Control Your Own Mermaid

Do you want a virtual mermaid that you can control? You can have one through Second Life and it's free.

Second Life has been around for years. It is sort of a cross between a multi-person video game and a chat room. It takes place in a virtual world made up of islands. Like real life, some of these islands are public and some are private. When you join you select an avatar (which is supposed to represent you) from a series of pre-packaged ones. You can get new clothing for your avatar or even replace it completely. After that you can wander around or teleport to specific landmarks.

To create an account in Second Life go to their web site and sign up. This will give you a link for the Second Life Viewer. Everything you do in Second Life is through this. You can walk around with your avatar or interact with special animations for things like dancing.

The first thing that you need to do to make a mermaid is to modify your avatar. Start at Freebie Island. This is full of signs showing clothes and body parts. The default avatars have permanent underwear which conflicts with the mermaid look so you will need a replacement skin. Be sure that you get the full thing and not just a demo. You have to look around and you might need to change your preferences to include "adult". You can also look around for some new hair and eyes.

Now, use your web browser to go to the Second Life Marketplace and search on "mermaid tail". You will find an overwhelming number of hits, many of them free. I'm using the term "mermaid" but there are male version also. Some of them are pretty fierce.

A note on money. Purchases are made in "Lindon Dollars". Free members have to buy these but they are pennies on the dollar. Premium members get L$300 each Tuesday which is enough for almost any tail.

Mermaids are handled three different ways in Second Life. The most common is to include an Animation Override (AO) that keeps the legs together so that they resemble a tail. The fluke is attached to one foot. There may be additional fins. Most of the mermaids done this way have a light, airy look. They can also take up a lot of room with all of these fins floating around.

The second way of handling a mermaid is to make the legs invisible using something called an "alpha channel" and to attach a tail at the waist. This can be very convincing but many of the animations looks a little strange unless they were specifically designed for mermaids. Also, sometimes your tail gets on crooked. When this happens you can fix it by removing it and putting it back on. In between you are floating since your legs are invisible. Also, if you are wearing anything like anklets, they will seem to be floating below you.

I haven't tried the third way yet. It involves removing one leg and reshaping the other into a tail. This is, of course, painless. That would resolve the problem of animations since you still have a leg and it should look better than trying to fuse two legs together.

Once you have your mermaid, what do you do with her?

If you search for locations with the term "mermaid" you will find several. These are mainly bars where you can hang out and stores where you can buy more mermaid-related things.

If you really want to get into Second Life then you can buy property and start decorating it. There are numerous mermaid beds available. You can also get poses, animations, and props such as seaweed.

All of this is great but the truth is that Second Life peaked some time ago. Most of the areas I have been through have been empty or nearly empty. The Trident Bar has a nice mermaid dance floor with enough animations for multiple mermaids to be dancing at once but out of several visits I've only found one other mermaid present. The dance with only two mermaids is impressive. It must be spectacular with all of the animations in use.

Another issue with Second Life is that a good bit of its content is adult oriented. Some of the mermaid beds include animations for mermaid sex. Many areas are devoted to casual or kinky sex and some to violent sex. I would strongly recommend that anyone below 18 stay well away from Second Life. It is also easy to underestimate the strength of on-line relationships so even adults need to be careful.

Melusine

Currently it is pretty common to depict mermaids as being able to grow legs when needed. As far as I know, that mainly dates from Splash. Before that, mermaids did not change form.

But, if you go back far enough, you find some exceptions. One is Melusine. I first ran across this term in an article about Starbuck's logo which is a topless, two-tailed mermaid. The article claimed that this creature is called a melusine.

It turns out that when you look it up, Melusine refers to a specific character in a number of medieval myths. She appeared to be a normal human most of the time but changed into a mermaid (or a half-serpent) on Saturdays. She married a noble (possibly a king) on condition that he not disturb her on Saturdays. Of course, he does eventually and she left him (possibly turning into a dragon on her way out).

Wikipedia concludes by saying that Melusine is a holdover water sprite from pre-Christian legends.

Mermaid Divers

Here is a video of a scuba diver in a mermaid diving suit. This is the next step up from swimable tails. You can order them from Otter Bay.

Here is a similar video.

H2O: second season

There are a lot of similarities between the first and second seasons of H2O: Just Add Water.

They both have five full moons with a full moon that gave powers in the first episode and one that removed them in the last episode.

They both have multiple references to the 1950s mermaids and how they resembled their modern counterparts.

There was a major change in emphasis. In the first season, the girls were portrayed as people with super powers who also turned into mermaids. They used their powers in every episode but were not always seen with their mermaid tails. In the second season this was reversed. Every episode had them as mermaids but they used their powers a lot less. They also spent a lot more time in the Moon Pool and less time at the juice bar. Maybe they were saving their special effects budget for the final episode. It was quite spectacular and probably had as much CGI as the rest of the season put together.

In the first episode the girls were moonstruck and went to the Moon Pool where their powers were enhanced. Their powers were out of control until the end of the second episode. This was a bit of a red herring (so to speak). They barely used their enhanced powers.

The main plot arc involved someone who became romantically involved with a regular and who found out about the mermaids. In the first season it was Zane and his romance with Rikki. In the second season it was Charlotte and her relationship with Lewis. In both seasons the romance threatened to break up the close-knit group. The others wondered if they could still trust the one in the relationship. Also, our view of the outsider changed radically in the last few episodes. In Zane's case, we found that he could be trusted to do the right thing. In Charlotte's case, we found out that she was not as nice as she originally seemed.

