A very tired student is trying their best.

Hi, welcome to my Ted Talk, today we will be dealing with something that has bothered me about Disney’s Robin Hood since I was a kid and I still cannot get over to this very day.

And it all stems from THESE THREE PEOPLE:

Maid Marian, Prince John, and King Richard

I’m going to preface this entire thing by saying THIS version of Robin Hood is very very VERY different than the source material, much like all Disney animated films, but it wasn’t really DISNEY who did the big changes… those just came over time with making things more… I’m just going to say “normal for society”, which is ultra double lame.

BUT that’s not the point, because that stuff happens everywhere and with everything, and if I started to complain about THAT we’d be here all day, and I’m already going to take more of your time than needed to complain about something SUPER unimportant from a children’s animated movie made in 1973.

ANYWAY!

So, in the movie the titular character, Robin Hood, is a fox.  Makes total sense, foxes are crafty, hard to catch, cunning, and known for getting into and out of situations that other animals would have difficulty with.  Take that and turn it into an anthropomorphic character and you’d get someone who would easily be against the normal laws, not BAD, but would do BAD to do GOOD. Robin is a show off when he wants to be, and quiet when he has to be.

He’s a pretty perfect Robin Hood, especially in the case of animated kids movies, his characteristics just work SO WELL with his personification as a fox. GOOD STUFF, if I do say so myself!

Little John, meanwhile, is a bear. Not just any bear, but a big ol’ lovable brown bear. This plays on the idea of Little John being a cheeky nickname because Little John is a big, strong, and above all the calm, cool, and rationally smart one of the two. Robin may be clever, but John is the big picture guy. Pun intended.

These two designs and animal choices work SO well with each other, and it’s because these two are so different yet they get along and honestly NEED one another that makes the differences so perfect.

ALAN-A-DALE IS A ROOSTER. BRILLIANT. I don’t even have to go into this, do I? What a GREAT call by making Alan-A-Dale a rooster.  Though, I feel a bit of his characteristics were also borrowed from Will Scarlet for the Disney version, but even that still fits everything. And, honestly, I don’t mind the blending of Alan and Will, it kinda works? Especially with the movie being as short as it is.

ROOSTER BARD. ROOSTER. BARD. So good, I mean c’mon. It’s perfection.

The Sheriff of Nottingham being a wolf is… okay. It’s okay. I get it though, having the wolf hunt the fox. Haha. Cheeky. Cliche, but cheeky.

I really have nothing to say about him, he’s just…okay. Dude’s a cop, so whatever. Not a fan of bootlickers, and the fact that they’re dragging wolves in the mud by making a wolf into a cop is… whatever. /He’s A Wolf Cop/

Personally, I don’t like Friar Tuck as a badger. It really doesn’t make sense to me, and I lowkey hate it that they totally missed so many opportunities. DOVE OF PEACE? LAMB OF GOD? Like FOR REAL, you coulda done something super cute like that, but NOoOoOoOoOoO… he’s a badger. And they kinda pick on him for half the movie, for no reason, and I don’t like that.

Still, Friar Tuck is cute, and a really fun character and they do some clever animation stuff with his “badger”-ness. Still a bit of a missed opportunity.

OKAY NOW THAT WE’VE GOT THESE OTHER BIG ONES OUT OF THE WAY, IT’S TIME FOR MY ACTUAL PROBLEM!

MAID FRICKIN MARIAN IS A FOX.

WHAT THE FRICKEN FRICKITY FRACK?!

ABSOLUTELY NOT! Disney did this JUST because they wanted Maid Marian and Robin Hood to be THE SAME ANIMAL, and that’s ABSOLUTE BUNK!

WHY? Well there’s two BIG reasons that is irks me!

First, the idea that they HAD to be together because they were the same animal or they were made to be the same animal so it wouldn’t be “weird” that they were together.

LAME! UNINSPIRED! BULLSHI-

*ehem* Nonsense. Nonsense.

And it’s even MORE nonsense because of this little fact…

PRINCE JOHN AND KING RICHARD ARE HER RELATIVES!

MAID MARIAN THE NIECE OF PRINCE JOHN AND KING RICHARD!

Okay, you could argue that Maid Marian was adopted, or that King Richard married a lovely fox woman and the fox woman’s relative had a daughter and THAT was Maid Marian. And YES, that would make the situation plausible…

EXCEPT!

