(Gently pushes a fanfic through the door)

[malymin]

Wechselbalg (732 words) by Malymin
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Princess Tutu
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ahiru | Duck (Princess Tutu)
Additional Tags: warning for discussion of infanticide, Pre-Canon
Summary:

There's obvious Doylist reasons why Duck looks and acts less like a "real" duck than the other animals in the show. She's the relatable audience-viewpoint protagonist; she needs to be cute, appealing, not too inhuman. The other animals, with more naturalistic features, are either ordinary beasts without human intelligence, or they're framed as offputting and unsettling in their bestial forms and habits, as befitting animal bridesgrooms in fairy-tales. Duck can't be a real duck because a real duck is unpalatable, unrelatable; she's the idea of a duck, cute and sanitized.

What if there was a Watsonian reason for that, too?

What if she wasn't a real duck at all?

---

I feel embarrassed making two posts in a row in here, but... I've been wanting somewhere to share my Princess Tutu fanfics. I've actually got several Tutu fics on my Ao3, but my most recent series is a collection of postcanon one-shots focusing Rue and Mytho's perfect fairytale ending going awry, and that's probably too niche for most people? Honestly, this one is probably too niche, too. ^_^; I hope it's interesting despite that. I hope the footnotes are educational, as well.