- Capricious -

please be respectful of cultural boundaries when working with mermaids from various cultures and traditions, and be mindful not to intrude.

🌊 Rusalkas - slavic in origin, disturbed spirits of the “unclean dead”, ghosts of women who died violent deaths, with a penchant for drowning young men. they live only in rivers and lakes, and are known to have green hair like aquatic plants, only appearing in the night. 

🌊 Melusina - a mermaid that walks among humans, but returns to their two-tailed form during baths and when they bathe their children. often a water spirit of a nearby lake or river. french origin. 

🌊 Siren - greek mythology. servants and companions of persephone, whom searched for her when she was abducted. they are known to sometimes have the body of a bird, and for their song, which lured sailors to their doom. cannibalism implied folklore. have the power of prophecy. 

🌊 Merrow - irish mermaid. known to have green hair and webbed fingers. particular noted love of music and their red cap, which when stolen, they will live with the thief until they find it, and then return to the water, leaving even a whole family behind. 

🌊 Ben-varrey - from the isle of man, known to bless those that are kind to them with prosperity, gifts, and even the location of treasure. 

🌊 Aicaya -  Caribbean mermaid, humans who become mermaids when they are shunned from their community and go to live in the sea. 

🌊 Amabie - japanese merpeople, with birdlike torsos and three legs and scales. they are gifted with prophecy, usually foretelling abundant harvests or epidemics 

🌊 Ningyo - “human faced fish” known to have golden scales, that brings bad weather and misfortune when caught, but when their flesh is eaten the consumer is granted youth and beauty, even agelessness. 

🌊 Finman / Finwife - magical shapeshifters that disguise themselves as sea creatures or plants to lure humans, unlike most mermaids they kidnap people from the shores to be their spouses or servants. they have a greed for jewelry and coins, particularly silver, and prefer humans over other finfolk. 

🌊 Sirena Chilota - considered the more friendly mermaids, caring for all fish life and rescuing drowned sailors to restore life to them. known for their human-like beauty and youth, according to legend they are the child of a human and a “king of seas”, tears are a powerful substance. from chilote mythology. 

🌊 Cecealia - sometimes known as “sea witches”, they are half human and half octopus. origins in native american and japanese mythology. 

🌊 Sirena / Siyokoy - the philippine version of mermaid and merman respectively. also called “magindara”, they are known to protect the waters from raiders, and protect the boy moon from sea monsters. Siyokoys can sometimes have legs however, covered with scales and webbed feet

🌊 Sea Mither - scottish/orcadian mythology, a spirit that personifies the sea during spring and summer, battles along scottish isles using storms to bring the summer about. a mother figure to all aquatic life. 

🌊 Ceasg - a fresh-water mermaid, specifically half-salmon, said to grant three wishes if captured. sometimes called maighdean na tuinne (maid of the wave) or maighdean mhara (maid of the sea). scottish. 

So…I was browsing one of my favorite creative writing websites, and one of the recent articles they posted was about recognizing moral abusers. It listed all the behaviors moral abusers partake in and offered advice on how to avoid or deal with them. After spending a lot of my time on the internet lately, and having experienced most, if not all, of the things that article listed, seeing that article gave me a revelation like no other.

Social justice warriors are moral abusers.

They point out or criticize you for wrongdoings you committed in the past. Any attempt you make at improvement or learning from that experience is always ignored in the eyes of the moral abuser. In their eyes and mind, you will always be your past self no matter what. I’m pretty sure most people who went on Tumblr at some point met with this kind of person. It can happen in real life, too.

They always ignore the context of your actions. Okay, let’s admit it, all of us have done some mean or callous things at one point, maybe not even knowing it. Most of us made an effort to adjust our actions and do the right thing since then, but there’s no such thing as context in the eyes of the SJWs, and your later actions have no bearing on it! They’ll call you whatever demeaning and degrading stuff they feel will hurt you regardless of what happened, whether it was something on their end or yours. I’m getting Zamii070 flashbacks just describing all of this.

They treat every single thing in the world, every negative incident, even the smallest one, as an issue in need of hyper-vigilant correctional measures. It could be something simple as having a bad week and yelling at someone without meaning to, and you’re probably not a person who yells at everyone on a daily basis. But even recognizing the wrongness of whatever actions you took and apologizing isn’t good enough, as they’ll always, often harshly I might add, admonish you as a super horrible spawn of Satan. Sound familiar?

They constantly tell you what’s wrong and what you shouldn’t do, but rarely, if ever, tell you what’s right and what I should do. Perhaps this is best illustrated with an example. I love writing fan fiction, and I’m one of those people who doesn’t underestimate the impact that literature can have on people. I’m not the best at writing about sensitive issues like bullying, disabilities, or even rape, but I try my best to work on this. But when I tried to write one of my fan fics in one fandom once, they were constantly hounding me about my inability to “write sensitive issues well” and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t understand what they wanted me to do and how. When I did ask, they were always rude and condescending about it, all like, “It’s not my job to teach you. You should know this by now.” Even when I tried to make adjustments like they wanted, everything I did was always wrong and offensive in their eyes, unless it was EXACTLY what they wanted, which I obviously couldn’t achieve.

