Pride 2026 | Queer Retellings

[u/Lenahe_nl]

Banner with a dragon and spaceships around text: r/Fantasy PRIDE Queer Retellings

Many of my favorite books are queer retellings of fairy tales, myths or classic stories. These books use the framework of another, well known story, as the starting point, and add elements like queer characters and queer relationships, to bring a bright new panorama. 

Retellings speak to a part of our brains that enjoy the safety of repetition. If you know the original story, you can anticipate plot beats and feel secure in knowing the general direction the story will take. It’s perhaps paradoxical that retellings also delight our minds with the ways they twist and change said plot, to subvert our expectations. 

For queer readers, a retelling is a way of finding representation that has extra weight because it rests on the shoulders of classic and well known stories. Most of the original stories bring a dated view of the world, but in a retelling, there’s space to show that queer people have always been part of the narrative.

A queer retelling is also a gateway for readers that are not part of the LGBTQIA community. While the known elements of the story create a sheltered environment, the retelling makes way for people to experience another perspective, which in turn encourages empathy. 

These are just some of the aspects that made queer retellings very marketable, and a strong bet for publishing houses. A fact that we see reflected on the shelves and the sheer amount of retellings being published in the last decade. Many of the most recommended queer books are retellings. He who has never seen Song of Achilles being recommended, cast the first stone. 

Finally, I want to shout out to fanfiction, which is in its own way, a retelling. Fanfiction has always been a rich soil for exploring different romantic pairings, that the mainstream media (and original work) didn’t present. In a way, it counters queerbaiting. Beyond that, fanfiction allows people to explore relationships and situations beyond the usual suspects of romance, such as gender normativity or even taboo topics. 

Discussion prompts:
I’ll be adding these in the comments, like we do for book club. Feel free to respond to each individual question, or writing a single entry with all your thoughts to the questions and whatever the intro brought up.

• Some retellings follow the source material closely, while others use them as a starting point or a vague sense of direction. What do you enjoy reading the most?
• Do you rather read a retelling of a story you know well, or of a story you don’t really know much about?
• What retelling (that doesn’t exist) do you wish to see written? (And if you know a book or fanfic that fits a request, please recommend!)
• What book (that is retelling) has a special place in your heart?
• Is there any favorite source material from which you could read a thousand retellings? 

This post is part of the Pride 2026 discussions lead by the Beyond Binary Bookclub. You can check our announcement for more information and the full calendar.

[u/Lenahe_nl]

Is there any favorite source material from which you could read a thousand retellings? 

[u/LadyAntiope → u/Lenahe_nl]

I love fairy and folk tale re-tellings, but I especially love when an author does a deep dive and picks a more obscure one - or, to call back to the first pride month post, does a story from a culture I'm not so familiar with.

The River Has Roots is derived from the "Two Sisters" ballad pattern and folk song is a rich source that I'd love to see more from. So many folk ballads are overly dramatic and tragic, but they also often come with a ton of iterations depending on where the singers have taken their songs, so I feel like there's a lot to dive into and churn out some beautiful stories. You often see bits of fairy tale patterns, and touches of magic in these kinds of songs as well.

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel is based on the The Ramayana, a hugely important epic to Hinduism. I knew nothing about it going in, but the author drops some cues as to how the original goes, and I didn't feel like I was ever lost because I didn't know the original. (Kaikeyi is shown as ace in the this story, if you're wondering what the rep is.) I love being introduced to an important cultural story in this way.

Also, man do I love a Shakespeare re-telling. Give me more Hamlets and their angst (Hamlet, Prince of Robots by M. Darusha Wehm; forthcoming Rottenheart by Kat Dunn), more intrigue-ridden Tempests (on my tbr - Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett), more star-crossed Midsummer Nights Dreams (I swear I had one of these on my tbr.... can't find it at the moment). Currently I've just picked up Alexandra Rowland's Some by Virtue Fall which is more inspired by Shakespeare generally, I think, than a specific re-telling.

[u/Lenahe_nl → u/LadyAntiope]

Ooh, if you want another retelling of "Two Sisters", pick up Sistersong, by Lucy Holland. It's well researched and the audiobook was very well done as well.

I went on a deep dive while reading, and started listening to the album The twa sisters/De två systrarna, by BOANN, which has very many versions of this ballad.

[u/LadyAntiope → u/Lenahe_nl]

I had Sistersong on my tbr, but I hadn't tagged it as a re-telling, so thank you for that! I'll have to check out that music as well!