Fun Fact!: One of my original ideas for MMR was for it to only be Abbacchio and Bruno aggressively courting the Reader.
And not like how they've been doing it in the story either.
So, I had the idea of like, what if merfolk were a "dying race". Female merfolk were hard to woo, being extremely picky and super difficult to keep up with if they bolted or decided to fight you. So, the more desperate male merfolk started looking for human mates.
The way a courting process works between a male mer and a female mer, is the male is supposed to show her that he can provide for her, so he makes a comfy cave nest, or he brings her large meals. If the female refuses tye first time, the male just tries harder. If she denies him a second time, but keeps giving him signals to continue his courting, that's where it gets a little more extreme.
Since the female is being difficult, the male will simply... How do I say this?
What the male will do, is he'll follow her closely. Never close enough to be invading her space, or even within clawing distance, but close enough that he can just watch her. He'll see what she eats most, what she collects most, and her favoured nesting materials... Then he'll deprive her of all of that.
He'll chase away any fish, destroy the thing she collects if he finds them before her, and he'll take the bedding... And then he'll gift a better version of the items to her.
She liked cod that would occasionally appear? Look! This male found some fat rich salmon for you! Those shiny items were kinda cool lookin'? Ha! He got you a whole human boat, neat right? That plush kelp that only grew near human boating spots? No biggie, he swam an hour farther and found some heavenly soft moss.
The idea is to sort of... Pavlov the females into associating them with good things.
The one problem for male mers though? After a... Massacre and unfortunate drop in breeding success rates, the females are more likely to get violent if you don't immediately impress her, so that whole second chance thing? Very unlikely to happen.
The whole idea would have been poor Reader getting terrorized by these two, massive merfolk and being totally oblivious to what was actually happening. She would reject their gifts out of fear, and confusion, and then ships would start sinking, people would disappear, and her own fishing dingy would be dragged underwater.
Abbacchio would have been a kelpie, a shape-shifting water spirit with a mean streak a mile wide. He would have been actually kinda sweet towards the Reader, and I was thinking of having him show himself to her as a big Borzoi with totally white fur. He'd try and pull her towards the water, only to get frustrated when she just giggles nervously and shoos him away. He doesn't have a "true form" but he can pull together features from different people to make himself a human form that's pleasing for the Reader to look at.
Bruno would have been either a New World siren, or an Old World. No matter which one, he'd be the one responsible for sinking all those ships.
If he was a New World, I imagine him as a surprisingly bulky creature. He looks like an actual monster, with no nose, large, alien-like eyes, and paper thin membranes everywhere. He appears as normal Bruno when Sirensinging people, just naked and looking hella hot, but otherwise he looks terrifying. His belly and chest has his usual markings. His skin is pale blue, fading into silver at his tail, then black at the fins. His tail moves side to side, and he's slow like a shark, with only quick bursts of movement.
If he was Old World, the number one thing is that he'd have totally silent owl wings. His wing and arms are fused, and he has dexterous claw/fingers that extend from the top of his wing, similar to a bat. He still has the hypnotic voice, and he still looks like a monster. His nose is sort of flat, think Voldemort, and his eyes are really wide and kinda dead looking. His has ram horns curling at the sides of his head, a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, and strong legs. His eyes reflect light weirdly, and he'd be really annoying. Since he's, technically, a bit farther removed from merfolk, Bruno wouldn't follow the courting procedure as closely as Abbacchio.
I think I'm happy I went this direction for MMR though, because I don't write darker storylines very well, and with the way my mind was going for that Alternate Timeline, it was going to get dark quick.
Okay MMR is fantastic the way it is,,, but to see what Could Have Been,,, AUGH I love monstery stuff so much and the designs for Bruno and Abba are super cool.
I prefer the lighter storyline anyway but the concepts for what they would have looked like got me 👀👀
Were the rest of the gang going to appear at all in that version? Bc now I'm Curious