They find moral fault in you when you try to assert yourself. Ohhhhhh yes, this has scarred me in ways I can’t bring myself to forget no matter how hard I tried. I’m sure other people have had to deal with this, too. In that same fandom, when I tried to stick up for myself and call some people out on their blatant hypocrisy, childishness, and immaturity during a particular incident that got out of hand, someone I know and once liked pretty much tore my down by saying untrue and degrading things about me, like how I don’t care about anyone but myself, how I’m victim blaming (How they interpreted that is still a mystery to me), how I need to cater to their feelings or else I’m a horrible person, blah blah blah. Heck, even saying you want some alone time can result in said moral abuser telling you you’re a cold and selfish person. I really don’t think this needs more elaboration here.

They make anything and everything into a moral issue. Even not liking certain characters in shows is grounds for out of control moralistic debates. I’ve seen people talk trash about others because they like certain shows or characters that they themselves don’t, and it’s honestly disgusting to watch. There’s stuff like, “Hey, I don’t like X, but if you do that’s fine. I have no problem with it” and then there’s “Oh my God, you like X? How dare you?! You’re a horrible person who hates Y and you probably support Z and A and B! Or you don’t like my fave?! You’re a shitty C or D and you probably E and F!” and blah blah blah. I mean…what do people even gain from this? Do they seriously think making everything into a moral issue, even innocuous stuff, is going to change things for the better? Because it won’t, especially with the way these people are going about it! Do you see me verbally attacking one of my friends because she likes Levi from Attack on Titan and I don’t? No!

They have extremely warped, skewed, or self-centered perceptions of right and wrong. I don’t think this needs to be explained. You don’t want to write lesbian characters in your own story?! How dare you! You’re evil and problematic! Bullying someone to the point of attempted suicide because she drew a character in a way that we didn’t like? That’s tooooootally cool! See what I mean?

They are quick to assume the worst about you. They’ll claim you did something bad or believe a rumor at face value, and won’t be persuaded otherwise. They’ll also assume the worst in everything you do. Like, say for example, you helped someone out of genuine concern. Instead of thanking you for it, they assume you’re in it for some award or doing it out of manipulation. Or maybe you made a poor choice of words and said something that came off as insulting when you didn’t mean for it to be. The moral abuser will decide you definitely intended to insult them and refuse to believe otherwise. I think this also needs an example: When I tried writing one other fan fic, I wrote one character as being a jerk who hates it when girls wear super short miniskirts and is quick to tell anyone wearing them so, loudly and in public. I intended for her to come off as a jerk, but then someone accused me of endorsing slut shaming and rape culture (Which I don’t) and claiming I support sexist views. I tried to engage in a discussion about this so I could both clarify myself and hopefully ask for advice on how to improve it, but the person continued to be very argumentative, rude, condescending, and belligerent, and any advice she gave came off less like genuinely wanting to help and more like dictating how I should write my stories and how to make them “problem free” by her standards. I got help from more civilized sources.

They also see no problem with doing things that they usually condemn others for. You stole a candy bar. “How could you?! Stealing is bad!” They steal an apple. “Well…I know it’s wrong to steal, but…I didn’t have any change…and I was really hungry…and it was more convenient…don’t blame me!” They make gray areas for themselves but hold others to unrealistically black and white standards because they don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions.

They don’t like engaging in civil, proper discussions about anything with anyone. Even standing up for yourself will get your told you’re either selfish, out of line, victim blaming, etc. Talking to these people is like talking to a wall. Nothing’s gonna change with them, and even if you present evidence and tell them this and that until you’re blue in the face, they’re still gonna believe they themselves are gospel and you all are problematic white fedora neckbeard fake lesbians who are violating their safe spaces who refuse to check their privilege. God, even typing all that made me cringe.

Any of this sound familiar? I’m honestly not surprised this is what most people on Tumblr perpetuate. But we all know this for sure: All of this is wrong. Everything they do is wrong, no matter their reasons, and we shouldn’t condone, encourage, or allow this behavior to continue, not just on Tumblr, but everywhere, even in real life. I know all of this may sound like a bit of a stretch, but I’ve experienced a lot of this, and reading that article just made everything feel put together. It all made perfect sense to me and it described almost everything I, and I’m sure others, went through and put them into coherent words.

These people call themselves social justice warriors, but…honestly? They don’t care about social justice, so why should we call them that? Instead, we should just call them what they really are and refuse to admit they are on the inside and out: Moral abusers. There’s no sugarcoating or denying it, that’s what they are, no matter how much they try to justify their actions. Moral abusing warriors. Because, really, what else do they do other than that?

The House on Ash Tree Lane

Emily Majarian

For Month of Fear, Week 4, “Hollow”

“And if one day you find yourself passing by that house don’t stop, don’t slow down, just keep going. There’s nothing there. Beware.”