HOME | DD

Description

[Note: this is actually the Penultimate GTS profile: I was going to do the final here, but then someone suggested the Mermaid and I don’t know how I missed that one. So we’re gonna talk about that instead]

    Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the sea, mostly because I watched Finding Dorey for the first time last month and it reinvigorated my passion in the open ocean. After all, it’s such a vast and mysterious place, leading to the creation of countless myths and legends about what may be lurking beneath the waves. None more famous than the mermaid: a mythical being with the upper body of a woman and the lower half of a fish tail. In our modern culture, mermaids are often times associated with glamour, beauty, and royalty.

    They are also often times associated with large size, but only in the GTS Community.

    So today I’m going to talk to you about everybody’s favorite waterborne giantess: The Mermaid.

    I’m sure you’ve all heard of mermaids: our culture is saturated with them. Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” was one of it’s most successful films of all time, they are also mentioned in famous books including Aquamarine and the Chronicles of Narnia, and the logo of Starbucks is even a mermaid (specifically, a siren which is argued to be a kind of mermaid.) So let’s get a few things out of the way. First off, they’re called mermaids because “mer” means “sea” and maids refers to women. Which means that a male mermaid is a merman, not a merbutler. “Mermaid-man” also isn’t proper so sorry Ernest Borgnine.

    The most common assumption about mermaids is that they were originally a myth fabricated by colonial age sailors who saw manatees in the distance that cradled their young (much like a human would, upright and held close to the chest) and thought that they were women. But the truth is, there have been mention of mermaids and mermaid-like creatures in dozens of cultures throughout history. In Slavic mythology, they are called “Rusalki” and in Scottish and Irish culture they are called “Merrow.” Though not every culture depicts them as having a long fish-like tail, which is what we believe them to have now.

    Interesting story about mermaids, apparently Christopher Columbus wrote about them on his voyages. In January 1493, sailing the oceans near Haiti, he encountered 3 “mermaids” that he described as “Not as pretty as they were depicted [In paintings], for somehow in the face they look like men.” So this does give credibility to the urban legend that sailors mistook manatees for mermaids.

    Now for the interesting part: how can we equate mermaids to giantesses? Well, in the giantess community, we have a habit of turning mythical creatures, regardless of original gender, into giantesses. This is true of succubi, fairies, and nagas, all of which I’ve done a profile on before. You could easily pass giant mermaids off as being something that is only found in the GTS community.
    But wait: that’s not true! There is one account I can think of of a non-ironic giantess mermaid outside of the giantess community. And that would be the Giga-Mermaid found in the most recent installment of the Shantae series known as “Shantae: Half-Genie Hero.” And truth be told: she is in fact “a huge mermaid.” The mermaid queen, to be specific. I haven’t played the game myself so I can’t give too many details on her, but I’d definitely play it just to see her (and the game received pretty positive reviews so it won’t be like I’m clawing my way through a game just to get to one good part.)

    So what makes the idea of a “giantess mermaid” work? Well, The Mermaid has advantages that other giantesses don’t. For one: the Ocean is freaking HUGE. There is plenty of room to swim around and slap whales with your fish tail. The ocean is also a good place to hunt for humans; specifically sailors. A popular hunting technique for The Mermaid is to grab a ship by its keel and drag it down to the depths: that way it is harder for humans to fight back, and if they try and swim away; they’re not gonna get far. Or, if the mermaid is big enough, she can simply just jump up and eat the entire ship in one bite.

    Already, I’ve made the Mermaid out to be a rather voracious kind of giantess. But I’ve always kinda thought of a mermaid as a water-naga myself. Mostly because instead of a long, snake like tail, they have a long fish-like tail. But mermaids can be gentle. There are countless stories of mermaids falling in love with sailors, “The Little Mermaid” being a good example of that. So I don’t see it unreasonable that a giantess Mermaid could fall in love with a tiny human. Perhaps place him (or her, if we’re being progressive) in her mouth so that he can breath while she swims down to Atlantis, or Rapture or whatever undersea city she hails from.

    Then she can treat this little sailor to a life of undersea luxury, because typically mermaids are associated with royalty. Especially if she happens to be a daughter of Poseidon, king of the sea which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility considering that Poseidon had thousands of children. Or she could be a daughter of Neptune and have a great love of pudding and breaking the fourth wall. Either way, this lucky sailor is in for a good time. At least until the smell of fish and the taste of salt water drive him into insanity. But let’s face it: if you’re a colonial sailor who lives in a palace at the bottom of the ocean with a giant mermaid for a wife and a little girl with D-Pad hairclips for a father-in-law, how much more insane can your life get?

