The Fic

In April of 2004, Scuttlebutt teamed up with JunkeeMunky on a project for Yaoi-Con's fairy-tale contest. The concept -- to take a classic fairy tale, add a dash of fanfic and a twist of yaoi. We chose Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Nightingale', a story of the Emperor of China, a nightengale and a mechanical bird... and instead turned it into a story about an emperor, a chef and a courtesan.

The Gilded Cage is an Ace/Zoro/Sanji triangle fic -- and yes, there is polyamory. It's rated a mere PG-13 (lord knows we would have LIKED to add smut but it just didn't fit.) and it turned out... much much longer than we had originally intended. The fic itself was written by Scuttlebutt and we did six illustrations to go with it -- four by JM and two by ourselves.

We took first place in the contest, much to our shock and delight, believe you me. Most of all though we had way too much fun with the project, particularly playing with a fairy-tale writing style and the re-design of Odachi's characters for the universe. We did a *lot* of concept work for it and in general just had too much fun. We hope you enjoy it!


The Illustrations

The Concept Art