Either I’ve completely forgotten to post this here or I can’t find the post but hey Mesmerizer brainrot has come back so I’m showing these guys again with me explaining their designs and story :)) (I may not finish the wip of trying to replicate the og with these guys so I’m putting this here in case I don’t!!)
This is long as fuck lmao but please stick with me I DIDNT PUT THAT AS MY DESCRIPTION OF MY BLOG FOR NOTHING 🔥🔥🔥‼️‼️‼️
While some parts of these designs are just aspects of either of the character’s design (the clothes being relatively the same as Miku and Teto’s just in Riftloss!Emery & Riftloss!Tom’s colour schemes), some parts are intentional little details I’ve decided to put in as to hint at the story behind these two and why I’ve drawn them as the Mesmerizer duo (the stories touch on somewhat similar themes like escapism methinks)
I’ll start with RL!Emery, where I’ve given her a white lily (which symbolizes rebirth) (it also represents purity which I guess you could assign to her but it’s not really relevant in this story) instead of Miku’s visor bow, a forget-me-not on her badge (which represents like remembrance of someone after they’ve passed, or at least that’s how I’ve used it here) and a black ribbon around her neck (kinda a reference to Miku’s choker but it’s moreso that it matches with RL!Tom’s ribbon and that the black ribbon represents remembrance and mourning) + the pink highlights being the same shade as Joshua’s (I’ll explain who he is a) cursed powers.
Meanwhile for Tom, I’ve given him what’s supposed to be a white chrysanthemum on his hat (which represents mourning and devoted love), what’s supposed to be a green ribbon around his collar (as to represent mental health awareness) and a little clock on his badge as to represent his job and how he’s connected to his father (time stealing casino security, I’ll explain it when I get there 😭) (and yes he’s the same guy but in another timeline as the other Tom in my pinned message, it’s that he’s related to the funny clock guy in there as well and in this timeline he intentionally takes more of his features, as he’s trying to break from his shadow)
The plot, independent from Mesmerizer (I’ve had this plot in mind for years now the OC brainrot is THAT deep 😭) starts with me establishing that infinite timelines exist and that time manipulation is possible, albeit extremely tricky and considered impossible in my lore and that powers are a thing cause man I love urban fantasies
In the base timeline, one of the stories in the plot involves Emery and an old friend of hers Josh, in which the two act as a vigilante duo, with Emery taking most of the game as she can actually cast magic and Josh being treated as the alchemist mage-wannabe sidekick, which he doesn’t appreciate as he feels like he’s being taken for granted by her, they both are kinda shitty to each other in the friendship, Josh ends up taking a cursed grimoire as to try to impress her by taking it’s powers and using it for himself, he’s manipulated by it to attack against her and decrease her popularity by starting a cult in the town and constantly beating her in battles under an alter ego, and eventually breaks out of the curse right before dying (?) due to it in front of her, telling her she’s sorry and she says it back. (I tried to speedrun it here 😭)
So, that’s where all the remembrance symbols for her come from.
Mainline!Tom, on the other hand, wants to know what happened to his father, Alexander Pascall, who disappeared years ago, leaving his research on time travel behind. He then has recurring dreams of this insane “time god” who calls himself Kairos, who won’t leave him alone until Tom accepts his offer to give him the power to time travel, which he eventually does accept despite his better judgement.
He gains what seems to be the product of his father’s research next morning - a blade that can cut through the fabric of space time - put in the form of a scythe, and fiddles about with it until he eventually finds out that he’s now been partially possessed by Kairos against his will - thanks to him traumatizing a close friend and colleague of his under Kairos’s influence
And yes, Kairos does turn out to have been Alex having lost his mind, pursuing power haven being driven to madness during his research due to seeing the infinite amount of possibilities out there in the infinite number of timelines, and he sometimes has moments of clarity which eventually let Tom put the pieces together (can you tell what one of my favorite tropes of characters is 😭)
(The two are also friends)
Now that the bare bones of the mainline story has been explained, I’m gonna try explaining the Riftloss!AU for these two and why a specific part of their storyline fits Mesmerizer and why it was stuck in my head as something I had to make for months,,
Also Emery looks mostly the same as her mainline design because up until this point of the AU, the same events occur.
