#Also with the casting they are doing Merrick would literally kill me on the spot whoever they chose

[linipikk]

okay im way too deep enjoying iwtv secondhandly in twitter (because i lost all control over my life and that's the best i can do given current circumstances)

But, to all my dearies who are mad and shocked and just really enjoying the reloaded Claudia tragedy, I hope we get to meet Merrick 🫶

I just really can't with Louis, but Claudia actively haunting the narrative is chef'skiss, having in mind that y'all give that role to Lestat and that would summarise Claudia's entire life.

[lazaefair]

Has anyone done the Disney Princess AU yet

Part 1 - written by me, @poemsingreenink, and @iwritesometimes

poemsingreenink: Like, if anyone has big, soft innocent eyes it's Marwan who I swear to god looks near happy tears in most intense scenes. I at one point during Aladdin in theaters thought "You know Jafar's maybe just not had a great life. He's really having a day here." BECAUSE OF HIS BIG SOFT EYES.

lazaefair: LUCA MARINELLI HIMSELF SAID IT

sarah: HOWWWWW DID HE EVEN GET CAST AS JAFAR LIKE THOSE ARE DISNEY PRINCESS EYES

lazaefair: I...I need somone to draw Joe in a Disney Princess dress

sarah: but WHICH PRINCESS i feel like belle's off the shoulder gold ballgown has promise

lazaefair: Ariel’s pink gown would really drive the point home, though Although you’re right, Belle is a literate, dreamy brunette who loves poetry, so she’s closer as an archetype

sarah: i'll be honest: i was mostly thinking of getting his shoulders nude

lazaefair: Nicky is Ariel. Big blue eyes, otherworldly, utterly uncivilized.

sarah: YES

So imagine: Prince Yusuf, who had a giant statue of himself gifted to him on his birthday, and who hates it because his best friend (and immortal general of the army) Andromache is NEVER GOING TO LET HIM LIVE IT DOWN.

Also imagine: feral merman siren Nicolò who bites off fishheads and communicates through weird clicking noises, when he’s not singing men to their deaths. He’s not one of those useless pretty koi mermaids, no. He’s a motherfucking creature of the deep. Lamp eyes that are used to distract fish prey. Claws and pale fins and an intense stare and fangs.

Now imagine: Prince Yusuf going overboard in the storm that hits his royal yacht. Struggling, swept away, half-drowned and losing hope fast when an unearthly song fills the air, low and sweet and compelling. He’s swimming towards the singing before he realizes it, delirious, until something closes around his ankle and drags him under. The thing under the water kills him quickly.

And then kills him again, when it doesn’t take. After the third killing, Nicolò’s on his way to being well and truly mystified (“Okay, don't panic. They all die eventually, maybe...maybe I’ll just need to do it again?”) and gives up after the fourth and fifth killing. He drags his (attempted) prey to a little sheltered island he knows about, kills it one last time just to make sure, and then watches, resigned, as the flesh heals up and the lungs push water out until it’s coughing its way back to undeniable life.

“You rescued me,” is the first thing Yusuf says to him. “Your song – it is the song of my heart. My soul.”

Nicolò...has no idea what to do with this, coughs awkwardly in reply, and leaves before he can think too hard about the warmth in his chest answering to the warmth in the human’s expressive, grateful eyes.

(He doesn’t tell Yusuf the truth about their bloody first meeting until years later. It’s too goddamn embarrassing, to be perfectly honest.)

Of course he comes back within a day, almost shamefully quickly. Unable to help being fascinated by this gorgeous, well-spoken, kind and generous human who cannot die. He starts bringing things to Yusuf: at first just fish, then interesting-shaped fragments of rock and coral, and then bits of treasure he’s collected over the years, just to hear what new poetic turn of phrase Yusuf will spout on the spot when he’s given something.

“...this is my family crest on this treasure chest, Nicolò. How strange.”

“It is the chest you said your great-great-grandfather lost,” Nicolò says, the words coming out dry and halting from long years of disuse. Watching Yusuf’s hands as he traces the elaborate lines engraved on the lid, now blurred with rust and coral. 

“That’s amazing. Truly. I am at a loss for words,” Yusuf says, smiling.

“No, you aren’t,” Nicolò says, and keeps watching so he can see the moment when the smile turns into a laugh.

Another day, he brings to Yusuf what Booker had told him was called a ��dinglehopper’ and was what humans used to keep their hair in order, as they did not have the ocean to spread it out like beautiful seaweed in the waves. Yusuf takes it, mouth twitching in a way that makes Nicolò doubt the accuracy of Booker’s explanation. Yet Yusuf does not correct him, but in fact solemnly thanks him before offering the dinglehopper back and asking him to help untangle his riot of curls.

And so it goes. Days pass. Fascination becomes infatuation, turns to desire and then into love, until neither can imagine living without the other, and yet—

Eventually, Nicolò has to give Yusuf up. The prince is too noble and good to just abandon his people indefinitely. And because Nicolò loves him, he goes out and once more lures a ship in with his song, but not to dash it to pieces on jagged rocks this time. He leads them to the island. Watches from a distance as the astonished shouting begins, then back-pounding hugs and joyous celebration as Yusuf boards the ship and sails away. Watches Yusuf turn back more than once to scan the beach, clearly looking for Nicolò, but Nicolò does not follow. Instead, he watches until the ship is lost to his sight and he cannot feel the ship’s current or smell, and then he dives deep and goes to visit Merrick.

