Littlest needed it most, & whose hair fell out w grief on learning her fate
Or her sisters who loved her to death, who entertained her w their own adventures at the surface, who came to her aid when they saw her upset, who helped her find where the Prince lived, & who traded their long hair to the Sea-Witch (implied to be very important in mer-culture) in a desperate attempt to find a way to save her life
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We see an arc as she matures emotionally, going from physical attraction to empathy to inquiry
Even more importantly it's during this inquiry that she learns about humans possessing immortal souls. It's the goal of obtaining one herself that pushes her to make the deal with the Sea Witch, while her love for the Prince was not motive enough on its own
Over the course of the story, we're left to wonder if
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she gains agency by acting to achieve her dreams or loses it through constant self-sacrifice for the Prince?
Is she selfless by setting her own wellbeing aside to intervene to support him & save his life over & over, or selfish by putting her family through so much pain &, yeah, kind of using the Prince too just so she can gain entry to heaven herself?
Hey, welcome to the core themes of this coming of age story & of
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coming of age in general
Who doesn't have to ask themselves things like this as they start growing up?
The message seems to be that exploration, maturing & attempting to attain agency always carry risk & you may not even get what you wanted but that sometimes you may find something even better & maybe the effort is worthy in itself
How often do you see that? Where the pretty princess DOESN'T get to be w
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the prince? A story w love in it but which is NOT, at its core, a love story?
By contrast, Disney's Ariel has her original traits only as far as can be considered palatable. She's INTERESTED in the surface, but not OBSESSED, DIFFERENT but not WEIRD, queer & neurodivergent coded but in a way only visible to someone who really knows what to look for
Her original plot beats & arc play out backwards as well
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She "wants to be where the people are", THEN saves Eric, THEN finds the statue.
Inquiry. Empathy. Physical attraction
Her motives become LESS mature, and her desire to explore gets superseded by her desire to be w him. Her love for a man is what prompts her to make the deal when her curiosity was not. She literally looks directly at the broken face of the statue before steeling herself to go & it really
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looks, yes, like she is just making this decision based on an impulse because of a guy she likes & like she definitely IS giving up her agency for him.
Quite possibly the opposite of her arc in the book.
I get that the original story's talk of God and immortal souls might sound a bit strange to our modern secular ears, especially coming from a Disney kid movie, but wouldn't it have been interesting to see?
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