hiii so!! here’s a little write up about the docmartyn mermaid/marine biologist enemies-to-lovers au i mentioned here, significantly later but also much longer than i intended it to be. written in collaboration with @daisycraft and @kingtheghast thank u both for letting me steal your very good thoughts and words <3
au contains themes of dehumanization and mentions of violence/injury. the tone gets a little dark at certain points, so just be warned!
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the only thing really known about mer is that they’re sneaky, scarce, and very dangerous. a siren song will lure an unsuspecting ship into rocks and a crew into the water, where teeth and claws and cold, crushing depths await them. so when there’s reports of what might be a mer spotted a few miles off the coast, a team is sent out to deal with it before it causes any casualties.
it’s rare to have one this close to land. it’s even rarer still that its successfully netted, and successfully sedated. several of the crew members are heavily wounded in the process, but no one dies. and, in an unheard-of turn of events, that also includes the mer.
and you see, up until now, mer have only ever existed in vague sightings: pieces of dead ones caught in fishing nets, grainy phone camera footage, strange findings of scales and old dwellings left behind in the ocean, and the wild tales of shipwreck survivors. so this whole thing is kind of a Big Deal. for the first time ever, a live, healthy mer specimen has been found, captured, and brought in to a facility for observation and study. and the honor of leading this unprecedented study goes to doc.
(the role would be a much bigger honor if the mer wasn’t an annoying, stubborn, spiteful little bitch.)
so doc gets transferred over to the marine biology department, where a huge tank has been retrofitted into one of the bigger labs, and brought on to the study of specimen 9201223—which is a terrible name that doc isn’t going to remember, so he starts calling it “martyn” after a childhood pet fish of his.
but yeah, once it settles in and stops hiding all the time? it turns out that “martyn” is a bastard of a specimen. the lab keeps it semi-sedated as part of the safety protocol (they feed it fish laced with a numbing drug that limits its ability to vocalize, so it can’t lure any of the staff into drowning themselves or breaking it out; the sedation is a side effect) and yet it still finds the energy to cause Problems for the research team. it’s tearing up the kelp and gravel along the bottom and stuffing it into the water filters. it’s slamming into the side of the tank, scaring the shit out of the scientists. it’s trying to bite the interns fingers off during feeding time. it’s eating the rubber ball they gave it for enrichment and getting sick. it’s ruined at least three laptops and countless lab reports by splashing the personnel at every opportunity. and it seems like it’s actively trying to be uncooperative with every test they run.
working with the damn thing makes doc want to tear his hair out, but he’s also stubborn as hell so it becomes a rivalry, a battle of wills; doc hates this fucking fish, and he’s pretty sure it hates him right back.
it doesn’t particularly like anyone, of course, but he’s convinced it targets him on purpose. it starts to sit at the front of the tank by his desk whenever he’s in, swimming back and forth, staring with those freaky blue eyes, rapping on the glass when it gets too quiet just to see him jump. it hides whenever other researchers swing by, but when it’s just martyn and doc in the lab, during his late evenings working overtime? god, can’t get rid of it. can barely get any work done with it bothering him.
and then. it’s one of those late, frustrating evenings when martyn is being particularly bothersome while doc is just trying to get some paperwork done, and he’s sick of it. he’s so frustrated with martyn’s constant tapping on the tank that he rips out a page from his notebook, balls it up and whips it across the lab… and then watches as martyn darts off, going as far as his tank will let him go after the ball of paper before he eventually turns and goes back to doc. and that’s the moment doc realizes, ohhh my god it’s going stir crazy. oh my god. it just wants to play.
suddenly, doc has a new perspective on his relationship with the mer, and a lot of things start making a lot more sense. martyn’s not just banging on the glass to annoy him when he plays music, he’s trying to get him to change the song to one he prefers. the haphazard woven band of seaweed around his head might not be some sort of stress response from running into the glass too much, but an accessory, a form of personal identity. the way he stares during observations, the way his freaky eyes follow doc’s hand down the page as he writes his notes—maybe he’s observing doc and his behavior right back, trying to make sense of him.
and, yeah, martyn’s still uncooperative and bitey and impossible to deal with as ever, but doc starts feeling less like he’s working with an animal, and more like he’s working with a very stubborn person. it’s a lot to wrap his head around, and the more he notices it, the harder it becomes to ignore.
