Hi everyone, I’m French, I’m 46, I’m a She and I’ve been on tumblr since August 2012 As much as I'd like to, I cannot live solely in my head (so I'm taking worlds with me)
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.
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Intelligent alien species based on bugs but specifically those moths that don’t have mouths and only live for a week after they pupate. This species’ whole conscious life is actually in the larval phase; larvae are the ones considered people, larvae are the ones with conscious and complex brains who build society, and each instar of the larva is treated as a different phase of life. Larvae become emotionally and socially and cognitively mature without ever becoming sexually mature. When they pupate, they metamorphose into something different and strange and close to mindless, with no mouth and no digestive system, whose only instincts are to mate and then quickly die. Metamorphosis is treated, functionally, like a person’s death, and the imago phase is a kind of proto-afterlife of majestic flight and the continuation of the species. Birth and death inextricably intertwined. Sex is not something people do during their lives, it’s a thing that is done as an imago after you’ve passed on from your life but before you return to the soil in death. Resultant eggs are collected by family members to raise. I think this would be fun.
BY BEING A DISGUSTING TRAITOR WHO LETS HIS CONVICTS ESCAPE, AND INSTEAD OF SUBMITTING TO EXECUTION LIKE A GOOD QIN DYNASTY CITIZEN, HE DECIDES TO FREE THE REST, AND LEAD THEM IN A REBELLION AGAINST THE STATE!!!!
this is a call out post for @emperor-gaozu-of-han!!! liu bang is nothing but a traitorous PEASANT who is totally UNQUALIFIED for the role of EMPEROR. he might have hoodwinked the uneducated masses with his tax breaks, exemptions of corvée labour, making peace with the xiongnu, and founding China's first gold age ect ect but I expect my LOYAL MINISTERS to know better!
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If I were an evil emperor in a fantasy world, I would have a an enormous aviary full of exotic birds that are exceptionally well cared for. They would be from a distant enough land that there would be very few people in my kingdom that knew much about them, they would be a friendly but not overly territorial species, and moderately intelligent. Like puffins. They would not, crucially, be able to imitate sounds and 'speak', but they would be very trainable and curious. Occasionally importing new birds for my aviary would be the Big Frivolous Indulgence that my political enemies make fun of.
I will also have a sorceror in my employ. When a hero or a renegade or a political rival is in a situation where I can safely kill them, they will instead be turned into a bird and added to my aviary. I would not brag about this; it would be a complete secret, known only to me and my sorceror. In situations where I capture multiple people working together, only one would go in the aviary;the others can be imprisoned or killed or whatever. If they escape and I reacquire them later, another one can go in the aviary. The point here is that nobody going in the aviary can safely assume that another bird in there is their teammate.
Because I would be trickling real birds in there, too. And I would train some of them to do 'intelligent' things like tap out prime numbers or scratch shapes into the dirt with their beaks. I would train some of them to pick at the locks and bars as if they were trying to escape. I would not train them all the same way, or train many of them at all.
Sometimes, a new bird goes into the aviary -- fellow revolutionary? Or just a bird? Is it trying to communicate to you that it's human, or just being friendly and imitating you because that's what smart friendly birds do? People would develop opinions and theories over time. They'd amass in a group of the smartest ones, pretty sure that they're closest four or five friends are humans, are using their invented little language of wing-flaps and trills with a human mind behind it... but can they ever really be sure?
Most people, when going into the aviary, would assume that all of the birds are captured enemies. So why are some of them hard to have ongoing communication with, to learn about, to plan with? Are these the natural communication barriers of someone in a bird body, or does being a bird make them stupider over time? Will that happen to them also?
Sometimes, if I capture a pair, I'll imprison them separately, then turn one into a bird and put them in the aviary at the same time as a real bird that's trained to have a couple of their partner's mannerisms.
When I interact with the birds, even in private, I won't secretly mock them or make clever veiled references to their past or act at all like I remember that they were once human. They are my birds, that I imported at great expense. And I've brought a treat for them; some fresh fruit, and another friend to share it with! A new bird!
#on tumblr thereso many 'if i were evil' ideas that aren't evil. and then there's this guy. 10/10 villainy. would scar an entire generation.#full villain approval
Look, Evil Emperor is a high bar. Empires are pretty evil by default so if you want to earn the title of Evil Emperor instead of Normal Emperor then you've really gotta put the work in. You can't just do normal greed and oppression and slavery and outright theft and then blame your victims for it, every empire does that, even the ones that pretend they aren't by calling the slavery and theft by some different name. If you wanna be an Evil Emperor then you have to get creative.
If I were an evil empress then I would execute people via an esoteric mind blast power where I'd lead them into a room and burn away their personalities and memories until they were an empty vessel and then send them home to their families, newly innocent and pardoned, where they'd have to be taught who they were and how to live from the ground up like a baby. (Or abandoned, I suppose, depending on the family.) Except I wouldn't actually have any such powers. I'd have a shapeshifting power that I'd use to turn my enemies into a piece of furniture and turn that piece of furniture into them, then send home a polymorphed candlestick or whatever for their family to dote on while my enemy goes on the table to hold candles for the rest of their 'life'.
