Fanfic / By the Sea

Mermaids - mermen - were not supposed to exist. But, then again, plenty of people said Hell did not exist, and Obi-Wan had walked through it, had lived in it, for years, wading through horrors such as should have never existed under a living sky. He no longer disbelieved the impossible. The man was real, and he was hurt.

By the Sea is a Star Wars: The Clone Wars Transplanted Character Fic romance series of the Historical AU variety written by glimmerglanger. It consists of two primary installments, Flotsam and Jetsam and Currents and Tides, plus a small collection of snippets within that universe, both post-story and scenes from other points of view.

Shell-shocked World War II veteran Obi-Wan Kenobi has retired to a tiny seaside cabin for some solitude and privacy as he grapples unsuccessfully with his battle fatigue and poorly attempts to move on from the hell that was the war. One morning, he finds an injured merman washed up on the beach in dire need of care, so he carries him all the way up to his cabin, determined to nurse him back to health. The merman introduces himself as Cody, and as his slow convalescence over the long months occupies Obi-Wan's restless mind, the two men come to discover new things about each other, and themselves as they grow closer and closer.

This is a Slash Fic romance between Alternate Universe versions of Commander Cody and Obi-Wan Kenobi that turns heavily sexually explicit starting at the halfway point of the first story. At the same time, it delves deep into Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and levels of homophobia, both internalized and external, appropriate for the 1940s American setting that firmly makes it "Plot with Porn", and an intense read.

Because the story is not only so plot-heavy, but also holds many slowly unfolding reveals about Cody's story that are later assumed to be known by the reader in the sequel, there may be unmarked spoilers. Proceed with care.

For other fics by the same author, see Sanguine.

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This fanfic contains examples of:

• Adaptation Name Change: In turning some of the clones into merfolk whose sole language is Mando'a, some character names in English have been translated into that language- Echo becomes Eyayah and Fives becomes Rayshe'a, and in a minor example more to obfuscate his name away from the homophonous English word, Wolffe is renamed to Wolv. Rex is actually a nickname for Marekar ("navigator"), and Kix is also stated to be a nickname, but his real name is never given. The story also goes with the fan interpretation that "Cody" is a corruption or mispronunciation of "Kote" ("glory"), and as the scenes written from his perspective show, Cody's real name is in fact Kote.
• Adaptation Species Change: The premise is that Cody, plus a handful of clone troopers, the Togruta, and Asajj Ventress and Count Dooku are all merfolk in this story. In a somewhat obscure reference, Boga, the varactyl mount that Obi-Wan had in Revenge of the Sith during the Battle of Utapau at the end of the Clone Wars, shows up here as a stray dog which Obi-Wan adopts.
• Assassination Attempt: A longtime enemy of Cody's has a bunch of assassins follow Eyayah to Obi-Wan, and they try to kill both Obi-Wan and Eyayah mostly to piss off Cody. In retaliation, Cody challenges the man to a knife duel in front of the royal court for conspiracy to murder the royal consort and kills the man, and then sends a couple of his brothers to Obi-Wan as bodyguards until they're reunited.
• Asshole Victim: One of Cody's enemies opposes Cody's marriage and courtship of a human, and when Cody refuses to back down, the man sends a group of assassins after Obi-Wan. When this attempt fails thanks to Obi-Wan's combat skills from the war, Cody openly challenges the man to a duel in front of the royal court and unceremoniously guts the man. The man otherwise has no role in the story beyond getting Cody to set a round-the-clock merfolk protection detail on Obi-Wan.
• Bathtub Mermaid: Obi-Wan is forced to care for Cody by placing him in his copper bathtub and laboriously filling it with seawater, bucket by bucket, with near-daily water changes. He doesn't want to risk Cody getting further injured resting in the tide pools near the shore and potentially getting trapped at low tide, or attacked and unable to get away. The bathtub also isn't great because merfolk are really supposed to be submerged as much as possible, and Cody's tail makes him way too long to fit in the tub- he can either submerge his gills (which are on his back) or his tail, but not both. But as much as he loves being able to stretch out in open water, he misses the bathtub while he's away because it meant he was with Obi-Wan.
