Princess Ariel - Tumblr Posts

🎵If the time is right and the time is tonight🎵Go on and kiss the girl🎵

THE LITTLE MERMAID (2023) dir. Rob Marshall

This is so beautiful and I cannot wait to see this 😍

Uniting the power of land and sea. Ariel, Filia Maris (Ariel, Daughter of the Sea) in a 19th century portrait done by Denver Balbaboco

THE LITTLE MERMAID (2023)

Another piece in the Ariel Series, a list of commissions I'm making featuring Ariel from the Little Mermaid, and this time encountering a young Godzilla. This is the fifth part of the series.

You can find me on twitter.com/SofieWikstrmArt Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/sofiewikstrom Deviantart: https://www.deviantart.com/sofiewikstromart

just watched “The little mermaid” the live one and anyone else think The actor who played eric(Jonah Hauer-King )kinda looks like ryan Gosling? or is it just me?

Sister’s support✨

“That’s my little baby girl, and I wanted her to feel confident and secure and amazing, and know that even though I wouldn’t be on set with her, she would never be alone~💖”

(c) Chloe Bailey

Drew this a while ago but forgot to post it because…well Hazbin Hotel dropped-

Anyways

My BF and I as Eric and Ariel from The Little Mermaid🧜‍♀️

Loved loved LOVED this movie as a little girl. Will forever love the ocean and mermaids 💜

childhood memories unlocked

Besides 2015's Cinderella, The Little Mermaid is honestly one of the best live action Disney film and one of the best films of 2023!

I watched it on Valentine's Day and it's amazing, Halle and the cast deserve their flowers for this iconic remake!

Happy anniversary to a masterpiece that reintroduce an iconic Disney princess that brought a inspiration for everybody who loved mermaids!

Uh oh 😏

I’m already making this my Little Mermaid and Aladdin dump…

Whatever shall I do…???

*hits post*

This was drawn for ma seester, cause she’s got a girl wrapped around her finger. Lol

Screaming because I had to

I’m pretty sure I found a new hobby in redrawing Disneyland pics into the actual characters lol

I have a couple of ‘em up my sleeve, but here’s Ariel and Eric posing with shaddddeess…😎

Here’s an older drawing of mine that’ll I’ll post for now since my creative flow is currently blocked. *Sighhh*

It’ll come back soon hopefully. 🙏🏻

Anyways enjoy Eugene, Rapunzel, Aladdin, Anna, Kristoff, Eric, Jasmine, and Ariel as modern day people having fun on a rollercoaster, as my head-canon friend group if you will. 🤠

Hey my lovely’s, I made something amazing!!!!

It’s a link to a hunger games simulator, but with DISNEY PRINCESSES and Princes as the tributes lol. So that’s really fun, and an exciting way to ruin your childhood. 👌🏻 And I had fun making it!

-Sakura Kinomoto as Snow White -Tomoyo Daidouji as Cinderella -Meiling Li as Princess Ariel

Cute! You know I only watched the movie for him, other than that the movie was meh. Lots of plot holes but I enjoyed the songs.

moon + tides

part 1, part 2 will be out soon! pairing: james hook x fem!reader (requested) summary: you, ariel's daughter, find yourself in a strange relationship with the one and only infamous pirate captain, who's absolutely obsessed with you genre: yandere, a bit of angst, some comforting fluff here and there, especially at the end cw: a few mentions of violence, someone walking a plank, mentions of drowning, some suggestive material, nothing too graphic though wc: 4.2k

a/n: this req was really fun to write! I might have gotten a bit carried away, heh...this part includes the backstory of how you two got together and the first part of the req, and the second part will include the rest of it. hope you guys enjoy reading this cause I definitely put some hard work into it lol. also please give me feedback and suggestions, I'd really like to know your thoughts!

If you could go back, would you change what happened?

This is something that you often ask yourself. 

You think about that fateful day frequently. It was the summer before your first year at Merlin Academy. You had finally convinced your parents, the famed mermaid Ariel and her Prince Eric, to let you go for a swim unsupervised. Being half-mermaid, half-human allowed you to transform back and forth at will. And although life on land was pretty good, your heart always ached to go back to the sea, to feel the cold, salty water as it engulfs you. To race along the reefs, tail swishing back and forth, allowing you to reach speeds far past what your human form can do. To leisurely swim amongst the many species of fish and plants that created the world of the ocean. To go back home.

Your parents had already gone over the rules with you hundreds of time, to the point where you could recite each one of them word for word: “Don’t go past the boundaries”, “Don’t approach any animals you don’t know”, “Don’t go so deep where you can’t see any light”, “Come out at the first sign of bad weather”, and, most importantly, “Do not, under any circumstances, interact with any humans”.

