#gregstophe mer/selkie au

[alister312]

in a mythical kinda gregstophe mood

[alister312]

brain gone it’s just selkie/fisherman christophe and merman gregory in there rn

[alister312]

last day of may so i’m squeezing in one last bit of art for the gregstophe mer/selkie au! it’s a nice end where christophe has his coat and they get to hang out forever <3

[alister312]

ok so i've put together all my thoughts about the gregstophe merman gregory/selkie christophe AU and it's a lot so i am gonna put it all below the cut 👀

(there are also more images below the cut 😏)

The concept of this AU starts with Christophe’s mom and dad. One of the old myths about specifically male selkies is that lonely fishermen's wives would cry seven tears into the sea and they would come to be with the wives instead (and maybe take them away). Christophe’s mom was a fisherman’s wife whose husband had been gone for a long time and she was lonely so she did this but after just one night with the selkie she felt guilty, changed her mind, and sent him away. Against her wishes, though, she wound up pregnant and her husband was still lost at sea (and presumed dead), so everyone knew she’d cheated in some way. 

Humiliated and upset, she moved to a new town so she could escape people judging her but she was still very bitter. She blamed the selkie for forcing her to have to uproot her life like that and when Christophe ended up being born as a selkie, she took his coat and hid it so she would never have to think about the whole affair ever again. She ended up projecting a lot of her bitterness and hatred for that selkie (as well as guilt) onto Christophe, making his life miserable. He learned early in life that he was a selkie but since his mom had his coat, he knew he couldn’t go anywhere and had to just put up with it. She ended up dying young, never having told Christophe where she put his coat so he’s stuck in the town forever.

I know there’s a lot of different versions of the myth about what happens when a selkie is separated from their coat, but currently I’m just going with the idea of the yearning for the sea and not being able to properly talk. So Christophe chose to become a fisherman because his mother used to talk about how good her past husband was and it’s a way he can be out in the sea constantly, kind of. Plus he doesn’t need to talk to be good at it, he just kind of grunts and gestures if he needs to communicate and everyone figures he’s just a very gruff, antisocial guy.

Gregory is a merman who’s gotten a bit cocky about having never been caught every time he goes to watch humans. He doesn’t want to join them exactly (he likes life in the sea very much) but he finds them fascinating to study. Anyway, Gregory gets caught one day by (of course) Christophe. Gregory is bit freaked out, worrying that Christophe might kill him or bring him back to the land as an attraction of some kind, but Christophe just wordlessly lets Gregory go.

This act makes him Gregory’s new fascination and, after a while of staring from a distance and learning that Christophe is an ultimately good (albeit quiet) man, he starts to interact with him more. Gregory is everything Christophe wishes he was (living in the ocean, free) so at first he gives him the cold shoulder out of jealousy but eventually warms up to him. Somehow Gregory learns that Christophe is actually a selkie who is missing his coat and he becomes determined to find it and give him the freedom he deserves.

I say somehow because I’m not quite sure but I’m partial to the concept of this AU also containing Stan and Kyle because…… i like them. Anyway, the thoughts I have about them in this AU is that basically Stan is also a fisherman who knows Christophe and doesn’t totally like him because Christophe’s gotten aggressive toward him before. Stan’s husband is Kyle who is also a selkie but, unlike Christophe, has his coat and can come and go from the ocean as he pleases. Kyle can sense what Christophe is and what’s wrong (and berrates Stan when Stan makes a rude comment because he doesn’t understand why Christophe is so difficult), but he doesn’t really know what he can do to help. He feels like he understands the best of anyone what Christophe is going through, and he technically does, but again he represents what Christophe wants but can’t have.

There's two potential endgames for this AU I've thought of but I'm open to hear other's thoughts if you've read this far! Anyway, both of the ones I've thought of I like, but they've got completely different vibes. In one, Christophe gets his coat (his mom had thrown it overboard a ship somewhere way out at sea) and joins Gregory in his life in the ocean. While he spends much of his time being a seal, he does come out of the water and shed his coat so he can give Gregory proper kisses. Maybe they live in a cave with an underwater entrance so they can have privacy and a safe place to keep Christophe's coat when he does take it off.

In the other end, it's less cute but imo still happy in a way. Basically Christophe finally accepts that he'll never find his coat and he tells Gregory that he doesn't want to string him along (haha like a fisherman) so he breaks off the relationship, believing Gregory would never want to give up the life in the sea. Gregory is offended Christophe thinks he doesn't love him that much so he goes and finds a way to start living on land with Christophe. He already liked watching people, why not live among them if it means he also gets to be with the love of his life? They are both trapped on land now, but they're trapped together so it's like a silver lining thing.

ANYWAY that whole thing is the AU concept!! I guess the one other important thing to mention is that selkies and merfolk are sort of myths in this world? Like they exist for real but most people think they're not real. Sorry to have gone on for so long but oh well! It's fun :)

[alister312]

ofc the gregstophe mer/selkie au is primarily gregstophe but my love for style necessitates that they are also there so i wanna get out a few thoughts about Stan and Kyle within the au

as stated in the initial post about the au, Stan is also a fisherman and Kyle is also a selkie

I think they met when they were really young (growing up together is vital for style), maybe Randy was also a fisherman and he’d drag Stan to the docks to show him what he’d probably be doing when he was older. Stan didn’t care and instead wandered off to the beach, where he met some other kid wrapped in a weird wet coat (Kyle) and they played together.

