monoLOL
Why give a monologue when you can have a monoLOL?

@no_vem_ber Geeky but well-dressed media science graduate growing up to be a PArrrrrr Pirate. Ask me anything   

The Curious Incident of the Mermaid in the Tree

Well, how was it possible for the mermaid to climb a tree? Don’t they have a fishtail? And what’s a tree doing in the middle of the ocean, where mermaids are supposed to live?

The problem is, that when it comes to Russian, mermaids are often confused with rusalkas. There is no proper Russian word for mermaid, so it is often translated as rusalka and the other way round.

The Disney movie The Little Mermaid for example is called Русалочка (little rusalka) in Russian.

So what’s the difference between a mermaid and a rusalka? We all know what a mermaid is supposed to look like: female human head, arms and torso. Fishtail. Beautiful voice, has a tropical fish and a seagull as best friends (all right, that’s Disney…). But what is a rusalka?

A rusalka is an unquiet dead being (a bit like a zombie, but a pretty, non-decaying one) or, in other versions, a restless soul. Women who die violently and before their time in or near a river or a lake must live out their designated time on earth as a spirit. So rusalkas are often young women who got jilted by their lovers or got pregnant before marriage and committed suicide by drowning themselves.

Though the rusalka’s primary dwelling place is the water in which she died, the rusalka can come out of the water at night, climb a tree, and sit there singing songs or join other rusalkas in circle dances. Rusalkas lure men into the water and drown them in order to finally be united with a lover, something that was denied them in life.

So it’s a perfectly common behavior for a rusalka to sit in a tree – she has no bulky fishtail after all. But if you’re a man you probably shouldn’t offer her your help to climb down again.