badliifechoiice2 | mermaid oh murmur into my ear

mermaid oh murmur into my ear

MERMAID AU MEME

Rules:
● Put down character name and series in subject line.
● Add any preferences (romance and/or general, human and/or mer) in comment.
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Scenarios:

1 ♢ Little Mermaid
♢ Mer
♢ One of you is a mer person with something you want. The other is a powerful mage who can possibly give it to you. Can an arrangement be made...?

2 ♢ Exploration
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Whatever you are, your curiosity has gotten the best of you. Whether it's a sunken shipwreck on the bottom of the ocean or a mysterious cove hidden away along the cliffside... Venturing with a friend or running into something unexpected... What will you find?

3 ♢ Exchange
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Sometimes, territories are broached, but it's not always a bad thing. Whether you're of entirely different species, or just from different seas, you've met in peaceful circumstances- perhaps as a direct result of those! So it's time for a cultural exchange. Just ignore the fresh water mer.

4 ♢ For Science
♢ Mer and Human
♢ This is a one in a lifetime chance.... for at least one person. Are you on an isolated island? A ship far out to sea? A highly funded aquarium? Or perhaps even a laboratory with more than questionable methods... Either way, you have the chance now to study something rarely seen before. How will it turn out for both of you?

5 ♢ Ariel's Dream
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Some say it's impossible for a mer to live on dry land... except that's been quietly proven wrong. One of you has taken to living among humans, whether for years or still learning the ropes. As for the other... Are you a concerned friend, checking in on them from the sea? Or are you a landdweller, stumbling onto a great secret?

6 ♢ Sea Life
♢ Mer and Human
♢ While they have the legs for landdwelling, some humans seem to have more saltwater in their veins than blood, and those are the kinds of humans that end up with dealing with the mysteries of the sea the most. A surfer catching waves with shark mer? A pirate bartering with sirens for safe passage? A fisherman working together with those who know fish best? There's all sorts.

7 ♢ Stranded
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Well, fuck. Good job. One way or another, you're stuck where you shouldn't be. Whether that's a human lost in the tides, or a mer trapped against the land, you need help.... So don't be picky with what you do get.

8 ♢ Not Safe For Water
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ The scenario made explicitly for Guillermo Del Toro and anyone who was extremely anxious for a xeno sex scene in The Shape Of Water. Get your smut on. Feel free to mix and match it with any of the other scenarios as well.

9 ♢ Siren Song
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Sometimes, there's a good reason people fear the too wide expanse of the sea, or how deep its depths an reach... Strange songs which string through coastal towns and cause disappearances... The sound of something slipping through the water around a ship in the dead of night... Unexplained shapes which flicker outside of deep-sea vessels or submarines or installations. Do you want to know what's out there?

10 ♢ Capture
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Sometimes, there's a good reason why people fear humans. You don't belong here, being gawked at through thick aquarium glass or trapped in a too-small freakshow tank, but what can you do? Is there anyone who cares for your plight, or are there only people responsible for it?

11 ♢ Chance Encounter
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Well, this is awkward. You didn't mean to stumble onto a mer just... there, doing whatever, on the beach or by the docks or tangled up in your fishing net, but, well. It's happened. Now what?

12 ♢ Transformation
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ For one reason or another, you want to go where you've never gone before... A mer, venturing on the land either as a rare chance or every day business? Or a human, accepting some sort of trade or just to run away from the life you have now? Either way, it might get messy.... Feel free to mix in with other scenarios.

13 ♢ Fantasy Meets Fantasy
♢ Mer and OTHERS!
♢ Who's to say that humans are the only other creatures in the world? Maybe people living beneath the sea's waves aren't the only strange things. Maybe there are centaurs who travel along coastal roads to watch the night sky along with mer astronomers. Perhaps selkies are just distant cousins. Or who's to say that mer can't be a host of things unto themselves? The ocean's the limit.