    You’re probably wonder: Hey, can a mermaid destroy a city?

    The Answer: well, to an extent.

    It would be difficult for a mermaid to destroy perhaps Kansas City since she’d have to crawl on her belly for miles and the payoff probably wouldn’t be that satisfying anywhere. She can probably smash coastal cities, but only the buildings closest to the beach. Unless there is a city that floats on the ocean, or a very small island nation that is composed of just one city, then it is more difficult for an aquatic giantess to destroy urban sprawl than a terrestrial giantess.

But of all the giantess Mermaids I’ve seen, they rarely attack more than a few people at a time so that won’t be an issue. Really, mermaids are kinda limited since they are ocean-themed. There really can’t be a giant space mermaid (but that does sound like a 50s sci-fi flick) and it’s difficult to have a land mermaid at that. Well, there are mermaids that can spawn human legs for walking, so I guess that’s fine too.

Even though the Mermaid is more of a niche concept, people still love them. Mostly because they represent in people’s minds the vast mystery of the ocean and it’s beauty. But like the ocean, mermaids can be scary too. Especially when they are mad. After all, even if they aren’t gigantic, they still know some twisted mermaid magic and they can shrink a punk or two down to size. Or, they could just summon a giant sea monster which would be far less fun. Not unless that sea monster was an even bigger, sexier giantess of a different species. That would be pretty sweet as well: after all, the Greeks had two sea monsters who were female: Scylla and Charybdis. Is it hard to imagine that they’d both be vicious but voluptuous ladies?

I guess the point is that mermaids are a huge part of human history, and a big part of the GTS community. Whether they be in the vore paradise of Karbo’s “Felarya” or in a giantess re-imagining of “The Little Mermaid,” you’ll typically find at least one oversized sea-woman every once in awhile.

A part of me likes to think that somewhere out there in the vast and mysterious ocean, there may actually be a creature that resembles a mermaid. Maybe historians are wrong and Sailors really did see beautiful fish-tailed women out on their voyages. And they are somewhere now just waiting to be discovered...and then procreated with.

But I doubt there are any giant mermaids out there. It’s still fun to imagine though.

Pose ref: wlper.deviantart.com/art/Raiju…

Description

[Note: this is actually the Penultimate GTS profile: I was going to do the final here, but then someone suggested the Mermaid and I don’t know how I missed that one. So we’re gonna talk about that instead]

    Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the sea, mostly because I watched Finding Dorey for the first time last month and it reinvigorated my passion in the open ocean. After all, it’s such a vast and mysterious place, leading to the creation of countless myths and legends about what may be lurking beneath the waves. None more famous than the mermaid: a mythical being with the upper body of a woman and the lower half of a fish tail. In our modern culture, mermaids are often times associated with glamour, beauty, and royalty.

    They are also often times associated with large size, but only in the GTS Community.

    So today I’m going to talk to you about everybody’s favorite waterborne giantess: The Mermaid.

    I’m sure you’ve all heard of mermaids: our culture is saturated with them. Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” was one of it’s most successful films of all time, they are also mentioned in famous books including Aquamarine and the Chronicles of Narnia, and the logo of Starbucks is even a mermaid (specifically, a siren which is argued to be a kind of mermaid.) So let’s get a few things out of the way. First off, they’re called mermaids because “mer” means “sea” and maids refers to women. Which means that a male mermaid is a merman, not a merbutler. “Mermaid-man” also isn’t proper so sorry Ernest Borgnine.

    The most common assumption about mermaids is that they were originally a myth fabricated by colonial age sailors who saw manatees in the distance that cradled their young (much like a human would, upright and held close to the chest) and thought that they were women. But the truth is, there have been mention of mermaids and mermaid-like creatures in dozens of cultures throughout history. In Slavic mythology, they are called “Rusalki” and in Scottish and Irish culture they are called “Merrow.” Though not every culture depicts them as having a long fish-like tail, which is what we believe them to have now.

    Interesting story about mermaids, apparently Christopher Columbus wrote about them on his voyages. In January 1493, sailing the oceans near Haiti, he encountered 3 “mermaids” that he described as “Not as pretty as they were depicted [In paintings], for somehow in the face they look like men.” So this does give credibility to the urban legend that sailors mistook manatees for mermaids.

