Becca
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mermay
🕑 Added 2025-05-06 14:00:10 +0000 UTCI read a kinda mediocre book about mermaids (well I guess mermen) last month and in thinking of ways the pacing could be reworked to flow better I accidentally came up with an idea for the Betrayal in my billford merAU.
Ford is a professor but still an unusualogist of sorts, and though most people kind of assume he's a quack there's a group (identity I'm still not sure of - maybe the Gleefuls or something else) who managed to capture what they assume to be the Last Mermaid Ever (Bill/Bael) and he's either injured or ill but point being he's kinda dying from what they can tell. So, this group kidnaps Ford to help fix Bael up so they can use him to dive for gold off wrecked ships or something and it's pretty much understood that Ford's usefulness ends if Bael is no longer in the picture - if Ford fails, he gets sent overboard.
In the time they're both on board Bael plays Ford like a fiddle and the poor sap falls for him hard until the night they finally are able to escape, and Bael is like "well, sucks to be you, thanks for the help!" and peaces out. Thus begins the equivalent of Portal!Ford's dimension hopping where Ford is lost at sea and trying to get home while avoiding the pirates or whatever who had him captured.
Anyhoo we got some women coming up for Mother's Day on Sunday and then I think I'll round the month out with the second-place winner of my poll. Maybe more stuff if I fancy it!!
Comments
Star-Sand Artist
Ford! For fuck's sake! Stop finding the flaring gills attractive! XD
Gabriella Sands
I am sooo interested in the specifics of how Bael gets Ford wrapped around his finger. Does Bael make a ton of promises to show him the ‘secrets of the ocean’ and how they’re going to be ‘research partners’ and all of this beautiful amazing stuff they’re going to do together once they get out, and then Barl just steals his shit, says ‘sucks to suck’, and leaves him stranded? What if Bael also double betrays him by dipping right as he led/trapped Ford into a scenario where Ford’d be some sort of sacrifice/get eaten by Bael’s friends. Maybe he was planning the whole time to get an easy victim out of Ford the second Ford got him free. In the other comic, Bael said he did try to drown Ford a few times, and Ford said Bael got him into a lot of life threatening scenarios, wonder what that’s about. Ouuuah I’m so fascinated by this au from a character perspective on Bill too. The obvious angle for Bael to play here is ‘oh I’m just a put upon innocent little anomaly being tortured I need a big strong man to rescue me’, but we know from canon that—when acting as himself—Bill *can’t* bring himself to act weak/in need of help, even as part of grift, even if it’s a lie, even doing so would only benefit him. It’s, IMO, his biggest flaw as a villain (not as a person, as a villain). It’s one of the reasons why Stan is a better con artist than Bill, and it’s also how he beat Bill, by playing the character of Ford as ‘weak and helpless and desperate with only one way (Bill’s way) out’. The only time we ever see Bill play up the ‘sorry’ or ‘weak’ angle is when the Axolotl is making him literally beg for his life. There’s a reason why Bill, when confronted by Ford, never told Ford that his dimension was decaying and went straight to ‘I’m going to take over the world’, even though playing the victim and telling him the former would have kept Ford willing to work with him. It’s too vulnerable. Too *true*. He’d basically just be sincerely asking Ford for help at that point. But you put Bael in a scenario where ‘even though I’m manipulating him by playing it up, I’m basically sincerely asking for help at this point’ is Bael’s *only option*, there’s basically a giant neon sign that says THIS IS THE GRIFT over the whole scenario, it would practically be *more* vulnerable to bluff and act like he’s in control because it would be so obviously a lie even Ford could see through it…and yet every instinct in his whole entire being would be screaming to Not Do That. But he has to do it to manipulate Ford. And he’s GOTTA manipulate Ford. There has to be *some* kind of grift going on, or else Bael/Bill would just be sincerely making a friend and falling in love, and—ewewee no impossible it burns I don’t need anyone he’s like a pet to me a pawn a henchman a tool I’m not owned I’m NOT OWNED IMNOTOWNED Anyway, can’t wait to see where you go with this!!!!! I love your mermaid AU!!!!!