They continued to meet up like this over the years, whenever Kyle’s family would come to the shore. Sheila didn’t like that Kyle kept running off to go interacting with a human (worried that this human would steal Kyle’s coat and keep him away from them forever) but Kyle knew Stan would never do that. In fact it took Stan a very long time before he even realized that Kyle was a selkie. He was already in love with him at that point so he didn’t care.

Eventually Kyle decided to stay on land with Stan, much to his family’s dismay, but they saw that Stan made Kyle happy and that he had no plans on stealing Kyle’s coat so Kyle could reverse his decision and leave any time (not that he would)

I think selkies have a sort of sixth sense when it comes to figuring out who else is a selkie (like in spiderverse) so when Christophe and Kyle see each other for the first time on the docks while Kyle is waiting around for Stan and Christophe is coming in with his haul for the day, they just stare incredulously at each other. I imagine Christophe might try and grab Kyle like “!!” or just get really close to him because he’s so shocked to meet another selkie but he can’t speak. Stan (human) would have no clue what’s going on and assume the worst (Christophe knows Kyle is a selkie and is about to steal his coat) and fly into a protective rage. There’d be a big fistfight between the two of them, eventually broken up by Kyle who is pissed at Stan for jumping to conclusions (but also very flattered that Stan would do that for him).

Once misunderstanding are cleared up, Kyle and Christophe become fast friends. Stan is definitely a bit jealous, especially the times when Kyle comes to the docks not to see Stan but to see Christophe, but he knows it’d be wrong to try and control Kyle. Kyle knows Stan gets kind of jealous but appreciates his hesitation so he’ll usually make it up to him later.

Kyle usually accompanies Stan when he goes out to sea for long stretches of time to fish (i.e. longer than day trips). He’ll hang out on the deck for a while, but also put on his coat to transform and swim around the area. One of these times is when he meets Gregory. Christophe quickly comes up in their conversation which is how Gregory learns Christophe is a coatless selkie.

Ultimate direction of the AU is uncertain, but I imagine no matter what, Stan and Kyle remain friends with Christophe and Gregory. Whether it’s as neighbors in the sadder end where Christophe never finds his coat and Gregory moves to the land, or the happier end where he does find his coat and he and Gregory occasionally come back to visit Stan and Kyle.

[alister312]

i know my gregstophe selkie/merman au has Christophe’s mom stealing his coat from him the moment he’s born so he never transforms until much later in life BUT ALSO baby seals are one of the cutest animals so!! baby seal christophe………… 🥺

while i was at it, i also did a kid design for mer!Gregory 🥰 i think his hair was longer as kid but it was prone to getting caught in coral and nets so he kept it shorter when he was older

anyway AU of my AU where Christophe got to live in the sea with his dad so he meets little mer Gregory who thinks he’s befriended a regular seal and not a selkie

[alister312]

been thinking about that seal nose boop video i got tagged in so here’s seal Christophe doing the nose boops 🥰

[alister312]

If you have anything more to tell us about Selkie Christophe and Merman Gregory I’d love to hear, perhaps some headcanons of them!! I am obsessed with the idea of them atm, so tempting to draw… perhaps soon.. 😈

YES so aside from this whole post detailing the basic AU plot/set up, I do indeed have other headcanons and stuff

Gregory definitely has a beautiful singing voice. It suits him, it’s a fun merfolk trope, and also it just further drives that “very similar yet vastly different” dynamic that I love him and Christophe having (since Christophe is mute due to being separated from his coat his whole life).

Additionally, Gregory is very talkative. He has to be, but he and Christophe sort of figure out their own way to communicate. No one’s really made that effort before with Christophe so that’s sort of when he realizes he likes Gregory.

Since Gregory doesn’t really want any humans learning about him and other merfolk, he usually only meets Christophe when his boat is way out at sea. Sometimes at night though he comes a little closer to the shore and they hang out in the shallows near an alcove.

One of the main things they like doing is swapping information. Christophe loves hearing about what actually living in the sea is like and Gregory is happy to prattle on about it. Gregory also wants to learn more about humans but since he can’t interact with them, he always asks Christophe to get him books or items to teach him. Sometimes Christophe brings interesting items but usually he brings random stuff he found earlier that morning around his house. He gets a kick out of hyping up a mystery item and exciting Gregory only to produce his dish towel and Gregory’s like “Christophe this is the third time you’ve brought me a dirty towel there’s nothing more I can learn from it 😒”

I think Christophe doesn’t actually know how to swim very well. He can doggy paddle and tread water a bit, but his mom was very determined to cut him off from his selkie heritage so she never let him swim in the actual water. Gregory tries to teach him but merfolk swimming is very different from human swimming (and Christophe is unfortunately stuck in his human form). Since they’re probably definitely in this AU, either Kyle and/or Stan ends up teaching him.

Of course if/when Christophe is finally reunited with his coat and can transform into a seal, he’s an extremely good swimmer. Making up for lost time or something like that.

I don’t really have actual fish or seal species in mind for either Gregory or Christophe, but Christophe is probably an eared seal on the slightly larger side (maybe actually sea lion?) and Gregory’s fins are kind of flowy like a beta fish.