askerian | (no subject)

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SOMEONE GET ONLINE AND TALK TO ME.

T_T i really need to babble about fannish stuff right now.

proanon? Are you online? I'm not sure how to make the gmail IM thing work. ;_;

Also for the space mermaids I realized I need to find a proper motive for Liadan to leave her pod. Okay, I know exactly why she would WANT to leave (she feels stifled, acts so very responsible but doesn't want to be, so very intensely curious about the rest of their world, feels that once she has children then that's IT, she's not allowed to live only for herself anymore but has to give up everything she is for the sake of her children) but it's still a rather dangerous world to live in and her family would still need a minimum of prompting to let her go alone in the wild.

She's of age to drift off and join another family unit and start making babies, sure, but usually drifting off at random is a male thing -- females usually go in groups of two or three, and usually in areas where they know there are other pods there, or during meetings of several pods. I'm realizing that while she knows how to defend herself well enough, she's still too reasonable to just one day wander off on her own if the thing that pushes her to leave isn't stronger than simply "i want to travel and it's a pretty day for it."

(social structure: a family unit is composed of one husband (leader), several wives, their children (the core family), and celibate males, either teenagers born in the pod and still waiting for their time to leave, or older males coming from outside who aren't strong enough to lead their own pod or are waiting for a chance to take the aging male's place. Merpeople have a HORRIBLE time having children -- genetic drifting is still high, resulting in non-viable mutations, mermaids die in childbirth rather often, and some couples are genetically incompatible -- so having children, for a mermaid, isn't a choice. It's a necessity for the survival of the species.)

So far the only reasons I found to trigger her departure were:

-she's casting the bones to see what to do and then ZOOM Arun's ship passes by overhead and then the shaman is all "okay, that's your great mysterious sign, you can go"
----->but then i'm wondering why the rest of the pod isn't following -- dude, a Great Dragon passing by, isn't that a sign? Or why some of the unattached warriors aren't coming with her, since they'd be waiting for a sign too. Also it makes her out to be some HOMG CHILD OF PROPHECY and that's such a fantasy staple I cringe a bit. XD (there's a difference between her seeing the dragon's trail and deciding to follow its direction because she might as well and she's curious, and a SHAMAN telling her to follow it. When she realizes it wasn't an omen from the gods using one of the rarest totems, but just arun's weird ship? she'd be DEVASTATED. Such a spiritual crisis would be better-suited to a mid-book or end-of-book event, not something one chapter in.)

-her parents/future husband treat her HORRIBLE
----->I don't want her to start the plot as some traumatized, OMG GUNNA RAEP ME victim -- she acknowledges the fact that one day she'll have to get a mate and have babies, she doesn't like it but she's not supposed to be SCARED of it.
----->----->maybe i could find a way to make her think "hey, the next pods we're gonna meet are the ones with X, Y and Z, I don't like them much but i know there are better guys out here, I could always sneak off before they spirit me away." ... hmm.

-she's separated from her pod by a storm or something
-----> she'd be worried and probably look for them. usually when a mermaid is "kidnapped" (they practice ritual (and not-so-ritual) kidnapping of the bride), the captor will leave something behind, so that her pod knows she wasn't eaten by a monster from the depths and doesn't spend ages looking for her killer so they can kill it before it eats their other children. She'd feel it very cruel to let them all believe that she died and she wouldn't be as carefree when she meets Arun.
----->-----> would having her feel guilty at first be bad? I don't know.

If anyone has other ideas, i'm listening, because i can't think of anything else right now. ;__;

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What IM? D: You can add me on MSN if you like!

T_T I don't have MSN. *sob sob* I have AIM, screenname askerian (so original, yeah)

*clingloves* ;.;

T___T That depresses me. I banned AIM after it put a virus on my computer.

D:

I have yahoo still... I think.

._. don't have yahoo either. I never used it so I got rid of it. ahhh, LOSE.