Your mother may be renowned for rescuing a stranger from the unrelenting grasps of the sea—if she hadn’t, you wouldn’t even be here right now—but that was a very rare case. Far more often than not, mermaid interactions with humans out on the waters ended up in the mermaid being tortured, held hostage, or even killed.

You knew the rules by heart, and yet, maybe it was because of your young age, you still broke them. You weren’t really aware of your actions in the moment; one second, you were swimming alongside a pod of dolphins, racing against the currents. The next, you heard loud voices and realized that almost directly above you, yet still a good few dozen meters away, was some sort of ship.

You had ducked down next to a big sponge, peering up apprehensively. It was at that moment you realized that you were far outside of the boundaries set for you by your parents. You should have turned back, should have swam back home, but there was something about the ship, something that intrigued you so much it forced you to stay in place.

A few moments passed, and seeing as there was no commotion, you let your curiosity get the better of you. After all, that ship shouldn’t even have been out there. Slowly, you crept closer and closer to the surface, making sure to remain in the shadows. The noises were becoming clearer; you could make out people’s voices now. But they still weren’t sharp enough for you to understand what they were saying.

Finally, you took the risk and poked your head out of the water near the rear of the ship. The sight before you elicited a sharp gasp, and made you wish you had just gone back when you still had the chance. 

Extended from the side of the ship was a long, wooden plank. Standing on one side of it (the safe end), was a man, gagged, blindfolded, and bound. He looked to be no older than forty, with a scraggly beard and ripped clothes.

A pirate.

Another figure emerged, walking to the edge of the deck. Your reflexes caused you to duck down quickly, so only your eyes were barely above the water. This figure was much younger, with dark brown hair parted neatly and angular features twisted into a wicked smile. He donned a maroon blazer that covered a white shirt with an upturned collar. Something in his left hand shined brilliantly under the sun’s bright rays.

The younger figure laughed, but not in the way one would laugh at a funny joke. He unsheathed a cutlass from his side, using it to poke the back of the man on the plank. 

“You see, Mr. Jones? This is what happens when you cross the most feared pirate captain in all the lands!” the young figure roared as he yanked off the older man’s blindfold, revealing to him his fate. The fear and panic that spread across the man’s face has been forever etched into your mind, even to this day.

You heard the man beg and plea for mercy, watched as every move he made caused the plank to sway even more violently. The pirate captain simply laughed, his crew along with him. Finally, when you suppose he tired of hearing the man grovel, you watched in terror as the captain gave the man a good kick in the back, finally sending him over the edge.

Suddenly, it was like the world was spinning in slow motion. The man plummeting off the wooden platform, falling, falling, falling. His screams muffled by the cloth around his mouth. Then, all too soon, he made contact with the water with a loud splash. 

He sank quickly, devoured by the ocean’s waters within the blink of an eye. Your young, distraught face watched as a few bubbles rose to the surface. Then nothing. All that remained of the man’s existence, all there was to give proof that he had ever even been there, were a few ripples in the water.

That was it.

You were frozen in shock. How–what–why? Your brain could barely string together a comprehensive sentence. All you were sure of was the feeling inside you. You couldn’t quite put it into words, could barely even understand it. But it made your tail ache to move, made you feel as if you simply couldn’t stay in one place any longer.

You dove beneath the surface, frantically swimming towards the direction where you saw the man go under. You kept looking around, searching, but to no avail. You decided to dive deeper, swimming lower and lower until the water around you was near pitch-black. You were growing more and more panicked by the second, because every second you wasted was another second the man grew closer to death.

Finally, you caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of your eye. Hope flaring, you darted towards it, the figure becoming clearer the closer you got.

It was him.

You reached out and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt to prevent him from sinking farther. His eyes were shut and he wasn’t breathing, but you could still hear a heartbeat. There was still time left.

Wrapping your arms around him, you started the difficult journey back to land. Thankfully, you knew of a small island not too far from here. Swimming with the added weight of a fully grown man was incredibly difficult, especially for a young mermaid, but you persisted. After all, this was his life on the line.

You swam as hard as fast as you could, and thankfully, by some blessing from the heavens, found a warm water current going the direction you were. You let it carry you, the rushing stream multiplying your efforts. Finally, after what seemed like hours but must have only been a couple of minutes, you reached the island.

Letting the wave wash you up on shore, you settled the man down on the soft sand the first chance you got. You rolled him to his front, which was quite the endeavor itself. His heartbeat had grown more shallow, but it was still there. There was still hope.

Using the skills your mother had taught you, you started to nurse the man back to health using your melodic voice. Ever since you were young, she had explained to you the gift bestowed upon mermaids, the power of healing through song. She taught you to sing before you could walk, and it was the one thing that you were sure you could do right.

