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.
● Reply to other people!

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

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Sharks! is Julien's first thought and really, can you blame him. He jerks, his wings hitting the surface of the water, his feet doing a thing, and looks around wildly, turning a circle.

He's got a very wide field of view and multiple focal points so he saw something moving away and there's some bubbles up from around where it had been. That's what has him not laboring to take off. This does not seem like a shark thing.

"Was that a sea lion?" he asks himself, because he hadn't gotten a good glimpse. From the air he thought he'd seen some seals or sea lions - maybe this is a sea lion thing? Do sea lions try to eat Juliens?

Hmm. Well. This expedition isn't really about fishing directly but about whether fishing is a good idea here, if this is a good place to set up nets or lines. Using his beak and some of the fingers remaining on a wing he unspools a test line from his back, a hookless thing weighted with a rock and baited with a little branch of bright red rowan berries. With some difficulty Julien gets that tied to some kelp that's got enough of those floating bulb things that it keeps the line up, and drops the bait to where it's hazily visible from the surface.

Ha! What a jump. Birds are the same no matter how big they are, it seems. Still, there's a strange sort of noise coming from above, so muted that it's almost impossible to hear, but definitely not like most other birds.....

Well, that's fine. Pleased with himself, Joker lazily guides himself among the kelp before perking up as a vibration thrums through the water. Curiously, he glances inbetween the gently waving fronds again. Red! His fins perk up in interest. Red, and not smelling of blood in the water, so it has to be a fruit or berry. Curious, he drifts closer, circling around and staying behind the kelp a while.

On one hand, it's not lobster. Or fish. On the other hand, it's enough of a rarity that he thinks it'd be great to take back to the others. Not a lot of fruit ends up in the water, and not all of it is perfect to eat when it does. After a moment of certainty that it's probably not a trap, he finally flicks his fin and ventures closer to it to take the berries inbetween his fingers to inspect. Looks good so far.

The rowan is bright and beaded with bubbles. The berries are soft and juicy and bittersweet and have a laxative effect in humans that's enough that everyone else won't touch them, as Julien has discovered, but they sit well with him and fish are attracted. It doesn't seem to take long.

Seeing the shadow curve out to the bait, odd-shaped and too big to reasonably subdue and fly back, Julien shuts his inner eyelids, putting a sepia film over his huge eyes, and shoves his face into the water to see better.

What the fuck.

What the fuck yourself, buddy.

The feel of something suddenly shoving itself into the water has Joker jerk back a little bit, but he doesn't retreat. It's a purely instinctual move, going against his more conscious knowledge that it's just the bird. Still, paranoia is always a friend... But as he looks up to see the enormous birdy beak, he has to say he thought it would be more....

Hawkish. Or something.

As it is, it just seems like a perfectly regular bid, so Joker has no shame in making direct eye contact as he reaches out to snag a berry. His now, sorry not sorry.

Rude!!!!

He tries to say it but, you know, water. It's more clearly a word than it might sound like from more of a standard-configuration human, since his voice comes from his chest and not his throat, and resonates better in the water, but it's still more bubbles and an indignant sound than anything.

Julien pulls his head back up above the surface and grabs the line with his beak, but reconsiders. He's not a guy on a deck with a fishing line who can just haul things up casually, and anyway what'll that gain him? Instead, after a moment, he puts his face back into the water, this time holding a twig bearing red-and-green crabapples.

Despite the fact that he's pretty sure birds don't understand the intricacies of facial langugae, due to the fact that their faces don't move much at all, Joker still gives a saucy little wink up at the bird. Hey, the berries are in the water and are thus free game! It's all fair and square.

By the time the bird shoves his face back into the water, Joker has just about picked the berries off completely to put into his net. Well, the mouth of a fish in his net, but it's fine. The fish is dead. It's as good as carrying space anyway. Feeling the splash again, he glances up in interest. Oh, more fruit... But this time the bird is holding them in his beak, as if to tease him. Rude!

Still, he starts to idly circle around up the line, gauging if those fruits move at all.

Yep. That is clearly an intelligent, tool-using fruit thieving mer-something with one arm and an Attitude. Could be a girl, could be a slim boy, or Julien could be entirely off the mark.

This is not how he'd envisioned meeting the locals and Julien is not trained in first contact. Honestly if they'd been land people he would have seen them from miles off and been able to fly back and talk to someone. Well. It's probably good to try and establish he's a person, somehow?

