yall, beauty and the beast AU where Merle finds himself trapped in a creepy castle inhabited by Final John (who, once Merle breaks the curse with his love, turns into regular John)
I can’t stop thinking about this sdgsdgfdsgfd
okay “finds himself trapped” though is like…. exactly how Merle would phrase it but also Merle is a fucking liar, okay. he didn’t just stumble into this like falling down an open manhole, oh no, it was more like:
he was on his way to visit his kids because it was his visitation weekend and he’d PROMISED Hekuba that he wouldn’t miss this weekend because she had PLANS and also Mookie is turning ten soon and Merle can’t miss another birthday for god’s sake act like a father and show up with a gift, Merle. a wrapped gift!
but then he was running a little late, oh no, and Hekuba is going to be SO pissed and the kids will be disappointed (though Mavis won’t even be surprised) so instead of following the coastal road and taking the scenic route like usual Merle takes a shortcut through the woods.
sure the locals were like ‘that road is haunted as shit!’ and ‘there are strange lights and patches of darkness and sometimes things over there are on fire!’ and ‘forget about the ghosts, you guys are forgetting the wolves and the bears!’ and ‘you’re gonna DIE on that road old man!’ but they’re just godless city folk.
everyone knows city folk don’t know how to appreciate a walk in the woods and think every leaf is out to get them.
the thing is that no one actually uses this fucking road anymore, actually, and Merle’s map is like a century out of date. eventually the farms fade away and the road turns into a path and the path turns into a trail and then it’s just the occasional half-fallen dry stacked rock wall and partially buried cobblestone
“man,” Merle says to himself after like a day of wandering from one indication that there’d once been a road here to another, “this road sure was nice back in the day, i can’t believe the local council has let it get this bad. someone could get really lost out here!”
Merle’s nature skill can tell him all about what kind of plants he’s seeing but he fails three investigation checks in a row, loses the path, and doesn’t have any survival skills.
Merle ends up really lost.
but then he spots some really great looking rose bushes. just, wow. look at them. the buds are just beginning to open. someone has lovingly, tenderly mulched them.
it’s not a crime to stop and smell the roses, is it?
no
it’s not
it is a crime to do other things with the roses, though, apparently
Merle wakes up in a castle dungeon with a killer headache
there’s a two-handled one-wheeled garden plow looking at him from the other side of the bars. her name is Sloane, she has the shovel she hit him with strapped to her frame, and she’s the one that carefully mulched those roses. she brandishes pruning shears at him until her girlfriend Hurley – a set of keys – calls her away
some people have no appreciation for passion. a man has a calling, you know?
anyway, Merle figures he’s probably going to miss Mookie’s birthday. again.
meanwhile, Mavis has arranged to have their great uncle Cyrus watch Mookie for the weekend so that poor Hebuka doesn’t have to cancel her romantic date that they’re not supposed to tell dad about
speaking of dad: where is he? Mavis investigates
Mavis invested in survival and investigation because she’s a very prudent twelve year old, so she finds the castle. her persuasion checks succeed wildly on Avi the literal doorman so not only does he let her in, he also gives her directions down to the dungeon.
Mavis absolutely was not going to offer to take her dad’s place in this haunted castle, he made his R-rated flowerbed and he needs to lie in it, but she’s still weirdly touched by his insistence that she can’t miss that much school or be away from mom that much
also he won’t shut up about how cool this cursed castle is and how much he’s enjoying the “minimalist design and authentic accommodations” in the dungeon. he gives her a poorly wrapped present for Mookie and she goes home
hurley and sloane eventually let him out of the dungeon because he noticed that they had some trees planted too close to the castle foundations and wouldn’t stop talking about how “it’s a real shame because they’re such beautiful trees – and i mean, really gorgeous, just, wow, yknow? like, wow, i’m a little hot under the collar ha ha whew – but they’ll start to undermine your foundation and, boy, i’d just sure hate to see all this wonderful stone work ruined.”
also, “it’s hard to find a decent stone mason these days and even if you find a real artist it’s hard to make the new stuff match the old stuff unless you repoint the whole basement and no one wants that mess, right?”
they’re expecting him to leave the castle entirely, please, please just go, but Klarg catches sight of him and offers him a soothing cup of Oolong.
Merle doesn’t seem off-put at all by the fact that the Oolong comes straight out of Klarg’s spout, which makes him better than all of the other potential matches they’ve managed to lure here.
also he seems charmed by the fact that the tea cups all yip and bark and wag their handles and scamper around the table while he’s trying to drink out of them
he asks for honey but Yeemick didn’t come out with the rest of the tea set so Merle has to go into the kitchen and find the honeypot himself. he comes back and lets Klarg know that “Meemaw in there is pretty dead set on getting me to break you, y’know. you should probably fire him.”
Klarg says, “what? no, that’d break up the tea set and we all have the same pattern…”
Taako has been in the room this whole time but he didn’t want to talk to some plant-fucking beach dwarf who’s tracked sand all over the place who’s probably going to get eaten before the day is out so he was just pretending to be a regular ol’ dumb-as-doornails non-talking candelabra, but now he HAS to say something
also: where does the sand keep coming from? Pringles has been on full-time sweep duty since this guy arrived
what Taako says is, “my dude, take it from someone who knows, you have to fire subordinates who plot to murder you.” and then because Klarg looks like he’s gonna get real upset and Taako doesn’t want tea all over the fucking place again, Taako adds, “plus uhhh, eclectic is in, yknow? mix n’ match. the hipsters love it”
Klarg is distracted by confusion over what a hipster is. Taako starts talking to Merle so that he doesn’t have to relive awful memories of how very flammable Sazed’s feathers turned out to be.
Magnus stops by and once Merle is caught in the thrall of the clock’s rustic hospitality, there’s no getting rid of the dwarf
they tell him John usually eats the blind dates they set up for him, because Merle seems like a good dude who doesn’t deserve to go out that way
Merle says, “well, i don’t think i’m into vore… but hell, i’ll try anything once!” and then chuckles
This is everyone’s skin tone, hair, eyes, lips, and brows.
remember, Lin, and Anthony are hispanic. Leslie, Oak, Renee, Christopher, Jasmine, and Daveed are biracial/black. Phillipa is Asian. they are NOT white. they have wide noses, big lips, dark hair and eyes. i’ve been seeing so much white washing in the hamilton fandom and all the white artists need to remember that our eurocentric beauty that we’ve been taught does not belong in our artwork of them.
Here is some reference, and you can find it anywhere online. do not white wash these people. if you can’t draw them as they are, then perish.
alright so i only repost it for the colors. i dont believe in whitewashing at all. pls stop this “you white people”. no matter what color your skin has , a reference is always good for an artist. so yeah. my opinion , hate on me , idc , i dont think whitewashing is a thing.
Imagine wanting to spend billions on something so easily circumvented.
I guess lefties think that illegal aliens can walk on water.
Wow, you’re right. There’s a huge flaw in my post, I forgot that humans have no way to get across water. Thanks for pointing that out, I’ll get right on deleting this.
