Hey guys!

There seems to be a trend lately to treat "fairies" as a family or "kingdom" of creatures, as opposed to a species, including anything with remotely pointy ears, supernatural allure, and a possible tie to nature, making mermaids just one kind of fairy. I'm not sure I agree with this, though, of course, it's always good to see more mermaids in books, movies, and other media.

Still, with the Spiderwick Chronicles and Tithe/Valiant/Ironside and Kith/Kin/Kind treatment (Holly Black has some awesome ideas, but she really seems to like sinister, alien, inhuman depictions of mythical creatures) of mermaids as being just as manipulative and apathetic and averse to humanity as other fairies, I'm not sure that really captures the true essence of mers.

Mers are tauric beings (like centaurs and satyrs), with the upper body of a human (mostly) and the lower body of a fish (mostly), and like other tauric beings, are supposed to represent the balance and link between humanity and the animal or elemental sides of our natures (the constellation Sagittarius, for instance, is linked with the Tarot card Temperance, involving a blending of opposites and finding a middle path between extremes). As creatures of the water with the upper body of creatures of the land and air, Carl Jung would consider them symbols of emotion (water) linked with sensation (earth) and thought (air), possibly lacking only the intuition of fire. Most fairies traditionally are shown as fully human-looking, with the Victorians adding insect wings and the pointy ears and small size of traditional stories of elves mixed in. Their powers traditionally involve visual illusions and time and curses, not weather and music and sea animals like merfolk. Mers also feel a connection with humanity, even if they are separated from them and are more active in their stories, while Sidhe-style fairies traditionally imitate human cultures but try to distinguish themselves from "mere mortals," while more benevolent "godmother"-style fairies (like those in Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Peter Pan) tend to passively assist humans... Frank R. Stockton (who wrote the Lady and the Tiger) has a fairy character named Ting-A-Ling who goes off on adventures of his own, but he's the only example of a heroic fairy I can think of (while the most famous story of a mermaid, Anderson's, features her as the heroine).

I haven't read all the way through them, but I think Merfolk are considered Fairies in the Dresden Files as well, and they're a sub-category in Changeling: the Lost and Changeling: the Dreaming as well. I think that Merfolk are too distinct from fairies to really be included in the same category (and I'm not sure that Satyrs, Centaurs, Ogres, Trolls, Giants, Dwarves, etc. count as fairies, either). What do you think?