avienne

Chase continues his saga of not knocking on doors 😭

before all else, we need to be on the same page about the little mermaid and that it is an inherently queer story with a queer author: Hans Christian Anderson was bisexual, and wrote the original story as a sort of lament about being in love with another man and never being able to be together but we’re not talking about the original version — we’re talking about the disney version, which was ALSO heavily influenced by out gay man and lyricist Howard Ashman a queer man in the 80s adapting a fairytale specifically about the queer experience and making sure the ending was happier where the mermaid lives and marries her true love was a revolutionary choice, considering what was going on in the queer community in the 1980s and early 90s (if you’re a young’un, i’m talking about AIDS, a disease that would also claim Howard Ashman later on), which is why it lowkey bothers me SO DANG MUCH when people gripe about the ending being changed — we needed this, y’all, let queer people dream of a happy ending

but anyway, this train of thought came about due to the little shadows arc in CB where they go into little mermaid and, despite the sea witch not having much to do in the original tale after the mermaid gets some sweet gams, Buddy gets quite a lot of focus, specifically on his backstory and then, of course, at the end of the arc, Buddy does the thing that everyone homages from disney’s version, and i remember saying to myself ‘oh, yeah, Buddy is Ariel haha that makes a lot of sense actually’

my impression was only strengthened by subsequent re-readings and here is the fruits of that

so, the first scene were we see Ariel in the little mermaid is her robbing a grave — it’s a fun scene, and we don’t register her actions as grave-robbing because we don’t see any bodies, but Ariel is looting through a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean and shipwrecks back then were almost always fatal, so this is in fact a grave. our girl loves other peoples’ things.

that aside, Ariel is a character defined by her desire to be more than what she is at the beginning of the movie, she has the desire to be ‘where the people are’; she yearns for humanity in a nebulous, unfocused way Buddy also desires a return to his own humanity, which is manifest in Violet’s plan to turn back time to before her brother fused with the villain key — it was a plan i remember questioning, like ‘okay he’s back to human and he assumedly takes the keys with him and… then what? bro was homeless, stealing for a living… what is the plan after that?’ though Buddy might be seen as having more of a reason than Ariel for his desire, the future should he get what he wants is still just as up in the air as hers

the consequences of this desire taking over their good sense and seeking the help of someone without their best interests at heart also eventually lead to a family member being imperiled

eventually, though, they meet someone who gives their desire for humanity some more focus

disguising their true nature with the help of a villainess, they follow around their chosen human and romance blooms, all with the knowledge that this situation is tentative at best

(there is also some severe rebuke on this kind of trust being bestowed to a human from a family member who means well but comes off harsh)

and then we do get to lean into the original tale a bit — in the fairytale, the mermaid is presented the opportunity to kill the prince and restore her status quo… and she refuses. she doesn’t want to hurt her love, even if it will hurt her in the end