#selkie verse

[blustankgirl]

Selkie verse

Armando was a simple man, a fisherman in a fishing village. He somehow managed to catch all the biggest and most delicious fish. When they asked his secret, he would just say the fish told him the perfect bait to use and he only needed to listen.

The clouds seemed to promise beautiful seas, but he could smell the storm on the wind and hear it in the cry of the birds. He would just have to go to the little sheltering bay he'd found. No one else seemed to know it was there, but it would protect him from the worst of the coming storm and if he was lucky, something useful might wash up before the weather passed.

Pulling up to the steep rocky formation, a lone golden furred seal dragged their smaller than average form from the water that began to darken from impeding storm. The seal took a moment to catch its breath before it bounced over to a rock, proceeding to rub its round head against the ragged exterior. The skin began to loosen as it was dragged back and forth. Just as it was turning over, a huge wave crashed against the seal, a shrill yelped was heard, followed by a splash. The seal had disappeared into the water that dragged it back, leaving behind a golden pelt.

[laikuh]

there’s au potential, tbh, in mary having been a selkie who gave birth to half-selkie sam and dean. she never dies in a fire, but finds her skin and runs away back to the ocean, leaving her children and husband behind.

john doesn’t go off to hunt what killed her, since he knows nothing did, but he does grow more and more controlling of his children out of the fear that they’ll leave him like mary did. with no hunting to do, they’d stay in the same place, sam bucking against the order to stay, the one most likely to run away like their mother, and dean falling under john’s spell, giving in to john’s need to be listened to and looked after. all the same parentification and emotional incest. all the same enmeshment.

i mean, i guess john could still hunt, though not for any yellowed eyed demon, but just to get back at mary for having left them. dean and sam feeling like monstrous others because they are both human and inhuman. sam not wanting to prove his humanity to john, dean desperate to prove it.

dean still becoming the mary replacement, because dean is a selkie (ish) who won’t leave like his mother did. dean has no skin to lose, nor to find. stuck with his father by choice, longing to live his own life, but in love with his dad and unwilling to cause him even more heartbreak given john never recovered from mary.

john having sex with dean because sex is a form of control. it’s a form of ownership. there is no skin for john to lock away, so he must lock away all of dean, must own and control dean’s entire being instead. sex with dean ties him to john forever, ensures that dean is always attached. a sort of all furs meets selkie stories.

[writingsofwesteros]

Imagine a selkie in asoiaf any era she would suffer

Joffrey finding a selkie, stealing her coat and forcing her to become his wife no matter what anyone says

Viserys hearing about a captured selkie and bringing her to the red keep so he can show her off to the court

THIS !!

Everyone would have such dark tendencies and try and keep her so docile

[cry-ptidd]

Realized I never posted her here so here's Síomha my selkie lady

[0dde11eth]

Ok but baby Selkie jaskier putting a fin on his back for Halloween so he can be a shark!

[labselkie]

THEY SHOJLD BE FRIENDS PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE

[beautyconsumer]

For a Selkie!Jason au, JayGrant, A/B/O verse, an idea came up to me a shook me in the shoulders.

You have Dick, visiting his brother because for some reason he hasn't been around as much lately to be his annoying younger brother self.

And when he knocks on the door the man who answers isn't Jason, instead Dick sees this scowling, grumpy looking guy looming over him.

And he's— he's wearing Jason’s coat.

Dick immediately starts panicking because what the hell? Jason doesn't let them have his coat. Never. Why is this random, intimidating guy —who looks vaguely like Slade— wearing it?

Is he threatening him with it? Did he claim it in a fight and now he's holding it over Jason’s head and treating him like a slave?

Anyway— misunderstandings happen, Dick manages to offend Grant in 5 different ways in the same sentence.

When Jason gets there he's like what the hell are you doing threatening my mate?

Because Grant has Jason’s coat, because Jason gave it to him, because he wants— no, needs his partner and awaiting pup to be warm and safe, it's in his instincts.

Hence Grant wearing a shit eating grin over this and Dick having many conflicted feelings about this new mate.

the fic that came out of this

watch the tags!

[spokewar]

i'm not gonna finish this, but it's halloween and i deserve to post some selkie-wan as a treat

[wyrdle]

Seville and his funky socks 🧦🎀🍊

[mantisgodsdomain]

3,4,15 for any member of team snakemouth!