He works his tongue and waggles the crabapples. Mmm, mmm, bite-sized fruit, larger and more swollen than the rowan berries. He lets go - they float - and nips one off the stem, then grabs the rest and pokes the one with his beak tip so it bobs further away from him and immediately runs aground against floating kelp.

Oh. Huh. Eyebrows raising, Joker cocks his head to the side. That's a very purposeful sort of gesture, and while birds are smart- crows and ravens that occasionally drop by are definitely some of the quickest- he hadn't been expecting it to be like this. With a sharp twist of his tail, he propels himself upwards to snag the apple. He doesn't dive back down, however.

Instead, he glides himself not too far from the water's surface, checking for things above as best he can before he finally pokes his head up.

Hi, Julien. There's definitely a redhead staring over at her now.

Julien watches the mer-something consider and decide to go for the fruit, and has to pull his face back up to breathe before Joker goes and breaches the surface. Ugh, the salt in his mouth! It's stinging around his eyes too, honestly; his inner eyelids kept it out of his eyes themselves, but the skin in the area is still sensitive.

Julien's muscle is heavy and he doesn't float anything like as high in the water as a seabird, so from about that level there some of the stuff strapped on to his back is visible. Rope, waxed canvas pouches, more fruit-bearing branches.

"-oh, hi," he says, casual as he can. The red of that hair, the way it's so flat when before it drifted, it's kind of comical. "Hey, it's a long shot, but can you understand me?"

Oh, holy shit.

"The bird can talk," Joker says aloud, answering that question quite soundly, before he barks out a laugh. It's a strange sound, definitely not like a normal human laugh. Somehow too sharp and guttural at the same time. "Now isn't that new!"

Still, all those things he's carrying are sure interesting, and Joker starts to lazily swim circles around him. It's not predatory so much as very curious; he just wants to avoid getting pecked.

Julien is not sure about the circling and starts paddling in place, trying to keep the the mer-man (? probably) from getting up his tail. Normally keeping his side presented to someone is his best bet. Much safer to pop a threat with his wing than it is to peck. Not that he can really hit something that comes at him from underwater, though.

"Yeah, I get that a lot." Was that a laugh? Expression and body language suggests yes. Julien puts his crabapples atop his back and tries gaping his beak wide, the closest he can come to a smile more obvious than the constant faint amusement suggested by the shape of his beak when it's closed. "I'm one of a kind! My name is Julien."

Facial expressions are definitely pretty hard to make, when your face is pretty stuck to one thing unless you open your mouth or half close your eyes. Joker understands that well enough, and even utilizes some of it himself. After all, it's the most sensible thing to do when you live in the water with more creatures that don't emote than those who do.

"Well, hopefully ya have a lotta people ta chat with~." For a moment, he ponders diving under to surprise Julien on the other side, but thinks otherwise of it. Maybe in a little while. "Name's Joker, not one of a kind."

"Never enough! I thought I knew everyone I could find, here. Guess I've been looking in the wrong places." The dream is always birds, of course, but if they're giant predatory birds there's a bunch of endemic problems there. "Hello, Joker. Pleased to meet you! I was sure for a moment there that you were a shark."

He has no idea if there are sharks big enough to go after him here but he's been raised on Western media, okay, and while in the water it's hard to let go of the notion that sharks are basically bear traps that self-propel towards anything that moves.

"So, uh, I wasn't going to put these in the water, but you ever tried mullberries? They're way sweeter and more intense than anything else I brought out." Julien beaks into one of his satchels, carefully, and comes up with a drawstring bag that he beaks open, and comes out of gripping a couple long complex black berries. He draws them into his beak, where the sweetness makes a good impact on that drying harshness of the salt.

Definitely in the wrong places although, to be fair, they're sort of in the wrong places on purpose. It's a little hard for people on land to interact with anyone hiding in the depths of water, not always surfacing for a lot of particular reasons, even as useful as hands are for something almost amphibious...

Joke, however, just laughs. "That'd be my sister," he says playfully, winking. Whether joke or truth, well, he's not bothering to make it clear.

Instead, he perks up, drifting a little closer. "Can't say that I have! Brought 'em for a snack of yer own, then?" After all, if it's not bait, then it has to be for one's own pleasure, right?

