#i haven’t read this yet but want to
Man I love me some Disney, and most of the time I’m, “The Little Mermaid is a fun, beautiful movie for all ages haha :) “
but every now and again
every now and again,
I remember the polyps in Ursula’s cave and I what the fuck WHAT THE FUCK
Ilose it. I am filled with the worst kind of repulsion and terror. It’s a plot device that wouldn’t have been out of place in an 80s body horror flick. If it had been in live action - oh shit it’s gonna be in live action soon - and without that bangin’ villain song, we’d all be talking about how it fucked us up A LOT more
No seriously what the fuck
Kudos to Disney Animation in the late 80s, putting mature themes and genuine horror in their movies, not dumbing things down for children, I love horror, but oh my god, goddamn, I am so emotionally weak to this kind of horror
Being transformed and shrunken down (is it painful too??) into a shriveled husk and rooted to the floor at the bottom of the ocean far away from everyone and everything you have ever loved, unable to speak of your horror regret and misery, surrounded by dozens (??) of other writhing moaning others whose nauseating appearance reflect the abomination you have become, forced to watch other hapless victims land themselves in the same trap oh my godthatONE POLYP WHO TRIED TO GRAB ARIEL IN A DESPERATE BID TO SAVE HER
Andno they didn’t deserve it, Ursula manipulates her victims, uses their desires and unfortunate circumstances as leverage, coerces them into unfair deals, and then cheats so that no matter what, YOU LOSE.
How long did some of those polyps stay there? How many years of their life did they lose?! Do they remember every graphic second after it happened? Do they have nightmares about it? They’re clearly sentient in that state, right??
Even the word polyp freaks me the fuck out and makes my stomach churn when I think about what real life polyps are and that they’re found inside people when something is wrong. I -hyuah,hyagh, BLUARGH
And that’s why, whenever I hear someone with a totally straight face suggest, “hey what if we got a thing from Ursula’s point of view? What if it’s like Wicked or Maleficent and she’s actually misunderstood” I want to claw their eyes out. I think there might even be a Disney YA novel like that already. You can’t convince me that she was just doing that to the Hitlers of the undersea world, you see her try to do it to Ariel LOL
Okay. Okay I’m fine. This episode will pass. I will go back to enjoying the song, the characters, the art
haha The Little Mermaid is a fun, beautiful movie :)
…but every now and then…
I understand people love villains because of their personality, style, etc. in fact, I absolutely love a lot of characters who are villains like N'Jadaka/Killmonger, The Joker, Kira Yoshikage, etc.
But when they start romanticizing them as “misunderstood,” I too get RILED UP.
I assume people “empathize” Ursula is probably because they hate Ariel for being “naive and dumb,” and think Ursula was just being “logical” when really she SCAMMED her. She intended for Ariel to fail. When Eric and Ariel started getting closer, she intervened. If she was true to her word, she wouldn’t have intervened.
Imagine if someone gets scammed, who do you blame: the scammer or the scammed?
Also, I can’t even imagine how traumatized those poor merpeople became after becoming polyps. Having to reunite with their families after years, fuck maybe even DECADES, of torment trapped inside a worm’s body?
Thanks, Ursula, and fuck you.
