brendala

I really dug the TV series when I was a kid. It wasn't perfect. But at least it showcased Ariel's adventurous side instead of having her obsess over a boy like she did for 95% of the movie.

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amelia-seyroon.livejournal.com

(Off-topic, but are you interested in Monster High at all? It's my new big fandom and I am curious about your thoughts as far the media goes!)

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(Off-topic, but are you interested in Monster High at all? It's my new big fandom and I am curious about your thoughts as far the media goes!)

Honestly, the dolls and general Bratz-esque designs of the characters creep me out. And I didn't even know there was a TV show attached until you made a post about it last week.

I'll give it a fair shot before I label it as "bad". But it'll be VERY hard for me to get past the awful character design.

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amelia-seyroon.livejournal.com

I can assure you that it's way better than it looks. Aside from the heavy focus on fashion, the webisode series also promotes strong female friendships.

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Again, I recommend you watch the movie again. And see Doug Walker's "Disneycember" video and "Disney Princess editorial". It wasn't JUST the boy she was obsessed with.

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I've seen both. And Walker brought up all the same points I did. Mainly, that the movie has flaws, but the positive aspects balance them out.

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Right. Lindsay Ellis also brought up the valid point of how Triton actually had to change and sacrafice more than Ariel did, oddly enough, making him the more dynamic protagonist. Heck, Sebastian changed more, having to start listening to his own heart rather than be the king's sycophant all the time.

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When I was a kid, I rented a live-action adaptation of the little mermaid from the video store. And I was totally BLINDSIDED when it ended with the mermaid's death!

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secondlina.livejournal.com

I was raised with the actual original tale, so I actually expected it in the disney version.

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Nicer maybe. But probably less interesting. :P

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Technically, she's supposed to die but gain a soul through her sacrifice, but that doesn't make for a happy ending in our current society. And...I guess I never saw Ariel that way, and I still don't. Young and naive, maybe, but we all were once! I'm going to be marrying my first real crush from back in the day, so I can't say anything. :p

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Obviously, the comic was made in jest. But I still contend that Ariel's behavior is pretty dumb and selfish when you sit down and think about it too long. Teenage naivete is one thing. But a girl selling her soul/voice to a witch for just a shot at some dude she's never even met is just painfully stupid.

The movie is actually more interesting if you think of King Triton as the "star". He goes through the most change and growth in the movie and actually makes a very noble sacrifice in the end. As a grown up with a somewhat contentious relationship to my much younger sister, I relate to him WAY more than I ever did to Ariel.

I'm going to be marrying my first real crush from back in the day, so I can't say anything. :p

True. But I'm gonna assume that you would NEVER have thrown away your family and permanently changed your body for this man without at least having a conversation with him first. LOL

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It's not as if she longed to become human and go to the human world out of rebelliousness against her prejudiced father LONG before she saw that dude. And it's not as if her father's own unreasonable behavior drove her to a state of sorrow where she'd think less clearly. And it's not like she initially refused those eels' invitation to go see Ursula until they gave her a subtle manipulative push. And it's not as if she were clearly still conflicted about it even when dealing with Urusla ("If I become human...I'll never see my family again." "BUT you'll have your man!") And she certainly wasn't sorry for it all in the en...wait.

And Sebastian was always the "star" of the movie for me. XD

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I have to say, I agree with

rezo_eris on this. Ariel's dad fed her lies about humans her whole life, no doubt because he wanted to protect her. She says from the start that she doesn't understand how any race that made the things she loved to collect could be as her dad said they were, so like any person ought, she decided to find out for herself. Enter Prince Eric, who is everything her dad denies humans could be, so kind he braved a burning ship to save his pet dog. It's no wonder Ariel was only more curious then, enough to save his life.

It gets worse when her dad goes into a rage and destroys her beloved collection. He thought he was doing her a favor. All he did was chase her away from him. And then she does encounter Eric again, who doesn't recognize her as his savior since she can't talk. Despite this, he still takes her in, feeds and clothes her, and even spends time with her. It's no wonder that even if she initially had a crush on the human that it became something more, especially when he took on Ursula to save Ariel's life. Even her dad wouldn't be able to convince her that humans were bad after that. She had found the opposite to be true!

Ariel has never been a favorite of mine, I couldn't stand the cartoon, but she is not unworthy of being seen as a role model to kids. Especially kids that grow up being fed racist lies. Would that more kids would be like her in that respect, and find out the truth for themselves.

As for leaving my family behind...yes, yes I am. As all people who expect to marry do, some distance has to happen. And also, my fiancé gave up a lot to want to marry me, including receiving his dad's approval. Just because his dad doesn't like me doesn't make either of us foolish to want to be together.

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Look, when I drew this comic, it was just supposed to be a silly joke/parody. I never intended to get into any philosophical debates about the merits of Ariel's character, her relationship with Eric & her dad, or your relationship with your fiancee. So I'm not sure how to respond to all that. And I'm sorry if I hit a nerve or something by poking fun at a dumb fairy tale movie.

As for Triton being "racist"....it seems to me that he had good reasons to distrust humans (humans EAT fish; and mermaids are friends with fish). So it's a bit disingenuous (and, IMO, mildly offensive) to compare his behavior to actual, real-life racism (even if the film-makers did intend for it to be an allegory).

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It was more prejudice than full-on racism, and yeah he did have good reason to distrust humans, but he crossed the line into being completely unreasonable about it. When Ariel says "You don't even know him", as a concerned parent, the PROPER response would have been "Neither do you!". THAT would have won him my respect. Instead, his response is "I don't HAVE to know him: they're all the same!" That is just a very ignorant, generalizing comment that showed me he was being irrational about the whole thing, so he actually lost my respect at that point. He more than made up for it in his later scenes, but still...