"Ahhhh. Well, I can't deny there's a lot on me that's probably good eating, but it'd also be a massive pain getting past all the feathers," he replies casually, even though talk about eating him always makes his pulse pick up. "As soon as they come off they stick to things too, it's a mess."

"Yeah! Here, try one." Julien delicately picks up a new mullberry and flicks it underhand (underhead?) the merman's way. "It's gonna turn your tongue black, see?"

"Good for you, right?" he says, laughter ringing out as he thrusts himself up out of the water a little catch the mulberry in his hands. Such effort has the laughter in question vanish, the momentum rolling him back underwater for a moment. He follows the flow of it, twisting back beneath the waves until he's topside again.

"Do ya know from personal experience, then?" he asks, inspecting the berry curiously.

"Right?" He decides not to press the issue by bringing up how the downy parts of his feathers cling ferociously in water. It's just not a good topic. He follows Joker's wake best he can, and gapes his mouth open for a couple seconds by means of demonstration.

The inside of his beak is a triangle hellscape, stained darker just now.

"Usually I'm all pink. It'll fade back, but that's a thing." He considers a moment, wondering how this kind of thing works, and just goes for it. "Is it all right if I set up like nets and lines here for fish? Only when I'm here, obviously, and just for like an afternoon at a time."

Oh. Right. Birds are sometimes just horror hidden in feathers. Joker sometimes forgets that, since he doesn't deal with them as much as he does with others of his kind, or anything else that lives fulltime in the water, but he has dealt with them before. It's usually not so easy to get such a close look into the gaping triangle hellscape that is a bird mouth, however...

Stopping his casual drift closer for a better look, Joker meets Julien's eyes again. "Oh, I don't have a problem with it, ha. Although..." Struck with an idea, he taps the side of his chin. "We could make a good deal, you and I, if yer interested."

Could be worse. He could be a penguin. Like a cat, though, he can open up so much wider than appears to be possible when closed.

"Like trade? Yeah, sure!" Oh, good, he doesn't have to be the one to suggest it. "I'm kinda stuck to the top of the water but I can go pretty much anywhere else."

Don't ask Joker about penguins. He doesn't live so far up north for a reason.

....The main reason is that it's cold enough to freeze his anus shut, but, listen. Penguins are a good reason to.

"Well, as it turns out, I'm a tad stuck ta the bottom of the water, so I think that suits us both nicely~." After all, that means they have something unique to offer to one another. Isn't that how the best trade starts up? "Is it just fish that yer lookin' for, then?"

"Mostly fish. Clams and abalones and that kind of thing, too. Oh, and like crabs and lobsters!" He wonders if a merman can get into clams. Julien's aware that sea otters hammer them open with rocks so... probably? Must be hard.

"And I could bring fruit and land animals, flowers, uh... cooked foods, maybe, though they might not be to your tastes. Honey. Unfortunately a lot of stuff doesn't really survive in the water long, but, hey, fish isn't good in the air after long, either."

"Well, fish we can always guarantee, one way or the other." It's water. Where there's water, there's fish. It's a basic fact of reality, as far as Joker is concerned. Sometimes they might not be the biggest fish, or the best, but they're edible.

....Usually. But he knows which ones to not trade off.

Moving on. "Fruit and land animals would be for the best, I'm thinkin'," he muses aloud, starting to idly swim in circles. He might not be a shark, but staying still for so long doesn't suit him either way. "But I'm always willin' ta try somethin' new, especially some of the things ya mentioned that we're not familiar with, down here." Like honey, or what kind of cooked foods can be found on land.

Why not be a little adventurous, after all?

Julien's countless carefully-waterproofed feathers trap layers of air that help insulate him, warm with his own body heat. Even so, lying floating in so much contact with so much cool water is starting to get chilly. He reshuffles his wings and clenches and relaxes his submerged feet.

"Could be fun. I don't suppose there's a beach or river mouth around you wouldn't mind showing off? You wouldn't have to like haul out."

Hey, he's floating, so that means he's perfectly fine, right? There's not really a lot of education about birds down beneath the water's surface... which probably explains why Joker seems pretty unconcerned and in no particular hurry as he glances around to remind himself of where exactly he is in comparison to the nearest bits of land. It takes actually using his arms a little bit to turn himself in place; mer aren't meant for this kind of movement.

"Let's see... I think there should be a beach, somewhere aloooooong...." He gestures in a direction. "That way? I'll go meet ya there~."

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mermaid oh murmur into my ear

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