The Captive Mermaid is one of those very specific cultural images which I think has only been around for the past forty years or so, but it’s basically everywhere at this point. A mermaid has been captured and is on display in a fish tank or an aquarium or in some kind of government research site.
Splash, 1984
Siren, 2018
May: The Mermaid of Lily Lake by Andy Ivanov
“Deep Trouble,” Goosebumps Terror Trips, 2007
This is also everywhere in fanfiction and fanart. You can’t swing a stick without hitting a mermaid AU featuring The Captive Mermaid.
And I can’t stop thinking about The Captive Mermaid, because it’s such a huge and recognizable image, and as far as I can tell, nobody’s recognized it as a. Thing. A theme. A trope. If you look up “mermaid aquarium art,” you’ll get hundreds and hundreds of extremely talented and beautiful pieces of art by artists online, but nobody I’ve seen has stopped to say “Oh hey this is a recurring image in western art and media, I wonder why that is.”
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Here is the last (for now) of the sticker set I made for ScottTheFox94! He wanted his own version of a sketch I did in 2021, except with his character and colored, of course. :3
WIPs and full-res are on Patreon!
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Electric sign. The Illuminating engineer. 1910.
Internet Archive
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