As I work on my comic obligations I like to reward myself so for this week every hour I drew I got to take a break and draw a panel of this. It’s a bit out of context but I love drawing these characters!
A doodle from my brother when he was a kid but also the comic he drew from.
So I had a thing where every summer I was going to take a break and do a comic that wasn't Faeries Bible back in the day. I had decided on a thing where I would contextualize it as these Fairy tale fanfictions starring the Faeries Bible cast in the character roles (As well as other OCs as filler)
The first up was Kichi's version of The Little Mermaid called The Little FishFolk.
(Lily was going to have Beauty and the Beast, Hoshi Alice in Wonderland, and Hiku was initially going to be Puss in Boots but I thought that was too on the nose and figured I'd rethink that when I got there)
In The Little Fishfolk the mermaid AU version of Kichi want's to own realestate and is told no by her adopted father the Sea King who already has many NONadopted and OLDERadopted children in need of realestate. He suggests that if she wants an inheritance then she might as well Marry one of his actual kids to get it and she boogies out of there in disgust to vent to her friend Hoshi the Mer-Anglerfish. They are interrupted by a statue of Prince Trinidad falling into the sea on top of them.
Kichi is enamored by the statue and eventually is lead to the surface where a storm is brewing and a ship is already taken down the prince's ship. Kichi thinks it would be fun to drown the survivors but when she sees the prince she thinks it'd be a waste with him being unconcious and all and takes him to shore to wait for him to wake up so she can drag him back to the sea and drown him while awake.
On shore Kichi is beat off of him by another woman and the Prince lives to see another day, but Kichi is not having that and decides to find Lily the Sea Witch to get a potion that will turn her human so she can go up on land and drag the Prince to his watery death because fuck you that's why. Kichi trades her voice and receives the potion, but it's the wrong one and when she is turned human she also is gender bent into a man who's mertraits become visible in the water so she has to not get caught.
Now Kichi has to try and kill the prince, the prince who is in love with his mysterious savior on the beach, while this...guy (kichi) is seemingly coming onto him and he is totally not having gay/bi panic totally. Eventually Kichi manages to lure him to a cliffside and shoves him into the water with her, and she returns to her mer form (Still male tho) and is incapable of drowning him because Sea Witch Lily mistook Kichi's intent to go on land for love and gave her a potion that when she forces him to drown will turn him into a mermaid so they can be together forever.
By this point the Prince realizes this mer-guy is his savior and becomes the pursuer in the pepe le pew relationship while Kichi is actively avoiding him, making an ending where nobody is happy lol!
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This comic ended up being the basis for a comic called Faeredoux: The Little Mermaid that I was in the concept phases of between 2015 and 2020 and recounting the events of The Little Fish Folk I am actually amazed that almost everything that comic was supposed to include made it into Faeredoux TLM aside from maybe the gender bending.
Faeredoux TLM was more of a romance Drama than a comedy but the skeleton made almost all in there!:
Tidal is a mermaid adopted by the mer King and Queen. While venting about a forced Marriage between her and her not-brother Ruga she encounters the statue of the prince with her mer angler friend. Surfacing, she witnesses a ship sinking and begins to check the sailors only to find them already dead, as she was looking for their souls which she thinks is a physical thing that leaves humans when they die and also the key to getting into a place called "heaven" that Mers don't go to because they don't have souls.
By chance she finds the Prince, Amalbert, aboard the ship alive, but unconscious, and pulls him back to shore to wait for him to wake up so she can personally drown him in belief that such a beautiful man would also have a beautiful soul that could surely get her into heaven, and she intends to catch it as soon as it leaves his body.
Unfortunately for Tidal a passing by woman named Princess Leona basically beats her back into the sea with a stick and saves the prince and not willing to lose Tidal blackmails her adoptive mother (who is actually a sea witch) into turning her human so she can go up on land and kill the prince. The witch is touched, misunderstanding that she fell in love with the prince, and acquiesces, but takes her voice as payment so if she ever came back to the sea she could never speak of her blackmail.
After getting on land in spite of legs being painful, Tidal is found by the Prince and brought back to the palace as he is smitten by her, recognizing that she is the one who saved him even if everyone else says that no, their guest Princess Leona saved him. This is lucky for Tidal. Unluckily though Prince Amalbert's best friend, Frans Ciscor is NOT stupid and pulls a
So as the story goes on Tidal tries to kill Amalbert, while Frans tries to stop her in an almost Looney Tunes fashion, and the two end up having an enemies to lovers situationship.
The story would eventually end with FRANS going over a cliff side and Tidal jumping off to save him. The two would be washed out to sea, waking up below the surface as the spell that turned Tidal into a human now reversed and turned Frans into a Mer, with a sad ending for Amalbert as he just saw his best friend and the girl he was in love with fall to their presumed deaths into the ocean. Amalbert would go on to be a dueteragonist in a sequel based on the Nightingale.