• Bedlam House: Obi-Wan fears that he'll be hauled away to an asylum if anyone finds out about his attraction to men, and specifically cites electroshock therapy. This, combined with his severe PTSD, is what keeps him living so isolated away from people.
• The Big Damn Kiss: When Cody has recovered enough to go swimming in one of the tide pools by the shore, he urges Obi-Wan into the water with him and starts palming Obi-Wan through his underwear. This is when he finally realizes that Cody's been attracted to him for ages and that the Headbutt of Love thing Cody had been doing with him over and over was the merfolk version of a kiss, so Obi-Wan shows him what humans do, instead.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: Merfolk have bioluminescent markings all over their bodies that indicate emotion. Blue and purple, for instance, are used in courtship displays to communicate arousal or sexual interest.
• Bite of Affection: In merfolk culture, it is customary during sex for both partners to bite their lover's shoulder, hard, leaving bloody teeth marks as a sexual claim and also as proof of consummation of marriage. Obi-Wan picks at the healing bite marks so they scar.
• Buffy Speak: At one point, Cody, who is having his first real experience of the surface world, calls Obi-Wan's bathtub a "small ocean", or "kih'sho'cye" in Mando'a.
• But Now I Must Go: Cody was injured fighting in a war, and although he would love nothing more than to just stay with Obi-Wan forever, he knows that his people need him. So, with all he can, he begs Obi-Wan to stay and wait for him to return, to "tear out his weaving every night" like Penelope waiting patiently for Odysseus, so that they can get married afterward.
• Chocolate of Romance: Obi-Wan buys a bar of chocolate to share with Cody for their last night together. A bit later, they cap off the night with sex and Cody bites Obi-Wan's shoulder, hard, claiming him.
• Commonality Connection: Obi-Wan and Wolv start becoming friends when they bond over their mutual traumas and terrible experiences in war.
• Crappy Homemade Gift: In an inversion, Cody makes Obi-Wan a patched-together necklace of colorful seashells strung on a strip of torn cloth that likely looks objectively crappy and amateurish. Obi-Wan is so overcome with emotion at receiving any kind of gift at all, let alone from someone he can genuinely call his love, that he's left speechless, and he never dares to take it off until it's broken in a fight and Cody sends him a more durable chain for the shells.
• Creepy Crows: Obi-Wan associates crows and ravens with the dead, because he watched them pick at the bodies of fallen soldiers throughout the war. Seeing them picking at the body of an injured merman on the beach at the very beginning of the story is what spurs him into action.
• Culture Clash: Merfolk and surface-world cultures have nothing in common, and in-story, most culture shock depicted between the two is from the merfolk side. Their main experiences with humans come from humans catching merfolk and either dissecting or torturing them, and so merfolk make an effort to stay away from the surface and avoid notice. It's apparently commonly thought among merfolk, even among the educated ruling class and despite the merfolk themselves having stories that state otherwise, that humans are so barbaric they don't even have access to language. Even Eyayah's first assumption to Cody telling him that Obi-Wan will be able to talk with other merfolk is not something reasonable like Obi-Wan learning Mando'a, but that Cody taught Obi-Wan to speak and understand language, period.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Obi-Wan grew up in an orphanage from infancy where he suffered severe bullying, he watched his only friend, Anakin, die brutally in a war, came away from the war with debilitating PTSD, and holds decades-long internalized homophobia at his own bisexuality on top of all of that.
• Death by Adaptation: Anakin is fully dead by the start of this story, having died in World War II getting impaled by a bayonet. (An unnamed Padme is also mentioned, working as a nurse and speaking only French, but she and Obi-Wan were never acquainted here and it's unknown what became of her.) Fives (renamed here to Rayshe'a, his canon name translated into Mando'a), Crys, Bly, and three other unidentified sons of the late Jango Fett also died an unknown amount of time prior to the start of the story from unstated causes, during or possibly even before the merfolk war serving as an analogue to the Clone Wars.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After Cody's slow recovery from the brink of death and Obi-Wan discovering true happiness, a tearful departure, attempts on Obi-Wan's life, some merfolk politics, and the defeat and surrender of the shark-riders, Cody is finally able to return and take Obi-Wan as his husband and royal consort, and move Obi-Wan to a remote island very near to Sundari. They live many more happy decades together as married men.
• Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Both Cody and Obi-Wan sound a bit You No Take Candle-ish while trying to speak the other's language- a hallmark of this Mando'a-English dialect seems to be the overuse of present participle forms of verbs, e.g. "I'm knowing", instead of "I know". They even manage some dirty talk with their limited command of the other's language. Since the first story is entirely from Obi-Wan's perspective with Cody trying to figure out English from scratch, it can be easy to forget that Cody is in fact not just well-educated, but also a reigning monarch, a skilled politician, and a military commander.
• Exotic Equipment: A variation; the Mermaid Problem is solved here by giving Cody a retractable penis with ridges along the underside and apparently no foreskin (covered in skin the same color as his upper half, not scales), and a large ejaculate volume, and he and Obi-Wan have anal and oral sex, with Cody as the penetrating partner. This also goes the other way from Cody's perspective, who has never seen a naked human before- he watches Obi-Wan bathe and mistakes the constantly extended state of the human penis, already unusual for most animals, for Obi-Wan essentially trying to come onto him, and can't believe that anal sex is possible in humans until he watches Obi-Wan prep with his own eyes. Merfolk do have cloacas, but Cody narrates that they don't stretch well enough to permit safe penetration, although some do try anyways to disastrous results, implying that mermaids also have vaginas in addition to cloacas.
• Eye Scream: Wolv loses an eye just like in canon, but here it's because he was tortured during his time as a prisoner of war.
• Fake First Kiss: One day, Cody holds and sings Obi-Wan through a thunderstorm-induced dissociative flashback. He's been assuming Obi-Wan to be romantically interested in him this whole time, so he gently brings Obi-Wan up into a keldabe once they wake the next morning. The snippet showing Cody's perspective of this scene makes it clear that he sees it as his First Kiss with his love and he regards it with the appropriate gravity, but during the original story proper from Obi-Wan's perspective, Obi-Wan doesn't want to let himself hope that it's anything more than a merfolk version of a handshake and is even dismayed that it wasn't a kiss (as he knows it), and he continues to not get it, several more times, until Cody has the words to explain it.
• First-Name Basis: After Obi-Wan has his freakout about Cody turning out to be royalty, he gathers himself up and asks Cody if he should be using a title instead. Cody, bemused, says no. Of course Cody would find that weird; he considers Obi-Wan his lover at that point, and who calls their lover a title to their face?
• Fish out of Water: In a very literal sense; the surface world is strange and baffling to merfolk like Cody, and the cultural context and aquatic environment Cody grew up in is equally baffling to Obi-Wan. The two learn about their cultural differences as Obi-Wan tells Cody stories, stopping frequently to explain things that have no equivalent in merfolk culture, such as artillery, or weaving.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: The crux of Obi-Wan and Cody's romance- Obi-Wan found Cody injured, and as he nurses Cody back to health, neither one can help but notice just how attractive the other one is. What gives this extra dimensions are Obi-Wan's internalized homophobia and insistence that Cody could not possibly enjoy his company, let alone return his feelings, Cody learning to trust Obi-Wan and eventually latching onto this human who so defies all of his people's preconceptions of humans, and the cultural dissonance between the two inadvertently pushing them along.
• The '40s: Obi-Wan is a veteran of World War II, and the story takes place in the late forties, what with the attitudes towards homosexuality and the tech level.
• Gayngst: Obi-Wan experienced severe bullying at the orphanage where he grew up due to his bisexuality, and spends a good part of the story trying desperately to convince himself that Cody couldn't possibly want a degenerate like him. It causes problems later when someone from town uncharacteristically comes out to check on Obi-Wan and overhears Obi-Wan and Cody through the cabin's thin walls, and he gets driven out of town after Cody's departure.
