#2026-05

[starryeyedstray]

happy anniversary to dbh <333 it's a day late but wanted to celebrate with the trio walking the red carpet (◠‿・)—☆

[starryeyedstray]

continuation of my merm connor au from last mermay related merm au posts: 1 2 3

sailors always told tales of how merms were man-eating creatures that drowned wayward souls so markus fully expected to be killed and eaten when he finds himself face-to-face with the creature. but then the merm saves his life by dumping him on the nearest island instead? the mysterious creature sticks around and they begin to talk. as the conversation continues, old memories stir in the back of his mind and he realizes that he's met this merm before.

i meant to post a follow-up to my original mermay post but uhm.... never got to it. and now it's been a whole year since so i guess better late than never!

fun facts about this au:

markus was thrown overboard during a storm and was stranded at sea for a day before connor found him

markus is a captain of a pirate ship

his crew is the jericrew ofc and i guess his ship's name is jericho ahaha

he is partially blind in his right eye due to an accident

he sketches in his free time during long voyages

connor's merm design is based off a dwarf gourami

merms are usually hostile towards humans, but connor's a lil different

connor and markus have matching scars at their right temple

they've met before

i'll be making a lore dump post with some sketches and their full back stories HOPEFULLY later this month but i said that last year and it took me a year to circle back to it so uhmmmm fingers crossed

[starryeyedstray]

God, I really like your style and your drawings. мне очень понравилось ваше о где Connor is a mermaid and Markus is a pirate. but I'm very interested in how they would send it or if Connor would be a pirate and Markus a mermaid)))(⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠❤

SORRY I'M REPLYING TO THIS SUUUUUPER LATE </33333

but TYVM <33333 here's my take on if we swapped the roles with merm markus and pirate connor!!!!

related merm au posts: 1 2 3

see below the cut for this specific au's ramblings

one of the reasons i took awhile to do this was bc i couldn't figure out what fish to model markus after. i ended up asking the rk1k discord server and we came up with multiple options and then i spun a wheel to pick one LMAO. it ended up on siamese fighting fish!!! i really like this option because it's SOOOO colorful. idk much about the fish behavior of this particular breed (except they will fight if you put two males together i think????) so i can't vouch for how accurate it is a match for markus. but i do like how the design ended up looking.

as for connor, i kinda imagine him originally part of the navy before pirates absolutely obliterate his fleet and he "volunteers" (totally wasn't coerced into it) to join the pirate crew as their navigator. (apparently good navigators were hard to come by during the pirate age and were often kidnapped by other crews LMAO) maybe he also has a background in tracking (tying into his whole "hunter" aspect of his character) and the pirate crew he's a part takes up mermaid hunting.

i imagine that they're trying to hunt down markus bc maybe in the past he's interfered with their hunts before (freeing caught merms and whatnot). connor is forced to tag along initially but he prides himself in being the best navigator in the seven seas so he takes his job very seriously. and eventually he becomes desensitized to the heinous antics of his crew because he's just here to do his job (he gets very prickly whenever the crew doubts his skill and the captain 1000% uses that to their advantage). eventually, markus reminds connor of his humanity and connor sides with the merms by the end of it.

anyway, thank you so much for the ask!!! it was fun thinking up of this version of the au and even if it was just a quick sketch i really liked how the drawing turned out.

btw, olenator i really love the dbh dolls you create. they're so cute! everyone should go check them out <333

[starryeyedstray]

why have fun and do creative things when you can just have a headache and lay in bed and feel miserable

[starryeyedstray]

i made this comic one year ago and never posted it. but i finally figured out we are in fact friends LMAO.

[starryeyedstray]

today was a day where i apparently forgot how to draw bc i could not make decent progress on this drawing despite the numerous hours i spent on it. i've redrawn this pose like a bajillion times and now it's been literally over 12 hours and i'm still on the sketch layer. i think i used up all my art mana on yesterday's dbh anniversary post so i didn't have enough to cast my art skill again.

hopefully my art mana regenerates enough so i can try again tomorrow u_u;

[starryeyedstray]

i am going through my 650 drafts that i have accumulated and scrolling to the bottom to see what i've collected down there and at the very bottom is stuff from may 2025. i've been procrastinating on reblogging stuff for a whole year ahahahahah ;u;

[starryeyedstray]

haven't really been posting my own stuff bc i'm in a very sleepy time of my life right now u_u </3

i've been sooooooo low energy but i think it's mostly passed ( ´ ω ` ;)