...how about all three?

(for this ask game)

3. Obscure headcanon

For Kabbu, though we may have noted this before, we think that the North is quite firmly considered a patch of Deadland - and its inhabitants, as a result, tend to be very, very strange from the perspective of the rest of the world. For Kabbu, specifically, this means a variety of things, both biologically and culturally - though Northern beetles are a lot more common in Bugaria, deadlands in general come with a very high rate of mutation and a very high rate of death, and that means a high rate of superstition both in things that actively impact survival and in things that do not - as well as the simple fact that a constantly-changing set of genetics means that what a northern beetle is like is often very, very open to change.

Kabbu is an example of a burrower - a subspecies of sorts primarily identified by claws designed, very specifically, for digging. His claws grow into a sort of broad shovel shape and tend to be much sturdier than an equivalent beetle's - getting underground in moments in soft ground isn't really an exaggeration! Though he can dig through harder ground, it takes time and effort, and he can't go at it with the sheer speed of softer soil - technically, he could burrow through solid rock given enough time, but it would be both hard and extremely painful. It's a trait that's heavily prized in the North for its ability to create shelter and safety - beetles dominate the North's underground, and there's nothing that can really pose a threat to them. Tunnels are safety, and it really surprises and disorients him when things underground attack him, because back home that just kind of doesn't happen unless it's Another Beetle specifically targeting you.

In terms of more social things, he has a lot of trouble getting used to the concept of mimics. This is mostly due to the fact that mimics as a whole don't really... exist in the north, at least not in the means of gaining benefit from mimicking anything else. If you can talk to them as any other awakened bug, they're usually exactly what they say they are, and species mimicking normal geological features and plants haven't found any success, unless you're willing to get extremely generous with describing the snow-bank camouflage of a Northern Silk Moth's topcoat.

Though sand wasps or "white bees" still exist, the thing they're mimicking no longer exists in the same area. Any Hive that once was in the North is long dead, overly-large groups of bugs tend to die out quickly thanks to the handful of large predators that may decide the benefits outweigh the consequences when enough tasty beetles gather in the same place, and when the enemy you're dealing with is both too heavily armoured to be really deterred by most weaponry and capable and intelligent enough to stalk your group through the snow until the cost outweighs the benefit of eating you... well, the sort of small groups generally sent to start a new colony of social bugs really don't stand a chance.

It is, occasionally, very hard to get used to the fact that southern silk moths only grow a few heads taller than him. He's used to them presenting a lot more of a threat.

For Leif... we think he's completely, 100% blind. His eyes are frozen over due to quirk of his biology - the thing about his integration that makes him a failure, specifically. With any of the Snakemouth cordyceps, they do not naturally transfer the immunity to their own magic that any other variety of mage would have, and so need to alter their hosts in order to get the appropriate biology across. With Leif, that protection is not sufficient to protect the host, much less to preserve valuable organs - eyes, especially, are fragile, after all. The cold he naturally generates exceeds the host adaptations he provides, resulting in, even beyond the blindness, unusually brittle chitin, extremely stiff and easy-to-damage tissue, organic food processing efficiency appropriate for a bug currently freezing to death...

Well, you get the idea. Functionally, if alive, a host body would be in a state of perpetual hypothermia, prone to breaking down over time and needing persistent repair that his strain of cordyceps cannot provide, as any repair he could offer that's not within his host's natural healing capabilities requires manually breaking down and reconstructing any parts, which... is inconvenient at best. As he is, he gets around most of these issues by simply replacing his host body's soft tissue with cordyceps, but that has its own issues, mainly in making him look and move incredibly uncanny. Injuries take a very long time to repair, relatively, though the less tissue damage is done the easier it is to fix - being cleanly sliced in two, for example, might be easier to handle than any sort of crushing damage. As far as his eyes go... eyes of any sort are delicate, and the slightest damage can permanently blind someone. Any of Snakemouth Den's cordyceps tend to go blind anyways as the fungus burrows into ocular nerves - if anything, this is better for hiding, since the frost over his eyeballs conceals any mycelium in the eyes themselves. In theory, it can be repaired... in practice, it would be far too much of a pain for work that will be undone the moment he overtaxes his ice magic again.