And then some generations later and a few thousand miles to the east a country is led by a weak and feeble king, and one of the descendants of the birds has turned into... this:
Someone asked me a while ago if I still had a photo of the worst sink I had ever seen while apartment hunting in Los Angeles. I assumed I deleted it so I didn't answer the ask and now it's gone, but as it turns out, yes, I do still have a photo of it.
impressive! it's ugly, impractical, gets water everywhere, makes too much noise, and the quote with shit kerning says you don't think music is even real
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Hero (usually yet another son of Zeus that Dear Old Dad fathered and forgot upon a mortal) - is generally useless. May or may not be clueless, may or may not have heart in right place, but will definitely get eaten by first villain/monster they encounter.
Enter Athena to teach them which end of the sword is the stabby bit, how to get prime arms and equipment, and if you can’t fight your way out, being sneaky and tricking your way out works just fine too (looking at you, Odysseus).
Aphrodite is more “So you can’t get a girlfriend/boyfriend and even horses and dogs run away when you try to be friends? Never mind, kid, I’ll make it so that one look at your new improved swoonsomeness and everyone within a ten-mile radius will fall madly in love with you and do whatever you ask them (any subsequent dead family members, wars, or falling out of love and trying to stabbity-stab you not my responsibility)”.
(Problem with Sanzang is that when the demons weren’t trying to eat him, they - and mortals - were trying to marry him, which is a bit awkward when you’re a celibate monk on a pilgrimage to save humanity and can’t really take time out to settle down with a family).
Okay, a lot of these have actually a pretty good feel to them, like, to say out loud as words.
Honestly though, this is an absolutely brilliant idea for a minor "this world is different from our own" touch if you're writing some sort of fantasy or especially an alternate history story.
Heck, I'm pretty sure I've seen "sarcophage" as part of an SCP, if I'm not mistaken.
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in which murderbot is a very normal terracotta soldier and ART the dragon spirit of a chinese junk who dwells in the ship's keel. they meet in the ming dynasty perhaps, when ppl are sailing places extra willy-nilly.
*Nüwa is the mother goddess in chinese mythology, known for creating humanity from yellow clay and repairing the sky.
thank you @mutualrapport for hosting the event! original prompt below.
[drawn for the prompt: an AU of ART and MB's first meeting and conversation - e.g. another look at their first meeting from a fantasy, historical, or (non-canon) sci-fi lens! Any perspective is fine. The only constraint is that it cannot be set in the canon universe. Any visibly non-canon AU- fantasy, human, historical, etc. - anything goes!]
I saw this and IMMEDIATELY tossed it into my international chat like a live grenade and it has caused much mayhem, so thank you. Results so far:
Mixed results from the Americans because this shit is legal in only 30 states and almost impossible to get past a zoning committee so while they exist, they're extremely localized. Lots of yelling at Ohio.
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Saskatchewan: "What's insane to me is that you have these with the population density you have. What am I going to hit in Turtleford?"
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Bahia and Sao Paulo: "I'm stunned we don't have these tbh."
Prague: "We have these in my city, but only for boats."
Manaus: "My uncle has one of these! He also has a window on the other side so you can drive your boat up too :)"
(much Brazilian and Czech high-fiving)
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Brisbane: "There's an astonishing level of trust being displayed that people aren't just going to open a beer immediately"
Tallahassee: "Oh no, there is 100% cop camped like half a mile down the road to arrest people who didn't stow the booze correctly."
Brisbane: "Oh it's an invasive policing operation! Yeah, that's the USA."
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Newcastle: "No, this looks correct for the country that has bears breaking into your house". (The Australians and Africans have a bit where every time someone mentions their wildlife, they mass @me (who had a bear in my house) and the guy from Singapore whose mom adopted a wild water monitor and says it's her favorite son now)
The aforementioned Singaporean: "How am I exposed to an onslaught of your media and culture at all times and you STILL find new ways to horrify me?"
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Vatican City: "You can ride your bike through the brewery to get beer but the abbot in charge doesn't like it"
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Jakarta: "We don't have this because we're Muslim but we do have drive-thru Marijuana"
Kyoto: "We don't have these because we have public transportation. You can buy liquor from vending machines at the stations though."
Munich: "We don't have these because we are disciplined enough to pack our beer with us if we are going somewhere that drinking is acceptable, or there will be beer at that location when we arrive."
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India: "Why have drive-thru Liquor, when you can have liquor delivered to your vehicle? GET ON OUR LEVEL" (no less than nine different images from across the country of people in trucks that have been specifically modified to operate the business of driving up to other vehicles in traffic and selling them liquor)
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Pudasjävi: "...I should open one of these."
Everyone: "NO!!!"
(he has decided against this because "half the year people only use snowmobiles, so I'd have to shovel snow INTO the drive all winter and that's too much work")
How does the international chat feel about the ones that are fast food-style drive thrus that serve mixed drinks, instead of being a modified liquor store?