Blargh. T.T

OH WELL TALK TO ME NOW. ♥

I AM TALKING TO YOU NOW <3

What fannish things are clawing at your brain, love? <3

Nothing right now especially but i did something kinda stupid and there's nothing to do for it but mope and sulk for hours or think about something else, so. yay fandom. -__-;;;

right now i'm attempting to work on my mermaids in spaaace novel, because i realized there's a hole in the premise of the story. I'm editing my first post now to post a babble on it... ~___~;

I haven't read the mermaids in spaaace novel... it sounds fishy. (No pun intended, I swear.)

I'll sure to read the babble (what exactly is that story about... anyway? XD)

Did something stupid? .... Uh oh. That doesn't sound good at all. Sounds like you were working on something and either destoryed it or lost it in the vast compartments of your computer D:

XD *copypastes!* A genetically engineered mermaid and a marine biologist face space pirates and a ruthless corporation to save a water-covered world.

Basically her species was engineered generations ago to colonize a water-world; and then the human colonists died out (yay tsunamis) and the merpeople reverted to a nomadic, somewhat barbaric way of life. And then 500 years after that, Arun, the biologist, comes by to explore the world. It's his doctorate project. Liadan and Arun meet, become fast friends even though she thinks he's some kind of horrible cripple (sometimes mermaids revert to more-or-less human genotype XD;). Everything goes well until pirates who followed arun start messing with things. Amongst the pirates is Blue; he's a mechanic and an antisocial empath. XD

Then the corporations arrives, they're all RARR COPPER SO MUCH COPPER GIVE IT TO US and since having uncivilized inhabitants would make the planet unfit to be mined, they decide to get rid of anyone who knows about the merpeople. Arun, Liadan and Blue have to run away together and find a way to alert people to what's going on.

~~then they all have sex.~~

no, the stupid was more of the "i thought a meeting i had was at this hour and it ended up being a hour and a half before that so i missed it" variety. blergh. i'd rather not think about it.

Oh, that's not fun. *pats your back*

... Wow. It sounds like Treasure Island on steriods... sorta. But not really. More like Treasure Island-meets-Atlantis-meets-Antlantica. When I first started reading I was like ".... What the heck?"

It's so strange... but it sounds like it would be very interest. And I'm not even into that kind of stuff. I'm seriously going to have to check this out.

*snerk*

... It started as a Naruto AU RP with a friend actually. XD Arun was Naruto. Lidan was, um, girlneji. But they were so modified, oh man. Now Arun's friendly like Naruto, sure, and sometimes he gets all RARRR!!! like him, but -- he's a scientist. XD

Blue isn't really Sasuke-like in particular, but I do have a weakness for antisocial/emo types in general. (but he has a sense of humor! And not asexual at all. XD And his past wasn't too pleasant, but he's not traumatized -- his main reason for avoiding people is that he can't shield and being around people who think too loudly give him headaches.)

... and of course since I love rivalshipping Arun and Blue are totally getting pissed at each other nonstop. u.u;;;; Thankfully they're developing into their own personalities, because the archetypes underneath are kinda obvious when you know what I usually write. XD;

Liadan is just too cute. She's so earnest and serious and responsible, nngh. ♥

AHH.

<3 Sounds like it's something I could get into. I'm more worried about character creation and the relationship structures than plots (Usually). Your characters sound like they have amazing personalities that are going to irritate and amaze me and make me like "UGH! I WANT MORE."

I'll check it out when I have time, after finals <3

(And just so you know, you mentioning how the AU RP spurred the story... I'd like to see Scientist!Naruto now. XDD DARN YOU. *loves Naruto RPs, for the fact they always bring drama or crack*)

Maybe away from the pod on a rite of passage of some sort? Like Outward Bound (is that the one where they drop you in the wilderness with a penknife and a thermal blanket and you've got to hike the ten miles back to civilization?) or like some of the vision quests that young adults have in indigenous traditions? In which case, if she's drifting alone and hasn't eaten in a day or two and sees the ship overhead, she'd follow it because it's potentially part of her vision quest?

