New blog moment /pos
Hello! I am here to formally request you may or may not tell me more about this selkieverse. Is it an au where everyone is a selkie (or at least, some bugs are)? Do they just turn into aquatic like bugs instead of actual seals? If actual seals, do you have species picked out for the selkie characters yet? How does it work? Are they even selkies at all? Once more, you don't have to answer if its information you'd like to withold but as local marine biology (mostly seals and jellyfish though) nerd I must know if this may be an au that is like. Right up my alley.
Oh boy, we can answer questions! Technically, we've had this blog for a bit, we just... haven't been using it (we are afflicted with a chronic need to illustrate our worldbuilding and we just Haven't Been Drawing recently).
Not everyone is a selkie, but some bugs are - actual species varies! They're seals, or other assorted... vertebrates, mostly. "Selkie", here, is less referring specifically to seals and more referring to the general category of Bugs With Bonus Pelt. We've got actual species picked out for the selkie characters, but we do want to keep a few under wraps - of the few we can reveal, Leif is a ribbon seal, Mothiva is a leopard seal, Cenn is a yellow-bellied water snake, and Vi... well, her pelt was an ermine.
In terms of how it works - selkies are, more or less, bugs that come in two... pieces, or with two forms. It's genetic, though it can very much skip generations and occasionally appears to manifest from nowhere - generally, you have a few main strains of selkie in an area, maybe with a scattering of other species around. Seals are by far the most common around both Bugaria and The North, and the gene's most common in moths (as far as anyone knows), though it can appear in other species - and, as previously mentioned, sometimes you just get a kid who's a selkie without any previous selkie relatives.
A selkie's pelt isn't present upon hatching, but manifests later - generally either when they metamorphose, in the case of bugs like moths and butterflies, or during one of their first few instars on bugs who do That. It is, functionally, a part of them - a selkie cannot be separated from their pelt for too long, though they can wander farther from it with age and practice, and trying to keep away from it causes fun side effects (like organ failure, and feeling like you're being physically peeled out of your shell, and death).
The pelt itself is, as is typical with selkies, a pelt - seal, or snake, or ermine, or whatever else someone might be. Looks like you'd expect a seal pelt to be - although a selkie's pelt contains a few more bones. Generally, you've got a skull, spine, and ribcage, but it's not uncommon to have a few other bones - they shape the skin, more or less. As is standard, once the skin is donned, they gain the form of their pelt, but the selkie has some control over it - as well as some control over how the pelt moves.
The thing about selkie pelts is that, as they're a part of the selkie, they're functionally "alive" - an extension of the self, an extra limb. Technically, anyone can don a selkie pelt and take on the form of whatever creature they are, but it'll be... strange. Uncanny. They aren't the selkie, and this isn't their form - they're just wearing their skin. Unlike on the selkie themself, the bones aren't going to merge to them properly, they're just going to stick in there, wearing away at their shell until they eventually take it off. A pelt only retains its transformative properties while the selkie it belongs to is alive - once they bite it, it becomes just a piece of leather, though with selkie skin being the only real option as far as skins go, it's still pretty damn valuable dead.
If a selkie's pelt is destroyed, the selkie dies. Likewise, if a selkie dies, the pelt becomes inert. It's a bit like holding a vital organ in your hand - and if the selkie and the pelt are taken too far apart, the connection is severed and the selkie will die even if no damage is dealt to either them or their pelt.
As is standard for selkie mythology, having a selkie's pelt gives you some measure of control over them. Specific degree of control varies, largely based on the selkie - though all selkies can be commanded while you're actively holding their pelt, if they'll keep following that command once you've put it down is a whole 'nother ball park. If you had Leif's pelt in hand and told him to do something, he'd keep doing it even if you put that pelt down later, but if you tried the same with Vi (again, while she had it) she'd stop the second you put it down. With Mothiva, just possessing the pelt is enough - you don't need direct contact, you just need to have it. The effect's at least partially psychosomatic - while it's a direct compulsion with direct contact, anything past that is largely based on if the selkie thinks you should be able to tell them what to do.
