Mermaid writers and artists, talk about your characters :3

[Mermaid Varshana]

As writers, we create complex people from the core of our creativity and from the pit of our hearts that we form deep connections to in ways that most people don't understand. We think that most of society would find us strange to talk about these fictional individuals like theyre these influential individuals that we love as much or more than real people. Any mer-writers or mer-artists out there want to take a minute to talk about their characters? What they're like? How much they mean to you? Or, characters you didn't make up but mean just as much to you. This is the place to brag and talk about it :D

[Mermaid Octavia]

While I don't have any mer characters (yet!), I do love to create and write! The girl in my avie is one of my latest characters and I love her dearly. :) I'd love to hear about people's mer-writings and artwork!

[Mer_Adella]

I started writing about my mermaid and her story (or a story about her adventures) but with the move south...I got writers block so I haven't written in a while.

[SeaGlass Siren]

Mine is a classical man eating (literal and sexual) siren. Shes kind of like my alter ego.. I have a lot of mixed personalities , so I took all my good qualities and attributes, and embodied them into her dead twin sister

Youre looking at them right now in my display picture.


Anither character I have is of a flying fish mer who is tiny enough to capture in a little mason jar, and she can sing you to sleep... But you have to keep her happy or else she'll sing you songs of nightmares.. And that's really hard, so you'd have to let her back out.

I also have a male indo pacific pink dolphin mer character that came to me in a dream to protect me from a banshee. Hes just a little boy though... Of about 13?

[Azurin Luna]

I've a merman story, where he is like a joker, but in a good way, and he likes to tease. The girl in the story is an active person who got on a trip but lost all contact with the 'modern' world after a plane accident. My characters never stand out big or something like that, they are mostly normal people with something extra. What usually sucks in my stories are my surroundings :P

[Joy&RaptorsUnrestrained!]

Hmmm... ok, I have one setting where merfolk resemble humans until they come of age, at which point they bond with the spirit of a sea animal which grants them their tail (or tentacles or whatever it is lobsters have, or pseudopod, or whatever). My character is a Leafy Sea Dragon Merman and a surfer/scuba instructor, who ends up getting pregnant.

I also have a merman character in a modern setting where a variety of supernatural creatures and monsters (all of whom prey, feed upon, or are in symbiotic relationships with humans) exist, and he's in a band with a mix of monsters. He's also one of the first merfolk to surface and take part in the society of vampires, werecreatures, ghosts, witches/warlocks, afrit, fae, trolls, and so forth.

Then I have a setting where the little mermaid was one of the founders of a vampire bloodline (along with Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, the Beast, the Frog Prince, etc).

Also, I have a character who is the son of a Superman-like figure and a Lori Lemaris-like mermaid, in the vein of the comic book Dynamo 5. He has variations of powers of his father, but he can only use them by shifting his appearance to a variety of sea creature-like shapes (for instance, a dolphin form for super-hearing, an octopus form for shapeshifting, a lobster form for superstrength, a manta ray for flight, etc)

[Alveric]

Lady Ambassador Ariadne of Clan Spindrift of the Imperial Diplomatic service was sent to the desert-planet Rii to investigate pirate activity when a pirate invasion leaves her and her escort stranded among a population that is hostile to women and people who are different. Not only is Ari female she's a Syrenkan, a mermaid.

This is the basic plot of my science fiction novel Spindrift which is a work in progress (I've completed about 46,000 words).

[Merman Dan]

I have been playing Dungeons & Dragons since 1979. Since 1995, I have been running them exclusively online, in the form of play-by-post and message-based games. My first online game was "Into the Land of Black Ice" (LoBI). On player in this game wished to play a character who was an alu-demon, daughter of a succubus and human. The player said he wanted help with the character's background so I used an article in a gaming magazine for inspiration and devised Xaetra the night hag, mother to the succubus Ariss. Xaetra has been my "Mary Sue", my own character in my own games. Though she began as an altruistic night hag, in time she befriended a group of undersea adventurers, communicating with them through dreams and portents. Though born human, Xaetra has lived and died many times. She was drowned as a heretic and returned as a night hag. She was murdered within mystic waters and transformed into an elemental being. Once she used a magical wish-granting ring to return to the hag she once had been. When slain again she rose as one of the undead, an incorporeal spectral hag. She was weakened by a further betrayal and found herself a creature of Dreamstuff, a spirit hag doomed to walk within the dreams of those she knew in life.