I like that tradition! totally forgot about it. *adds it in* u.u

Problem is that they'd do that with guys, but not with girls -- they need all the breeding females they can get, and not every guy gets to ever have a wife or three of their own. They're not totally obsessive over keeping track of the women, but as long as the girl isn't sick (and that's physically sick, because crazy or simple-minded women still get to have kids), they're still going to try to keep her alive as long as possible. They're barely maintaining their population as it is. So unless it was in an area that's supposed to be safe-ish... and even then she wouldn't leave for her quest and then be fine with never coming back and going away for months and months on her grand adventures.

Unless the area is like a parking station for lone girls. XD "we're dropping you off here, honey, find yourself a good husband okay! :D" Hee, might be able to figure out something like that. Maybe she was supposed to meet with other lone girls for safety and wait to be approached by some wandering guy... Hrrm, why wouldn't the guys all hang out there then -- maybe it's a retreat, sacred area, safe-ish but still with meditation/ritual things to do, and they come out of there on their own time? *ponderponderponder* hmm, will have to think harder on repercussions, but I like it...

One thing that really bugs me is the "wommins got trouble having chillun" short-hand for "artificially low population". You're better than that, and you write strong female characters, so I'd think you'd remember that half a child's chromosones are coming from the father, too. Genetically engineered creations (like clones) can reproduce and have heathly children (as far as we know), but we've also not taken the reproduction of clones through the full life-cycle of ten generations. (Unless they've gone that far with mice, but I dunno.)

So, it's entirely possible that some women may have mutations in their genetic structure that would render their eggs either incomplete or outright inviable -- but that some men would, too. Recessive features might also be an issue, and it's not like low technology makes people stupid. There are plenty of indigenous, low-tech societies on this planet that have strong taboos against brother-sister marriage -- you get enough mutations or recessive-based oddities in that kind of parental mix, and even a no-tech person can say, "hey, y'know, maybe we shouldn't let that happen."

Or, alternately, a set of traditions/superstitions develops. People with red hair are more likely to have twins, or that girls who hit puberty by X age are more, or less, likely to have healthy ova, or that boys who hit puberty after X age are probably sterile (or effectively so). I'd also suggest taking a look at some of the recessive/genetic mutations that can occur in humans and coming up with taboos that might develop if you didn't fully understand the process (or even possibly understood it but just don't have the means to test other than behavioral/observation).

In that case, if there are taboos that must be considered, then a rite of passage for both genders makes perfect sense. On average, any population left to itself will have a pretty close 50/50 split on genders. (Not counting artificially-influenced populations like traditional India, or modern China, where boys are seen as "more valuable" than girls.) But let's say that equally on average, one in three males will be sterile, and one in four females lacks eggs. We can at least identify those who are end-points on the family tree -- maybe the girl never hits menses.

Boys would be harder to pinpoint but if puberty strikes no later than mid-teens, a boy in his late teens (or the equivalent age in your mer-species) who hasn't had puberty would, perhaps, have similar characteristics to the castrati (opera singers castrated pre-puberty to keep their voices from changing). There are some very specific psychological and phyisiological traits that showed up in all castrati as a result of the body being deprived of the hormones we get during puberty.

So in a pod of say, about 12 adults -- 6 men, 6 women -- that knocks at least two men out of the parental running. At least one of those women will definitely, on odds, be unable to have children at all, lacking ova. It's not like they can't contribute, and in fact would be considered highly valuable regardless of their child-bearing status; if the population rate is so low, then every possible adult is needed to assist the few healthy children to get to adulthood. While those three 'spare' adults might tackle the more dangerous work, like protection or hunting, they might also choose to be nannies, an "uncle" or "aunt" to the pod's children. In that case, also look into how societies develop that use extensive multi-parenting groups, and how that kind of upbringing affects the childrens' perspective. Could be that for your mer-people, the idea of "Mom" and "Dad" isn't how they think of "family" but instead "First Mom" (person who gave birth to me) and the rest are "Mom, Mom, Mom, Dad, Dad, Dad, and Dad". Maybe they have one title for all "parental figures" and a second title like "Aunt" or "Uncle" for any older mer who isn't in a child-rearing role -- perhaps some bear children, while others rear them -- just because a pairing comes together that can have healthy children doesn't mean the person, or both people, are that excited about 'being' parents.