still, he and his team run their tests, gather their data, publish their findings. and the media eats that shit up… at least during the first year, when the captive mer is still novel and sensational. after a while, public interest wanes, the studies get more niche, and funding starts to slow down.
that’s when some of the faculty board members approach him with a proposal.
you see. the care and upkeep of a live mer is extraordinarily expensive. the personnel, the food, the medicine, the aquarium chemicals, the water and electricity bills, etc etc etc., it’s all getting to be a bit… much. and, frankly, they’ve already gotten plenty of research done as is. so they were considering that, well, it might be time to retire the mer program and do some final reports, and then perhaps they can move on to some other, less costly studies.
doc doesn’t realize exactly what’s being suggested until the words euthanasia and dissection are dropped. he starts protesting, stammering about the— the ethics department, and— and species preservation, and— and they can’t just—
and he’s told, quite plainly, that the thing's going to die anyways, or have you forgotten, doctor, that we don't know how to keep a species like this yet?
this tank isn't enough for it to live healthily, or very long.
we don’t even know how old they’re supposed to get in the wild.
better to get something out of it before it gets sick enough to be spoilt.
doc takes a deep breath, and tells them to get out of his lab. the board members exchange glances, and tell him they’ll give him time to think on it. doc tells them, louder, to get the fuck out of his lab.
…sitting there in that empty room, lit by the blue glow of the tank, doc feels cornered. because yes, sure, martyn is uncooperative and annoying, but also—good lord. he’s smart enough to be uncooperative. he’s smart enough to annoy him. those luminous blue eyes that stare at him through the thick glass are freaky and inhuman, but they’re intelligent. and they just want to—
he could go to the ethics board, sure. he could go plead his case and show them all the evidence, look, look, he’s not just a monster, he’s not just an animal. just spend some time with him, you’ll see. but there’s a lot of people who won’t be happy with that. a lot of very influential and rich people, people whose surnames are carved into plaques outside the building or have their companies attached to big research grant funds. and if they stop paying, doc doesn’t really have a say in what happens to martyn.
he can continue his research quietly for now, but it feels like the rest of the facility is breathing down his neck with expectations and deadlines. doesn’t help at all that the mer still doesn't want to be any sort of cooperative, either, because it’s just delaying an inevitable end that it doesn't even know is coming. the thought that he’s the only person able to protect martyn right now is fucking terrifying.
doc sets his paw on the glass tank, and the mer on the other side smiles a big, sharp smile, and mirrors him with a webbed hand.
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Thinking about my thoughts on Inkneedles ship from Magnus Protocol, apologies for followers who saw this already but I decided it needs its own post. I am getting somewhat Magnus Protocol brainrot i admit
Inkneedles dynamic is like imagine a Twitch Streamer and a TikToker who both met as mututals on DeviantArt in 2013 (Needles nuked their DeviantArt years ago when they blew up on Vine; Ink5oul still has their DeviantArt and refuses to get a more professional portfolio of their work), and they lowkey can't stand each other but no one else likes them so they can't get rid of each other. And the reason everyone else hates them is totally the fault of their toxic friendship. Like Needles 100% outed Ink5oul as nonbinary in a Tumblr callout post on one of his alts but blamed another one of their mutuals and convinced Ink5oul to go no contact with that mutual to keep up the lie. And the few TikToker friends Needles ever made all got their accounts mass-reported when Ink5oul got jealous and sent their Twitch audience after them. And they're always sabotaging each other like this. But Needles stays in a spare room on the second floor of Ink5oul's tattoo parlor rent free and stays up until 5AM making DIY piercing tutorials on TikTok (note: these tutorials are all terrible, unclear if he's doing that intentionally for the whole Fear Monster thing or if he's just bad at it naturally), sleeps past noon every day, and gets woken up by Ink5oul blasting the most atrocious dubstep remix of a Lady Gaga track you've ever heard in your life. Needles has 100% doxxed Ink5oul's home address twice over this behavior, refuses to admit it, but all the same Ink5oul won't give him their new address after the last time. Also every time Ink5oul threatens to kick Needles out for not paying rent, Needles just gives Ink5oul a promo on his tiktok and gets the twitch stream like 200 new followers and Ink5oul decides to let it slide. Both of them have huge folders of "receipts" on their phones about the other one in case they ever feel like they need to cancel them. Notably none of these receipts are about either of the other's supernatural crimes, it's all just stuff like them being problematic or petty.
