Fandom nonsense (affectionate). I'm Tal and I haven't been a girl or on stage since 2018 but I don't want to break a decade's worth of links on this blog so I'm here forever. She/They; old enough to remember the 1900s; stop disclosing all your personal details online kids. Askbox is open; I love chatting headcanons and theories. The fandoms are too many to count, but they include: MXTX novels, Black Butler, BNHA, Good Omens, TAZ, CritRole, Voltron, BSD, Tolkien, Witcher, Danny Phantom. Shakespeare yelling hours occur unprompted and without warning. If you want to check out my writing, links are below and I love you forever. Empty blogs get reported as spam & blocked! MuseofWriting on AO3
If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that for a number of years now I've spent every May soliciting for prompts and writing a bunch of mermaid fic. This year I'm doing something a little different.
A couple years ago, I had the questionable idea to do this alphanumeric bingo where I try to hit a mermay fic for a fandom from every number 0-9 and every letter A-Z. Thus began one of the more absurd silly little challenges I have ever created for myself. (Finding media that starts with numerals in particular has been a wild journey.) It's taken two years of prep—and make no mistake that I am still writing a fair number of these as I'm posting them. This project will probably not manage to be daily posting for the whole time. I fully expect it to take me most of June, if not a chunk of July as well, to get everything up, especially as I'll be busy opening a show in the middle of that. But! I'm determined it's happening this year and at the latest will be done by the end of summer.
I'm not accepting prompts this year, I'm afraid, as I want to prioritize the bingo (but keep your ideas for 2027, they'll be back!). But I hope you'll check out some of the weird little corners that I've ventured into and enjoy the fics that I am posting! I won't be promo-ing each fic individually—lord knows those posts don't get notes even when I'm posting for fandoms that I'm in regularly and that people presumably actively follow me for—but you can check out the whole list here! And one or two of the fics that I'm particularly proud of may get their own posts.
Apologies to any of you who are user subscribed to me on AO3 for the avalanche of emails about fics from fandoms you may or may not have even heard of XD
A Father's Heart: A Beauty and the Beast Retelling
For the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge
Let me tell you, I sure confused that Beast when I returned. Have you ever seen a cat pounce on its own tail? That was the look of confusion the Beast had when he saw me in his palace. Only this cat was enormous—standing seven feet tall on his hind legs—black as soot, with claws this long, and a mouth full of teeth like butcher knives.
"Where is your daughter?" he asked me. Yes, that's what he sounded like—all deep and raspy, like he was growling and purring beneath his words.
"At home," I said.
"You did not bring her?"
“You told me,” I told him, "that I could return to be devoured or send her to take my place. I returned.”
"She did not wish to save you?"
“I never told her. Do you think I could lay that kind of burden upon my own daughter? What sort of father do you take me for?”
He had taken me for a cowardly one, I guess, because it took me a long time to convince him that my daughters were all safely at home, and I didn't plan to fetch any of them. He didn't seem to know what to do with me after that. He wasn't as bloodthirsty as I'd have expected someone with that many teeth to be.
"You will be my guest," he said at last—and he didn't seem too glad about saying it. No doubt he'd have preferred a pretty young girl as a houseguest to a weathered old sailor. But he gave me run of the place—I could help myself to anything, go anywhere I pleased. I didn't understand it. He'd been ready to kill me for a rose, and now he was giving me everything in the house?
I wasn't about to complain, though, so I set about to enjoy the place. The Beast encouraged me to enjoy the luxuries of the palace, but I've always been a working man—I didn't fancy living the life of an idle aristocrat. Before the week was out, I was working in the gardens—the place was overgrown like you wouldn't believe. When I wanted a rest, I'd explore the castle, and boy, was there plenty to see. He had rooms upon rooms of treasures—paintings, silks, wines, musical instruments, even an entire room full of exotic birds! I'd made my living selling such things, and my head swam at the sight of it—a tenth of it would have been worth more than all the riches I could have transported in ten lifetimes.
I didn't make my fortune by having dull wits, and I didn't lose it for lack of courage, so it wasn't long before I began to piece together the truth of this place and confronted the Beast with it.
"How long have you been cursed, your highness?" I asked him one evening at supper.
That great big cat was so shocked he knocked a wine bottle off the table. "Who says I am cursed?"
"Blazes, man, I'm not blind! This palace is worth more than most of the kingdoms of the world put together. If there was a king out there this rich, you can bet every merchant in the world would know of him. He'd have destroyed the world's economy. Fairy magic's the only way you get a horde like this, but you, sir, are no fairy."
Now the Beast seemed intrigued. "How do you know that?"
"A fairy would never have let me live—if he promised to kill me, he'd have killed me. No mercy among their kind. Only a human could have changed his mind like that—for which I'm very grateful, by the way."
"You're welcome," he said, seeming dazed.
I went on, "You're definitely more than a dumb beast; you walk and talk and dress like a man, so it stands to reason you were a man once—that furry coat of yours is just some fairy shell. Same way all these riches are probably just dirt and ashes once you take away the magic. Which means you must have run afoul of a fairy sometime in your past, who decided to curse you with an animal body and then trap you in a palace full of false riches."
I looked at the furnishings, the food, the Beast's clothes—everything spoke of royalty. "Fairies always meddle with royals, so you must have been a prince. The seventh son of the king of Gher went missing just before I went on my last voyage, so I'd wager that he is you. Am I right?"
The Beast goggled. "I…can't say."
"Which means I'm right. No fairy worth his salt would let you say you were cursed. Which means all I have to do is figure out how to break it. Those fairies always give you a way out—the more improbable the better."
