let these creatures kill everyone in here and he will take the bottle back by force. Landlord takes the point and gives him back his bottle. Sated the man collects up the parade and is on his way. From that day on the man's life is great and he lives a long, happy life. After he dies his kids try and talk over who gets the magic bottle. They end up fighting over it and drop the thing, breaking it. Because it wasn't their bottle and it wasn't the landlord's bottle. It was his bottle. It was his gift specifically and even when he was seemingly being punished for losing it he was offered the means to get it back. Because they're always fair and they're very good to the people they like, even when it looks to be the opposite. You just have to be as clever as they are and the man was that in spades.
Another one I like is how the River Boann was created. If you know any of the rivers in Ireland then chances are the Boann and the Shannon are the two you know of. But the River Boann wasn't always a river. It used to be a well. Like many wells in Ireland it was a sacred well. The water within it was magical and could heal any ailment, and thousands would come from all around just to get even a portion of that water. There were special rules to how the fountain was to be treated, as well. Its rules were clear and they had to be respected. Which was only fair in exchange for it did. And for a long time they were. Until a particular woman came around. She came, like most, to gather some of the sacred water in a bucket. Simple enough. However, unlike most she didn't dance around the well sunwise as was the rule. She did it widdershins, instead. Yes, she still chanted and yes she still danced but she didn't dance in the correct fashion. To make matters worse as she reached down to collect the water she made the mistake of touching the well's surface with her bare hands. This was the ultimate upset. The well burst out into a rushing rage of water and it took the woman and all the fish living in it with it. This surge continued to flow and flow until at last it had become a river, and the woman who offended the well with it. There are many similar stories about how lakes or rivers come to be in Ireland. They tend to involve someone, usually a woman, fucking up the sacred well procedure and offending whatever happens to live in it. There's a loch that is believed to have been a well hoarded by a greedy man who wanted to show off his wealth to other wealthy people, for example. Wells also tend to have weird little procedures involved with approaching them or using them. Though the penalty for failure in reality isn't often so extreme as "You became a new body of water on Ireland for failing so hard".
I really, really want to see some good Undertale AUs in this vein, it could fit so well thematically.
I've seen some Undertale fairytale AUs-I think they were in the UnderFairyTale series? They included things like a The Little Mermaid AU, two Beauty and the Beast AUs, and the like, but there was also an original one.
TALK KING THRUSHBEARD VARIANTS TO ME /sax solo Which reminds me, I need to go digging through the massive list of folklore types again.
I was looking for stories of the Lindworm, on the fairy tale encyclopedia, and found this. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/snake.html#transformation i don't. what is this.
Give me fairytale AUs in which no character who wasn't canonically a villain has to become one. It never works when someone's forced into that role. One I liked was a retelling of Maid Maleen where the true bride needed a stand-in because she was too young and scared and didn't love the groom, rather than ugly and evil.
I remember in my creative writing class, we read some different takes on old fairytales, like a story where Little Red Riding Hood was the wolf, and stuff like that, and then we wrote fiction pieces based off the stories we'd read, and I remember that one person wrote this story where the wolf was a man who was paid by stepmothers who married into rich families to take the daughters of the families into the woods and kill them, and the story focused on this one instance where the girl he was supposed to kill caught his attention in a way most of them didn't, and he decided to let her live instead of killing her, but still made her go into the forest. it was implied that he was some kind of immortal shapeshifter, but we never found out for sure. I'm not doing a great job of describing it, but it was honestly a really excellent story. I wonder if I can find my copy of it....
I really want to do something with The Friendly Frog, but I don't have any ships who'd really fit it; it needs a reproductively compatible pair with one kid (or one pregnancy's worth of kids) and I need to ship the kid with someone.