• Headbutt of Love: Similarly to the Maori hongi (the culture that Cody's canon actor originates from), the merfolk kiss is a press of foreheads, ostensibly because merfolk have a mouthful of sharp teeth that would make kissing uncomfortable or hazardous, and is called a keldabe in Mando'a, as in established Legends canon. In a true showing of obliviousness, Obi-Wan had no idea (and also didn't dare let himself hope) that the weird forehead-press thing was supposed to be anything special, let alone a romantic gesture.
• Innocent Swearing: One of the first English words Cody learns is "fuck". Obi-Wan is mortified at the prospect of accidentally teaching a mythical creature profanity, although it doesn't take Cody very long to learn that's what it is. Cody comes to prefer its sharpness over Mando'a profanity.
• King Incognito: It's halfway through the first story before Cody reveals that he's the king of Mandalore, partially because he didn't seem to find it that important- and perhaps just wanted to get to know Obi-Wan without the barrier of status -and partially because he didn't have the words in English to convey it to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan has a minor breakdown about it and just sees it as yet another reason why Cody, a king, most certainly could not possibly care at all about him, a weird human commoner who has "fits".
• Language Barrier: English and Mando'a have absolutely nothing in common, and it's one of the biggest impediments in Cody and Obi-Wan's early relationship until they're both able to pick up enough of the other's language to communicate their needs and wants (and eventually try out some dirty talk). Even years into their marriage, both still sound a bit You No Take Candle-ish when speaking the other's language.
• Leg Focus: Cody is fascinated by Obi-Wan's legs, especially once their relationship turns intimate and he comes to love how Obi-Wan wraps his legs around his tail in an embrace. Some members of Obi-Wan's personal merfolk guard detail evidently think the same and are constantly hiding their embarrassment whenever they watch Obi-Wan swim.
• Life Will Kill You: One of the snippet chapters shows that, despite the assassination attempts and angry mob out to get him, Obi-Wan eventually passes away when old age and his wasting disease catches up to him, dying peacefully in Cody's arms.
• Lord of the Ocean: Sho'cye (literally "ocean" in Mando'a) is the Mandalorian people's chief deity. Unlike most sea deities, she is female, and is considered to be both a deity and the sea itself. The mercurial, inscrutable nature of the sea also lends her to associations with fate and luck, which feature heavily in the themes of the main sequel, Currents and Tides.
• Low Fantasy: There are merfolk, but the merfolk are exceedingly mundane in nature, with no magic or truly fantastical elements, despite what Obi-Wan seems to think. The sequel opens with an author's note stating that there is no magic in this AU of any kind, with the implied statement that Obi-Wan would not be getting turned into a merman so he can be with his love.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Cody decides to come clean early and tell his people that he was rescued and nursed back to health by a human, knowing that it would throw all of their preconceptions about humans sideways, and then drops the bombshell that he intends to marry this man and take him as his spouse. Reactions are bemused at best, and one of Cody's enemies tries to have him declared insane and unfit for rule for not killing the human on sight, and when that fails, he sends some thugs after Obi-Wan to try and kill him instead.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: At least twelve sons of the late Jango Fett are known, and half of them are already dead by the start- Kote/Cody, Marekar/Rex, Kix, Wolv/Wolffe, Eyayah/Echo, and Boba are the surviving ones. Crys, Bly, and Rayshe'a/Fives are known to be dead prior to the start of the story.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Due to cultural and physiological differences between humans and merfolk as well as a language barrier preventing effective communication, it turns out that both Cody and Obi-Wan were mistakenly trying to and also unwittingly, at varying times, both display and deny their attraction to each other, only for the other to totally misinterpret it. Cody even coyly tries to feel out if Obi-Wan would be open to marriage, fully assuming that Obi-Wan would understand what he's doing, before Obi-Wan even realizes that Cody's into him.
• Mermaid Problem: Obi-Wan and Cody avoid the issue altogether with anal sex, where Obi-Wan is the receptive partner, and a lot of handjobs and oral sex. Cody actually has a cloaca, but he narrates that it won't stretch well enough to permit penetrative sex.
