#spring heeled jack and the wolfman

[ts-porter]

The banging continued, echoing from Theo's front door, joined by a voice. "Theo? Theo, are you in?" The doorknob rattled.

"Coming!" Theo set his weaving aside and rushed to the door. I hopped quickly to the most shadowed corner, a space half-hidden behind a cross beam, where I was unlikely to be spotted. Theo opened the door, ushering in a big lantern-jawed human woman in a fur—no, a selkie with her mottled skin draped over her like a raincoat.

"There's been another," she said without preamble, sweeping the hood of her skin back.

"No." Theo's head and tail drooped. "Who was it?"

"James Murphy." The selkie shook her head sharply. "Damn fool just had to go check on his boat in the storm. Little bits of him were spread all the way down the dock to shore, like chum."

"Third humans in three days." Theo covered his mouth with one hand. "How bad is it out there?"

"Well, it's not good, I'll tell you that," the selkie said. "Those McConnell boys were out drumming up fear, until the weather drove them home, and that's before they found Ol' Murphy. This plays right into their hands."

"I should be out there," Theo's voice was quiet but intense. "I should be helping."

"Weren't you going to be hunting tonight?" the selkie asked, chin jutting out combatively. "I didn't expect to find you in."

"I was." Theo growled faintly. "The Spring-heeled Jacks have taken it into their fool heads that I'm involved. They've got me pinned down."

"You!?" The selkie seemed positively affronted. "I'd give those bouncy bastards a piece of my mind!" She tugged her fur back over her head. "Well, I'm off. Someone's got to spread the warning."

"Be safe," Theo said.

The selkie barked a rough laugh, flashing a disconcertingly wide mouthful of pointy teeth, and was gone.

-- Excerpt from 'Spring-heeled Jack and the Wolfman', by me, a novella for whom I can find no publisher.

so if there’s one single trope i’m always down to fight it’s the animal bride (folklore motif 402??) which a lot of you are probably familiar with as the selkie - the fisherman either falls in love, steals her skin to trap her on land/gain power over her, or they fall in love and THEN he steals her skin to keep her from leaving, and either way she spends a lot of time gazing sadly out to sea and then she or her child finds the skin and never returns again. and that’s awful on a whole lot of levels - it’s not love, it’s control.

BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.

i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…

you know i was going to say maybe she just shouts for her sisters and suddenly you’re realizing you’ve made a terrible terrible mistake bc you’re surrounded by big fucking birds who are all hissing. but honestly if this swan lady is as aggressively down to brawl as any other generally unhappy swan, then she’d straight up fuck you up on her own. she’d just deck you roundhouse, honestly. you don’t fuck with swans. why does this trope exist

[theelliottsmiths]

Cryptids are fine

The rammboys as cryptids/mythical creatures (thank you for this ask, finally listening to the Cryptid Keeper Podcast is useful):

Schneider: Kelpie. He has very delicate, slightly equine features, and their whole deal is being a sometimes-horse who can also turn into the prettiest man you've ever seen. He's also quite tricksy and deceptive, which are important qualities if you want to fool someone into touching your sticky skin so you can murder them.

Alternately, Fae. His features are delicate and he has a very ethereal quality. Looks like he would trick you out of your name.

Or just a giant rat. That's arguably a cryptid thing.

Oliver: I want to say skinwalker but from my understanding the cultures skinwalkers belong to aren't super happy with people treating that part of their culture as a joke? So consider, perhaps, a Fresno night crawler

Till: Wulver. Basically a wolfman (not a human, not a shapeshifter) from the Shetlands, notorious for leaving fish for poor/starving families. Like a werewolf but soft and sweet and good.

"The Wulver was a creature like a man with a wolf's head. He had short brown hair all over him. His home was a cave dug out of the side of a steep knowe, half-way up a hill. He didn't molest folk if folk didn't molest him. He was fond of fishing, and had a small rock in the deep water which is known to this day as the "Wulver's Stane". There he would sit fishing sillaks and piltaks for hour after hour. He was reported to have frequently left a few fish on the window-sill of some poor body"

Alternately: Black Shuck. Black Shuck is just Till when he needs to go off into the wilderness for a while

Paul: Kappa. They're mischievous tricksters. Their heads have a little bowl of water and if he spills it he is defeated. Fitting, given his little bowl cut thing.

Alternatively: Spring-heeled Jack. Bouncy. Mischievous. Nasty boy.

Flake: hoop snake. But no in seriousness, I was going to say some kind of shapeshifter because his looks are so vastly different I used to think he was several people, but maybe a sphinx? He seems like he would be good at riddles.

He could also be the banshee, reason being he's got a good shout on him, judging by a few Feeling B videos I've seen. He would probably have fun being an omen of death.

Richard: Incubus and/or vampire. Unsure this needs an explanation. Fun fact, one way you can supposedly identify an incubus is by their unnaturally large or cold penises.

You could also probably write an interesting selkie fic with him and his white fluffy coat.