The handling of Charlotte's character was handled well and is an example of how the writing for the show is better than most shows aimed at a teen-age audience.

I had read the Wikipedia entry on the show before watching it so I knew who Charlotte was before we met her. My first impression was, "But she's nice!"

This was actually a relief. It would have been annoying seeing a jerk all season. Instead, Charlotte was pleasant. She was also smart and talented. We saw her artistic talent from the beginning and, at one point, she was recruited as a tutor for Cleo.

Her body type was also a bit of a surprise. She is tall - taller than Lewis. She is also noticeably heavier than the stick-thin stars. She is a bit reserved and the type who would never be one of the cool girls. Actually, she is exactly the type of girl I would expect Lewis to be dating. Speaking immodestly as a fellow genius, it can be a strain being with someone who doesn't understand what you are talking about.

Through most of the season Charlotte is long-suffering. She is constantly kept waiting so that Lewis can do something with his ex-girlfriend and her friends. It is understandable that Charlotte would begin to dislike Cleo.

This dislike got a lot stronger when Charlotte found a photograph of her grandmother in Cleo's room. Then she noticed that Cleo was wearing a locket just like her grandmother's. No wonder she suspected that Cleo and the others were keeping something from her. They were keeping something big secret. Once Charlotte discovered their secret she was convinced that they had been keeping her heritage from her.

Then she found out that she was as powerful as all three of them put together and had more control.

No wonder it went to her head. There was the implication at the very end that being a mermaid had changed her and that she couldn't handle it but that she was back to normal once she lost her powers.

Charlotte's personality is similar to Emma's although not as obsessive/compulsive. There were hints of this all along starting with the way she pursued Lewis. She managed to get herself invited along to things like a camp-over at Mako Island where she was not exactly welcome. At one point Lewis suggested a couple of things for the evening and she was surprised because he usually let her make all of the decisions. At the time she took this as a sign that he was becoming more interested but it also showed the general direction of their relationship.

After becoming a mermaid, Charlotte felt that the others are trying to hold her back, insisting that she should not be using her powers. Considering that a couple of episodes earlier Emma and Rikki were using their powers to throw a pool game or that Cleo had just used her powers to cheat in a volleyball game, she was justified in thinking that there was a double standard.

It is unclear if Charlotte got the girls' original powers or the enhanced version. We never saw her create snow, or lightening. Maybe she could have done those things, also if she had seen Rikki and Emma do them. Instead she seemed totally surprised when Rikki used her lightening powers in the final episode.

Charlotte and Rikki just plain didn't get along. No surprise there. It was established early on that Rikki had problems making friends and she found Charlotte abrasive.

A note on performances. I've already written about Rikki's. Episodes featuring Rikki tended to be the most realistic.

Emma's tended to be silly. She only got one good scene. Her boyfriend Ash knew that she was a competitive swimmer and couldn't understand why she wouldn't go swimming with him. She explained that she had had a life-altering experience, letting him assume that she had nearly drowned and was afraid of water. He took it upon himself to desensitize her by carrying her into the surf. She convinced him to put her back on dry land but, in a fit of anger, decided to show him what happens when she gets wet. Just before she reached the water some other people came into view and she had to put off the big reveal. This was the juiciest piece of acting that Claire Holt got.

Emma also got the creepiest episode of the season. After being poisoned by a some exotic coral, she became voracious and her scales began bleaching out. As time went by she stopped talking and started having fish characteristics (gills, scales on her arm), even when human. There was some question if she would attack her friends or family.

Angus McLaren as Lewis got to move beyond his one-dimensional character. He spent the season caught between Cleo who broke up with him but didn't want to see him move on and Charlotte. At various points he had to communicate that he was miserable just through his expression. In one late-season episode Cleo finally thought to ask him if he was ok and he answered, "No." He looked miserable.

Phoebe Tonkin as Cleo finally got a good episode at the end of the series. In the second-to-last episode she had a total meltdown. Her father was demanding that she do the dishes. Charlotte had bullied her and taken her locket. And Lewis wasn't talking to her any longer. After Charlotte took her locket she collapsed in tears. When her father tried to force her to do the dishes (without rubber gloves) she ran away. rather than going to the Moon Pool, she hid in the shark-infested reef beyond Mako Island (presumably the same area as Zane's run-in with a shark in the first season). Lewis had to come and bring her back.

Book Review - The Mermaid's Mirror

The Mermaid's Mirror by L. K. Madigan is aimed at teens but readable by adults.

Lena (short for Selena) has just turned 16 and wants to learn to surf. Her father refuses. Lena's desire increases after she sees a mermaid in the surf at Magic Cove.

Lena has some issues. She sleepwalks and even fainted, just from being in a high-rise building. Apparently this is tied to the mermaid, assuming that she really exists (spoiler: yes, she does).

The book is essentially in two parts, the first part is highly realistic with details about Lena's friends and boyfriend. A lot of time is spent explaining how to surf and what to do when you fall off.

The second part follows what happens after Lena finally makes contact with the mermaid. This part is much less detailed, almost dreamy which matches Lena's state of mind but is still a little jarring.

The mermaids in the book breath air and have to surface occasionally for air. They communicate telepathically and live in small settlements. Much of their culture is through song which matches primitive human cultures.

One oddity of the book is that the mermaids carry sealskin cloaks like silkies. They do not change shape with these but they use them to appear to be seals and sea lions to humans.

The book left quite a bit of room for a sequel.