#reverse cinderella

[onscreenkisses]

THE RESIDENT, 3x16 - “Reverse Cinderella”

[allthesepurplelights]

Now your turn.

-Way ahead of you.

That’s just cheating.

[grifalinas]

Prince: I’ll only marry you if you capture this minor deity for me

Protagonist sr: That sounds like a reasonable request

[kikikato]

Knight Ladybug for my reverse Cinderella AU! The old scroll effect is actually just because of my cellphone's camera, not me 😂

[grifalinas]

I almost forgot, I roughed up a design for my reverse Cinderella prince

Not the official design, I’ll probably play around with it, but an idea anyway

[grifalinas]

So here’s how the story goes: in a little kingdom of littler consequence, a wealthy and powerful young man is visited by an old, decrepit beggar and his raccoon husband. The beggar asks the young man for shelter from the coming storm, and the wealthy man not only grants it to him, he welcomes the beggar and his raccoon into his home as honored guests. He places them beside him at his table, gives up his own place by the fire, and has his most comfortable guest room prepared for them

Well, we all know how this story ends, right? The beggar, to the surprise of no one, is in fact a powerful old fae, and he is so moved by the wealthy man’s kindness and hospitality that he resolves to grant him great favor in return.

Now, at the time, there is in this kingdom also a princess, who has resolved that she will marry only the person who brings her the golden goose who brings back summer to the kingdom every year. Why she wanted it was anyone’s guess, but one can only assume she was getting tired of suitors and sent them on a wild goose chase- oh, wait, wild goose chase. Little bit on the nose, don’t you think?

What? Oh, right. We all know how this story ends too- the wealthy man succeeds with the help of the old beggar and his raccoon husband, and marries the princess and eventually becomes king. In time, the princess gives birth to a son, a beautiful baby boy. The king, who has by this point grown quite close to the old beggar, names the old man as the prince’s godfather and gives him a home in the castle.

And the old man is so moved by the king’s kindness- not just to the old beggar but to his subjects as well- that the kingdom enters into a golden age under his rule.

And that’s where the story gets interesting.

[grifalinas]

Reverse Cinderella thing that pleases me: the six paragraph prologue that alludes to protagonist’s dad capturing a minor deity to woo the prince that is never touched on again then three paragraphs later it’s like “and then the story got interesting” like I’m sorry can you go back to the minor deity capturing because I thought that sounded pretty interesting in fact

[grifalinas]

Okay so having consulted my shower head and looked deep into my heart and considered some practicalities, I’ve decided I’m just going to make protagonist’s parents be gay anyway because, well. Because. I have reasons beyond “I’m gay and I want to” but let’s face it, that is a major factor.

So I had two issues regarding the hetting up of the first generation other than aforementioned I’m gay:

1. If I made them both dudes, that would mean one but not the other would have to be protagonist’s biological parent. Not a problem for me normally, but I have specific ideas that I want to play with.

2. If I make the royal parent a woman and het the story up, the stepparent becomes a stepfather, and I have specific characterization choices for the stepparent that I feel will come across tonally differently based on the gender of the character in question.

So obviously with the first issue the question becomes, if I make them both dudes, how do I approach the childbearing angle? Obviously surrogacy is a thing, and I had the brief thought that this could be used to create the angle of challenging protagonist’s claim to the throne- if he’s the non-royal parent’s biological child, that makes him non-royal himself, and with his biological parent no longer on the throne, his claim is lost. But that’s dumb because obviously they’d just use the royal parent as surrogate, problem solved.

And then I remembered that they literally have the friendship of a very powerful and very old fae who thinks this guy is the bee’s knees and will do pretty much anything to make him happy because it’s fun, and wished for children are a staple trope of fairy tales. There’s literally no reason not to have the dads just wish really hard for a baby and have Hobo Joe be like “here you go, this one’s on the house” and whoops, I think protagonist might actually be Snow White instead of Cinderella.

Anyway the dads are gay now sorry I don’t make the rules.

As for the stepparent, the death of the first parent leads the king to remarry, to a lady this time because bi people exist, and they have children and the new queen wants to put her children on the throne, not the children of this other guy. The king dies, and protagonist is not yet old enough to rule (he is in fact quite young), so the queen rules in his stead until he’s old enough.

The angle I wanted to go for with the stepmother, and the reason I feel it works better with a female character, is a “mother loves you” nurturing type abuser. This is purely for a friend of mine, who finds nurturing and wholesome characters more unsettling than outright cruel characters, and after all the times we’ve talked about it I really want to try my hand at that brand of horror.

The queen keeps protagonist isolated, convinces him that she means him the best and is taking very good care of him (and she knows what’s best for him more than he does, and he shouldn’t go out, he’s very frail, isn’t he?, and honestly, he’s looking a little pale, does he have a fever?, better sit by the fire and warm up, here’s a soft blanket for you, I’ll have you sent some soup, don’t fret yourself over such things as the state of the kingdom, mummy will take care of it), so it’s hard for him to untangle himself from that brand of compliance but fortunately he has this raccoon that lives in his room and teaches him all sorts of fun things and lets him do things and learn what he’s capable of.

Back to my first point, I like the idea of a prince demanding a mythological goose as his groom-price because that means that he’s the one being pursued and is sick of it, and also that either his suitors aren’t limited to just princesses, or princesses have the same expectations of badassery as princes. Or both. I love it.