In my current game, "Heirs of Turucambi", Xaetra helped a band of aquatic heroes find three magical tomes which would restore her to life once more. When the time came, she was called upon by the hag goddess Cegilune to serve as her avatar. Accepting apotheosis, Xaetra became the bane of the Blue Coven, a trio of sea hags in the service of Olhydra, princess of elemental evil.

[Nate Walis]

I've created so many of them that it's hard to decide where to start, but I suppose that the importance of why the character is a mermaid or through the course of the events in the story becomes one is the central thread of what is being explored in the case of that particular character. The main thrust of my mermaid characters has always been the effects of the transformation from human to mermaid or other fantastical creatures, in fact I don't think that I have ever introduced a central character that began as a mermaid. In some instances the idea was to explore the way a person would need to come to terms with the change and in others look at the way in which their thought process and personality might be altered if the transformation affected them on such a basic level as to reorder their person, making them think like a mermaid without even realising that they were doing so. Whether or not I managed it is up to others to say.

[Alveric]

As junior officer on the bridge of the Imperial cruiser Agamemnon, ​it's Lieutenant Rhodri Morgan's responsibility to see to the comfort and safety of V.I.P.'s travelling on his ship. This is what attracts the attention of the Ambassador, the mysterious Syrenkan mermaid Ariadne, who decides to 'borrow' him for her mission to Rii. His captain advises him to accept, since it would be good for his career. Morgan is not so sure. What are her plans for him and what happened to the last officer she borrowed?

[SeaGlass Siren]

I like this thread. So many interesting characters and back stories..

[Mermaid Lorelei]

I have a couple of merfolk of my own, but my favorite is probably from a book I'm writing having to do with genetic experimentation. It's set in a dystopian version of earth's future. His name is likely going to be Rin, but I haven't decided for sure.

[Mermaidwriter]

My first mermaid character (Kerra) was originally a one-off in my story. Then as I began writing so her world expanded to include her three sisters, then her daughter, and then I developed a whole world for the mermaids in my head.
They live in a sort of tribal society and are kind but terribly wrathful when angered. They have a symbiotic relationship with land-men and can't survive without them (to find out why you'll have to read my story though! ;))
I have become extrememly attached to them and would like to write a longer novel featuring them, but I have no ideas that stretch beyond the short story format as yet.

[Mermaid Varshana]

I have problems going beyond short stories, too. I'm very ADD with stories XD

[Alveric]

I have the opposite problem. Every short story turns into a novel. I have a difficult time letting go of characters. When I think I'm finished, I keep thinking, 'What happens next. What happens next' til I have to get up and write more.

[Mermaid Varshana]

I tend to hold onto the same characters for awhile, but write "episodes," short zany adventures or document philosophical exchanges that have clear beginnings, climaxes and ends. Probably because, as said, I'm ADD as fuck :)

[Mermaidwriter]

Kakarotte, your avatar makes me think someone should write about a mermouse!

[Mermaid Varshana]

Ha! That's a fan art of Science the lab rat from Adventure Time. It's funny, though, because I wrote stories about a merfox when I was a little tyke.

[Mermaidwriter]

So cute the merfox! That would make a good children's book character.

[Nate Walis]

I have problems going beyond short stories, too. I'm very ADD with stories XD

Then the best advice I can think of is to keep on writing short stories until an idea comes along that has the potential to become a longer narrative. You can never have enough practice actually writing, and you also need time and effort to find your own style and what you really want to say. But remember that in a longer narrative you have the distinction between the overall plot and the minor episodes that move things along. If you're used to coming up with short episodes for the characters concerned, then the chances are that all you really need is a unifying plot to link them together.