    Now for the interesting part: how can we equate mermaids to giantesses? Well, in the giantess community, we have a habit of turning mythical creatures, regardless of original gender, into giantesses. This is true of succubi, fairies, and nagas, all of which I’ve done a profile on before. You could easily pass giant mermaids off as being something that is only found in the GTS community.
    But wait: that’s not true! There is one account I can think of of a non-ironic giantess mermaid outside of the giantess community. And that would be the Giga-Mermaid found in the most recent installment of the Shantae series known as “Shantae: Half-Genie Hero.” And truth be told: she is in fact “a huge mermaid.” The mermaid queen, to be specific. I haven’t played the game myself so I can’t give too many details on her, but I’d definitely play it just to see her (and the game received pretty positive reviews so it won’t be like I’m clawing my way through a game just to get to one good part.)

    So what makes the idea of a “giantess mermaid” work? Well, The Mermaid has advantages that other giantesses don’t. For one: the Ocean is freaking HUGE. There is plenty of room to swim around and slap whales with your fish tail. The ocean is also a good place to hunt for humans; specifically sailors. A popular hunting technique for The Mermaid is to grab a ship by its keel and drag it down to the depths: that way it is harder for humans to fight back, and if they try and swim away; they’re not gonna get far. Or, if the mermaid is big enough, she can simply just jump up and eat the entire ship in one bite.

    Already, I’ve made the Mermaid out to be a rather voracious kind of giantess. But I’ve always kinda thought of a mermaid as a water-naga myself. Mostly because instead of a long, snake like tail, they have a long fish-like tail. But mermaids can be gentle. There are countless stories of mermaids falling in love with sailors, “The Little Mermaid” being a good example of that. So I don’t see it unreasonable that a giantess Mermaid could fall in love with a tiny human. Perhaps place him (or her, if we’re being progressive) in her mouth so that he can breath while she swims down to Atlantis, or Rapture or whatever undersea city she hails from.

    Then she can treat this little sailor to a life of undersea luxury, because typically mermaids are associated with royalty. Especially if she happens to be a daughter of Poseidon, king of the sea which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility considering that Poseidon had thousands of children. Or she could be a daughter of Neptune and have a great love of pudding and breaking the fourth wall. Either way, this lucky sailor is in for a good time. At least until the smell of fish and the taste of salt water drive him into insanity. But let’s face it: if you’re a colonial sailor who lives in a palace at the bottom of the ocean with a giant mermaid for a wife and a little girl with D-Pad hairclips for a father-in-law, how much more insane can your life get?

    You’re probably wonder: Hey, can a mermaid destroy a city?

    The Answer: well, to an extent.

    It would be difficult for a mermaid to destroy perhaps Kansas City since she’d have to crawl on her belly for miles and the payoff probably wouldn’t be that satisfying anywhere. She can probably smash coastal cities, but only the buildings closest to the beach. Unless there is a city that floats on the ocean, or a very small island nation that is composed of just one city, then it is more difficult for an aquatic giantess to destroy urban sprawl than a terrestrial giantess.

But of all the giantess Mermaids I’ve seen, they rarely attack more than a few people at a time so that won’t be an issue. Really, mermaids are kinda limited since they are ocean-themed. There really can’t be a giant space mermaid (but that does sound like a 50s sci-fi flick) and it’s difficult to have a land mermaid at that. Well, there are mermaids that can spawn human legs for walking, so I guess that’s fine too.

Even though the Mermaid is more of a niche concept, people still love them. Mostly because they represent in people’s minds the vast mystery of the ocean and it’s beauty. But like the ocean, mermaids can be scary too. Especially when they are mad. After all, even if they aren’t gigantic, they still know some twisted mermaid magic and they can shrink a punk or two down to size. Or, they could just summon a giant sea monster which would be far less fun. Not unless that sea monster was an even bigger, sexier giantess of a different species. That would be pretty sweet as well: after all, the Greeks had two sea monsters who were female: Scylla and Charybdis. Is it hard to imagine that they’d both be vicious but voluptuous ladies?

I guess the point is that mermaids are a huge part of human history, and a big part of the GTS community. Whether they be in the vore paradise of Karbo’s “Felarya” or in a giantess re-imagining of “The Little Mermaid,” you’ll typically find at least one oversized sea-woman every once in awhile.

A part of me likes to think that somewhere out there in the vast and mysterious ocean, there may actually be a creature that resembles a mermaid. Maybe historians are wrong and Sailors really did see beautiful fish-tailed women out on their voyages. And they are somewhere now just waiting to be discovered...and then procreated with.

But I doubt there are any giant mermaids out there. It’s still fun to imagine though.

Pose ref: wlper.deviantart.com/art/Raiju…