Alicornutopia

Did the thing with the skins eating somebody happen in the original story or did you make that one up?

In the original story, there was no one around who particularly needed to be eaten.

So there was no forcing of maidens to marry anything inclined to eat them?

I feel so sorry for a Joker who thinks of food as inconvenient. Food is fun and exciting and tasty, especially for Jokers! I’m glad his father isn’t around to disprove of his atrocious table manners when Erian learns this.

Erian doesn't think of food as inconvenient, he thinks of being the sort of creature whose meals need to be cooked more often than not is more inconvenient than being the sort of creature who mainly eats raw fresh-killed prey.

The king and queen did make three foreign princesses marry the Lindworm and two of those were after he ate the first one, and then they made the gardener's daughter marry him too, but they weren't as egregiously awful about it as King Antimoun and they weren't as generally egregiously awful in other aspects of their lives as King Antimoun.

He also thought it was inconvenient that he had to eat approximately daily, instead of being glad that he got to eat more as a mammal than as a reptile.

Do real mysterious old women (as opposed to impostors of pranksters) ever ask somebody what’s troubling them and then fail to offer advice? As in:

MOW: “My dear, why are you so anxious?”
Guy: “The police are after me for hitting my demon children.”
MOW: “Yeah, that would tend to make a person anxious.”

The MOW can generally get a rough idea of what is troubling someone before she shows up to ask. If she wasn't going to offer advice anyway, she doesn't show up in the first place.

Jokers aren't, in general, happy about needing to do a particular thing when they might have liked to do something else instead. Erian has been enjoying a life of getting to spend very long stretches of time not worrying at all about where his next meal was coming from. Now he's human and this is apparently going to be a concern every single day, multiple times a day even, for the rest of his life. It's a constraint he did not previously operate under, and even though he likes eating, he isn't a fan. (He is in a position to not worry about this very much since he is the king of Mahlirou, but he does understand that ceasing to be king of Mahlirou would be easier than ceasing to be human.)

By the way, I'm curious what you thought of Mial's response to that one question.

I suppose that makes sense about Erian. I was thinking more along the lines of him not being able to eat as often as a human can (just like a human Joker wouldn't be able to eat nearly as much as Brilliance does when he discovers food). I guess it does make sense that being upset about needing to eat more often would take priority over being glad that he can.

I just remembered that I posted questions there; I was busy around that time and lost the tab. I responded to it there.

Fairy names don’t click into place for humans, I think. How does Nick getting an unknown fairy to say a string of syllables convince him that he actually has her name?

Oh look, a lampshade. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... adeHanging

Or would a retcon be more appropriate? In any case, I was operating under the assumption that her name clicked with Nick and I don't think it's feasible to backtrack 70 posts to fix it.