Marvelous continuation of “Fairy Tales in Deep Space” another author, who does, IMO, and equally good job, same tone even, picking up right where airandangels left off, covering different tales.
The premise is Bashir tells Garak fairy tales – Grimms’ or Anderson – while Garak interrupts and asks questions and then at the end, Bashir asks Garak what he thinks the moral is. (This is based on Bashir sharing “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” on the series.) So in the end, you get GB banter, cultural exchange, lit-fic, and a refresher on certain fairy tales you might not have revisited in a long time or which you never read in the original. I had never even heard of “Donkeyskin.”
Thus far this author has covered (by reader request):
1. Beauty and the Beast
2. Hansel and Gretel
3. The Emperor’s New Clothes
4. The Little Mermaid
5. Bluebeard
6. Rumpelstiltskin
7. Donkeyskin
8. The Frog Prince
9. Thumbelina
Unless the story was already covered in the earlier series, you can put in your own suggestion. I recently put in a prompt for “The Red Shoes,” which is an extraordinarily gruesome Anderson tale.
Excerpt
[Bashir is finishing up the tale of “Beauty and the Beast.]
EG: So he really did die of a broken heart. I suppose that’s a lesson to children to keep their promises.
JB: I’m not finished. Beauty went to the Beast, hoping she could revive him. His eyes opened for a bare moment. “You took too long,” he gasped. “I thought you’d never return.”
“But I did,” she said. “I love you. And I have decided to accept your offer of marriage.”
With that, a bright light flashed through the garden, blinding Beauty. When her vision cleared, she found her Beast had vanished and a handsome young man knelt before her.
EG: Now really! Just because she agreed to marry him, he suddenly became a socially acceptable husband?
JB: Just so. The young man explained that he was a prince who had been cursed by an evil fairy to appear in the form of a beast until a woman agreed to marry him as he was. All his servants had been cursed to be little more than wraiths, and the castle had been hidden and erased from living memory. But Beauty had broken the spell, so she and the prince got married and lived happily ever after.
EG: And what about her family? Did her father get over the guilt of leaving her there?
JB: Some versions don’t say what happened. Some say that her family came to the wedding, but when her wicked sisters passed through the gates, they were turned into stone statues to frighten away the birds.
EG: Ah, of course they were.
JB: So…your interpretation?
EG: Let’s see…I suppose the lesson is that loyalty to your family is more important than personal happiness.
JB: How did you reach that conclusion?
EG: Everything that happened was because of the father’s desire to please the daughter who had been good and helped him, and because Beauty was willing to take responsibility for it and sacrifice herself to save her father. And in the end, she was rewarded with material wealth and a powerful husband, while her disloyal sisters were punished.
JB: Well…I suppose you can look at it that way. The original moral was that you can’t just a person to be a monster by their appearance and that true beauty is found within.
EG: I found very little about the beast to be beautiful, inside or out. He manipulated Beauty throughout the story with both extortion and bribery.
JB: Well, the other common interpretation on Earth is that it’s a story romanticizing Stockholm Syndrome and abusive relationships, though I find that overly reductive.
EG: So you’re saying that for once I managed to be less cynical than the people of Earth? I’m shocked.
JB: As am I…same time next week?
EG: I look forward to it.
Metadata
Title: More Fairy Tales in Deep Space
Author: butterflyslinky
Year Posted: 2017
Approx. Word Count: 22,000+ (more stories to come…)
Chapters: 9 (so far)
GB - Slash or Platonic: platonic (turning flirty)
My Rating (1-5): 5
Keywords: fairy tales, stand-alone stories, flirting
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