Just an idea. Or nine. Wait, did I go over the LJ limit? YES. Okay, next post!

XD ♥

I did take into account genetic problems, and both genders have about equal numbers of sterile people (though funnily enough it's never considered the woman's fault, even if it is -- it's considered to be the male whose energy is too weak), but the main problems they have to give birth is related to their anatomy. They were supposed to give birth through cesarean.

Their hipbones are tilted toward the front, they've bred out narrow hips in women by now, and the leg bones are semi-vestigial at best, but /still/ here -- basically it's like trying to give birth by pushing your hips forward but keeping your knees more or less together. The death rate on the first childbirth is pretty bad, as is the number of infections and complications from trying to fracture the pelvis so it will set wider or more loosely. Some women would rather not have it done. In some places they do a kind of crude C-section, if they have access to a safe beach, but they don't have metals so that means the only cutting instruments they have are bones, fish scales and pointy rocks, there's the risk of bleeding out, and if it doesn't heal right the woman might never carry a child again.

So about 1 out of 6/7 women never has more than one child and/or dies, 1 is sterile anyway, 1 never finds a compatible partner, and out of the rest who manage to have enough kids to compensate, 1 out of 5 children are a mutant that they have to abandon, too weak to live anyway -- then that means about 4~5 healthy kids for each living woman regardless of childbearing ability... and then there are the predators/storms/sicknesses that reduce the numbers of kids at any time between infancy and their own first child. For a primitive world, that's kinda low. Their population is growing, but really not fast enough for them to notice.

(oh, the mutant kids. *__* There are colonies on some archipelagos. They descend from atavistic back-to-human people and humans who survived the destruction of their colony, and if they can, mermaids give them the failed kids who look like they could live out of the water. They have their own little civilization on the islands. It's fun to see what they have in common and what they don't. I'd have to figure out the numbers/proportions and whatnot, but eee. Lots of them are crippled in some way and they're almost all low-grade empaths so they live in a kind of semi-gestalt where everyone helps everyone. It's not like they have a hivemind, but they're always very attuned to their neighbors' discomfort/needs/bad feelings. Also there are no land predators, so in a way they're safer from accidents, and since they're not nomadic they've had more time to develop some things. I'd have to research to see how advanced they are, though.)

The pod structure is Father, Mothers (there's the head wife and the others, but that's the only difference they make. They keep track of filiation but it's not necessarily the strongest mother/child link.) and uncles/warriors, who the kids have to listen to and who kinda take kids as apprentices as they grow. Often if two or more leaders are friends and trust each other they'll travel together, and if a leader has seconds he likes, he'll allow them to court his daughters. (I even have a history for how it started and how the teachings of the first leader got distorted with time XD quick summary - first leader knew that some people would just be incompatible and so he advocated switching partners often (at least for conception) so the gene pool would be as wide as possible. Also discouraged unhealthy people from having children, which slowly evolved into a culture of "only the strongest get to have children" which... rather limits the gene pool. They don't really remember by now, though.)

... if the woman hasn't conceived in five years, it's shame for the man, and the woman either leaves or is "captured" by some other pod. they'll consider the man to be weak (even if he physically isn't -- not enough yang energy D: ) and then he'll just be tested and challenged more and more often until they lose.

And... I keep going. (This is me stalling on grouting the tile.)

You might even have a situation develop where, when the "signs" are right that a person will have healthy babies, that a contract can be created where two mer have sex, the woman gets pregnant, delivers the child... into the arms of a set of child-rearing "aunts and uncles". Part of the drain on a unit, after all, in bearing children isn't just what it does to your body (as a woman) but also in going through pregnancy while you're also raising current children.

