Thom Chen Art

True Sirens

Added 2025-03-31 13:45:01 +0000 UTC

I'm hereby announcing that from today onwards the weekly MerMonday series will be discontinued.

Recent events have inspired me to move towards a better form of the mythical siren, as you can see here with the far superior form of part woman and part bird. I believe that this form better suits their appearance in famous stories like "The Odyssey", where:

Odysseus was curious as to what the sirens sang to him, and so, on the advice of Circe, he had all of his sailors plug their ears with beeswax and tie him to the mast. He ordered his men to leave him tied tightly to the mast, no matter how much he might beg. When he heard their beautiful song, he ordered the sailors to untie him but they bound him tighter. When they had passed out of earshot, Odysseus demonstrated with his frowns to be released.

While the poet Homer did not provide any physical descriptions and left their visual appearance to the reader's imagination, I have come to the belief that a half-bird form makes more sense when their song is their means of luring men from afar (because who's ever heard of a fish that can sing??), and the mermaid attestation to sirens came much later.

I hope that this change does not rustle feathers!

Stay tuned as we soar to new heights!

Happy April Fools!