14 ♢ Sci-fi
♢ Mer and Human
♢ Some say astronauts are nothing more than sailors venturing off into another unexplored sea, one that's above instead of below. And, befitting those same sailors of older days, they seem to tell tails of strange melodic frequencies coming in over the radio to their ears, and strange comets that look like tails passing them by on a landed planet. Do they not know what's accompanying them in space, or is that what they're actively chasing?

15 ♢ Divinity
♢ Mer and Human
♢ There are stories told of what exactly it is that could be both human and fish... So it's not surprising that, eventually, one would land upon calling them divine entities, either gods of the sea or lakes, or just their messengers. Is that true, or just a very clever, long lasting ruse?

16 ♢ Afterlife
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Some say mer are just humans, wrongfully forced overboard by superstition or cruelty and welcomed by the sea into something more. Others say that they're the spirits, haunting a particular sea or lake town for a wrongful death. What's the truth? Time to find out.

17 ♢ Peaceful Living
♢ Mer and/or Human
♢ Not everything has to be a dramatic mess. Sometimes, things just... work out for the best. These are better times, and mer are just another part of life. Water-side towns where everything is built around those that share the waters with them, or huge metropolises with water tubes and sprouts for mer to travel through. How will you imagine this sort of life?

18 ♢ Wildcard
♢ follow your dreams, make up whatever

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Though this deep-sea research base is remote and technically secret, that doesn't mean it doesn't have visitors. Or at least one visitor. Most mer stay away from humans. Byakuran is not most mer.

Today he is, as usual, in the moon pool. He sticks his head up slowly out of the water, looking around, before propping himself on the edge of the pool and taking a deep breath, letting it out through a hum. He's warming up; the oarfish mer is far from the best singers among his people, but he can lure a man or two into the ocean. Of course, there's one particular human he's after, and the visit is more cordial than some of his have been in the past. ... Unless security shows up. He doesn't understand human suspicion. It's so... shallow and superficial.

He's tried everything. All genre of music, pumped up at their loudest, right into his eardrums. Yet no matter what he tries, that singing always seems to wiggle through.... Although thankfully, with so much competing noise, the singing doesn't work as well as it might otherwise.

That doesn't mean it keeps from driving him up the freakin' wall. It's just enough to throw every single song out of tune, and no matter how much he tries to hunch over his equipment to do work.... Well. It's too much, in the end.

Stepping through the reinforced doors leading to the moon pool, Shoichi Irie looks about as tired as he feels. Down in the bottom of the ocean, so long as you're not working with the more heavy machinery or engineering, you're allowed to wear whatever you want, as it turns out. Sure, there's a dress code... but they'd all sort of stopped caring after a while. It's sort of freeing, honestly, but it also means he's wearing boxer shorts and a baggy concert tee-shirt instead of the kind of lab coat one might expect. He doesn't say anything, or remove the heavy duty headphones around his ears. He just holds up a single sheet of paper:

I'M BUSY

Sure, he could use sign language- a mandatory thing to learn when you sometimes have to go temporarily deaf for creatures that can sing you to you death- but he's not sure how quickly the mer has taken to that. Besides, he's flashed this sign enough that it should be obvious.

It's obvious but has that ever dissuaded this particular fishman? He raises one brow, and sings one last note - SIGNIFICANTLY louder than the preceding music - before settling on rim of the moonpool, smiling lazily at Shoichi. He raises one hand, slow and languid as the cool waters below him, and crooks his finger in a universal signal - come here.

If Shoichi does approach, he'll drop some shells into his hands. They're old and brittle, but at least they've been cleaned by the denizens of the deep. ... Then he'll try to sneak a kiss, but hey, he does that.

Are all fishmen this demandingly arrogant? Science has yet to find an answer, yet there's no denying the one in front of him is pretty much top tier. Sighing, Shoichi lets his hand swing down. Who is he kidding, here, anyway.... With a certain reluctance, he steps further into the lab and over to the moon pool so that he can lean down to see what it is he's being offered this time.

For any other type of sealife, he'd assume the shells are some sort of courtship ritual, but with mer and how much of a mystery they are, who's to even-

And that's when the merman tries to snag a kiss, only to be met with a sheet of paper smacking right inbetween them. From over the page, Shoichi squints his eyes at him. HE'S ONTO YOU, BUDDY.

