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For reasons at Momocon, I decided to commission at the artists' alley "a mermaid with ornamental koi coloring." The original mermaid also had shutter shades and a bottle of whiskey. From this rather curious prompt, your friend and mine PAKPAO was devised and developed. And then over time, I have slowly amassed a set of different commissions of her! I'm going to talk about her lore on this page.

Pakpao is extremely good at fistfighting, which is why she has boxing gloves. As far as "how does one fistfight effectively under the water, where there is significantly more drag," I will say only - shut up! We do what we please! She uses mermaid magic.

"Whoa man, you said mermaid magic, can you expand on that," sure, here's the scoop, there's a variety of forms of magic, and Pakpao has picked up some in her travels. One such point of magic is that she can evoke spirits - you drink a special distilled liquor, and joining this powerful distillation with energy and will from your lungs, you can exhale and produce a variety of marvelous effects - fire is an obvious and flashy result, but thick clouds, bees, and coins are all achievable with the proper techinque. It's said that masters of the art can even summon djinn and other great powers of the earth. Pakpao is by no means a master.

"So that magic isn't, per se, mermaid magic," yeah no man, magic is available to anybody. She also knows some (very little) shapeshifting magic, which is how she can travel overland. A tanuki taught it to her! The trick is to be able to pour your shape into water, and pull your new shape out of it. It's easier to do this if you keep your shape on your person, and easiest if you can keep your shape atop your head. Tanukis who have fine control can use something as simple as a green leaf to hold their shape. Pakpao needs an entire cup of water, which is difficult to balance.

"When you say, 'ya boy', is Pakpao genderqueer in any way?" she is not, I'm afraid that it is just part of her LORE that she introduces herself thusly. Her short hair is due to; she sold her hair to the tanuki to learn the shapeshifting stuff. Mermaid hair is useful for magic stuff. If it seems like that's pretty cheap to learn shapeshifting, just, keep in mind, it's not like the tanuki really taught her anything very robust. She's got the basics. Imagine being ten years old and your cool cousin shows you how to drive stick shift. It's not like she'll pass any tests anytime soon.

"What's her personality like" she is a energetic and outgoing young lady. On TVTropes I feel like once upon a time she was called a "genki girl". I think a good summary motto for her is from "The World God Only Knows," and it reads thusly: a weapon doesn't need brakes.

Also, all of these thumbnails are links to the full-resolution commissions.

Working on getting some type of link to the relevant artists enplaced: most of them I picked up through Twitter, and Twitter is Going Through It right now.