...also, he doesn't really care. Sight is not the most important sense a moth has and his scent and ability to sense pheromones is fine, along with a general sensitivity to things like vibrations in the air. More than fine, even, since he's now kind of hybridized with both Ant and Bee and the number of pheromones he's sensitive enough to sense has shot through the roof. This on top of the "magic sense" he has means he has absolutely no trouble getting around, though reading books requires more or less sticking an antenna or fungal tendril over them and parsing out where the ink is by scent and texture. He full-on didn't notice he was blind until after the cordyceps reveal.

For Vi, while this might be one we've mentioned before, we headcanon that she's got a bit of minor mutation throwing her antenna... maybe 2% more towards a non-social relative, which gears her just slightly more towards being able to detect "foreign" scents - predators, prey, and any pollen or nectar in the area. Unfortunately, this slight shift in what scents she's made to pick up comes with a reduced sensitivity to pheromones and pheromone communication within the hive, along with loss of the general innate understanding that an average bee would have of how she's meant to "fit in" to a structure that utterly cripples her communication and social life in the hive.

It's minor enough of a mutation that she's never been flagged - she's a mutation of a social bee, not a normal variant of a solitary - but she smells weird, and she doesn't pick up on pheromones quite enough, and the variation in signals she puts off means that she both fails the communication to get across what she might need and fumbles the communication conveyed back to her about what she should do. Subtle things build up over time, and within the Hive, the negatives far outweigh the benefits - the Hive is only built with bees that fit to a standard in mind, and even minor deviations can get you dragged far, far behind.

This is getting very long so, uhh. Here's a cut. Everything else is below it. We enjoy getting very long-winded. There's a lot in here.

15. Worst thing they’ve ever done

Well, this one will depend on if it's "in general" or "by their standards". Putting any sort of objective moral judgement on just about anything is ridiculously difficult, especially with how values vary by culture or individual.

There is no such thing as objective worst, and we absolutely don't guarantee these would line up with your idea of worse, and so we'll offer two options here - what we believe they would think of first if posed with the question, and an alternative answer that would likely crop up.

For Kabbu, his own response would be easy - abandoning his teammates to The Beast. It haunts him to this day - really, what sort of beetle abandons their swarm to a fate like that? If he was a little faster, a little braver, a little less of a coward - but no. He abandoned those he was meant to care most for, and they died because of it.

For the other...

There are some things that are necessary, to survive somewhere as harsh as the Deadlands. Not everyone can be saved. Not everything can be helped. Not everyone can be taken in. Tradition and law is the heart and soul of the North - rules that everyone must comply to, if not for the sake of themselves, than for the sake of those they may interact with. To break a law, for any reason, is to be shunned by the community, most likely to your eventual death.

She broke a law. It could have been for understandable reasons, or not - it doesn't matter. She put the community at risk, and for that, she couldn't stay. She was put out in the cold, despite her pleading to the contrary. She was allowed to beg and plead and bang on the door, and yet, it meant nothing. The beast she would have lead to them caught up, eventually. He would still believe it was justified.

For Leif, his first response would be... exactly what you expect of him, really. The body he took without a care. The life he stole. He might vary on whether it's the action of stealing it or the lies he's told with that body, but the answer would be the same.

For the one he wouldn't think of... He could have spoken up. He didn't. He met their eye, slated for execution on crimes that he could parlay them on if he implicated himself, and he said nothing.

The look on their face still haunts him sometimes. It hurts more now that he's two, rather than one. It's what was needed to protect his family.

For Vi... a fault in a machine. The instructions were boring, and confusing, and hard to read. She tried to do whatever she thought might work, instead of following the manual. There was an injury. Then another one. It was her fault, really, for rigging it wrong, but she was tired and angry and she argued instead of just sucking it up and fixing it when confronted on it, and it went unfixed for days more. A minor fault can very well lead to deaths, and though this one didn't, it came close - one more inch, a slightly looser bolt, and it would have cracked a bug's shell clean open. It's a miracle it turned out as well as it did. It's a miracle that no one connected it to her enough, even when it was fixed. Someone else was punished, and she was old enough to know not to step forward - she's not stupid, after all.