And, too, recall that when we're talking about infant mortality -- that is, children are born potentially or adequately healthy -- and the low population rate is due to circumstances such as illness or war or malnutrition, those death rates occur before a child's fifth birthday. Maybe if some genetic mutations first show signs in the second year of life, a taboo/tradition might have developed where a couple has a child and promptly turns it over for fostering for its first five years -- to non-producing pairs/sets that specialize in getting a kid through those first rough years. Then, if the child doesn't make it (or is determined to be unable to make it, and is -- however seemingly callous the decision is, it's still pragmatic -- allowed to die rather than spend extensive limited resources (such as we can now, in the modern world, on children born retarded or premature or significantly ill) -- then the original parents are told, some kind of event is held in lieu of funeral that allows community grieving, but they're not forced to choose between "I love this part of me" and "we cannot support a mouth that will never be able to reciprocate, assuming it makes it past ten".

As well, fostering also creates stronger ties between extended branches of a family, too. Plenty of societies have done that; I know it began as a way to keep a hostage for a neighbor's good behavior -- but it developed (like in Wales) into a complex system that gave each child a full laundry list of emotional connections. A person from a pro-fostering society is going to have a very different (and probably much larger/broader) concept of 'family' than a person from a society that only contains the immediate family. One example of that is in our own language: we say "aunt" and this could mean my mother's sister, my father's sister, my step-mother's sister; we say "brother-in-law" and this could be my husband's brother, my sister's husband, my sister's husband's brother... but if you look at Mandarin/Chinese, there's a separate, distinct title for each -- including designations of 'paternal' or 'maternal'. That's a sign of language that developed in situations where the family structure was massive and complex, and thus speakers had to have a way to identify the relationship-path between each person.

For applying that to writing, I'd then look at suffixes or prefixes to names, as something readers can get from context (or have explained later, when your mer-girl meets your scientist) -- like "materal" becomes a "ma" suffix, while "paternal" is "pa" (which are actually common sounds the world over, like baba/papa being 'father' in a huge number of languages). If someone is a parent-role, maybe -- picking at random here -- "ke" is added, but if the person's talking about another just as a general form of respect but who isn't a child-rearing role, it's "se".

Let's say names are gender-neutral (like many names in Chinese and Japanese, mostly), so if the mer-girl is talking about her childhood friend Sere, an older boy co-fostered with her who was kind of her sempai, she might call him Sere-kepa (parent + male), while a newcomer meeting Sere might call him Sere-sepa, respecting that Sere is a man not currently in a child-bearing or -rearing role.

Incest: son has to leave to start his own pod (though first he has to make friends to defend it with). As long as the daughter is in a pod, she's the leader's daughter, even if she's actually daughter of the previous leader. The second she leaves she's not considered from his pod anymore -- lots of men will still not be interested even then, but it happens. They have so many mutations they honestly can't tell what's caused by incest and what isn't; the "ew" factor about incest is mostly due to that "two children raised together won't find each other attractive even if they're NOT related" thing that I forgot the name of.

... I really should just show you my notes. I'm sure some of it doesn't really make logical sense, and some could stand to be expanded, but heh.

I love the fostering and suffix ideas. *_* Hohoho. Will have to ponder more about them.

last one... hunh, maybe I should've just EMAILED this. sheesh!

Even if you never explain the suffixes or prefixes fully, understanding the intricate connections between families/people (as a result of difficult child-creation or rearing) would give a richer feel to things. (And they say it's fantasy and it's just made-up -- making stuff up is a lot harder than using the existing world, so crib from how things work in reality whenever you can!) Plus, for those readers who figure it out, it's like non-Japanese speakers using the honorifics to get the nuances of relationships... we just don't have the equivalent in a romance-based language that tells us as much as we can learn from the difference between using first name, surname, adding -san or -sama or -chan. That kind of detail can be tiny clues to readers, and for those who don't get or need the clues, it's just "part of the name" -- fantasy readers being relatively forgiving as long as you remain consistent.

