#jellyneil au

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Can I be cheeky and ask for some more tiny jellyfish Neil? I love him so much. In my pocket.

In your pocket!

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I live for your JellyFish!Neil AU.

They are so cute, and I just want to protect them forever! Thank you for bringing these into the world! 🧡💜

THANK U FOR ENJOYING THEM 💕

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op your style is so charming and the chibi drawings and tiny baby mermaids are going to be the end of me

Oh no… a baby jellyNeil appears

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Digital download for the last year’s worth of mer stuff is available 🫡

It’s pay what you want - if you have a couple extra bucks to toss at me it’s v much appreciated right now but I wanted to make it accessible! Pls enjoy, and don’t forget that earlier info is still available in last year’s zine 💕

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Ok life cycle of a jelly mer is a GO. I’ll stick it under the cut in case anyone doesn’t want to see the lil development/newborn stuff

BUT before that since I know at least a few people are going to ask; yes, you can hold tiny baby medusa Neil, it can’t even sting you yet. Just a lil tingle

(Shout out to @the-tortoise-lady for the idea of baby Neil with no common sense or self awareness being very certain it both can and will eat that thing it found wading in the water near the beach (fisherman Andrew))

So normal jellyfish polyps grow into what looks like little stacked saucers or plates and when one breaks off it grows into the actual medusa we all know. So like. I’m just imagining the upper body/human part of the mer grows inside more like two cups stacked together, and there’s only one per polyp (i don’t even know if regular polyps have multiple discs break off tbh).

But according to some v quick research and not being able to find specifically Sea Nettle reproductive cycle, I am declaring their polyps the average size of Small (about an inch/3cm or something close) and their baby medusae have A LOT of growing to do :D

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not to be dramatic or anything but I would die for baby jelly Neil

You will

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I'm so obsessed with your aus omds I just wanna *cups jelly Neil in my palms*

Good news! It loves that 😌

Find the mer au masterpost here 💕

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hiii ngl idk if u still do these I'm 😰 new to tumblr but ur bio says art asks r open? UNLESSITSNOTthenignoremeilybye...UNLESS?? doesn't even have to be art I'm jus dying for a crumb (even a morsel) of big giant mer boy Kevin n his favorite diabolical devious lil mudrats Jeremy and also jean. Bye 🏃‍♀️💨💨💨💨😘🫂

HELLO no worries you are doing everything right 😌

So I loved this prompt actually but my brain was giving me nothing for mer kevi with human Jean and Jeremy so I am hereby opening the ideas pool to you all, pls help lol

What I DID do was doodle the exchange between Kevin and Neil that @sade-of-spades mentioned in our chats 😂💕 thank you again, it’s perfect

Find the mer au masterpost here 🐋

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Question: how long does medusa neil takes to grow?

Like, taking the hands as Andrew's, is it more of a "whiplash because I was petting this baby a month ago and it's now Big" situation or "wait what you're telling this hot mer is that tiny cute thingy I'd found around as a teen?" one

Ok ok so I had just put out “Andrew finding baby jelly neil would be really cute” as like a fun little side thought but now I REALLY LIKE IT AND I WANT TO PUT IT IN THE TIMELINE

so to answer this question: physically? A Sea Nettle mer like Neil I’m going to say takes about 17-19 years to reach physical maturity/full size (which in jellies is pretty far removed from mental and emotional maturity, jelly brains take a good while to develop because they start with so little)

So this. This is what I’m deciding thank you so much @snazzy-jas-z-is-a-fan-of (which counts as your second option, dear galacticvampire)

And it looks like this:

@exy-is-sexy medusa admirer 🥰

So Andrew always comes back to the beach (fisherman’s son, they’re there a lot) and always gets distracted going to a specific tide pool housing this little thing he found. Aaron thinks it’s really cool too, their dad is too busy with work down the beach and is happy his kids are entertaining themselves while he gets ready for the day. Of course, yes, he tells them. Very good, finding such a mer in these waters. (He thinks it’s kids being kids. No one’s seen a jelly mer, they’re kind of believed to be extinct if not simply legends. But a little imagination is healthy.)

Then one day, Andrew checks the tide pool and finds it empty of the tiny jelly. It’s nowhere in sight, he looks all over the nearby waters and in any grass or rocks it could have gotten caught in. Nothing at all.

Maybe by the time he’s taken over his family’s fishing business, Andrew has convinced himself it really was in his imagination. His memory serves him well but if he’d convinced himself it was real back then, that would be what he remembered now.

Until he finds a monster washed up on his beach.

(A shot of the process under the cut)

IT DOESNT COME ACROSS IN THE PANEL. BUT I CANNOT PROPERLY EXPRESS TO YOU HOW TINY THAT SECOND NEIL IS. literally I think that is the single smallest thing I’ve ever drawn. Look at this

That’s me sharpening my 0.3 mechanical pencil to get it small enough to draw the eyes. I just need everyone to know this because I think it’s so stupid and funny. And we all love tiny baby jelly Neil and it doesn’t get ANY tinier than this folks

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Extra posting bc I was going back through my sketchbooks to figure out where I left a note on smth, found this. Still don’t super like it and I actually think they’d be a couple years older when Neil finds its way back to Andrew’s beach but maybe you’ll get a kick out of it 😘

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We may branch off into separate masterposts as we keep going, but for now, here’s this ✨ there may be some overlap or ambiguity with various posts, but I’ll do my best to organize!

mermay 2023 pdf/zine (free download)

mermay 2024 pdf/zine

oops all mers au 🦈🪼🐋

brainstorming pg1 mermay 2023 piece head pats for jellyneil whalemack

mer cuddles

squid jean take 1

hybrid mer Kevin

jellyneil’s gender

Neil tries to catch food for Andrew

How Neil sleeps sometimes (and harbor seals being cute)

Tiny baby squean?