The guilt still haunts her. The "what-if". The possibility of it. If someone died of her own stupid negligence, if she made someone else take the fall - she would let them, really, her sense of self-preservation isn't that bad, but she's not sure she could live with it after.

With the one she wouldn't think of personally... considering the background she's got, the journey to the Ant Kingdom, and the fact that it's already stated she took jobs before canon? We think there's a fairly good chance that Vi's off jobs got... shady. It's not like she has much in the way of morals when it comes to money, and "will do just about anything for enough cash" is a decent market. If you're willing to forsake your morals, you can get more money than your heart desires - at the cost of just a bit of risk, at that!

She doesn't think about it, really. It wasn't something she needed to think about. They were threatening her, they were a risk to her team, they were the price she had to pay to eat, the specifics of what happened don't matter much at this point. Put in the position again, would she choose their life, or hers? It doesn't matter. They're dead, anyways. She should know. She was the one to take the payment for it.

4. Favorite line?

We're copy-pasting these straight from the game! These Direct Quotes are all sourced from @aquilamage's Bug Fables Transcript project, which we highly recommend checking out! It's an excellent resource for double-checking dialogue without having to replay the game first, and a repository for just about all the dialogue in the game (provided it wasn't taken out by previous patches, of course).

We will be honest: there's a lot of dialogue in this game. This might not be our absolute favorites, as a result of a general poor memory as well as Too Much Game. Also, we have blatant favoritism towards Vi in all ways. Most of these are favorite interactions, rather than anything else, so...

For Leif:

Kabbu: Leif. If you need to take a break, let us know. Vi will carry you. Vi: That is not happening. Leif: Oh, the fatigue, it kicks in... Vi: I said it's not happening!

...and for Vi, we're fond of this dialogue, specifically because the first time we encountered it we misread "exploring" as "exploding".

Leif: Science looks like a lot of hard work. Vi: It's like uh...the thinking version of exploring!

But of course, our favorite Vi Dialogue as well as our personal favorite dialogue in the game in general would be the Bee Guard overworld spy.

Leif: Vi, you're the only Bee explorer, right? Vi: Huh? Uh, yeah! That I know of... Leif: We've been thinking it's a bit weird, to see so many Bee guards, but only one explorer... Vi: Look, they're not guards because they want to or anything, okay? Vi: They were born to be guards, so they guard. That's it. Kabbu: That's a bit somber... Vi: ...That's just how the Hive is sometimes.

"I'm allergic to bouncers" is a close second, of course. In terms of story implications, we pull on her Jaune interactions and especially the point just after getting kicked out of the studio for the first time during Jaune's request, but that's... it's less we "like" it, per se, and more that the implications are fun to toy with. In terms of the actual dialogue, it just... makes us feel sad. Sad, [], and maybe a bit angry on her behalf. We've been there more than we care to admit, after all.

We... wouldn't wish something similar on anyone. And no matter how good the good gets with Jaune, it still can't really outweigh the fact that the bad starts ticking boxes about emotional abuse in a way that makes relationships like Mothiva & Zasp that more people are willing to try and call out pale in comparison. We probably need to finish that essay some time...

Anyways, we like it when Kabbu gets mad enough to yell at people.

Kabbu: This is ridiculous! You realize you could be dooming us all!? Kabbu: What if the Termite King loses trust in the Queen!? Kabbu: What if you lose to the Wasp King without our help!? Kabbu: Have you gone completely, utterly insane!? Have you lost all intelligence! Mothiva: Yikes. You're overthinking this WAY too much. Mothiva: The Ant Kingdom's way better in our hands than with you LOSERS. Kabbu: We have SAVED YOUR LIFE BEFORE, you WITCH!

[blustankgirl]

"Of course you'd make fun of my culture." She scoffed, tossing in the driest stick from the wet pile to feed the dying flames. The storm raged on, fat drops of water pelted the rocky ground and thunder rumbled, announcing its arrival. "Just cause you're not my ideal mate for life either, doesn't mean I can just piss away years of tradition."

"So you wanna break the engagement cause of some fear of commitment, just take that rock over there and bash my head in." Johnny crossed her arms and flops to the side, closing her eyes. "Get it over with. It'll make us even and I'm sure you have some very important human things to do later."

