#also. is there a post somewhere about the parallels between emma and gracie. or did i make that up entirely

[opalsiren]

okay. given the opportunity which h2o mermaid do we think would be most likely to want to give up their tail, for good?

my knee-jerk response is cleo. while she was able to retain a lot of what she held dear prior to her transformation, like her relationship with lewis and her fish collection, her mermaid identity caused a ton of friction between herself and her family. this is especially pronounced in season two after her mum leaves and she runs away from home, and i don't know that this was ever adequately addressed. cleo's ancestral counterpart is gracie who chose to give up her tail after struggling to find the balance between the two worlds. while i think that lewis is a far better boyfriend than max and that cleo is able to lean on her friends for support, if i had to pick a mermaid to give it all up, it'd be cleo

of course emma is the obvious choice given that she lost her competitive swimming career after becoming a mermaid. however i feel that she made her peace with this by the end of her time onscreen, throwing herself into studies and her job at the juicenet as well as her new life as a mermaid to compensate. emma has a better relationship with her family even than cleo. her folks seem to trust her implicitly and are willing to bend to accommodate her without too many questions, like changing the location of the family holiday to somewhere more dry

somehow, it's hard for me to see rikki giving up her tail. even though it's important to them both, emma and cleo have other interests outside of being a mermaid. this doesn't seem to be the case for rikki in the same way. being a mermaid is everything to her. initially she probably struggled the least with the adjustment, as compared to emma and cleo she had so little to lose. her relationship with her family wasn't the same, nor was her proximity to water and water-based preoccupations. rikki was also the most reluctant of the girls to give up her tail when denman came to town. i think it would take a lot for rikki to want to give it all up, like a direct threat to her safety or that of her friends

if charlotte had managed to retain her tail past the season two finale, it's hard to see her wanting to give it all up either. girl was obsessed with being a 'super mermaid' and revelled in her power even when she was left all alone. the same can be said of bella: by the time we meet her she has been hiding her tail since she was nine (9!). she has hobbies and interests outside of being a mermaid but has seemingly managed to find a balance between her two worlds. she probably hardly remembers a time before she had a tail and is accustomed to keeping the secret

of course all of this is hypothetical, and it's near impossible to theorize when the girls share a solid foundation of friendship and support. gracie ostensibly didn't feel the same level of support from her friends nor max when she gave it all up. i'd be remiss not to mention the implications of mermaid-ness on the lives of the girls in the future: would it be possible to hold down a full-time job with a tail? what if the job involved close proximity to water? could you share a dorm room with someone in college without revealing the secret? live in an apartment with a roommate? how do they learn who to trust? can mermaids even have biological children? what sacrifices are you prepared to make to keep your tail?

tl;dr based on her strained relationship with her family and the parallels drawn between she and gracie, of everyone cleo would be most likely to give up being a mermaid. ymmv!