Gather round children and hear a tale! A tale of how a mermaid loved a prince so much, that she was willing to dump her entire family and fishy friends for him only to die tragically (spoiler alert!)
Ladies and gents, I present: The Sarcastic Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (She has no name. Just “The little mermaid”. What would her name if she wasn’t little? The medium mermaid? The big mermaid? You can’t just boil people down to fry sizes!) dwells in an underwater kingdom with her father (the sea king or mer-king), her dowager grandmother, and her five older sisters, each of whom had been born one year apart (Her mom had like NO rest at all between children). When a mermaid turns 15, she is permitted to swim to the surface for the first time to glimpse the world above, and when the sisters become old enough, each of them visits the upper world one at a time every year (Two of them at a time is not allowed because why?). As each returns, the Little Mermaid listens longingly to their various descriptions of the world inhabited by human beings (“It smells of rotting eggs and you get sunburn! Ain’t earth great?”).
When the Little Mermaid’s turn comes, she rises up to the surface, watches a birthday celebration being held on a ship in honor of a handsome prince, and falls in love (By looking at his face of manliness) with him from a safe distance (Okay, so if you’re at a safe distance, how can you even tell what he looks like in the first place? And even if you can, talk about SHALLOW!). A violent storm hits (Out of nowhere. Apparently the dude in the crow’s nest was taking a nap or whatever), and the Little Mermaid saves the prince from drowning (Wait, he’s on a ship and he can’t even swim. Get a life jacket!). She delivers him unconscious to the shore near a temple (What temple? Wouldn’t she have to like, walk TO the temple? Bad architecture design to put a temple right at the waters edge, just sayin’). Here, she waits until a young girl from the temple and her companions find him. To her dismay, the prince never sees the Little Mermaid or even realizes that it was she who had originally saved his life (wasn’t like he was unconscious or anything).
The Little Mermaid becomes melancholy and asks her grandmother if humans can live forever and if they can breathe under water. The grandmother explains that humans have a much shorter lifespan than merfolks’ 300 years, but that when mermaids die, they turn to sea foam and cease to exist, while humans have an eternal soul that lives on in heaven (So who REALLY gets the raw end of the deal here?). The Little Mermaid, longing for the prince and an eternal soul (She wants a soul? Not creepy at all!), eventually visits the Sea Witch in a dangerous section of the ocean (And that would be where? Marina trench perhaps). The witch willingly (*Ominous music*) helps her by selling her a potion that gives her legs in exchange for her tongue (And they made this into a Disney movie. Totally kid friendly material there! “I’ll give you my tongue and you hand over a leg and we’re even”). The Sea Witch warns that once she becomes a human, she will never be able to return to the sea (Unless you go swimming or buy some scuba gear). Consuming the potion will make her feel as if a sword is being passed through her body (Okay, ow), yet when she recovers, she will have two human legs and will be able to dance like no human has ever danced before (What does DANCING have to do with anything? I should hope you can WALK). However, she will constantly feel as if she is walking on sharp knives and as though her toes are bleeding (And she agrees to this?). In addition, she will obtain a soul only if she wins the love of the prince and marries him, for then a part of his soul will flow into her (Oh…okay?). Otherwise, at dawn on the first day after he marries another woman, the Little Mermaid will die brokenhearted and disintegrate into sea foam upon the waves. (Welll this sounds like a wonderful deal that couldn’t possibly grow wrong! Where do I sign?)
The Little Mermaid agrees to this arrangement (Yeah, dump your family and life for a prince you met from “a safe distance” with only a slight chance of winning his love and you will most likely die alone and broken hearted. Sounds fair) and the Sea Witch cuts off her tongue. The Little Mermaid swims to the surface near the palace of the prince and drinks the potion. She is found by the prince, who is mesmerized by her beauty and grace (Alright, everyone in the story is officially just plain upright shallow. Great moral here), even though she is considered by everyone in the kingdom as dumb and mute (I can vouch for the dumb part. Still can’t believe she went through with it). Most of all, he likes to see her dance, and she dances for him despite suffering excruciating pain with every step (Lovely). Soon, the Little Mermaid becomes the prince’s favorite companion and accompanies him on many of his outings. When the prince’s parents order their son to marry the neighboring princess in an arranged marriage, the prince tells the Little Mermaid he will not because he does not love the princess. He goes on to say he can only love the young woman from the temple, who he believes rescued him (But you were unconscious! What?). It turns out that the princess from the neighboring kingdom is the temple girl, sent there only temporarily to be educated (On what, may I ask? Taking, er, temple classes? I don’t know). The prince loves her, and the royal wedding is announced at once.
The prince and princess celebrate on a wedding ship, and the Little Mermaid’s heart breaks. She thinks of all that she has sacrificed and of all the pain she has endured. She despairs, thinking of the death that awaits her, but before dawn, her sisters rise out of the water and bring her a dagger that the Sea Witch has given them in exchange for their long, beautiful hair. If the Little Mermaid slays the prince with the dagger and lets his blood drip on her feet (Again, totally kid friendly. Disney accidentally left out THAT part), she will become a mermaid once more, all her suffering will end, and she will live out her full life in the ocean with her family (Whom she dumped for a shallow prince whom she met from “A safe distance”).
However, the Little Mermaid cannot bring herself to kill the sleeping prince lying with his new bride (Whoa. Creeper alert!), and she throws the dagger and herself off the ship into the water just as dawn breaks. Her body dissolves into foam, but instead of ceasing to exist, she feels the warm sun and discovers that she has turned into a luminous and ethereal earthbound spirit, a daughter of the air. As the Little Mermaid ascends into the atmosphere, she is greeted by other daughters who tell her she has become like them because she strove with all her heart to obtain an immortal soul. Because of her selflessness, she will be given the chance to earn her own soul by doing good deeds to mankind for 300 years (Not long at all! By the way, how can she do good deeds if she’s dead?) and will one day rise up into the Kingdom of God (One day. But for now she will live out her days in pain and suffering. Yeah, she totally lived happily ever after).
By the Brooke 