• The Noun and the Noun: The titles of the series' two main stories- Flotsam and Jetsam, and Currents and Tides. The first title could be referring to Obi-Wan and Cody themselves, with Cody as the "flotsam", the wreckage washed up on the beach, and Obi-Wan as the "jetsam", the shell-shocked war veteran and closeted bisexual man cast aside by society. Currents and tides show up frequently in the sequel as a metaphor for the inscrutable whims of the sea and fate, especially with the sea itself personified as the goddess Sho'cye, both with regards to the fate of Cody's people and Obi-Wan's life, and how the two intertwine in Cody and Obi-Wan's romance.
• Not Now, Kiddo: Downplayed, Obi-Wan did take note of his dog Boga's agitation when he goes to swim in the sea, but thought it was because of her usual nervousness around water. By the time he decided to listen to her warning, the merfolk assassins sent after him had already gotten close enough to attack.
• Oblivious to Love: Obi-Wan spends the first half of the first story desperately convincing himself that Cody could not possibly return his feelings, telling himself that they're both men, they're different species, and he totally misses the value of the merfolk Headbutt of Love and mistakes Cody's bioluminescence for a pain response (it is not); it goes on and on. Cody's not entirely innocent, either- he mistakes the constantly extended state of Obi-Wan's normal human penis for Obi-Wan trying to come onto him, mistakes Obi-Wan blushing down to his chest at being seen naked for an indication of arousal and reciprocation, and assumes Obi-Wan understands all of Cody's merfolk culture-specific courtship rituals and is just being cool about it. It isn't until Cody is about to give Obi-Wan a handjob that either one realizes what was actually going on with the other; it's incredibly fortunate that both wanted each other the same way at that time, at least.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: This being a classic mermaid AU, Cody's people are more like Disney's Little Mermaid, in that they have a mostly ordinary-looking human upper half (complete with hair, but only on their heads, and no mentioned facial hair) plus some patches of scales on the torso here and there, and a multicolored fish tail lower half. (Cody's tail scales are gold.) It's also mentioned that they can't sit upright unassisted or lean forward much like most surface-world depictions of mermaids because their spines just don't work that way. They also have non-retractable claws and webbed fingers, a mouthful of sharp teeth, sharp spines up and down their arms that raise and lower like hackles, a respiratory system that can swap between gills and lungs, some level of increased strength given that Cody is able to break a lobster's shell with his bare hands, and bioluminescent markings on their skin that change colors in accordance with emotion. Blue and purple are used in courtship displays, for instance.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Ahsoka, a princess of the Togruta, is offered to the Mandalorians for betrothal, as a condition of the political alliance set up between the two past enemies. She decides to take matters into her own hands and sneaks off with the Mandalorians to meet her potential husbands herself away from her mother the Empress's supervision. Fortunately, the man she chooses and falls in love with, Rex, happens to also be a more than politically appropriate mate as the crown prince of Mandalore, and their daughter is named Cody's successor and next in line for the throne.
• Pirate Booty: As early as the start of the first story, before Cody even shows up, Obi-Wan narrates that there are rumors that the shore he lives near was once a pirate hangout. It turns out that those rumors have truth to them when Eyayah manages to dig up a bunch of buried gold nuggets. Obi-Wan pawns some of the gold and gets enough money to buy himself a boat.
• Porn with Plot: There is a good amount of very explicit sex scenes, but they only come after a lot of character building and emotional bonding between Cody and Obi-Wan- the sex scenes, in turn, serve the dual purpose of emotional resolution as well as just being sexy. Obi-Wan getting a handjob means that he's breaking through his longtime internalized homophobia, and coming to realize that the one he's fallen in love with also loves him back.
• Pronouncing My Name for You: Obi-Wan mispronounces Cody's name; it's actually Kote. Obi-Wan is mortified at first to hear he's been mangling his lover's name this whole time, but Cody actually likes the sound of it and prefers that Obi-Wan pronounce it the "wrong" way as a sort of pet name. He always wanted a nickname like his little brothers Rex and Kix.