Also, people harp on Ariel for trading her whole life for a man she never really met. Well...how else could see "meet" him when her father was forbidding her from getting any closer to the surface world all the time?

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You didn't hit a nerve at all, but you need to understand that when you put anything out where others can see it, there's going to be a reaction. Maybe good, maybe bad, but a reaction regardless. It's a lesson I learned a while ago, so if I ever post anything that can be taken badly, I prepare for a debate from someone. (But, I tend to like talking to people to learn of differing views, so I'm okay with it.)

Fairy tales, Little Mermaid included, were often morality tales. If one cannot relate it to real life, it has failed to do what it was meant to do. There's plenty of pointless entertainment out there, Disney tends not to be in that category - unless you watch its current t.v. shows. UGH. But, that's something I'm okay not discussing.

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You didn't hit a nerve at all, but you need to understand that when you put anything out where others can see it, there's going to be a reaction.

I understand that. But sometimes it's just impossible to predict how people will react to something. :P

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If we knew how to predict people's reactions all the time, there would never be any strife. (Unless someone was just being a jerk.) Relevent to this post, I remember reading something from a Disney person talking about people telling them to keep making box office hits like Lion King. The remark was that if Disney knew exactly what caused a movie to be a box office hit, they'd always make them!

So many aspects of life are trial and error. No getting around it.

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Errr no. Ariel is not a stupid, selfish, awful person. If she was stupid, she wouldn't have such vivid imagination and be able to think for herself. If she was selfish, she wouldn't eventually try to say "Daddy I'm sorry!" when Triton was at Ursula's mercy, and save Eric's life twice! And if she was awful, she wouldn't be the fucking protagonist! She's just a naive, headstrong teenager. I hate hate hate hate HATE it when people misinterpret that and make her out to be Bella Swan. Things were more complicated then that: it's just that Disney didn't really make it entirely clear in the writing for the script.

No, this didn't ruin my childhood. But it's just another "bawww, Ariel's a terrible role model!" cry, the kind of thing Doug Walker has spoken out against. I am very disappoint in you, Brenda. -_-

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Uh, calm down, dude. The comic and description was meant to be tongue in cheek. O_o

I still love the movie and dig Ariel. And I would never ban my hypothetical children from watching it because of "bad morals". The movie/character flaws are only apparent if you over think it (and most children wont)
That said, you can't deny that Ariel's decision to leave her entire life behind (including all her friends AND family) for a boy she's never even spoken to was really frickin' stupid. Even by teenager standards.

If she was selfish, she wouldn't eventually try to say "Daddy I'm sorry!" when Triton was at Ursula's mercy, and save Eric's life twice!

I don't think she was sorry that she did it in the first place. It seemed to me that she was only sorry because things went horribly wrong instead of playing out the way she wanted them to.
I mean, before the shit hit the fan, Ariel didn't seem at all concerned that her dad (not to mention her sisters and the mermaid citizens) were likely worried sick because they had no clue where she was or if she was even alive.
Not thinking about that doesn't necessarily make her a monster; but it DOES make her an inconsiderate jerk.

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I'm not enraged or anything, just irritated. Sorry if I scared you there. XD

Yeah, her decision was stupid even by teenager standards. But I don't think she really "loved" Eric, despite what she might have blurted out to her dad. She was in love with humans, their world, their things, and their culture. Eric was just her justification of getting there. THAT is selfish, I'll give you. But I think it started out as curiosity and turned into an obsession and a longing to leave her world behind BECAUSE her father forbade her from getting closer to the human world for reasons that were, to be blunt, racist. He and Ariel were equally at fault here: the writing just never made it clear since Ariel ends up getting everything she wanted while Triton has to just suck it up and deal with it.
And to be fair to Ariel and Eric, they did get to know each other better over the course of the two days we see them staying together. And Ariel couldn't even speak then, so that's quite the accomplishment.

I think things playing out differently from how she wanted and expected them to SHOWED her that it was a bad idea in the first place, especially when the person she made the deal with was explicitly showing that she had an evil plan behind it all along. Ursula was getting what she wanted at Triton's expense, and Ariel had helped her. I can totally buy that she WAS truthfully sorry for everything at that moment.
And before the shit hit the fan, the last time Ariel and her dad had interacted, he was a big jerk to her and destroyed her entire collection. She most likely thought she hated him at the time and naturally didn't give a crap if she was worrying him. Serves him right, she'd think. (This is just how she felt at the time, though, not how she REALLY felt deep down.) Sure she was an inconsiderate jerk, but only because her father had been an inconsiderate jerk to her. In the end, I sympathize with them both, which I think I'm meant to.

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Yeah. The tone came across as kinda strong. O_o

Honestly, I never intended to start a debate with this comic. It was just supposed to be a dumb parody of a dopey fairy tale movie.

Besides, it is totally possible to love something and still admit it has flaws. Just sayin'.

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I guess some people just don't see the movie as "a dopey fairy tale movie". It DID spark the Disney rennaissance after all. And was a very personal project for the late Howard Ashman. It's got alot of worth for many people, more than we could give it credit for.

Oh of course I know that! I do it all the time!

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I love the little mermaid, too. I was just the right age when the movie came out and probably watched it at least 200 times throughout my childhood. And I adored Ariel as if she was real. In fact, one of my earliest memories is of seeing her out the window of Disneyland's old submarine ride and almost fainting with joy.
But that doesn't stop me from having fun with it. Because it's still just a movie at the end of the day.

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