Hey hey hey it's not like - ok it's a little like that. Why do you take his shells but not his affections?! These mixed messages, man. Not cool.

Byakuran pouts for a moment before diving back under, interacting with something attached to his long tail. He comes back up with... That has got to be the largest natural pearl he's ever seen. Not the largest ever (that was like 75 pounds) but still. It's lopsided and bubbly, but the thin layers of nacre patina make it lustrous and incredible. It's also about the size of a softball. He sets it down on the side of the pool with a trill, ducks down, and just peeks out of the water, fingers clinging to the ledge, waiting to see what Shoichi will do.

Honestly... With the shells in his hand, Shoichi pushes himself up to his feet to glance down at them. They're fairly pretty, he gets it, but what is he supposed to do with these...? For lack of better idea, he makes his way to one of the many counters that are situated around the place. They're always pulling some new thing out from the ocean's depths, after all...

He's still separating the shells from one another when that trill pierces through the music of his headphones, and Shoichi blinks at him over his shoulder. It takes him a second to really take in what it is that's been put down. For a second, he thinks it's just some sort of pale rock, but then he turns away from the counter to step closer....

"Where did you get that?!" It's not the picture perfect round pearl that people think of in movies, but he recognizes these sort of things when he sees them. Stumbling over, he boggles at the sight.

He hums. His grasp of human languages is better than that of most merfolk, but that's not saying too much. Those were simple words, but it still takes him a second to parse them, and his brow furrows while he thinks. Then he points into the water. Obvious, that.

He lifts his hands, flopping onto his back lazily, and makes the shape of a clam with them. He opens them, and points into one of them. Also obvious. Also a lie. This is an old treasure of his, and his father before him, and his before him, and he's not sure where it came from, but he knows it's powerful.

...Okay. Well. He wasn't expecting that question to be taken so literally, but then again, they have absolutely no idea if mer understand the idea of 'hypothetical question'. For a second, his hand rises up as if debating on removing his headphones... but it swings back down. No, too dangerous still... But he does grab some rubber gloves, just in case. He's really not dressed for this kind of work, but, well...

Tugging on the gloves as he approaches the pearl, he glances over at Byakuran carefully before crouching down. He still can't believe how large it is... carefully, he reaches towards it to turn it over and inspect its condition.

Those gloves will likely protect the patina, but they're a bit of a disappointment for Byakuran. He kind of hoped Shoichi would just pick it up. Oh well. It's not like either of them knows exactly what this pearl does. It's a good way of saying how much he likes Shoichi, though.

He lets his hips sink until he's vertical again, then perches on the side of the tank, watching. The pearl is old, slightly clouded with that and the long exposure to salt water, but in good shape given that. It's uneven, beads and bumps dividing smoother sections, but it's clearly natural because of that. Byakuran's never seen it out of the water; his long, pale tail and the red fin that traces up his back (and into a reddish pink stripe in his hair) stir in the water in response to its beauty in the unnatural light.

Listen, buddy, he's going to be careful about unbelievably large pearls from half-fish suitors who harass him in the middle of the night (it is night, right). Caution is a scientist's best friend.

Although, admittedly... It seems like just a regular pearl, from what he can tell. Everything checks out... So, after a moment, he finally gets up with the pearl cradled awkwardly in his hands. "I'm really not dressed for this," he mutters to himself, making sure he doesn't trip over his own feet on the way over to the more serious equipment on the perimeters of the room. As he does so, he speaks over his shoulder to the mer.

"You don't have to bring me stuff like this, you know."

He chitters, his version of a laugh. Of course he has to bring gifts! Shoichi might never understand him without them. Even if he doesn't fully understand the gift himself, he's sure Shoichi will be able to figure it out.]

((OOC: The pearl could make Shoichi a merman, or able to understand the language more, or have any other effect. Or it could be the thing maintiaining Bya's merman status, leaving him becoming human. Up to you!))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

mermaid oh murmur into my ear

6+9+others, we'll see.

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Where do you want to take this? More in body.