Desirane

My darling, I love you dearly, but the sea has claimed my soul.

the human body is about 60% water and large bodies of water know it, its why they welcome you so willingly like a loved one returning home

inspired: merfolk actually have very different concepts of gender to humans because they’re an entirely different species with their own unique culture

It’s a biological fact that fish do indeed change their sex to keep the male/female ratio balanced in their school population. So this fluidity actually makes more sense from a scientific standpoint than the silly idea that merfolk are born with a strictly assigned sex like humans.

Merfolk are all canonically genderfluid and we love them for that

OH MY GOD

So in the presence of a ship with an entirely or mostly male crew, nearby mermaids would become female to keep the balance.

That’s it. We figured out why everyone thinks merfolk are all women. Get a boat of fems out there and let’s see what they report.

Personally I've never been a fan of the "magic is a beast that needs to be tamed" metaphor. Magic is more like the ocean: powerful, terrifying, capable of unbridled force. But at the same time, it is gentle, warm, the lifeblood of millions of people. The folk who know the ocean know you cannot harness it's force, you must work within or around it, lest it destroy you. Similarly, magic is great and terrible and gentle and kind, all at once. And those who work with it need to work WITH it, not reign over it. Because the primordial forces have no rules about biting the hand that feeds you.

Oh, also it's controlled by the moon.

But above all magic is wet and salty.

If you're not wet and salty, are you even doing magic?

“The mermaid is an archetypal image that represents a woman who is at ease in the great waters of life, the waters of emotion and sexuality. She shows us how to embrace our instinctive sexuality and sensuality so that we can affirm the essence of our feminine nature, the wisdom of our bodies, and the playfulness of our spirits. She symbolizes our connection with our deepest instinctive feelings, our wild and untamed animal nature that exists below the surface of outward personalities. She is able to respond to her mysterious sexual impulses without abandoning her more human, conscious side. What happened to the girls who dreamed of being mermaids?” ―Anita Johnston, Eating in the Light of the Moon