#the trainers will do shit like this with rachel in the aquarium

[detective-with-one-arm]

Mer Verse Headcanons

More information on the mer.

Rachel

Her mermaid form is similar to a Blacktip Reef Shark.

She grew up completely alone, having never known her parents or ever given a name. All she knows is that she had parents, but she sure doesn’t remember their faces or if she even had siblings.

She has a cave much farther out from the shore and away from civilization where she lives. So far, nobody’s found it.

She’s never seen another of her own kind in all the years she’s lived in the lake. As far as she knows, she’s the only one.

Reference:

Lake Verse

Rachel lives in Lake Eerie and hangs around Belle Isle a lot.

She doesn’t actually like to eat and/or kill people like sirens are fabled to do.

She mostly just lures people close so she can make friends.

Which isn’t to say that she can’t be scary and kill people because hoo boy, she can be scary when she wants to be.

She’s seen some messed up shit gone down by the shore and she’s not keen on just letting that slide.

Because there are a lot of androids there now, Rachel actually makes friends with a lot of androids and they keep her secret.

Especially since they’re both races that face persecution by humans.

She sees the families that gather on the beaches on the lake and she can’t help but want something like that for herself.

Aquarium Verse

Rachel’s been caught and discovered and she’s kept in the Belle Isle Aquarium as an exhibit and it constantly studied by the staff and researchers that come there.

She’s particularly soft towards the children that come there because of how excited and awestruck they are by her.

She really hates it when she sees parents mistreating their kids and has often scared them, the parents mistakenly believing Rachel to be dangerous.

She knows Sign Language thanks to the handlers and trainers teaching it to her.

They don’t know she can actually verbally speak their language.

She keeps her true intelligence a secret from them because she doesn’t want to just be discarded, but she also doesn’t want to be studied too hard by them and kept as some sort of experiment.

Which is hard because...she wants friends.

Connor

Connor is based on a black halfmoon orchid betta fish with elements of a firefly squid.

His tail half is black with shimmery bright iridescent blue scales while his top half is pale white skin with a pale blue iridescent shimmer to it when the light bends on him.

He has a long flowy tail and fins on his sides and his elbows and his ears are the same way. He also has a pronounced frilled spine from the back of his neck to partway down his tail.

There’s also a soft flowy seam that runs down his sides from his tips to where his flowy tail tip begins.

Covering his slit are a set of tentacles, two of them being proper arms to grip things with and four of them just for protection.

Connor is capable of giving and receiving eggs, but which one he does changes every breeding season.

He has dark freckles on his pale skin and white freckles on his dark tail. All of these glow a bright blue in the dark.

In-fact, Connor is absolutely covered in secret bioluminescent markings all over his body.

In terms of personality, Connor is a traditional siren.

Charming, proud, flirtatious, and carefree.

He lives a mostly solitary life, but spends his life living day to day without much of an ultimate goal or need for anything else.

He often entices others to him with his song and lays with them, keeping them and taking care of them for the season until his eggs hatch and he can let them go freely.

He can live in both the deep sea and the surface level, as he is perfectly able to camouflage for both.

Cyrus

Cyrus is based on a Leopard Seal.

He’s covered in splotchy grey fur all over and is very sleek in design. He’s also 13 feet long.

Cyrus does not lay eggs, he would find a mate that can give live birth.

In-fact, egg-laying animals, including egg-laying mers, smell like food to him.

Androids or android mers would simply smell like equipment.

However, he won’t eat other seal mers because they’re either competition or mates.

He does not encounter humans very often, but depending on the circumstances, he may either see them as food, competition, or a mate depending on the scent and how much of a threat they seem to pose to him or his food sources.

In the harsh environment he lives in, he cannot afford to waste food or resources, so he won’t pick unnecessary fights and he’ll take advantage of whatever food or mate he can get.

He’s mostly detached and cannot form attachments to others except for a seasonal mate. Then and only then does he have an attachment, and even then, it’s a temporary one. He views his mate as something he needs to provide for and protect and keep safe and will be very caring towards them during the rearing of his pup. But afterwards, he will lose the attachment.

He’s also a primarily solitary creature otherwise and prefers his own company to the company of another.

Howard

Howard is an incredibly prideful siren.

He’s incredibly intelligent and he knows it and often preens his appearance.

He can camouflage with his environments and blend into his habitats.

His lower half bears a resemblance to a two-spot octopus, golden yellow in appearance typically with two false eye spots on either side of his naval.

Howard is not interested in consuming humans for food or even killing them.

No, all he cares about is finding a suitable mate to deposit his seed in and he’ll find just about anyone to do it in.

Once they’re trapped, they won’t be able to escape his tentacles or his grasp.

He will sing them songs that promise them a life of security, comfort, and unconditional love and adoration. He prays on those with insecurities and self-worth issues.

He's rather drawn to marriage iconography.

Unlike his human self, as a siren, he actually doesn't care what gender his victim is.

He doesn't go inland if he can help it, but if he does, he will spirit his love away and make a journey through the lakes until they reach the open sea where he takes them to his island and they can spend their entire lives together.

What his victims don't know is that there are several skeletons on the island from his previous victims.

Howard can't lay eggs, but he can reproduce with most human females. Though, he doesn't actually care much about being a caretaker. That being said, he will be a decent and serviceable father to his young.

Serena

Android Siren Verse

Serena is a custom-made android mermaid.

She was made by a man who was obsessed with mermaids and wanted one for himself.

She was kept by him as his trophy and his personal companion android, except for the fact that she was an aquatic mermaid android.

Despite playing the part, she wants nothing more than to escape from her master and be free, out on the open ocean where she belongs.

She looks a lot more like a typical storybook mermaid. Think Ariel from The Little Mermaid, and that’s pretty close to what Serena looks like.

Once she does manage to escape her master, however, she flees.

She flees and she never looks back and makes a life for herself out on the open ocean.

She ends up becoming a true siren, luring sailors to their doom before killing them and leaving them for dead at sea.

Siren Verse

She’s an incredibly reclusive siren.

She never stays in one place for very long and is always traveling.

If she’s seen, she’s never seen in that place twice.

She tends to lie low in the depths until she has to hunt for food.

Her lower half has the appearance of a vampire squid.

Dark red with elegant tentacles and membranes between them.

Her song is irresistible and anyone who comes near will meet a swift and painful end by her teeth and barbed tentacles.

Nathan

Nathan isn’t a siren, he’s just an ordinary mer.

He lives in the lakes and doesn’t really bother anyone and mostly just keeps to himself.

He’s incredibly inquisitive and curious and fascinated with everything around him and he’s most fascinated by new things.

Humans fascinate him more than anything else and he collects as many random trinkets and artifacts as he can from them.

He values books and other things that offer knowledge to him and he hoards them like treasures.

He’s very gentle and soft-spoken and doesn’t act violently very much.

Unlike many of his fellow mers, he doesn’t really concern himself much with finding a mate or having a family.

He’s more interested in just learning for the sake of learning and satiating his curiosity.

Nathan has the appearance of a wild caught axolotl, exhibiting the dark colouration rather than the more familiar leucistic variants often seen in captivity.