nonasuch wrote this beautiful selkie story. She noticed that almost all selkie stories end badly, so she wanted to write one with a happy ending. We have actually posted a similar story before about Dating a Selkie, but not hiding her cloak. This should be the new selkie trope!
If you didn’t know, in Celtic and Norse mythology, selkies meaning “seal folk” are mythological beings capable of shapeshifting, changing from seal to human form by shedding their skin (aka cloak). They are found in folktales and mythology originating from the Northern Isles of Scotland. The folktales frequently revolve around female selkies being coerced into relationships with humans by someone stealing and hiding their sealskin, thus exhibiting the tale motif of the swan maiden type. There are counterparts in Faroese and Icelandic folklore that speak of seal-women and seal-skin.
Source: nonasuch
This works excellently as a coda and rebuttal to the other Selkie story that starts out with a Selkie falling in love with a woman, shocked that the woman doesn’t treat her like her controlling father treated her Selkie mother, and then ends with the skewed Aesop that all men are by nature abusers and aren’t capable of actually loving their romantic partners.
um idk 🙁
maybe they wrote it as a wlw love story because all selkie love stories so far have been hetero and HAVE ended with the, quote: “skewed Aesop that all men are by nature abusers and aren’t capable of actually loving their romantic partners.” unquote.
i mean
i was happy with this story and with the other one as well. we need more lgbtq folktales. 🙂 but that’s just me idk
also i am very much aware that “not all men”, i happen to have a wonderful loving bf
selkie stories often seemed to have the moral of “if you give a woman freedom trust and love they won’t hesitate to betray you, break that trust, and run away, so you have to trap them” which is messed up on all levels, so it wasn’t just the guy who was portrayed as the villain. it depends on which versions you read. im glad that this story AND the other one exist cause we need more of these healthy folktales.
be mad if you want to, hate me if you want, idk im just here cause i love mythology 🙂
and this is just my personal opinion, im not gonna try and force you to agree with me cause thats a messed up thing to do lol, if you disagree thats fine by me. have a good day/night
You’re not wrong that we need modern folktales that dismantle the toxic themes of older renditions of these myths.
The issue is that the wlw version being referenced doesn’t dismantle the toxic themes of older renditions of the myths, it reinforces them by presenting women as safe, empathic, and trustworthy partners while doing nothing to dispel the notion that men are inherently controlling and abusive. It ultimately reinforces the old Aesop without seeking to build one that actually fits modern relationship values.
We definitely need more modern (and more diverse) folk storytelling… but in scenarios where all previous versions are both hetero and abusive some mindfulness needs to be spent making sure that the message isn’t revised in such a manner that it presents the hetero elements AS abusive, because abusers are not inherently limited to any one sexuality, and painting things as though they are runs a tangible, real risk of setting expectations that young lgbtq folk don’t need to worry about such dangers in their actual lives.
We can have LGBTQ folklore love stories without trying to claim that love stories that aren’t LGBTQ aren’t legitimate because men aren’t capable of actual love, though. That’s the only problem with the other one, that line saying “It’s not an answer a fisherman could give, nor would think to.”
Without that line, the other story is wholesome and uplifting, but the instant that line went in, it skewed the whole thing into a story about how men are inherently abusive and women inherently aren’t.
That’s a dangerous lesson to teach young LGBTQ folk, because it might lead to them anticipating abuse when it isn’t necessary… or falling into abusive dynamics with people that they’d believed would be safe.
We can have LGBTQ folklore tales that are healthier for the people we pass them down to.