We all have one, that place where we keep all the really cool ideas that just don’t fit in the world we’ve built. What you got? What’s that cool thing you made that toy can’t really use?

  • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    I have a character that I don’t know how to use but I love anyway. The Demon Frog Prince:

    A demon prince is cursed into the body of a frog, only to be released when he receives true love’s kiss. Which, as a demon and now also a frog, seems like a remote possibility. However, he is still immortal, so he lives his long life as a frog in a pond. Occasionally he is caught by predators, and even torn apart and eaten, but he always reforms into a frog.

    One day, he is caught by an advisor to the king. The king has gotten into his head that he is likely to be imminently poisoned and has decided that the best countermeasure is to have a frog taste all of his food, believing frogs to be particularly sensitive to poisons. The advisor places him in a tank at the court along with other frogs, and pulls one out at random for every taste test.

    This method works because most frogs are vulnerable to most poisons, so the royal family adopts the practice for generations, until one day the demon prince is selected to taste a poisoned dish. The frog doesn’t die, but the king is fatally poisoned. Because of the test he is assumed to have died of a natural illness, but the advisor becomes suspicious, and performs a series of tests on the frog, ultimately discovering that it is immortal. He keeps it in his secret laboratory and subjects the demon prince to much cruelty.

    At some point, a child meets the demon prince and adopts it as a pet. Might be a royal heir, might be the advisors child, maybe a child of one of the palace staff who snuck into the lab. But the child loves the frog like a child loves a pet, and one day kisses it on top of the head. The child’s true love for the frog breaks the curse and frees the demon.

    At this point, the story can veer off in a number of directions. I imagine the demon will have some kind of affection for the child who freed it, and maybe they become best buds and go on adventures together. Or, maybe the demon just deigns to spare the child’s life. Maybe the demon and the child team up to topple the dynasty that imprisoned the demon for so long.

      • queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        2·
        6 days ago

        Thanks! I love writing little character backgrounds like this, I have a ton of them. Usually they’re fodder for a hypothetical RPG campaign I might run but every once in a while I’ll try to stitch them together into a narrative on my own. Maybe one day I’ll manage a whole book but, and nobody ever tells you this, writing a whole ass book is hard 😅