• Questionable Consent: Cody is a well-mannered gentleman who very clearly cares for and respects Obi-Wan and doesn't want to push him, and he makes a point of verbally asking Obi-Wan's consent whenever they cross another boundary in their growing romance. The trouble is that due to a combination of language barriers (Cody's way of asking consent to kiss Obi-Wan and initiate sexual contact is just asking "Yes?"), cultural differences, and Obi-Wan being stubbornly oblivious due to past trauma, he tends to assume that Obi-Wan already knows what he's asking permission for. Obi-Wan wakes up with his face really close to Cody's and narrates that he'd really like to kiss Cody and that he doesn't actually know what he's just agreed to with Cody, only to be surprised and disappointed to receive a gesture that he doesn't even realize is a kiss. Thankfully, it all works out in the end once Obi-Wan realizes that Cody actually does want to be with him the way he was hoping for this whole time.
• Related Differently in the Adaptation: A milder example; the characters in this story who were Jango Fett's clones in canon are, in this fic, instead his natural-born children, from a union with an OC mermaid named Va'yen.
• Related in the Adaptation: Shaak Ti is Ahsoka's older sister, and the two, as daughters of the (unseen and unnamed) Empress of Shili, are princesses.
• Rewatch Bonus: The fun part of rereading this story after it's already been read in full, including the sequel and snippets that show more merfolk culture, is figuring out what's actually going through Cody's head during Obi-Wan's POV sections, especially early in their relationship when they were still working through a significant language barrier.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: In merfolk culture, like the canon Mandalorians they're based on, the royal family fights in wars as front-line commanders alongside their soldiers, including the monarch themself. Shaak Ti, as crown princess of Shili, is a high general of the Togruta army.
• Scary Teeth: Cody, like all merfolk, has a mouthful of sharp, pointed teeth, which is helpful when your diet consists primarily of raw seafood. Because of this, kissing (as humans understand it) and oral sex are not a custom in his culture, and he's initially horrified when he realizes that Obi-Wan seems to be moving his mouth towards his penis... until he discovers just what his lover can do with his mouth. Cody later declares blowjobs to be even better than chocolate and strawberries.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Obi-Wan is severely scarred from his time fighting in World War II and feels absolutely nothing positive for it, especially not after he watched Anakin die in his arms. He has constant, debilitating nightmares and dissociative flashbacks to battles and hearing the screams of the dying, and of Anakin's last moments, and he only starts to get some relief after he makes friends with Cody, who realizes what's happening and wakes him from his nightmares and sings him through his episodes, helping to ground him in the present.
• Shout-Out: Before the war, Obi-Wan was a literature teacher, and he passes the time with Cody telling him human stories about merfolk, in particular The Little Mermaid, and The Iliad and The Odyssey. These feature heavily in the symbolism as Obi-Wan and Cody liken several aspects of themselves and their experiences to parts of those stories. Obi-Wan in particular hopes that nursing Cody back to health might help absolve his sin of loving Cody, allowing him to escape either the blandness of Heaven or the torment of Hell and dissolve with the sea foam, like the Little Mermaid. Cody interprets Achilles and Patroclus as lovers, like he and Obi-Wan, and much is made near the end of Cody's recovery, when it becomes evident that Cody absolutely must leave, of Penelope patiently waiting for Odysseus's return from the war, tearing out her weaving every night and restarting it every morning to keep the suitors at bay.
• Suicide by Sea: It never actually occurs, but there are several moments where Obi-Wan ideates suicide by way of the sea in his narration after meeting Cody. He draws parallels between his sinful love of another man, Cody, and death in the mermaid stories that he tells Cody, such as how the mermaid dissolves with the sea foam at the end of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, and how the sirens sing sailors to their deaths in The Odyssey.
  In his dreams, Obi-Wan leaned forward, there in the sea, tasting Cody’s soft mouth, and feeling only relief when Cody stole the breath from his lungs, though, truly, you could not steal something freely given.