This is MEDIEVAL ENGLAND and they are ROYALTY and that kinda stuff wouldn’t fly even IF King Richard is the King.

WHAT I’M SAYING IS…

I really recommend reading the rest, it’s gold

With my mother that being not actively cooperative with the law is not the same as breaking the law.

With my father about which laws are worth breaking and when exactly you cross the line from 'being annoying' to 'criminal'. That line is not always where you think it is.

I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE and you will not believe it that they never used on actual productions, only rehearsals because people got creeped out and didn’t want to use it, UNTIL DAVID TENNANT IN 2008

THAT MAD MAN ACTUALLY PERFORMED WITH THE REAL SKULL!

After the use of Tchaikowsky’s skull was revealed in the press, this production of Hamlet moved to the West End and the RSC announced that they would no longer use Tchaikowsky’s skull (a spokesman said that it would be “too distracting for the audience”).[10] However, this was a deception; in fact, the skull was used throughout the production’s West End run, and in a subsequent television adaptation broadcast on BBC2.[11] Director Gregory Doran said, “André Tchaikowsky’s skull was a very important part of our production of Hamlet, and despite all the hype about him, he meant a great deal to the company.”[11]

Andre Tchaikowski was born in the 1930’s and even adapted some of Shakespeare’s work including his seven sonnets and an opera based on The Merchant of Venice!

It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldn’t be legalized nation-wide until 2015.

It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldn’t hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)

As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. That’s only ~19% of countries.

Love it.

Oh my god

Brief encounters 🐾

Stay with me.

We do not know how the hell the Gay Pirate Plate was first acquired. This being a point of contention is actually pretty plot-relevant; the saga of the Gay Pirate Plate began with my grandmother and her sister, who, for some ungodly reason, both BADLY wanted the Gay Pirate Plate and believed it to be rightfully theirs.

I should back up, firstly, to establish: The Gay Pirate Plate is the cheapest, tackiest, ugliest plate in existence.

It is in no way a collector’s item. It is physically impossible for it to complement anyone’s decor, because the colors in it are garish. It’s just a ceramic plate with a gay pirate painted on it, and the painting is, this cannot be emphasized enough, extremely bad.

(How do we know the pirate is gay if he’s just posing on a plate? Listen. Fully 100% to stereotype, but he is. He is gay. There’s an energy. That pirate is a flaming homosexual. That pirate has sex with men and does it frequently. That pirate is fucking gay, all right, he just is.)

Anyway. The point is that this is an extremely cheap and ugly plate with a poorly-executed painting of pirate on it who is like a nine on the Kinsey scale.

My grandmother and her sister fought a blood feud over this plate for their entire lives. It would be on the wall in my grandma’s house, and then her sister would visit, and then it would be gone. She’d visit her sister and the plate would be on the wall and her sister would pretend it had always been there. She would steal it back, hang it up, and, when her sister visited, pretend it had always been there. This continued for DECADES.

When the sister died, the Gay Pirate Plate lived triumphantly in my grandmother’s house. And then my grandmother died. And my aunt, who had lived with her and been her carer throughout her life, rightfully inherited their house.

We visit my aunt after the funeral and stay with her for a week or two.

Me, my sister, and our dad. Her brother.

The three of us look at each other. We don’t say anything. We studiously avoid making eye contact with the Gay Pirate Plate mounted proud and ugly on the wall. We notice one another studiously avoiding looking at it. We notice one another noticing. We say nothing. We come to a silent consensus. We pack up to leave. We get in the van. Our aunt comes out to say goodbye. I loudly announce I need to use the restroom before we leave. She obviously stays outside to continue talking to my dad.

I take down the Gay Pirate Plate, stuff it under my oversized sweatshirt, go outside, and get in the van. She happily waves goodbye as we drive off.

Two days later my dad gets a phone call that opens with hysterical laughter and “You FUCKING ASSHOLE did you seriously STEAL THE PLATE–”

Anyway. The gay pirate plate lives in my dad’s house currently.

The plate must be clearly and openly displayed in a place of great prominence whenever it is in your possession. When it is not in your possession, the display piece must remain in place. This is where you would put your gay pirate plate, IF YOU HAD ONE.

No active steps may be taken to prevent the theft of the Gay Pirate Plate. That goes against the spirit of the game, as does attempting to hide it.

The plate MUST be stolen and cannot be gifted or removed with permission. Should you witness attempted theft of the Gay Pirate Plate you are required to intervene and return it to its place.