Anyway, back to mer-girl and her roadtrip -- seatrip?

You could have some kind of a rite of passage for both genders at X point in puberty, that is supposed to 'identify' whether they'll be able to have children. (After all, if population is low and infant mortality is a risk, you don't want to put a life at risk that could be used, instead, to hunt/protect/raise, if you can at all identify this. Why take an otherwise contributing member and kill the person by forcing them to have a child if they qualify per superstition/tradition as likely to suffer a death sentence upon pregnancy?

Not to mention the fact that if some genetic mutations endanger the mother, that this means the child is also lost. If, on average, the species has learned that pregnancies ending in death indicate the child is also stillborn, then why risk it? ...if you figure out "how to know" this'll happen (and believe me, a society would! especially if infant mortality is also an issue -- what good does it do you to have four healthy children and no one to care for them if all adults must also constantly be gathering food/resources?).

Either your mer-girl is slated in a category of "can't bear children" (damn those redheads) -- even if she discovers later that she can -- or maybe she's on a three-day vision quest which is supposed to reveal, somehow, whether she's got healthy ova or complete womb or whatever. She might not even know what she's "supposed" to see, only that she's to hang out until "something" happens. (Most adolescent "coming of age" quests I've read about are a duration of a day to maybe a week at most.) Perhaps she knows some kids come back after two days, others don't come back for a week, and one or two have just drifted about until an adult retrieves them, oh, those ADD posterchildren.

In that case, maybe she considers seeing the ship to be "her sign" but rather than run back to tell the group, she decides to follow it herself. She could go back and tell the shaman and then the shaman (male or female, since don't forget the chance that a woman who had healthy, surviving children or raised a number of healthy surviving children, and made it all the way to menopause would probably be considered Pretty Damn Savvy On This Kid Stuff by the rest of the group) -- would listen and pass down sentence of "you'll be doing X and not Y." Maybe your mer-girl has noticed something in herself that indicates she'll be slated for X and she doesn't like the idea of raising kids, or doesn't want to get pregnant, or wants to have kids but knows if the pod finds out they'll refuse to let her risk/kill herself via pregnancy... Or maybe she just doesn't like the shaman being so high-and-mighty and would rather figure out why she's seeing a Dragon Ship herself.

'S possible. Okay, was that ENOUGH of a response for you? There's some tile calling my name, now... sigh.

*_* prrprrprr.

She's got some tiny mutations -- nothing that would disqualify her or give her unhealthy children; she has no pigment in her hair, and some patches of color have traveled a bit from tail to back and vice versa. (it's actually all the same skin -- thicker to avoid water damage -- but coded so the colors will be different for top and bottom. And by now, it's not rare to find people who look like siameses, spotted horses or dalmatians. XD) Or she could have narrow hips and thus require the careful consideration of a shaman. *ponderrrrs*

Eh, maybe she's of age and hasn't menstruated yet. Though I'd think that in a society like hers, being 17 and not having her period wouldn't be too surprising.

Thank you so much. Wheee! *thinkthinkthink* ♥

I don't know, but whatever you decides I'm sure I'll love it. ♥

A nice conversation with mom/shaman about how she always knows that her little girl's future is away from the pod? Or do great things? It doesn't have to be a sign from the gods or anything.

XD Thanks, hon. And no, I don't want her to have some kind of destiny. Actually her mothers kind of thought she might become a shaman eventually, but that's only for people who are done with children. it's not done to be selfish before that. XD;; Also liadan's not really obvious in being different -- she comes across as responsible and reliable and that's it. ^^; She's already special enough being a telepathic mermaid, I don't want her to come across as so amazing that everyone knows she's destined to Better Things from the start.

... as a result i wonder how interesting or memorable she really is. Hrrm.

*is very whiny and difficult today* .__.

But she's CUTE, that's all that matters really.

Well, it's not an ideal answer, but maybe it will jog something loose....

