#sureeeee

Starting off with Ej’s design, HES HUGE. Like, 4-5 METERS LONG. Hes based on a thresher shark, which grow to be pretty long (tail inckuded- which makes up about half their length.) Ooooh ok and ok top of this design i cat actually talk about hi usual design too…. so many species of sharks, especially open water ones, have this specific pattern on their scales where they’re lighter on the bottom and darker on the top. This is so that prey from the bottom can’t see them as clearly because they’re bright underbellies mix with the light coming in from above, and prey above the sharks have a harder time seeing them because the dark tops of their scales blend in with the deep blue below. Has been used by other animals before ofc but it’s very noticeable in sharks- thresher included! THAT is why i gave Ej’s hoodie darker blue sleeves, tail, dorsal fin, and that funky little line going down the back while the rest of it is lighter. I’ve done the same here! Also, yes i know the cartilage extensions on the sides of his head look a little off. Sadly this is a case of me taking an artistic liberty. It was so that Ej could look a LITTLE more recognizable. I’ve decided that they would likely function as a sort of secondary dorsal fin, used for balance and such when turning, though IRL i don’t think that would work too well lmao. And yes I KNOW his gills are in the wrong spot I’m sorry (both in terms of Ej’s actual design and sharks normally). It’s just that for fast moving sharks like the thresher, their gill placement is the best because it picks up the most oxygen from the amount of water brushing by it from its placement. Ej’s weird head fins got in the way of me putting it around his neck area because that would lead to less water hitting them. I had to make the decision to put them lower down. Don’t ask me for his respiratory system i don’t wanna talk about it. Anyway look at his comically large thresher eyes. Also i think a great part of my take on mermaids is the fact that Ej doesn’t need to bind lmao because he isn’t a mammal. Good for him good for him

Ferns design!! He’s based on a wobbegong, a type of carpet shark! Now admittedly I’m more interest in open water sharks than carpet sharks, but i still think these guys are cool. I chose the wobbgong for fern because their whole THING is mimicry! The lay on the sea floor, usually in a reef of sorts, and blend in the the environment around them, atypically consisting of plants, rocks, sand, and corals. By doing this, they can avoid any danger and also catch prey much easier because of their camouflage!! They also have little pieces of skin that dangle from their faces to mimic flora…. they’re little plant sharks.. For ferns design, for once, HES the little guy- at least compared to Ej. Wobbegongs don’t get very large- never more than a meter or two. The dont really need to. His gills, if you couldn’t see them, are located just above his neck area and between where his “hat” and face meet on the bottom. Not AMAZING placement, i know, but not terrible. I wanted them to look clear. So the cool thing about carpet sharks- along the many others- is that unlike most open water sharks, they DONT need to move in order to breathe! They can use muscles in their mouthed to manually force water through their gills. This allows them to remain virtually completely still on the ocean floor in order to better blend in. His hat was a little tricky for a moment. I decided to dona reverse thing- make the little light dots the main color and the dark base color the dot color! I thought it worked out ok. His little ear things were also tapered at the base and extended, as well as hollowed out! His design NEEDED them, of course, to look recognizable, however it wouldn’t make sense for a shark to just have random horn looking things on it for no reason. Thus, with how these are built, they’re more flowy and now resemble flora as well. They may even look like an attractive home to some smaller fish, thus making it an excellent lure! Fern also does have a while belly btw but thats not in the open water shark why like described. Hes just squishy under there

Not for more general mermaid things..

For starters, they don’t have hands. This is a constant among all merfolk. Rather, they have pectoral fin extensions that act as a sort of prehensile hook. This is because fish in general don’t have built in digits (think bat or bird wings) to their fins that could, via evolution, theoretically extend to become functional hands. Instead i like the idea of their pectoral fins gaining some muscle mass and more dexterity in their fin tips. Merfolk are sort of like crows in that they can use tools and like to tinker with things, so them having little hooks works, even if they’re not THAT useful outside of said situations. Secondly, as mentioned above for ej, mermaids are NOT mammals. They aren’t hybrids. They are fish. Well ok technically not fish anymore because fish aren’t a real species but rather are used colloquially to describe a certain general shape in an animal. So they aren’t fish but they’re actually evolved from fish. This was done because since i was little ive HATED HATED HATED HATED HATED mermaids because they’re all STUPID and didn’t make ANY SENSE because that’s not how ANY OF THIS WORKS. You can’t GEG mammal-fish hybrids THATS NOT HOW THIS WORKS. You can’t MAKE your sexy-fish-woman who’s basically just the same but has fish legs so the only clothing she needs to wear is a shell bra I See You because if humans were to evolve to become ocean dwellers THEY WOULDNT LOOK LIKE THAT AT ALL THEY WOULDNT LOOK HUMAN THEY WOULDNT AND THEH CERTAINLY WOULDNT BE A HALF AND HALF COMBO THATS NOT HOW EVOLUTION WORKS THATS BOT HOW HYBRIDS WORK THATS BNOT NOT HOW ANY OF THAT WORKS can you tell I’ve thought a lot about merfolk. Anyway. So MY merfolk are descendants from “true” merfolk. “True” merfolk were a species from a VERY VERY long time ago who were fish that evolved to mimic humans who made settlements on the shores (they were most common among islands with native residents). Why? Either to trade with or eat them. It depended on the species. Anyway so a LOT of people got a little freaked out by the idea of these merfolk and so sadly they were mostly driven out of their lands or hunted and eaten (not very tasty but hey it worked). Of the few groups that did make it, they were forced to acclimate to their new environments away from humans. They adapted to their environments and took on roles and looks similar to the animals around them. After a VERY long time, “true” merfolk had broken as a species, going entirely extinct and instead emerged as many branches of different modern merfolk. None of them are LITERALLY the fish they’re based on- they’re just similar. Those hand things were present in True merfolk too btw because they were pretty much fish that just grew up around humans too so. Yeah they didn’t have digits either and that’s where modern merfolk get them from. So yeah they’re sort of like if merfolk were evolved to be humanoid and then made a 180 to be fish again. Does any of that make sense? No. Does it make more sense than the little mermaid? YES and that’s all that matters.

anyway obligatory