I came around to his side of the table so I could walk around him and examine him from all angles. "You were disappointed when I came—you wanted one of my daughters, not me. When I did come, you didn't seem too keen on killling me—which makes me think it was an empty threat, trying to convince me to send my daughter instead. Which means she must be the way to break the curse. What can she do that I can't? Easy—true love. No fairy would think a girl could love a hulking monster like you, so that would be their impossible way to break the curse. You needed, what—true love? Marriage?"
"I can't say," the Beast said, but I knew by his face that I'd hit upon the right answer.
"That makes things simple. You let me out once before. Let me go home again and fetch one of my girls, tell her there's a prince waiting for her, and bring her back to join you in wedded bliss."
He seemed genuinely horrified by that. "I…can't say."
"Oh, of course. It won't count if she knows you're a prince. Well, I'll leave that part out. Tell her that the Beast who spared my life is in need of more company. With a bit of time and a bit of encouragement from her old dad, we'll have you back in human form by Christmas."
He thought it was worth a try, and something he could arrange with the conditions of his curse. So I went home to my children, convinced my sons not to follow me to slay the Beast, and made the castle sound intriguing enough that all three of my girls agreed to join me. I thought that maybe Hope would be the one to break the curse—she's always been the boldest of my girls—but it turned out that my quiet, gentle Beauty brought out the soft side of the Beast. It was the cutest thing you ever saw, the way they'd sit together reading in the rose gardens, that great big cat as shy as a schoolboy with her.
It wasn't three weeks before the Beast worked up the courage to propose—and my Beauty accepted without hesitation. Then there was blinding light and earthquakes, and when the dust cleared, the palace was gone. We were standing in a clearing in the woods—and a black-haired prince stood where the black-haired Beast had once been.
He's an excellent boy—I'll be proud to call him a son. He doesn't mind at all that his bride's the daughter of a failed merchant or that she once worked on a farm. We'll all be moving to his palace across the sea to live as honored members of the family.
Which is why we're moving out on such short notice—his highness doesn't want to be away from his kingdom any longer than he has to. I'm sure you'll find someone else to take the old place off your hands.
No, you don't have to believe me, but it's much better if you do. You'll look much less like a fool once it comes out that it's all true.
Is it a big deal if a radio announcer/TV host/guest thereof says swear words?
American continents (not US) - Yes, it will/may get bleeped/cut out
American continents (not US) - No, they may apologise but it won't be bleeped/cu
Europe - Yes, it will/may get bleeped/cut out
Europe - No, they may apologise but it won't be bleeped/cut
Afria - Yes, it will/may get bleeped/cut out
Africa - No, they may apologise but it won't be bleeped/cut
Asia - Yes, it will/may get bleeped/cut out
Asia - No, they may apologise but it won't be bleeped/cut
Oceania - Yes, it will/may get bleeped/cut out
Oceania - No, they may apologise but it won't be bleeped/cut
Not applicable in my language.
I'm in the US where swear words will be bleeped/cut
Remaining time: 2 days 19 hours
Sorry there's not much room for nuance, I wanted to divide this by continent so that limited the options. Please feel free to expand on your response in the tags!
“The ritual, the containment field of energy, suddenly drops. And all you hear, between the two of you as the shadow encases Nott, is this terrible laugh.
You’ve sensed this before, things like this. But lying deep in the heart of Nott’s form is a curse that still holds her. Something that still grips her essence, from whatever creature laid this fate upon her.” - Matt Mercer (ep 91, stone to clay)
Discworld book where the auditors hear about the phrase "it's not over till the fat lady sings" and hire someone to kidnap all the fat ladies in the world to find the One who will end the world when she sings.
Lady Sybil Vimes is one of the ladies, so Sam Vimes is on the warpath until he can find her, while the watch desperately try to keep all infrastructure from falling apart without all the fat ladies who keep it together on a daily basis
It ends when Sybil leads a hoard of fat ladies into battle, which ends up being so glorious an unrelated time traveler who witnesses it goes back to his native time starts the myth of the Valkyries
If you describe a story as a "kid fic", what is your intended meaning?
Characters caring for/parenting a child (canon OR fanon)
Characters caring for/parenting a child (fanon specific)
Kids are a major presence/focus
Adult character(s) become kids/are de-aged through magic or whatev
Alternate Universe where the characters are kids/much younger
Set in the past when the characters were children
Multiple of the above
ALL of the above
Something else entirely
i'm just here for the ride
Remaining time: 1 day 4 hours
i've often been checking out a fanfic exchange or a similar event, see "kid fic" listed in the requests or 'DNW'. And it's not a major Problem since these aren't my Go Tos and i sure wouldn't write any of them if I wasn't sure... But i do Wonder if there have been some unfortunate mix ups in the past.
The primary version of “kid fic” as I understand it is “canon characters ARE children”—whether magically de-aged or simply taking place while they were children.
I personally would not call “characters taking care of canon children” kidfic, and would only go “I mean, I guess” at calling “characters take care of fanon children” kidfic.
imo "kidfic" is specifically making a character into a kid either through magic, being set in the past, an AU, etc so a little different from the above since it's more expansive to include other types of kidfic tropes
"there's just kids in the fic" doesn't make any sense to me because that's just??? that's just a kid there? it would be more efficient to name specific characters from canon you don't want to see instead of having the writer guess. However I think it's safe to assume that they probably don't want to read that either on a DNW list without a clarification by including every possible definition of kidfic by default. Like if I say "no roadtrips" I'm not going to be secretly hoping for a specific type of roadtrip I didn't say was okay
(as for system collapse I think it's definitely a babysitter AU or babysitter!mb or something)
I have definitely seen kidfic used to refer to "we have these characters a child to look after" much more than I have for deaging. It wouldn't even occur to me that was an alternate usage. I suspect it means different things in different fandoms.
