Mermaids
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Its been a long while since I drew mermaids. Like most people, I drew and imagined mermaids to be human-looking women who happen to have a scaly fish tale.
But I came across a story by Kurt Cagle a few years back called "Voyage of the Canto". In this story, a female scientist has stumbled across a sound process that changes the physical structure of humans, into any mythical being you can name - angel, centaur, cat-woman, satyr, mermaid.
In "Voyage", he tells how the lead scientist turns her crew of mainly female cadets into mermaids. He explores how the transformation from human to mermaid occurs, what changes, and gives some plausible explanations on why, um… they always have big breasts and the myths always revolve around having sex with them.
This story is the inspiration of my current mermaid project. But I'm not going for the big breasted sex symbol. Following the line of thought that Kurt Cagle made, I am drawing my own conclusion on what a mermaid would probably look like if she never ever went on land (for goodness sake what does a mermaid need a butt like ours for? She'd have an anatomy more like otters or seals and other water-mammalian species like dolphins.)
I went back to where I first saw the story and linked back to other Kurt Cagle sites but the "Voyage" is no longer there. I have been searching the net for this story but find no trace of it But he does have other fascinating mermaid tales. You can find them here:
Fanarchive - Stories by Kurt Cagle
"Gina" and "Sea Change" - Transformation Archives
"Bells of Ys" at http://seatails.blogspot.com/
Kurt Cagle's site in the making: Seatails
Note: the picture above is a link from the Yahoo! Group: Mermaid Stories. Beautiful picture!
