Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms/Funny

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The Fairy Godmother

  • Godmother Elena on Unicorns:

"They are like highly bred lapdogs. One is sweet, two are amusing, but after the next thirteen you are having uncharitable thoughts involving deep ponds and burlap sacks."

One Good Knight

  • After the unicorns show up and reveal Georgina's true gender, you get this little gem:

Unicorn: "Cousin? Why is the Warrior Maiden beating her forefead upon the tree?"

  • Later, the unicorn's explanation for why they're following Andie and co. is a little Fridge Horrory hilarious:

"Alas," Florien said mournfully, "these are the lands of the Satyrs. Virgins are exceedingly difficult to find."
Gina choked.

Fortune's Fool

…Then he heard a wild, high pitched cackling that made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. It wasn’t sane, that laugh. In fact, it was the laughter of someone who never had more than a nodding acquaintance with sanity.

  • The Sea-King to Sasha, who was singing about his potentially tragic love for the Sea-King's daughter. Evidently it was a pretty good song.

“Oh for the sake of all that is sane, do stop. Apparently you are unaware of just how well sound carries underwater. You have half my courtiers and family swimming about looking for me to plead with me to forgive you. And the other half are swimming about looking for a way to help you escape.”

    • Compounded by his later statements to the guards- “And stop sniffling.”
  • After Sasha gets off the dragon ride.

When he slid shakily down off Adamant’s back once they were on the mainland, it was with two conflicting feelings. He wanted to do it again immediately. He never wanted to do it again, not under any circumstances.

  • Katschei’s heart holder

“There was an oak tree in the forecourt—it’s gone now. There was a dragon curled around the foot of a tree. In the tree was a chest. In the chest was a fox in the fox was a rabbit, in the rabbit was another duck, in the duck was an egg and in the egg was his heart. You had to get past the dragon, climb the tree, open the chest, kill the fox before it got away, then kill the rabbit, then kill the duck and break the egg.”
Katya’s brows rose. “Good heavens. That just shrieks ‘I am an important hiding place look into me!’ Why didn’t he just put a big sign on a tree that said My Heart Is Up Here?”

  • Katya’s cursing- apparently it involves calling someone a “noodle-spined bar sinister son of a blind camel and cactus.”
  • “Horses,” he murmured. “Drive now, canoodle later. Ditch bad, bed good.”
  • Sasha confronts a female ghost haunting a forest pool, and then three unicorn mares show up to protect him. He's irked to have the fact that he's virgin made so public, and anyway, he'd begun to suspect the ghost wasn't a real threat. And then one of the unicorns notices something about the ghost....

Unicorn Leader: No problem. This is a creature of darkness!
Hesitant Unicorn: But... A virgin creature of darkness...
(A bit more dialogue, and then)
Leader: I'm sure there are virgin creatures of darkness all the time.

    • And then a male unicorn shows up, meaning to protect the virgin ghost, and realizes -- loudly -- that Sasha is virgin, too....

The Snow Queen

The Sleeping Beauty

  • Leopold. Cursed necklace. Singing. Fun times everyone, fun times.
    • To clarify: as part of an engagement challenge, Leopold was given a cursed necklace and told to add it to a dragon's hoard. It slowly turned him into a drooping, gothy Dreadful Musician who could only sing about the weight of his blighted hopes crushing him. He and a companion were able to bypass the dragon simply because the beast was laughing too hard.
  • The end when Leopold is married to Bruunhilde, Siegfried's Aunt. What does Bruunhilde yell to her father as he flies off?

Bruundhilde: " Leo makes love like a tiger!"
Her father: "I--can't--hear--you--!"

  • The extended Take That at Der Ring Des Nibelungen, delivered by Bruunhilde herself, at the end.
  • The usual Heroic classification of birds is discribed as "good to eat," "not good to eat," and "singing while I have a hangover, kill it with a rock."