Recent Thoughts on The Little Mermaid

Hello, ever-present audience. (Nevermind how accurate or inaccurate that is.)

As you may or may not have seen on my Facebook (I try not to let those mix) I said I might have to post about The Little Mermaid after watching it the other night. Thursday, I believe.

Like many of the pure joys of my childhood, revisiting it as an adult (we'll ignore the fact that I watch at least four Disney movies every year for the last decade or so) can be both disappointing and hilarious.

In my Facebook post, I summed up the movie this way, "The Little Mermaid: the three day journey of a sixteen-year-old girl getting body modifications for a guy she's never met, culminating in catastrophic, magically created weather and their first kiss/wedding."

I guess technically the story takes about five days.
1) The missed concert/first sight/storm/rescue
2) Rescue song/destruction of Ariel's horde/ decision to solve things with plastic surgery via Ursula/ meeting Eric formally
3) Tour of the kingdom/ "Kiss the Girl"/ "Vanessa" appears out of nowhere
4) Stall the wedding/ final battle with giganto-fat-octopus-woman/ sparkley dress and first kiss
Cut to wedding

Watching this the other night, during their wedding scene, my first thought was, "oh my god. Is that their first kiss??" Followed closely by "She's SIXTEEN! D8"

I just did some intense Googling and Youtube clip watching, though, and as it turns out, it technically isn't, because when her poor, misguided father takes the advice of a crab and turns his beautiful daughter back into a ravenous "fisheater," she runs out of the water, totally ignoring that gift and the paternal approval it represents, and drives into the arms of this near stranger for a passionate kiss. Which then fades into that shot at the wedding.

Also, there's totally a Top 15 Disney Kisses video, and I take issue with the numbering of most of them.

But here are some of the things that I had to yell at the movie for:

First, King Triton constantly refers to humans as barbarians and fish-eaters. I refuse to believe that mer-people don't ever eat fish or sea creatures of any kind. That's impractical and unrealistic. Use the resources available. What else are they going to eat? Krill? 

Just imagine Ariel swimming around with her mouth wide open all the time....

But they have teeth, I say! Teeth just like human teeth, or so I assume based on the fact that Eric never recoiled and went "Oh god! What's wrong with your mouth?!" And human teeth are designed to break apart both meats and plant matter. That's why we have pointy teeth and flat teeth (a.k.a. molars and incisors). 

Also, who is the heavily bearded, naked, old guy to call anyone a barbarian? I've only played a handful of Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, but from my not inconsiderable experience with fantasy, the less clothing someone is wearing, the better indication that they're either a sexpot or a badass, and if they happen to a well-muscled, scantily-clothed male, they're almost definitely a Barbarian.

So there, fork man!

Speaking of the magical three-pronged instrument of death and hurricanes, another issue I had. When you're a kid, suspension of disbelief is no problem. But with Disney movies, not suspending your disbelief and pondering the consequences of the world they operate in is way more fun.

Like why didn't the country (France) in Beauty and the Beast have serious political troubles when they spontaneously lost their monarch for ten years, only to have him pop up out of some woods in the middle of nowhere?

In The Little Mermaid, I think the trouble is the weather. I take no issue with the idea that ocean and all of its surrounding weather are controlled by a fish man with a magic weapon (which, by the way, begs some interesting questions about Triton's omniscience or lack thereof), but presumably he operates in a safe and sane way, causing storms the natural way. What happened to the world when Ursula gets hold of said magical trident and starts causing storms and whirlpools to come out of nowhere? All that water and air pressure had to go somewhere, right?

Also, how old is Eric, anyway? It can't be more than like eighteen or nineteen, because then we start wandering creepy statutory rape country. And if he is that young, why is his steward, or whatever Grimsby is, pestering him about getting married? Do they just have an incredibly short lifespan there? Because everyone in Eric's town seemed to be pretty healthy and content. Plus all of the palace staff seems to be at least middle-aged...

