Jellyfish Love.: seanan

Jellyfish Love.

My love for you is jellyfish love. It is the kind of love that you can only give when you happen to be a delicate floating construction of diaphanous membranes, primarily water-based fluids, and stinging tendrils. That makes it very difficult to see before it brushes up against you, and kind of cool, but not if you happen to be adverse to lumps of formless ooze. Or stinging fronds. But because my love for you is jellyfish love, you are not on my list of things to sting, paralyze, and eventually engulf. Be glad.

Jellyfish spend most of their time floating aimlessly through the ocean, going wherever the current takes them, generally just chilling out. When they encounter something they can eat, they casually wrap it in their stinging fronds and keep on going, off to do whatever it was they were doing before lunch came along. Jellyfish things, like processing edits, or picking blackberries, or watching too much television. Or maybe just bobbing around in the surf and sending unsuspecting swimmers to the emergency room, if you want to be literal about things. It doesn't matter to me. Because see, those jellyfish float along in huge, beautiful schools of delicately layered membranes, and once something has been caught by the tendrils of one jellyfish, they all get a little bit to eat. They aren't greedy, those jellyfish. They share.

If you watch jellyfish floating along, you'll see that they're constantly twining over and under and around and even through one another, like this giant, glorious underwater macrame, and yet somehow, they never get knotted up. They're always together, but they're always willing to let each other go. And that? That is how I feel about you. I totally spend my days wrapping my long, stinging tendrils around delicious things, because I know that even if you float away from me, you'll come back, and you may need something to engulf.

Only they aren't real stinging tendrils. And we all have skeletons. And if you decide to try to exist by absorbing raw fish and plankton through your porous skin, you're probably going to need to eat a sandwich, too, because man cannot live by metaphorical osmosis. But the basic concept is there. I spend my days floating free, loving you.

My love for you is jellyfish love.

Bloop bloop bloop.

all_ephemera

September 23 2009, 14:33:12 UTC 7 years ago

New comment

That's... actually pretty cool, in an oozing, weird kind of way.

seanan_mcguire

September 23 2009, 19:38:06 UTC 7 years ago

Stingy jellyfish of love!

jacylrin

September 23 2009, 14:40:59 UTC 7 years ago

*chuckle*

We love you, too.

September 23 2009, 19:40:01 UTC 7 years ago

Yay!

mokatiki

September 23 2009, 14:57:51 UTC 7 years ago

Hey, I love you like pretty virus sculptures :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8268505.stm

(Talis wanted them pointed out to you)

September 23 2009, 19:48:42 UTC 7 years ago

Oooooooooooooooooo.

You do love me.

7 years ago

Deleted comment

September 23 2009, 19:50:30 UTC 7 years ago

Right back at you, darlin'.

vixyish

September 23 2009, 15:39:32 UTC 7 years ago

Bloop bloop love bloop!

September 23 2009, 19:50:55 UTC 7 years ago

*giggle*

ladyqkat

September 23 2009, 16:27:25 UTC 7 years ago

I am absolutely captivated by this comparison. It says so much more to me than "If you love something, set it free, etc." Thank you for the idea and the image.

September 23 2009, 19:52:17 UTC 7 years ago

Thank Vixy and Sooj, for posing in front of the jellyfish tank!

apocalypticbob

September 23 2009, 16:43:56 UTC 7 years ago

Bloop to you, too.

September 23 2009, 19:52:28 UTC 7 years ago

Awww!

brightlotusmoon

September 23 2009, 17:27:30 UTC 7 years ago

May I link to this? It describes my marriage rather nicely.

Re: Awww!

September 23 2009, 19:52:39 UTC 7 years ago

Absolutely. :)

blythe025

September 23 2009, 17:44:39 UTC 7 years ago

I don't even have a proper response. That was beautiful, and odd, and wonderful. Thank you.

September 23 2009, 21:09:03 UTC 7 years ago

You're very welcome.

snowcoma

September 23 2009, 17:56:29 UTC 7 years ago

Bloop bloop bloop <3

September 23 2009, 21:09:21 UTC 7 years ago

Bloooooooooooop.

ladymondegreen

September 23 2009, 18:06:20 UTC 7 years ago

Bloop. <3

September 23 2009, 21:09:48 UTC 7 years ago

Precisely.

jennifer_brozek

September 23 2009, 18:47:20 UTC 7 years ago

Awww. I love you, too in the most blackberry bush manner. Your blood feeds me and helps me produce the best blackberries around.

September 23 2009, 21:10:29 UTC 7 years ago

And thus do your thorns encircle and shred me to bits. With LOVE.

greektoomey

vincentursus

September 23 2009, 20:36:29 UTC 7 years ago

Marine biology is a romantic field.

September 23 2009, 21:10:53 UTC 7 years ago

Romantic, and painful.

s00j

September 23 2009, 23:02:02 UTC 7 years ago

epic bloop.

September 24 2009, 14:13:09 UTC 7 years ago

VICTORY!

misachan

September 24 2009, 00:10:16 UTC 7 years ago

I love your brain.:)

Bloop.

September 24 2009, 14:13:26 UTC 7 years ago

And my brain loves you.

exapno

September 24 2009, 03:15:17 UTC 7 years ago

Oh my yes! This is fantastic :)

*sigh* like i needed more reasons to love you :) *bloop*

September 24 2009, 14:13:45 UTC 7 years ago

Jellyfish love, baby. Jellyfish looooooove.

kat_merle

September 24 2009, 06:01:12 UTC 7 years ago

My brain now wants me to write a song starting with the line My love for you is jellyfish love. My sanity and sense of good taste wants someone else to write it instead. I am not a writer not at all but I do want there to be a song.