Essentially, the twist here is that instead of a blade sharp enough it can cut the fabric of space-time, Alex instead invents a gauntlet that can absorb a person’s life span and give it to the user instead.
When he was first testing it, he accidentally used it upon a very close friend of his, watching her age rapidly and disintegrate right in front of him, panicking and trying to turn the thing off until it was too late - all that was left of her was ashes.
He then dedicates the rest of his life to trying to find a way to make his gauntlet be able to give others time from his life-span so he can use it upon her ashes that he has within a bottle, becoming more bitter, cruel and inhumane as time goes on and he fails over and over again.
This results in him needing to extend his own lifetime to find the solution, which he reluctantly did at first but eventually normalized, and eventually over time this developed into him starting a casino where he could claim you didn’t need money to gamble in - just your mere time, which you wasted in any other casino anyways! With the prize for winning being extra time for your lifespan, which is why the casino was rigged, yet addicting and enticing enough to get more players within - an easy place to siphon off time he needs to figure out the solution.
Tom, being his son, is a part of the casino’s security, having been conditioned and set up by his father to be obedient to his every command, a cold reaper of those who attempted to mess with how the casino worked.
He didn’t question his situation, having done it all his life until he met the same friend and co worker (Lucy/Astrid) from his mainline story, where these two slowly grow closer as friends like the main timeline and Tom realizes what his father’s done to him and decides he’ll escape his father’s shadow and try to become a better person than him, becoming more spiteful of having to follow his orders over time.
He starts research of his own, and ends up prototyping the same blade that can rip through the fabric of space time Mainline!Alex does with Astrid (thanks to Kairos intervening in his timeline and telling him the basics), testing it and losing Astrid in the process as the time rift opens (haha the name of the AU, she also does have her own separate storyline in a separate timeline) far wider than expected and starts sucking them in, with Tom only being able to close it when it’s too late - paralleling his father’s beginning of spiral into madness. (Also one reason why he also has remembrance symbols)
Having lost leading light out of his father’s control and a really close friend he deeply cared about, he falls into self-loathing and thinks he’s no better than his father, having done to the same thing as him in his eyes (hence why he looks more like him in this timeline - I’m imagining a good devastating mirror art piece outta this one 🔥🔥🔥)
This then leads into him finding out and trying to console Emery after she loses Josh as she’s fallen into grief and depression, (hence the green ribbon, with it being tied differently to how it’s usually tied also able to be interpreted as a reference to how his solution is an attempt but not healthy in the end) being clingy to her and desperate to prove that he’s a good person and have a take 2 of sorts because of the Astrid incident.
However his solution to her depression (the first red background part of the animation) is to take her on a trip through other timelines that he enjoys and show her the wonders of the possibilities there, with the two having a rather pleasant journey through them before coming back, with him doing it every now and then with her at her request.
As time goes on, she becomes more and more reliant on these trips as to keep it together, indulging too far into escapism, blocking out her grief and pretending it isn’t real as she becomes mesmerized (haha) with the endless possibilities within the endless timelines that Tom’s blade on his scythe unlocked - and she starts to lose her mind akin to how Mainline!Alex does. (Akin to Miku)
Kinda like Teto, Tom realizes this far too late, and even after realizing this she asks him to let her keep the blade, to continue going through timelines endlessly, and he still accepts, albeit guiltily. He just didn’t have the heart nor was willing to deal with the consequences, and he never sees her again after this, having been haunted by how he’s ruined another person close to him’s life (he’s NOT doing well in the way of trying to not be like his father 😔)
I’d just replace the hypnosis in the middle thing with a time rift and it works borderline perfectly for their storyline lmao I’ve had this storyline before I found mesmerizer so imagine my brainrot when I realized how these storylines could perfectly overlap and aughhhh I knew I had to try to make an attempted remake of it with them 😭