Ink5oul calls Needles a clout-chaser on stream at least once a week. Needles is vague-posting about their bourgeoisie "landlord" every few days. They hate each other. They can't escape each other. Crackship of the century.
Also I rescind my other post about them, i think i do ship it now actually
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Happy valentine's day :3333
Ngl it was kinda hard for me to think of something to draw this year bc i'm still REALLY proud of the valentine's drawing i made LAST year and i lowkey felt like i needed to sorta one-up myself in some way (some considered ideas were to either do what i did last year, but with my CRACKSHIPS instead, or do something with my OCs) but y'know....i've had the idea for a drawing like this for a while and i lowkey wanted to draw something with candy hearts in it so here's a simple lil naegiri for your troubles <3
Oh yea and also since naegiri is a RIDICULOUSLY popular ship in the danganronpa fandom so this theoretically is gonna get more notes than i usually get, i've provided links under the cut to some other art i've made that i'm really proud of and i think need a little more attention
A redraw of MCR's three cheers for sweet revenge album cover but with celeste and byakuya (CW: PINK BLOOD)
A rendition of a friday night funkin character i saw in a dream a few years ago
My danganronpa OC yuriko in the artstyle of an early 2000's cartoon network show
Sans undertale as a super saiyan
My deltarune OC sprite recreating the akira bike slide with a fisher price car
Minecraft gijinkas part 1
Minecraft gijinkas part 2
Minecraft gijinkas part 3
Yuriko in the actual dangan artstyle (honestly i'm happy with ANY of my yuriko art getting attention, i love that girl SO MUCH)
Me redrawing art of a witch i made when i was 11 (...and then redrawing a redraw of that art that i made when i was 13)
Me redrawing fanart of hatsune miku i made when i was 13
A redraw of the painting saturn devouring his son but with hello kitty (CW: BLOOD, MILD GORE)
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It's me again, the one who said he was gonna write a makarov/graves fic (i have not yet)
tbh I do think graves x makarov is an amazing rarepair/crackship bc its just so funny pls its peak evil men yaoi like?? They could meet on a mission or smt and makarov has an anime style nosebleed bc oh no he's hot!!!
But anyways I need plot ideas I have base elements of characters and plot down but I think I need ur expert advice on being the one person who makes content of a ship bc the current graves/makarov fics are not it their all oneshots and the only continuous one is pretty angsty so
I definitely want makarov to get tazed at some point tho so let me know what u think this is so disorganised oml
ngl im wheezing at both "i want makarov to get tazed" and "they're peak evil men yaoi"
bold of u to say i make content (well, of _A_ ship sure) bc i made like 2 (two) posts abt them lmao but lmao sure im on board
i love ur idea abt makarov instantly being Down Bad it's the funniest thing ever especially in his circumstances. not like "oh hell yeah i want him", but "fucking hell. oh god. oh no. i think i want him"
i also feel like he would be kind of a jerk about this? mostly to save his own ego tbh. like, he def wouldn't show that _he's_ down bad, he's gonna act all high and mighty abt it like it's graves who should be grateful for the attention, in a "ur so lucky _i_ think ur hot" kinda way
i also feel like graves would see right through that and try to lowkey bully him about it. like, makarov is not as subtle as he thinks he is and it's obvious he's a little (a lot) obsessed and graves finds it hilarious.
tbh i think they'd both be insufferable and enable each other's worst qualities <3
idk about specific plot ideas, what did u have in mind??
the idea abt them meeting on a mission kinda instantly made me think of makarov being obnoxiously flirty (in his own weird way) which kinda leaves graves a little puzzled like "does he want to kill me so bad, is he ??flirting??, or is he just.... like that"
they could meet on neutral ground afterwards? idk if you wanted the makarov getting tased thing comedic or serious but i just can't get the image of him falling victim to graves being paranoid out of my head and coming to his senses tied to a chair with graves like "ok what the fuck are you doing in my hotel room u freak??????"
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