asakiyume: chalk drawing (catbird and red currant)
asakiyume ([personal profile] asakiyume) wrote2025-06-30 01:38 pm
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a trade

This question popped into my head when I looked out my window and saw a catbird balancing on a stick, using its wings to help it balance.

Would you trade your arms and hands for wings?
sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)

[personal profile] sovay 2025-06-30 07:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Oof, yeah, no, I forgot about that; I was thinking of the Disney version.

My imprinting version was Splash (1984), in which the change is painless and flexible. It was what I wanted, in the sea.
Edited 2025-06-30 19:28 (UTC)
sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)

[personal profile] sovay 2025-06-30 07:48 pm (UTC)(link)
painless and flexible: ideal

The great scene of her in the bathtub by night, running salt into the bathwater as the skin of her thighs crinkles suddenly into scales.
troisoiseaux: (Default)

[personal profile] troisoiseaux 2025-06-30 08:38 pm (UTC)(link)
My imprinting version was Splash (1984), in which the change is painless and flexible.

My defining childhood mermaid media was Liz Kessler's The Tail of Emily Windsnap, which also had a painless + flexible mermaid transition, although there the protagonist was, in the immortal words of Lady Gaga, just born that way, so I didn't feel like that counted for this prompt. (Although she didn't discover her mermaid powers until middle school, because what kind of MG adventure would it be otherwise?)
Edited 2025-06-30 20:39 (UTC)
sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)

[personal profile] sovay 2025-06-30 08:45 pm (UTC)(link)
My defining childhood mermaid media was Liz Kessler's The Tail of Emily Windsnap, which also had a painless + flexible mermaid transition, although there the protagonist was, in the immortal words of Lady Gaga, just born that way, so I didn't feel like that counted for this prompt.

I have not read the series, but cheap and easy recourse to the internet suggests it follows the same conceit: legs out of the water, tail in it. I am delighted. Would you consider the books to hold up? If so, I will try them on my niece.

(Splash features both the ability to move between worlds and the necessity of choosing between them, of which different characters are capable. I carried all of the folkloric parts of the story with me for life and had to rediscover a lot of the human '80's comedy as an adult.)
troisoiseaux: (Default)

[personal profile] troisoiseaux 2025-06-30 10:14 pm (UTC)(link)
Would you consider the books to hold up? If so, I will try them on my niece.

I haven't reread it since I was like 10, but I remember it fondly. I think I may have read one of the sequels, but I think most of them came out after I aged out the series.