Human-Sized Mermaids

I thought this may've been off-topic in the small naga thread, and I didn't come across any necro-able threads saying what I had in mind, sooooo...

I was skimming the wiki today out of sheer boredom, when I found myself on the Mermaid page. I was looking through the info on the varieties and noticed that there isn't a single human-sized mermaid there. Hell, the intro paragraph has the line : "The average Felaryan mermaid tends to be around 130 feet in length," and the 20-footers are referred to as the "smaller ones" in the race. Other races I've checked out suggest height variance, avoid mentioning specific sizes, or flat-out describe human-sized varieties, but the mermaid page seems to go out of its way to suggest that human-sized varieties are non-existent. I'm aware this may be an artifact of another time when Felarya was all about the giants, but I can't really be sure, haven't been around that long.

Centaurs seem to be a victim of this, too, but I'm picking on mermaids, because:

a) I want to use a human-sized one in my story, and I want to make sure I'm not inadvertently pissing on the canon.

b) They're fish-women. You'd think a race based on the animal that gave us the countless "Big fish, little fish" expressions would have, I don't know, little fish. Not saying to go down to Tiny, (I'd like a mermaid in a little glass bowl, though, that'd be cute X3 ) but maybe either change that specific line in the wiki I mentioned, or let us work together to describe the smaller varieties like we did with nagas.

I apologize for stirring things up, just addressing a concern of mine

the estuarine Mermaids have a descent size or maybe I'm wrong.

From what I can tell, Estuarines look to be about 20-30 feet

Estuarine and Meirmanies are the smallest you'll find.

Sean Okotami wanted the Meiramines to be human sized, but I believe Karbo refused him on that one, and upscaled it to 20-50.

...If I remember correctly.

I don't get why mermaids needs to be exceptions to the rule, I mean... other races, I wouldn't mind if there were only giant Dryads, I'd sleep easy, they're trees and most trees are big, and a few others, but why mermaids?

karbo may have a plot idea for that one. I remember him saying there's a reason why there are a lot of taurs on felarya too, and that would a spoiler.

Hey,

It feels to me like there should be human-sized mermaid populations. The weird thing is I remember reading something about them in the wiki. Maybe I'm just going crazy?

Yours,

Ambrose,

AisuKaiko : you are indeed right, Mermaids are not meant to be giant only ^^;
I should really look into that and correct that mention

Karbo wrote:

AisuKaiko : you are indeed right, Mermaids are not meant to be giant only ^^;
I should really look into that and correct that mention

Oh thank the Lord above, thanks for the clarification, sir!

Indeed, I was wondering the same but I didn't peruse it because it was not a pressing need for me.
This is something that should have been clarified a while ago, but it doesn't really matter since it's done now.

yeah. I'm wondering, maybe (ask sean okotami first) make the meiramines possibly found at 10 ft minimum. that's pretty close to human lengths, as it gives room for a longer fish-tail, but the same torso size.

A, I never noticed. I assumed they also came in small varieties - I seem to recall many stories having smaller mermaids as prey for larger ones or even other sorts of predators.

^_^ Yeah I scaled Estaurine Mermaids at 18-30 feet because I had certain dolphin species in mind when I dreamed them up. I like the idea of a smaller race of mermaid though-especially if it's mostly a freshwater species. Hell-I even like the idea of a tiny mermaid small enough to fit in your hand.

I'm gonna keep Meiramines at their description in the wiki, ranging from 20 - 50 foot long.

I feel inspired to write about a race of tiny mermaids now. Maybe ones that evolved in a isolated waterway way out in the jungle. Petshops would LOVE them.

I didn't really like Meiramines being larger than 20 ft before, but now it makes more sense.

Well I went and posted my tiny mermaids. Not human sized though. More tiny sized.

My first couple of Stark stories featured a hotel that kept a tiny goldfish mermaid in a tank in each room o: It makes sense; fish are supposed to vary greatly in size, after all XD

I based mine on tropical fish but you make a valid point. Fish do vary greatly in size. Heck-even dolphins do from 5 foot freshwater ones all the way up to 30foot Orcas.

Good point. I think that certain tauric species should have different ranges.

For example, there are pretty big ranges from the smallest to largest snakes and spiders, so we have both giant and human sized nagas and dridders.

Fish are even more so (think whales-harks to guppies, and the things even smaller than guppies), So I think they should range from tiny to giant.

On the other hand, other predators based on animals with less variance might be only found in giant form.

Just something to keep in mind.

I know the Whale Shark is the largest known fish on Earth but I forget what the smallest one is. I'm all for tiny versions of the taurs though. Especially mermaids, dridders and nagas.

Paedocypris

AisuKaiko wrote:

Paedocypris

Wow! That's a tiny little speck of a fish!

Yup.

I figure if mermaids were allowed to get that small, they would be small even to tinies. Maybe not tiny, but certainly very small.

That's be a rather huge size difference between members of the same race: 10 millimeters to 700 feet... A Leviathan might need a microscope to see her distant cousin O__O

I think I like the lower limit of around a foot. Any smaller than that and you're beginning to get too small to interact with people.