The Little Mermaid

I know I haven't been updating lately. I had a shitty weekend of work (I work with the hugest douchebag EVER) and I have just been basking in the loveliness of doing nothing after finishing two essays in three weeks and finishing up my midterms.

I also have further bad news. Script Frenzy is taking place in April. The challenge: Write a hundred page script in a month. My plan is to adapt two of my Kate and Asher stories into a TV scripts. April is also finals month, so I won't have a lot of time to update. I'm hoping to update as often as I can, but don't expect too much. Happily, though, I will have four months of completely free time (barring working) to post lots. So yay for that.

Today I bring you The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen, and if you were expecting pretty Disney mermaids and handsome princes, you better kill the illusion right now.

So deep in the ocean lives the Sea King (the Pokemon?) who is widowed and lives with his mom. Real winner, this one. He also has six daughters, the youngest of which is the most beautiful of all. Again, I love how the youngest child is always the best. Because it's so true.

There's a really strange illustration accompanying this story. It's a mermaid who appears to have no eyes, sitting on land (?) next to a figure whose face is obscured by shadows, so he looks really sinister. I don't like it.

The large amber windows were open, and the fish swam in, just as the swallows fly into our houses when we open the windows, excepting that the fishes swam up to the princesses.
I don't know about you guys, but when I open my windows, birds don't fly in. I guess things are different in Denmark.

The youngest doesn't care about anything except for her flower garden and a statue of a guy. I'm just going to call her Ariel from now on since it appears that she doesn't have a name. Anyway, she is fascinated with everything about the surface of the ocean. When each of the daughters turns fifteen, they are allowed to go to the surface of the ocean.

I don't remember the rest of the fairy tales having illustrations. Now there's a VERY masculine looking topless woman.

So anyway, the first five sisters all go to the surface and then quickly become bored with it. Randomly, the grandmother wants to attach eight oysters to the youngest girl's tail to show her high rank. The girl complains and the grandma says, “Pride must suffer pain." When my mom was little and her mom was doing her hair and my mom complained, my grandma would go, "Vanity knows no pain!" Maybe she read this story.

So finally the youngest rises to the surface and sees a ship and a prince (though how she knows he's a prince, I have no idea) and she can't take her eyes off of him. She watches for like, hours, and then the ship capsizes and the mermaid saves the prince. She takes him to shore and kisses him while he's passed out, which is creepy. So she goes back underwater and is all sad and finally her sisters get it out of her that she likes this prince and they know people who know people who know who the prince is.

Ariel decides that she wants a soul. The only way a mermaid can get a soul is if a human loves her and marries her.

“Let us be happy,” said the old lady, “and dart and spring about during the three hundred years that we have to live, which is really quite long enough; after that we can rest ourselves all the better. This evening we are going to have a court ball.”
Whoa, that's a non sequitur if I've ever seen one.

So Ariel decides she really wants her soul (when mermaids die they turn to seafoam, apparently. So remember, next time you're frolicking in the ocean, you're really playing in dead mermaids) and decides to go to the sea witch. The witch says she will turn Ariel into a human if she gives up her voice. Ariel asks what is left for her then.

“Your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surely with these you can enchain a man’s heart. "
Because you don't need to have opinions or intelligence to get a man! Just walk nice and bat your eyelashes and he'll fall in love. Blech. Come ON, HCA! You wrote The Snow Queen, I KNOW you're not a misogynistic bastard.

Oh also, in the movie I think the witch takes Ariel's voice by magic, but in the original fairy tale, she actually cuts out Ariel's tongue. That's not nightmare inducing at all. Also, I wouldn't let someone cut off my tongue just to get a guy. Well, I guess she's gaining a soul as well, but I think the guy is her first priority here.

“Cleanliness is a good thing,” said she, scouring the vessel with snakes, which she had tied together in a large knot; then she pricked herself in the breast, and let the black blood drop into it.
Her line here is just so random. And the rest of the potion sounds disgusting.

Another weird illustration. Looks like a zombie with two black eyes is being accosted by Julius Caesar as Aslan looks on.

Anyway, Ariel takes the potion and somehow gets to the top of the ocean where the prince miraculously finds her. There just seem to be many coincidences in this story. I'm finding it hard to suspend my disbelief, mermaids and witches aside. So anyway, the prince takes her to her castle without apparently informing her on what he's doing. Another unfortunate side effect of the potion is that whenever she walks it's like she's walking on knives. This seems like A LOT of trouble to go through to be with this guy.

The prince said she should remain with him always, and she received permission to sleep at his door, on a velvet cushion.
This disturbs me.

She's also basically a puppy who follows him around. Despite the fact that they are living together, there is remarkably little dialogue in this story. Well, monologue, I guess, since Ariel doesn't have a voice.

Anyway, the prince loves her like a sister but doesn't appear to want to marry her. But if he marries someone else, she turns into sea foam. Her family comes to the surface and are all sad. Bros before hos, Ariel!

The prince is going to marry some other chick and says he would rather marry her but he can't for some reason. He also calls her shit like, "dumb foundling" and "dumb child" and I know dumb means mute, but the double entendre here is very unflattering.

WTF? The prince meets his new wife and out of nowhere is like, "you saved me from the sea!" How he came to that conclusion, I honestly have no idea. And instead of being like, "wtf are you talking about?" his new bride just says nothing.

Ariel's sisters show up and says that they talked to the witch and she can live if she knifes the prince in the heart. This story is dark. Anyway, she can't do it and then she gets taken away by some people called "The spirits of the air" who say that since she has suffered enough, Ariel can gain an immortal soul. The end.

Moral of the story: Suffering will make you stronger. Or something.
Moral I learned: Unrequited love sucks.