Asexual Fairy Tale

[Fay Onyx]

I have written a fairy tale with an asexual main character named "Tala and Prince Hart" and I am publishing it online here: http://writingalchemy.net/fairy-tales/tala-and-prince-hart/

Summary: Prince Hart is asexual, but his parents and many suitors are having a hard time accepting that. When the trickster Tala decides to come to his aid, chaos naturally ensues in this exuberant story that is a playful response to the all too common romanticization of boundary-crossing behaviors!

I have also created a podcast, Writing Alchemy, where I read my fairy tales and discuss them with guests. Podcast episodes 4, 5, and 6 will all focus on this story. They will be coming out January, February, and March of 2016. My podcast can be found on itunes or at: http://writingalchemy.net/podcast-2/

I own the copyright to this story. You have my permission archive it in its entirety with a link to my site (but not to alter it or post it without the link). It is roughly 7000 words and I can't find a description how to do spoilers on this site, so if someone could link to that, I'll post the full text here.

[sophy38]

At first I should say I'm not a fan of fairy tales but your tale was enough interesting to read whole of it.

All of LGBTQ were represented in the tale. The reactions toward asexuals were described well.

But as I was reading, one Q was repeating without any answer!

As I understood the queen was female and homosexual. So she could have the prince by donated sperms (I don't know using the term (Donate) for this is common in English, but it's the exact translate of term that we use in my language: donated sperm, donated ovule, donated fetus, donated uterus to grow the fetus).

Now the prince is a cisgender male and asexual. The queen wants to have a grandchild. The way that she select the suitors is not match to her aim. If she wants having a grandchild through marriage, the partner should be a woman that has ovule, and uterus! But just one of the three suitors is a woman. So even if the prince marry to one of the two others, he will need donated ovule and donated uterus to have a child. In this situation what is the insistence for marriage? Even the asexual prince without marriage, can have the child if he find a woman that can accept donation!!!

[andreas1033]

Decent story, about how people can drive you up the wall with this stuff.

Like i said before in 1st world countries in years gone by, the only choice for asexuals would of been to just go and live in a monastery for the rest of there lifes.

Shows us, humans have always really been the way they are today, and asexuals will always have to put up with pressures, especially from families that they do not want to know, or have.

[Fay Onyx]

@ Sophie38

I am really glad you found my story interesting! Also a good question. I tried to make that more clear with the queen's situation, but in this world there is a clearly defined system whereby other member's of the spouse's family become involved in procreation if needed. This was what happened for the queen and how she was able to have a child. Unfortunately, that system is based on marriage. I think there were definitely other options the queen could have explored, but she had always imagined her child as following that one, which is that standard model and she became too attached to it to effectively seek other options. I tried to fit this in more explicitly, but every time I did it was super awkward.

I am in the middle of writing a discussion document for this story and I will definitely include this question so that it will be there for anyone interested. Thank you!

@ Andreas1033

I intend to write more stories where Prince Hart's asexuality isn't the focus of the story to give him a chance to do other things too, so that his whole life isn't just pushing back against this stuff.

[Guest Sheka4]

It's a good story, though a lot of things nag at me as a fellow writer myself. Overall it's really good and I like the concept very much.

[Fay Onyx]

@ Sheka4

I'm glad you liked it! You might be interested to know that I wrote this fairy tales in a style modeled after the original Grimms Brothers' fairy tales. The style of the original stories has some serious limitations: limited dialogue, limited use of adverbs, limited description, unexplained magic, a surreal dream-like sequence of events, unexplained plot elements, very tight focus on plot and the sequence of events, limited expression of emotions, and extremely limited character development. I don't go to the full extreme of the original material and I add in more plot logic and character development, but do so using stylistic elements that match the source material.

I do this because I find the structure (and surreal quality) of the original stories really interesting, and also because I like the way it invokes the feeling of another time and place. Most fairy tales are set in a past time and culture, and I like invoking not just a historical setting but a matching historical story telling structure that goes with that past time and place.

It isn't a style that everyone connects with well (and might even be a bit discordant for some), and I'm glad you found it to be a good story with a good concept.