At least in most Disney movies, they never actually say outright how old they are. Except possibly Rapunzel, who I believe is turning eighteen in her movie. Legal adult, boys and girls.

Also, there's two cool Disney movies coming out I heard about recently, one of which is Frozen, which will be awesome, because The Snow Queen was one of my favorite stories as a kid.

Now if someone would just do East of the Sun and West of the Moon in a good way, because the only movie that I know of is The Polar Bear King, which is one I also liked as a child, but is definitely lacking when compared to how cool it could be.

And then I guess there's this movie about the making of Mary Poppins with Tom Hanks playing Walt Disney, and that sounds a little implausible, but  pretty cool.

Speaking of movies coming out, my vhs copy of Little Mermaid had all these new exciting movies coming out, like Mulan, A Bug's Life, and the unfortunate Pocahontas sequel coming out in...1998!

Yeah....I felt old. Do you guys realize that was like fifteen years ago? Madness I say!

Words No One Should Use (Part 2)

Because I am largely a creature of my word, I shall finish my list of annoying words and phrases. Hopefully quickly, so that the posts are in the same month in the drop down menus. It's also going to be quick, because I have other things to do, and I'm in a less ranty frame of mind than last time.

-Pejoratives for race, gender, sexual practices, etc
This is just a common decency thing with me. If you're not a total worthless douchewaffle, you don't decide people are not worthy of respect based on anything other than their character. Treating them like crap because you don't agree with them is totally not okay. You don't get patted on the head for it, but you don't deserve to be lynched either. Using words to demean someone because of their  gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc just makes you more of an ass than you're saying they are. Except hipsters. It's okay to hate on them.

-The One
As you may have noticed if you've read basically any of my other posts, I passionately hate romance. When people talk about "The One" in any context other than The Matrix, it basically means you can write them off as a sappy moron and ignore anything else they have to say about people.

-True Love ____
Waits, is whatever, and so on. These phrases just irritate me, because they're not only stupid and/or obvious, they refer to "True Love," another idea I have absolute disdain for, because they mean it in the Disney sense. If we're talking "true" as in real or genuine, I have no issue, but those are far in the minority. People like the idea of having a Destiny, because they're not smart enough or strong enough to take responsibility for their own love life. Or most other things.

-Expecially
This just makes you sound like an illiterate waste of a free education. Can you not read phonetically? Sound it out, you imbeciles.

-Nucular
See above. If you look at a word letter by letter, you can probably say it right, and with simple words like this, there's no excuse.

-Punny
Who even invented this word? Why would people decide it's okay? It's obnoxious. Puns are supposed to be clever, and they're usually more annoying than not. This is some bastard child of "pun" and "funny," but it's totally unnecessary.

-Pointless letter changes to diffuse profanity
Here's a novel thought: Say what you mean! If you're going to use profanity, use it. If you're trying to be sensitive to people who may be too old or too young to hear those words, get a better vocabulary, and use a different word. Everyone knows what you mean, so you may as well have just used the obscenity you had in mind.

Words No One Should Use (Part 1)

There are things people say, especially these days, that they should immediately be stabbed through the calf for vocalizing, and yet, for some mysterious reason, no one has stabbed them anywhere.

So, next time you feel like violently attacking someone for being a moron, here's words to look out for that I'm sure will make the justice system decide to give you a high five and go home.

-Cray
Unless referring to the crustacean, this is unacceptable. If you desire to express that something is absurd or unbelievable, I have an alternative word for you that won't draw blank, disdainful stares from people who speak English: "Crazy." Let me say it again: "CRAY-ZEE." It's almost the same, but you'll sound less like an illiterate waste of matter.

-Pimp
Exception: when referring to the owner/seller of a whore or several whores. I hear this all the time as a description indicating the awesomeness of something, and I don't know who the hell okayed that. For one, it's painfully stupid. For two, it implies that you find men who own, abuse, and extort women to be representative of that kind of awesomeness. If you don't, you're stupid and misusing the word, if you do, you're worthless scum, and we should probably kill you anyway. So again, watchword for stabbing permission, just to be safe.

