Merpeople as Romantic Partners: The Ultimate Unknowables

I mention in my latest taboo post that although bestiality is generally mocked in stories, sex with shapeshifters is entirely accepted--as is sex with mercreatures. 

The story of Kopakonan--which I summarize in my book about medieval saints and lore--like many tales about mermaids and seals has an underlying pathos. My first published short story, "The Birthright," which uses a similar backstory, is more drama than romance.

That is, mermaids have a long history of romance and amorality. Without getting too philosophical, they are fairly perfect representations of the sea: placid on the surface until a storm arises; dark and unknowable beyond the surface. As someone has pointed out somewhere, more people have been to the moon than to the bottom of the Marina Trench.

An instant corollary exists here since romantic entanglements are also unknowable and sometimes risky and often involve a "plunge." My novella Nerites Amid the Stars is possibly the most romantic of my sci-fi novels, and it involves merpeople or Siphons. 

All my couples tend to be "working" couples--that is, they are people who care about researching doctrines or handling parishioners or tracking down antiques or trying to stay employed or helping farmers or managing a restaurant or ensuring fair trade or figuring out sainthoods or investigating crimes. 

Meke and Rill from Nerites Amid the Stars are a diplomat (who discovers he actually likes being a diplomat) and an enumerator (a specialist in demographics). They are also star-crossed lovers, a kind of Romeo & Romeo (without the pointless deaths) who connect after falling out many years earlier. 

The title is based on one of the lesser known Greek myths. As Meke reflects:

Siphons spoke of Nerites and Helios. Some Siphons paired Nerites with Poseidon, as did human mythology. But the oldest Siphon tales presented Nerites as a Siphon charioteer in his bipedal state, commended for his quick eye and expert skills as he raced along the shore and into the waves. He fell in love with the sun and drove his chariot into space. In art, Nerites was pictured chasing light rays against a background of stars. Always in pursuit. Like the human Icarus, he would never reach his goal, not without perishing. Yet his love never abated. 

Did Helios love him in turn?

How could he not? 

The passage is a good example of how characters live beyond their authors. My reaction to that story is "Oh, please." 

But Meke is a romantic. He chases Rill across a nine-month voyage by ship to Mars. 

He is also something of an outlier within his own culture. My merpeople or Siphons are a tad like Vulcans: logical CEOs of large corporations who prefer to make marriages based on business dealings. Not given to warm fuzzies. 

But because they are tied to the sea, romance and a sense of the incalculable lurks. 

The Other Taboo: Humans and Animals and the Line

On Votaries, I have written about untamed horses and their connection to a human. 

Here, I am writing about the taboo: falling in love with an animal. 

Catherine the Great supposedly had sex with horses. According to Virginia Rounding and other historians, the event never happened, but "Catherine's sex life was...a common subject for ribaldry" in Petersburg and countries of Europe (Rounding). 

Ribaldry is the common response. According to my cursory research on the subject, falling in love with animals is apparently not the same as bestiality. People who actually get emotionally and romantically attached to an animal rarely have sex with them. Bestiality is more about, ah, convenience, and it is treated with amusement. 

As a character relates in A Prairie Dog's Love Song by Eli Easton--after the main male character informs the townspeople that he intends to bring a young male citizen of the town home and marry him--

"Then Old Jenks stood up. You know how crazy he is about Old West history. He said cowboys humped each other all the time, back in the day...and some of 'em even paired up for keeps...And about then Ike said 'better a good-looking boy like Ben than sheep.' And I swear that was aimed at someone in particular." 

The story of Catherine the Great was always told as a salacious "ha ha" story when I heard it growing up. And when Boston Legal had a subplot where a man wanted to marry a cow, the casting director chose Michael McKean to play the man--could (would) anyone else have taken the part? And of course, there's Bottom from Midsummer Night's Dream.

What fascinates me here is that generally speaking, having sex with an animal is considered taboo and funny. But having sex with a shapeshifter is entirely okay.  

Granted, I'm talking about romance/fantasy here. But the idea appears in mythology as well. Belle's Beast is humanoid enough to be non-taboo, even before he turns into a human prince. Sex with sirens and enchantresses, even those with cloven hoofs, also okay (if dangerous). Mer-people in general: okay. 

It's almost the opposite response to incest. With incest, the appearance of a sibling connection calls the relationship into doubt. With bestiality, everything is okay until the beast actually turns into a non-speaking, non-sentient animal. 

Humans are mammals after all.