The selkie form itself is fairly standard as creatures of its species go, albeit downsized for bug scale. They're around the size they'd normally be relative to a human, relative to an average bug (using an ant as your Standard Human works, here). A selkie is, functionally, both their bug species and their pelt species - behaviors in one form will affect the other, and vice versa. Generally, this'll manifest most noticeably in either tics or diet - a craving for raw fish, an odd sense of territorialism, an impulse to drag dead things to your dumb, bad-at-hunting teammate. It does, however, vary - and a good chunk of selkies do try to keep the fact that they're selkies hidden, especially if they might have reason to fear a stolen pelt.
...this is a whole lot of rambling on Selkie Magic Mechanics and not a whole lot of marine biology, uhh. Hope this helps sketch out the general mechanics for ya! We're always glad to talk about Cool AUs!
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I wrote this scene this morning, I guess I needed a bit of NewTina fluff...
It's supposed to fit in my non magical modern AU (that said, there isn't much to change to make that fit into canon), before Newt and Tina are together.
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Newt tried to open a round metallic box, but it suddenly slipped from his hands, as if it had been alive. As in slow motion, the container fell on the ground, all its contents spreaded on the kitchen floor, staining the tiles with tea leaves.
“Bloody hell !” he muttered, before beginning to mumble, as he was looking for a broom. “Can you be bloody careful once Newt ? It’s not that bloody complicated to open a bloody box… I’m tired of you Newt, really… You should be able to make yourself tea without creating a storm in the kitchen…And not be such a failure.” He was almost crying over frustration, over despair at having wasted all his precious tea reserves, and over fatigue. Probably.
A door opened, revealing a feminine shape. Tina’s eyes were barely opened, as if her lids were protesting, manifesting, ordering her to go back to sleep.
“Newt, ‘re you alright ?”
“Oh… I’m so sorry. Did I wake you up ?”
She softly smiled at him as an answer. “Is everything OK ? ‘re you hurt ?”
“Yes…all good… I just… messed everything up. As usual… But there is nothing to worry about. I’ll just have to buy tea in the morning, I guess. I’m so sorry I woke you up Tina.” He was rubbing the back of his head, looking sheepishly at the dirty floor.
“Oh… that’s a chance that I actually bought some tea of yours a few days ago.” She opened a cupboard and stretched, her pajamas lifting up, revealing a bit of skin over her stomach. He hurried to look away, his cheeks abruptly burning.
“I think it’s the right one ?”
A paper bag appeared in front of him. He took many precautions to open the bag and plunged his nose to smell the content. Straight away surrounded by the scent of orange blossom, he whispered. “You remembered… Thank you Tina.” He smiled at her, a golden sparkle in his eyes, and brushed her cheek with his lips. She was the one to blush, now.
“What if I made that tea for you ? Does that sound great ? So you’ll tell me why you were up in the middle of the night.”
“It’s 5AM, not the…” She gave him a glare, making him stop his sentence. “Right. I couldn’t sleep, I’m up for hours already. I was working.” He kept the rest of his thoughts for himself, trying to avoid to incur her wrath again, even if he was endlessly spiraling. “And you’re right, I should sleep, or rest, or things won’t get pretty soon… As it always turns when I begin to lose my motor skills.”
As Tina pushed him out of the kitchen space, he returned to his seat at the table, and got back to work… before being interrupted only a few seconds later, by her hand putting a bookmark inside the large volume that was in front of him.
“Certainly not Mister Scamander. We’ll have that tea together. But no work. I think that all of this proves to us that you need to rest. I’ve two free hours before I need to actually get ready for work. Do you want to watch that show we began last week ?” He looked at her, flabbergasted, then nodded imperceptibly. Then, as he began to grab the teapot, she stopped his move. “What about I take care of everything breakable today ? And you get us some pillows and plaids ?”
Newt snuck in his room to bring back the thick blanket made with multicolored squares they both loved. He joined her on the couch where they snuggled against each other, Tina finally using Newt as a pillow as he turned the TV on.
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