• Switching P.O.V.: Most of the story is from Obi-Wan's perspective, and we don't see anything of Cody's until the second installment, plus a few snippets from the perspective of some other characters, like Ahsoka, Cody's mother, or Cody's POV of some scenes from the first story. These really make it clear just how deeply different merfolk and human culture are.
• Tastes Like Friendship: Because Cody is confined to a bathtub, Obi-Wan shares his food with Cody as the latter recovers. It means a lot more in Cody's culture to share food, and Cody reads this gesture as a show of Obi-Wan offering friendship, although Obi-Wan himself wasn't thinking of it as anything more than a necessity. Cody, in turn, shares a raw lobster with Obi-Wan and is at first baffled and a little hurt when Obi-Wan declines at first before relenting at Cody's insistence. Later on, Obi-Wan shares more and more surface-world foods with Cody, in particular fruits and later chocolate. Obi-Wan continues the tradition with Cody's brothers- Eyayah becomes obsessed with blueberries, and Wolv comes to love peanut butter.
• Threatening Shark: The plot is set off by Cody getting bitten by a shark while fighting in a war against vicious enemies who use them as mounts. The shark nearly kills Cody and he's given up for dead as the ocean carries his unconscious body away to wash up on Obi-Wan's beach.
• Transplanted Character Fic: Several important Clone Wars characters (plus the Larses and Luke, who have no relation to Anakin or Padme at all) are transplanted into a mostly mundane late 1940s pseudo-American coastal setting, with Jango Fett and his Clones, the Togruta people, Asajj Ventress, and an unseen Count Dooku getting reimagined as (also mostly mundane) merfolk.
• Tattoo as Character Type: Cody has extensive traditional tattoos over his chest and arms, each one signifying status, family descent, and accomplishments. A circle over the sternum is intended as a signifier of marriage, of a custom design representing "that who makes one's heart beat". When Obi-Wan and Cody finally marry, Obi-Wan gets his own marriage tattoo.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation: A roughly teenaged Luke shows up being raised by his aunt and uncle the Larses, but they have no relation to Anakin or Padme at all, and this Luke is much too old to be Anakin's kid, in any case.
• Unreliable Narrator: Obi-Wan narrates the majority of the story, and the entirety of Flotsam and Jetsam. Obi-Wan's perspective is heavily tinted by his own preconceptions of merfolk (most of which are not applicable to Cody's kind), his own stubborn obliviousness and internalized homophobia preventing him from noticing Cody's growing affection for him, his general unfamiliarity with merfolk culture, and the language barrier between the two preventing either one from using their words until much later. Rereading this story, especially the first installment, is a lot of fun because with the added context from Cody's POV sections in the sequel and snippet collection, the reader is able to pay careful attention to Cody's reactions and more easily decipher what is actually going through his head and just how wrong Obi-Wan is at the time.
• War Is Hell: Obi-Wan emerged from World War II with little more than horrific memories, scars, and debilitating battle fatigue. He's unable to relate to civilians nowadays and can only stomach being in populated places for just long enough to buy supplies at the general store. Loud noises like thunderstorms and random stray thoughts are enough to send him into terrible dissociative flashbacks that leave him reeling and ill for hours or days on end.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Obi-Wan lives on a western temperate coastline, but Anakin is stated to have grown up in a "miserable sandy place" on the other side of the (English-speaking) country (a phrasing that is generally only used to refer to horizontal directions, not vertical ones). Whether this was intended to be Obi-Wan living on the eastern coast of the US with Anakin coming from the southwestern US (an area that is sandy), or just a bit of deliberate Artistic License is unclear, and no surface-world place names or other regional or geographical information is given. At the end of the day, it doesn't actually matter that much to the story.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: The merfolk understand the value of precious metals and gemstones, enough that marriage traditions mandate the gifting of pieces of jewelry during engagement, but it's implied that they don't have the technology underwater to work raw gold (or any raw metals), only cold-working by hand at most, hence why Eyayah doesn't see anything special or valuable about gold nuggets that he found buried on the seafloor.

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