Meanwhile, Yusuf arrives back at the capital, where his other best friend, Quỳnh (immortal admiral of the navy) feels terribly guilty about the prince going overboard on his birthday. Which is why she uncharacteristically doesn’t give him shit when he comes back babbling nonsense about mermaids. Or when he spends the next few weeks moping around, writing mermaid poetry and drawing mermaid pictures.

To be fair to him, the particular mermaid he sketches over and over does look pretty striking. Otherworldly and all that. Good cheekbones. Nice pearly scales. “Fucking...giant anglerfish eyes,” Quỳnh mutters while she and Andy look over the latest pile of sketches Yusuf’s left abandoned on a library table. “Our prince has been fucking bewitched by a fucking fish.”

“Mm,” Andy agrees. 

So when Nicolò arrives at the palace one fine summer’s day – naked, his fangs smoothed away to look perfectly human, a giant emerald in one hand and a silver fork in the other – and walking, on legs, it causes a bit of an uproar.

“You still smell like the sea,” Yusuf says hoarsely into Nicolò’s neck, the two of them wrapped around each other as closely as two bodies can be.

“Oh, fuck,” Andy says, lowering her axe. Quỳnh looks more closely at the dirty naked wild man their prince is embracing as if his life depends on it. Angular face. Skin encrusted with salt. Absolutely enormous piercing blue eyes. Naked, did we mention naked.

“Oh, fuck,” Quỳnh says.

“You get them separated,” Andy says. “I’ll go...get them a bath.”

The price Nicolò paid for his new human shape:

His siren song.

His immortality.

What he gets in return:

Yusuf teaching him what a dinglehopper is actually called, and what humans actually use it for.

Yusuf teaching him how to read and write his native tongue, and a few other tongues besides.

Yusuf reading poetry to him or sketching next to him on long lazy afternoons in the gardens.

The immense pleasure of intimidating the fuck out of any remaining would-be suitors for Yusuf’s hand in marriage who are still hanging around the palace for some reason.

“I am Nicolò di Genova,” Nicolò replies to the marquis’s indignant demands – predator’s smile still frightening even without endless rows of needle-sharp teeth. “You have seven days to leave this place forever. Get your affairs in order.”

Friendship with Andy and Quỳnh.

“Holy shit. Did he just—”

“—stab the marquis with a fork, at dinner, in front of the entire court? Yep.”

“...”

“...”

“New best friend.”

“Obviously.”

Yusuf writing poetry about him and to him. Nicolò likes them all. He wouldn't know a good human poem from a bad human poem, but nothing Yusuf touches could be bad, so ergo it's good.

Sightseeing throughout the kingdom with Yusuf’s strong, gentle fingers twined around his.

Yusuf breathing blissful curses into Nicolò’s ear, exactly like he used to do on their island, as they move together on his enormous bed.

Yusuf. Yusuf. Yusuf.

(Booker is also there. He insisted on being turned human, too, and coming along to make sure Nicolò doesn’t totally fuck this up, but he’s really mainly there for the entertainment. And the booze. Andy asks him at one point about losing his immortality. He shrugs. “Look, if we die, we die,” he says, then offers Andy another pour of fine French brandy. The two of them get along famously.)

It’s all going great until one night on the beach, while they’re walking along hand-in-hand under the stars and idly discussing human and merfolk constellations. Someone approaches them, dressed splendidly and moving with arrogant grace. He is also angular, also fair-haired, also possessed of unsettling eyes. And he has Nicolò’s siren song, gently humming from the shell that adorns his neck.

“Merrick,” Nicolò hisses as Yusuf’s eyes grow glazed and blank, and he tightens his hand on Yusuf’s, afraid for the first time. “Our deal—”

“He can’t bear the idea of living forever without you, can he? And so he hasn’t proposed,” Merrick says, smiling cruelly. “You’ve missed your chance. He’s mine.” And he extends his hand out to Yusuf—

Who stirs, suddenly, and turns to Nicolò. “Limpid, or shimmering?” 

“What?”

“Shimmering,” Yusuf decides, peering into Nicolò’s eyes. “Yes. Limpid would be too pretentious, I think.”

And that’s pretty much that – we don’t actually get the plot with Merrick the Sea Witch because Yusuf only has eyes for one weird-looking white guy. Also, his one artistic failing is that he's tone deaf.

They do eventually kill Merrick because true love wins out and we are all about those happy endings, Grimm’s can suck it, etcetera, so Nicolò gets his immortality and his siren song back. He’s also back to being a merman, but Yusuf does not care. “I could paint your beautiful tail for the rest of my life, my love, and still fail to capture the luminous iridescence of you,” he murmurs, stroking said tail with tender fingers. The last person to touch Nicolò’s tail got his hand bitten off. Here and now, Nicolò runs his claws through Yusuf’s hair, clicking deep and happy in his throat.

(“This is weird, right?” Quỳnh asks from where she and Andy are busy scraping evil kraken guts off their armor, a prudent distance down the beach from the lovers. “I’m not the only one who thinks it’s weird?”

Andy says nothing, just offers Quỳnh the rest of her bottle of vodka. This is why Quỳnh loves her so.)

(The wedding is a nightmare, at least according to the palace chef charged with cooking the wedding feast. “What is this, this, abomination? What in heaven’s name have you brought into my kitchen!”

“Tubeworm,” Booker says. “Considered a fine delicacy among our people. Don’t worry about it.”)