What if something happened to scatter her pod? If she can't find them would she eventually go off on her own?

I don't like suggesting the pod suffer something fatal, it feels to OMG!angsty, but it would be likely in a low tech world. If there's enough time between that and Arun's ship passing over then you get past the mourning stage.

Actually, unless they had some way of either communicating over long distances (like whales) or a pre-determined meeting point they could all actually get to, it's perfectly possible to scatter them without killing them. Currents and things get really weird. I understand that recently, with all the sound pollution in our own seas, whale pods (who can't hear each other anymore)are having a lot of issues with losing members.

Switching thoughts in the middle of a comment is bad, I didn't mean for the scattering and the fatal thing being one suggestion. :)

Scattering would be simple and (if Asuka wished) non-fatal, the question would be how Liadan would react to that. I'd think it would be reasonable for her to look for them for a while and then just drift off on her own. She might even take seeing the dragon as a sign in that case.

The fatality idea was more accident/attack/illness oriented, but as I said, it feels too angstfic cliche to me.

Too much badfic has really soured some otherwise acceptable tropes for me, which made NaNo more difficult that it should have been for me this year. I had to keep telling myself it's perfectly okay to have grim histories for characters in a cyberpunk story. :P

Ah, I misunderstood. My bad!

Also, lol at the bad!fic tropes thing. I do the same.

It was unclear, no worries. :)

http://community.livejournal.com/sasuxnaru/1757525.html?nc=6 Not only is someone stupid enough to steal the fanarts of many, many, MANY artists across all fandoms, but she was stupid enough to put up an art of yours which had a warning about stealing on it:

Specifically, this one (http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff228/AngelicBreeze/Naruto/SasuNaru/SasuNaru0365.jpg).

=\ Wow, she's an idiot.

Hmmm. I always got the impression from the beginning that Liadan had already been wandering for a little while, so maybe she did start out with a couple other girls from he pod who wanted to travel and they stopped somewhere else (found husbands they liked or something) but Liadan wanted to keep going. Heck, maybe food was getting slightly scarce in her pod's territory and that's why they allowed it, if only on a temporary basis.

Do males ever reject unattached females/not choose them for their pods for whatever reason? Because if so, she could start out with a group of other mermaids, and then simply not be chosen to be in the same pod as them. It doesn't have to be 'ew! You're ugly! I dun want you!' either, mainly since that would be complete bullshit. Maybe... a difference of opinion? Anyway, some reason where she and the pod leader mutually agree that she's not suited and she departs on friendly terms.

You still online, by the way? I've a few hours to kill, and wouldn't mind if you need to bounce ideas. *shrug*

Adi

Oooh, I really liked a lot of what

kaigou said up there. :D Good luck with the story!

Does she have to leave on good terms? She's supposed to be a good, responsible little mergirl, but if there were a misunderstanding, that image may or may not hold up. If they are very superstitious, could she have accidently or inadvertently call some sort of 'bad luck' down on the tribe, that would make the tribe banish or exile her? I may be way off, but I don't see that mentioned in the other posts, so I'm just throwing it out there. If surivival is top priority, I don't think I can see them casting out a healthy adult except under certain circumstances.

How do they deal with those who break social taboos by the way? What is considered taboo?

Hmm, maybe she could have left the pod with another female, but the other one actually had a sekrit boyfriend (or the equivalent) waiting for her somewhere? Maybe Liadan then decided she could cope for a while on her own, especially if it had taken them at least a little while to get there and she knew she'd be able to survive being alone or quasi instead of in a pod?

Maybe you could mix that with :

maybe i could find a way to make her think "hey, the next pods we're gonna meet are the ones with X, Y and Z, I don't like them much but i know there are better guys out here, I could always sneak off before they spirit me away." ... hmm.

It doesn't even need to be a sekrit boyfriend - just the girl she's with deciding to settle down with someone Liadan doesn't like, and thus Liadan deciding to give them the slip? Something like that?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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icons!

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icons!

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