Need inspiration? Stith Thomas online!

[mme_hardy]

 If you're a scholar of folklore, Stith Thomas is an honored name.  He created Motif-index of folk-literature : a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediaeval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends.   This is and was the Dewey Decimal system for folklore.  

T11.4.4. Love through seeing marks of lady’s teeth in fruit which she has bitten. 
T11.6. Wish for wife red as blood, white as snow, black as raven.
T85.4.1. Ring of Fastrada. (Tove‘s magic ring.) Lover keeps body of dead mistress (wife) intact by means of magic ring. When ring is removed from her finger, the body immediately decays and he is cured of his love. 

A full six volumes of Stith Thomas will set you back a pretty penny.  But the University of Alberta has put it online!  Hurrah!

Comments

[muccamukk]

That's amazing. Thanks for liking to it.

[executrix]

Ages ago I thought about Stith-Thomasing fan tropes but never got around to doing anything.
T16.2.2 Wish for a woobie as smol and soft as a perfect cinnamon roll?

[mme_hardy]

My very. first. thought. was that somebody should run a Stith-Thomas fic challenge. Or a bingo card.

[executrix]

Researchers could probably tackle it from the other direction--i.e., merge and purge a bunch of bingo cards and then group and number the tropes.

N15 Undercover as a Couple
N15.1 In a gay bar
N15.2 In an S&M club
N15.3 Ex sees them

[dsrtao]

Perhaps you are already aware of Seanan McGuire's novels Indexing and Indexing:Reflections, which are concerned with the federal agency that refers to certain supernatural incidents according to their Aarne-Thompson index number.

If not, I suspect you would enjoy them.

[mme_hardy]

No, I wasn't! Thank you.

[recessional]

Okay but now I want story a wife who is literally red. And a wife who is literally white. And a wife who is literally black. Like, not bad racial descriptions: like colours of paint.

They can live with a shy non-binary human spouse who has anxiety and just wants to be left alone to make their music boxes and Deal With Shit.

*considers where to put this in her Weird is Weird type 'verses*

[nineweaving]

Wheee!

Thank you so very much!

Nine

[sabotabby]

Hah, I was introduced to that last winter. It's something else.

[larryhammer]

Sweeeeeeeet.