-So dope
Unless this is an obscure, antiquated drug-reference, no one knows what in the world that means. They vaguely understand this is a positive term applied to things one thinks are cool, and so it gets adopted and perpetuated by people who don't even know where it came from. Unless you're referring to weed or heroin, it makes no sense.

-Any and all spoken text abbreviations
I hate any kind of text speak. It's an abomination. We have been taught since childhood how to speak English in free schools. It's really not that hard to type out the few other letters, which in most cases is only two or three. Like "You," or "are," etc. But when people speak those phrases out loud it is clear permission to bludgeon them about the face with the nearest object. If you SAY, "el-oh-el" or "bee-tee-dubs" or "oh-em-gee" or whatever, fully expect everyone to write you off as the hopeless lack-wit you clearly are, and I can only hope that someone hits you in the brain so hard, you no longer remember how to butcher any language.

-Hella
I'm not clear as to the context to this idiotic word is supposed to be used in, but as far as I know, it's an expression of degree (ie. "It's hella cold outside."), but that doesn't really make sense. It's a contraction of "hell of a" so how did that end up being used in such a way? Because why would you say "It was hell of a awesome"? If you were a thinking, remotely grammatically correct being, you wouldn't, but that seems to be more and more uncommon these days.
(Damn kids these days! Got no respect, or work ethic. When I was a kid, we knew how to earn what we had, by God!)

-Oh my glob*
What does this even mean? Is this an attempt at saying "Oh my God" without blaspheming, or something? Because I'm pretty sure God knows what you mean, regardless of what you say out loud. And if it's other people you're worried about, you're saying "oh my god." Not their god. Swear by someone else's god, and you've probably offended both parties; swear by your own god, and it's between you and your deity.

*After some rudimentary Googling, this appears to be a reference to that current horror Adventure Time. I rest my case. You people are morons.

-Hashtags
I hate these so passionately it's hard to express adequately. Let me paste what I said about it on Facebook:
"In a country where education is FREE, and people have the ability to be as intelligent and openly thoughtful as they want, this is the culture that's grown. People can't even speak their own bloody language, let alone think complex thoughts for more than about thirty seconds, because for some mysterious reason, intelligence is frightening. What is actually better about behaving like and becoming thoughtless cattle driven by all the BS from mass media? I saw it in high school, and I see it now: people being more imbecilic than they actually are so that they can fit into the appalling norms that we've come to expect from that age/social circle/gender/demographic. It's absolute crap!"
It infuriates me that they're used in place of communicating an actual thought, or coherantly expressing oneself. You know when that type of spew is appropriate? When tagging things for seach parameters, like I do for post labels. What if I just vomited solitary phrases at you, internet? Why would you want to read anything I wrote?
Annoyed!
Stupid people!
Social experience!
Cute kittens!
Sunshine!
lackofeducationandintelligence!
Wasn't that thrilling? Don't you feel like we just had a meaningful exchange of ideas? I have to intentionally not capitalize or space when I type. How is this a thing? Is it really that difficult to write full thoughts as captions and status updates?

-Comparing oneself with tv characters
I thankfully hear this less with people I have any respect for, but so often I hear people say crap like, "Ohmygod, you so___" or "you're such a *fill in fictional character name here*" Do I really need to talk about this one? You aren't that character; you never will be that character; in all likelihood, you're not remotely like that character, because characters in recently popular media are seriously lacking in any depth. You get one-dimensional imitations of characters, and you're probably only exhibiting a vague resemblence to their main attribute. So shut up.

I have now run out of both my motivation and my drink, so I shall call this TO BE CONTINUED! I have several more words and phrases that make me want to murder people with forks, so I'll be sure to share those later for your future edification and legal defense.