Oh my gosh, I love your designs! All of them! The trailing bits on the first fluke are awesome, I've been wanting to see more of that in tails. And your plant-based designs are just lovely for a freshwater Mer, it really does look like the tail a water nymph or what-have-you turned into a mermaid... which is an idea I've been working on for writing. I always felt that any water spirit/nymph/whatever could transform into a mermaid, that it, have a tail.

When you think about it - in the old legends and tales, the water nymphs (and all the other elemental beings) have been around much longer than humans. Yet they mostly seem to be depicted as looking like humans (with some exceptions, such as earlier depictions of sirens, and mermaids). Would a water nymph always look like a human, or take on human form when around humans? Do they just swim through the water looking all awkward with two scrawny legs, or would they grow more appropriate appendages for their environment, such as webbing or tails? I like to think that various water beings would be a bit of a shapeshifter, growing tails quite like yours (in relation to their environment and personality).

Which leads me to think about tails based on localities - maybe a cherry blossom tail for freshwater Japanese mers (or, alternatively, something almost kappa-like), and Japan also has a ton of interesting seaweed for saltwater Japanese mer tails. A tail made of tropical flowers local to, say, Hawaii, or the Caribbean or what-have-you. A tail for a rainforest mer... (which could be so varied, seeing as how there's different kinds of rainforest - I live in one here in Oregon, even!

I can't wait to see what you come up with, I'll be saving up for a silicone tail, and I'd love to have one of yours be my first (not-homemade) tail!