When sharkdrew surprises jellyneil

Jellyneil and its stingers

Whalemack taking sharkdrew to Abby & Bee

Squean angst

Whalemack babysits

Jeremy & Jean designs (jeremer and squean?)

Killer whales (Allison, Renee, Riko)

Kefin and jellyNeil bicker

sharkdrew au 🦈🏴‍☠️

brainstorming pg2 sleepy baby sharks/some lore sharkdrew and whalemack

Neil meets the shark (evernote scene)

sharkdrew finds a washed up pirate

Mer Kevin and human Jean&Jeremy

Maybe another first meeting

jellyneil au 🪼🎣

first mini comic pt1 / pt2 jelly life cycle/baby jelly neil little Andrew finds a baby jelly

harpoon fisher Andrew

baby jelly sounds

bubble rings snippet

jellyNeil in a bucket

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“They said something washed up on shore last night.

Something no one had seen in hundreds of years.

Something that was supposed to be dead.”

Mermay au pt1 / pt2

In which Andrew is a respected, if lone, fisherman designated to safeguard the shores and nearby ocean. Neil is a very large and very dangerous Black Sea Nettle mer jellyfish. Who shouldn’t have ever been anywhere near Andrew’s shores.

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“It should be dead now, too.

But I couldn’t kill it.”

Mermay au pt1 / pt2

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Hey tumblr happy mermay

I have a mini comic for you later, but for now here’s some concept sketches/brainstorming 👀

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I didnt mean to rediscover how much I like brainstorming and world building stuff but here we are - this time it’s (mostly) pirate Neil and shark Andrew flavored!

@tell-me-your-vision had some very good tags on the last post like this so of course I started thinking harder about it lol, you all know by now that the best way to get me to draw more is to leave ideas and questions in your tags 😘 it’s very interesting figuring out what parts I want to be drawn directly from the source animal and what I want to have artistic liberty with! Sometimes you just gotta say “it’s this way because I decided it is” and offer no more explanation, not even to yourself.

That being said. If the snippet interested you, find more of the unfinished scene here :D (and if you want to leave a comment… 👀)

I don’t know how clear this image is going to end up being, so here’s the important notes typed up:

Does [Andrew’s] missing fin cause maneuverability problems? Yep. Fins keep the body stable and streamlined in the water. No fin/half detached fins means Andrew spends a lot more energy to be equally as efficient while swimming. (That’s part of why he had more upper body strength than most mers.)

Does jelly Neil feel pain like humans? Not at all. Pain vs nociception - the detection of averse stimulus. So Neil can sense and respond to ‘painful’ stimuli, and he does feel some pain like a person would in his upper half, but it’s mostly just a sensation that he responds to. (This is dangerous. Less pain means he doesn’t realize how dire a situation may be.)

A second eyelid - like a crocodile/etc; a clear secondary eyelid that closes horizontally beneath the primary eyelid, developed to keep the eye safe and clear underwater. Why jelly Neil rarely ‘actually’ blinks

Pirate Neil’s prosthesis. Most of it is always hidden under clothes; it’s made of leather, copper, rubber, and cumaru wood. It was given to him by Stuart as soon as the man found out that Neil had lost his leg, and Stuart had it custom made through his vast connections. At one point in the timeline, Neil angrily takes it off to show a wary and lashing-out sharkDrew that he has also once been on the wrong end of a ‘whaler’s’ knife.

The tiny two panel comic in the bottom right corner: pirate Neil says “stop trying to stab me in the leg” while sharkDrew was fairly certain he just took out this pirate’s kneecap with his sharp rock

The snippet:

“And it was terrified. It’s second eyelids fluttered, it’s eyes were hazy. It held the rough stone ready in case Neil tried to get close again. It still wasn’t breathing right. It was still bleeding.

“Okay,” Neil said softly. He held his own hands out a little to the side. “I’m not going to hurt you more.”

The shark snarled, though it’s mouth never opened.

“I didn’t hurt you in the first place. They’re still finning mers?”

Neil tried to step in, slowly, and was met with another vicious swing. He was ready this time, avoiding the sharp stone neatly.

“Hey, thing. Keep moving like that and you’ll bleed to death.”

Another attempt, and another swing. Neil looked at the place it’s fin had been, now a horrible, gaping wound on its back. He could see the meat beneath the blood. If he didn’t help soon, the shark would go into shock, if not simply die here on the rocks.

“Do you even realize what’s at stake for you?”

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Wips and sketches from the insta live this morning 💕 sharkdrew and pirate Neil, fisherman Andrew, and possible design squid Jean