A pair of twins who are half merperson, who can switch between legs and tails as opposed to looking like blends of the two species?
A pair of twins who are half merperson, who can switch between legs and tails I would think not lazy but much more concise.
Also, does this sound plausible, one of the twins (Finley, yes I know awful pun) after his first tailed swim can't take joy in swimming legged, it just pails in comparison.
Sounds plausable to me. Obviously it's not possible, but you can just claim it's pixie magic or whatever you want because it's your story. We're already suspending belief to accept the existence of Mer-people... don't see why they wouldn't just magically be able to switch. And it does sound plausible that swimming with legs would be much worse than swimming with a tail.
You can make it plausible if you can make it plausible. It all depends on the story you tell and how you tell it. Imaginary worlds can contain extraordinary things provided they have their own internal logic and integrity. Try writing it and see what happens. I'd drop the pun, though. If you want your reader to take you imaginary world seriously, then so must you.
Can something inanimate—or more specifically, abstract—be object of laziness? From a creative standpoint it's like calling a hammer or the concept of luck lazy; it can only afflict your idea during its execution, and that's entirely up to you. And concerning the sea-related names, I did a quick Google search and found out a few. However, I'll leave it up to you to check if the meanings are the real deal: Adrian and Aegeus: which are derived from the Adriatic Sea and Aegean Sea respectively Dylan: "son of the sea" Mervin: "sea friend" Morgan: "circling sea" Zale: "sea-strenght"
Why would the transformation be "lazy"? Because it's a convenient way to make the twins into sea creatures while still making them look normal on land? It wouldn't be plausible as a scientific explanation, but if there's magic in your world, no problem.
That's the beauty of fantasy. No one will tell you, "Hey, that's not possible!" because it's supposed to be that way. Fantasy is the anti-thesis of realism, and to further explain my point I borrowed a part from the Wikipedia article: Here's where you intervene: you come up with an explanation that suspends disbelief, and whatever you say has absolute authority within your literary work, and no external forces can refute it.
Here's a few, tendency to bite new things, as well as sniff them, jumpiness (lot's of predators in the sea), also, massive fear of getting tangled in things. Anyone got anything to add to that list?