Beautiful Grotesques
Carson Fire of Alfheim has some new artwork of the mermaids — Leukothea, Prymno (the eel), Psekas (the tiger fish), Thoe (with the froggish tendencies) and the merfolk equivalent of Mr Magoo — up for sale. They’re clothed, btw.
In response to some flack from recent visitors about the, ah, endowment of the mermaids, Carson has made explicit his conception of mythological creatures as “beautiful grotesques”. Neither his elves, nor his merfolk — or anything else for that matter — are classically beautiful. Even Filis has been seen to have her anthropid moments.
The problem could be that the level of grotesqueness is in between the acceptable levels of minimal/none (classically beautiful) and extreme misshapenness (classically ugly). Which results in people feeling uncomfortable — the mermaid bosom is too large to be feasible, but small enough to be explained away. There’s a reason why it’s called the ‘excluded middle’.
If this is the case, then the only thing one can do is get over it and enjoy the story.
Posted in Comics (Op-Ed,) by R Cruickshank 11/03/08 06:47 PM Tags: alfheim, comics, elf life, human nature, opinion
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