Lighting struck the ground, causing rocks to scatter, one striking their fire that had burning embers kicked up. One of the fiery pieces landed on her coat, burning into the golden fur. Johnny cried out, back pedaling from the fire and beat her palm against the hot cherry as it seared into her hand. Once it died out, she looked over the pelt, hugging the skin to her in gratitude of it's minimal damage.

Selkie verse

Armando was a simple man, a fisherman in a fishing village. He somehow managed to catch all the biggest and most delicious fish. When they asked his secret, he would just say the fish told him the perfect bait to use and he only needed to listen.

The clouds seemed to promise beautiful seas, but he could smell the storm on the wind and hear it in the cry of the birds. He would just have to go to the little sheltering bay he'd found. No one else seemed to know it was there, but it would protect him from the worst of the coming storm and if he was lucky, something useful might wash up before the weather passed.

Pulling up to the steep rocky formation, a lone golden furred seal dragged their smaller than average form from the water that began to darken from impeding storm. The seal took a moment to catch its breath before it bounced over to a rock, proceeding to rub its round head against the ragged exterior. The skin began to loosen as it was dragged back and forth. Just as it was turning over, a huge wave crashed against the seal, a shrill yelped was heard, followed by a splash. The seal had disappeared into the water that dragged it back, leaving behind a golden pelt.

[laikuh]

selkie!dean is the one thing guaranteed to make me crazy still about dean and john.

[hatigave]

I've been thinking a lot about selkie Jackson and the more I think about him the more I love him   ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ so here's the write-up.

Jackson was found and eventually adopted by Alfred and Kenna when he was just a baby. Alfred found an infant wrapped up in a pelt during one of his visits to Portsmouth, and when the search for the baby's mother didn't yield any results, eventually brought Jackson home with him.

The child grows, and so does the pelt he was found in. Neither parent speaks about it; to them, Jackson is their son, and an ever-growing pelt tucked away in a travel chest isn't going to change that. They find that the pelt soothes Jackson when he is restless, so they allow him to play with it as he grows from a baby into a toddler.

When Kenna is pregnant with the pair's second child, she is outside with Jackson, watching the child play at the edge of the lake near their home, using the pelt as a blanket for the child to sit on. She takes her eyes off him for a moment, and cannot find him when they return. Frantic and frightened she runs into the water expecting the worst. Kenna did not expect to find the young seal staring up at her with big eyes and a clear expression of a child recognizing its mother.

As a teen and during early adulthood, Alfred keeps taking Jackson to the sea as often as he can. His parents are simply trying to do what's best for him even when they know his leaving is going to hurt them. Jackson is 18 when he joins the Navy. Too late to truly amount to anything, too old to move up the ranks. He's happy though, even when it becomes a chore to keep his identity hidden from his shipmates and superiors.

Eventually, he meets the man who changes everything for him, and he abandons the Navy in favour of being with him on a merchant ship. Nothing grand, just a small vessel that holds a crew of less than ten. There are fewer eyes there, and no one notices when Jackson is gone for a while to swim in the endless oceans in the shape of a seal.

[elvisabutler]

beyond the sea verse ( the selkie elvis au )

summary: once upon a time there was a selkie named elvis who gave his seal skin to his manager for safe keeping only to be trapped by him. you come along and win it from the manager in a game of poker. this is the story of how two people navigate a relationship that is both incredibly simple and more than a bit complicated. features jerry schilling as a werewolf, and a lot comments about seal skins and seal wives.

my heart will lead me there soon ( rated t, prequel ) happy we’ll be beyond the sea ( rated m ) and never again i’ll so sailing ( rated t ) sea dog ( rated t ) my lover stands on golden sands ( rated t ) she's there watching for me ( rated m ) we'll kiss just as before ( rated m )

all of these are meant to be read in order for a sequential timeline but honestly they all can be read as one shots too. and last two were written for smut summer.

[0dde11eth]

Omg omg omg a friend shared this on Facebook and it's exactly what Lambert would do to (adult) selkie jaskier!

@penandinkprincess

[labselkie]

happy pride month to her in particular

i hope she can convince fisk to do a corporate acknowledgement and change the alchemax logo rainbow