Merfolk do not exist.

[Jeremiah]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18692830

In related news, the US Department of Agriculture stated that there is no evidence for the existence minotaurs, centaurs or sentient cats.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Huh, I was under the strong impression all cats were sentient.

[rebthor]

No evidence of mermaids, says US government

Two issues
The article only talks about mermaids, not mermen. Merfolk could all be dudes which would explain why they're so hostile (and blue).
Of course the US government is going to say they don't exist. They have a vested interest in keeping the sheeple docile.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

[Confidence Interval]

Am I alone in finding Minmay's accounts of his dreams terrifying?

[nicolae]

Am I alone in finding Minmay's accounts of his dreams terrifying?

they're not nearly as terrifying as minmay's accounts of his real life...

*looks off into distance, shudders*

[XuaXua]

No evidence of mermaids, says US government

Two issues
The article only talks about mermaids, not mermen. Merfolk could all be dudes which would explain why they're so hostile (and blue).
Of course the US government is going to say they don't exist. They have a vested interest in keeping the sheeple docile.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

[BlackSheep]

Am I alone in finding Minmay's accounts of his dreams terrifying?

I find them oddly humanizing.

And to answer his question, yes the puppets on Sesame Street are muppets.

[Grimm]

Am I alone in finding Minmay's accounts of his dreams terrifying?

Not having read Muir's dreams yet I can't say how they compare but minmay's are pretty clear. The peculiar symbol-language is a bit startling for some but as dream languages go it's par for the course.

No one who plays Crawl deeply is "normal" in the usual sense of that word. Crawl engages levels of the psyche that few games, indeed activities, do. We all know this, whether we admit it or not.

Remember too that this is minmay, i.e. minmax on the y axis.

Finally, to address the OP: if merfolk don't exist, then how do you explain this? You can't. Can you. No, you can't.

http://www.amazon.de/PLAYMOBIL%C2%AE-48 ... B001PQK2GK

[Confidence Interval]

Not having read Muir's dreams yet I can't say how they compare but minmay's are pretty clear as far as interpretation goes. The peculiar symbol-language is a bit startling for some but as dream languages go it's par for the course.

Freud, where is thy sting? Some of Muir's poetry refers to an imagined dream-like reality, divorced from the complexities of everyday life, with much starker differentiations of good and bad. You can see some of this implied in "The Labyrinth" but there are other of his poems in which it's more explicit.

No one who plays Crawl deeply is "normal" in the usual sense of that word.

I am glad, now, that I play in such a shallow way.

Finally, to address the OP: if merfolk don't exist, then how do you explain this? You can't. Can you. No, you can't.

There are no seahorses in Crawl. Seahorses do not exist. That picture is an obvious fake.

[Grimm]

Freud, where is thy sting? Some of Muir's poetry refers to an imagined dream-like reality, divorced from the complexities of everyday life, with much starker differentiations of good and bad. You can see some of this implied in "The Labyrinth" but there are other of his poems in which it's more explicit.

Quoth Professor Peter Butter in the introduction to the Canongate Classics edition of An Autobiography:

The fable is found in the story, and more directly in moments of special vision and in dreams. No autobiography 'can confine itself to conscious life'; our dreams are part of reality, through which we can reach knowledge of ourselves, and hence of other people, beyond what the conscious self can attain. The most distinctive feature of this autobiography is the number and quality of the dreams. Most of them are quite different from our usual confused and trivial dreams; and the most interesting are more than the working out of personal psychological problems. As Thetis Blacker says of the dreams she records in A Pilgrimage of Dreams, 'They possess a clarity, a coherence, a vividness, a translucence and significance never found in the ordinary dreams of every night'. They 'seem to have come to me from some place deeper than my ordinary ego, or my analysable subconscious self.' This is true also of Muir. His long waking dream in London 'came' to him, he believed: 'it was not "I" who dreamt it but something else which the psychologists call teh racial unconscious, and for which there are other names'. Such dreams and visions come at least from a deeper level of the self than we are normally aware of, and so seem to come from outside. Whence do they get into that deeper self? From the collective unconscious? From God? From some more sinister source? We can only conjecture, on the basis of the wisdom or otherwise conveyed. Some of Muir's dreams--such as that of the dreamer murdering a man in a moonlit street--can be related to his life at the time, and given a simple psychological interpretation. But the most interesting--such as the dream of the praying animals, of the dreamer bringing a statue of a girl to life, and the waking trance--have the quality of poetry, being endlessly suggestive, beyond explanation.

Those "most interesting" dreams are possibly premonitions of Crawl. The awoken statue though might come from couplet 42 of the Precious Mirror Samadhi:

木人方歌　石女起舞 The wooden man starts to sing, the stone woman gets up dancing.

There are no seahorses in Crawl. Seahorses do not exist. That picture is an obvious fake.

Playmobil don't lie. And neither do Orkneymen:

"A man I knew once sailed out in a boat to look for a mermaid, and claimed afterwards that he had talked with her." - Edwin Muir, An Autobiography, p. 4 (Canongate Classics edition)

[Confidence Interval]

Orkneymen

I believe the (gender-neutral) term Orcadians is preferred.

[Grimm]

I stand corrected.

[Grimm]

Though I cannot claim that Et in Orcadia ego.

[nicolae]

this thread got weird

[Confidence Interval]

Though I cannot claim that Et in Orcadia ego.

You should visit, then - I have never been but believe it is very beautiful. Also, one of my favourite whiskies is made there.

[pratamawirya]

this thread got weird

Behold the mandatory meme:

[Grimm]

You should visit, then - I have never been but believe it is very beautiful. Also, one of my favourite whiskies is made there.

Thanks to computer magic I am able to look up all the sights Muir mentions - Egilsay chapel, Shapinsay castle, u.v.a. - and come to my own conclusions about them. It does indeed look wild and stirring.

To wrench us back on topic, here is more proof of merfolk. No one would accuse the good burghers of Prochowice of falsifying their herb, and if merrabbits exist, then merfolk also must, by simple logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:POL_ ... ce_COA.svg

[Confidence Interval]

You have too much time on your hands.

[Grimm]

I am well aware of that problem. But hey look, German Wikipedia has a whole article on the subject of fishtailed heraldic devices. Your life just got richer.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischgeschw%C3%A4nzt

[Confidence Interval]

If only these energies could harnessed for peaceful purposes...

[Grimm]

I know right.

[Confidence Interval]

I am both horrified and intrigued by your apparently decadent lifestyle.

[Grimm]

It looks better on a small computer screen.

[Confidence Interval]

Most things do: it gives more scope for the imagination.

[Grimm]

Life is like Crawl: it's free to download, it looks better on a small screen, and almost everyone dies at the end.

[JeffQyzt]

And it's got merfolk. Er...

[Confidence Interval]

And octopuses that wear rings.

[Grimm]

And neither has Mountain Dwarves. QED.

[Stormfox]

And cats that are quite happy to eat lots of things, even if it makes them ill.

[Grimm]

Video proof that merfolk exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHRQnbsGOUc

[Confidence Interval]

And have manginas.

[Grimm]

Proofs that merfolk exist just keep piling up.

http://atlasobscura.com/place/weeki-wac ... e-mermaids