As you sang your strange and melodious tune, it finally occurred to you that you were breaking the most sacred of rules. Not only were you interacting with a stranger, you were coaxing him back to life. Like mother, like daughter, you thought. I suppose healing strangers who were drowning at sea runs in my blood.

The only caveat to your healing powers is that it takes quite some time to have its full effects. You don’t know how long you sat on the beach, but it had been quite some time. You probably would have been there for much longer had it not been for the boom voice that sounded behind you, waking you from your trance of song.

“Well, I’ll be. If it isn’t a mermaid.”

You practically jumped out of your fins as you turned around, startled beyond words. There, towering above you, was the evil pirate captain you saw earlier. He was even younger than you had previously thought. In fact, he couldn’t be much older than you. You wondered for a fleeting moment how a kid like that could command an entire ship full of grown—and scary-looking—men, but decided you have bigger matters at hand to worry about.

A few members of his crew lurked behind the captain, and you could see a small lifeboat docked to the ground near the coastline. Further beyond that, his ship swayed in the ocean waves, dark against the bright horizon.

You followed the pirate’s gaze down to your tail, which was still out. You silently cursed yourself for forgetting to transform back into your human form, being too distracted by saving the man to pay attention to your own safety.

You wanted to yell at the cruel pirate for trying to kill this man. No matter who he was, what he had done, he didn’t deserve to die. At least not like that. But the words got caught in your throat, so while a war raged inside your mind, you were completely quiet on the outside, simply staring up at the man with wide doe eyes.

“You have a lovely voice,” the man said, with a tone that you wouldn’t quite imagine a killer using. He must have overheard me sing earlier, you thought to yourself. “Tell me, little mermaid, who taught you to sing?”

“M-my mother,” you replied weakly, your voice far more meager and small than you wanted it to be. You were still staring up at him, afraid of what he’d do to you.

“Your mother? Well, that’s quite interesting.” The captain raised his left hand to scratch at his chin, which is when you realized that it wasn’t a hand at all. Instead of a hand was a curved metal hook, with a sharp point gleaming at the end. So that must be the shiny thing I saw earlier, you thought.

“Oh, where are my manners?” laughed the pirate abruptly. “My name is Captain James Hook, leader of the Jolly Roger. And you are?”

You blinked, almost forgetting your own name. If it were a less tense moment than this, you would have laughed at the fact that his name is rather befitting for him. “Y/N,” you respond.

“Y/N…Now, where have I heard that name before?” He tapped his chin with his hook again.

“Sir, that’s the name of Princess Ariel’s daughter,” one of the big, meaty pirates behind him answered in a gruff voice.

“That’s right!” Hook exclaimed. “You’re the mermaid’s daughter. You know, rumor has it you’ll be joining me at Merlin’s Academy in the fall, is that right?”

For some reason, your voice seemed to not work anymore, so you settled for nodding. Join him? you pondered. You didn’t know that he was also a student at the school you were planning to attend.

Hook started pacing along the beach, arms crossed with his hooked hand extended, deep in thought. You watched him, fear growing by the second. A sly smirk spread across his face, which only served to fuel the flames of your worry. 

“You know, you directly defied my command by saving that man,” he started. Slowly. Deliberately. Choosing every word precisely and carefully, like a shark circling its prey. “Do you even know why I made him walk the plank?” You shook your head no, the panic in you reaching record heights.

“That man” —he vaguely gestures towards the unconscious body laying on the beach with his hook— “stole an entire week’s worth of rations from my ship. An entire week’s worth of food and rum for an entire crew. Had he gotten away with it, we likely would have starved to death out at sea. Does he seem so innocent now, little mermaid? So worth saving?”

Again, you shook your head no. Although you agreed he definitely wasn’t an innocent man, you still didn’t see making him walk the plank a justifiable punishment. Despite your thoughts, you kept your mouth shut. Angering the captain further was not going to do you any good.

“Now, if anyone else had done something like this, I wouldn’t hesitate to cut their head right off,” Hook said menacingly, and with a swish, unsheathed his sword once again. You flinched—hard—and scrambled to back away from him. 

Hook took note of this, and, sheathing his sword, crouched down to get on the same level as you. “But don’t worry, little mermaid. I won’t hurt you. You see, you’ve piqued my interest. Plus, it would do me no favors to have a little girl’s blood on my hands.”

You let out a breath you hadn’t even realized you were holding. So he’s not going to kill me, right?

“But, alas, you can’t leave unpunished, now, can you?” he added. Your eyes grew impossibly wider, your entire body shaking in fear. This was it. He was going to kill you, or do something equally worse.

“I demand” —you already felt a tear slip down your cheek— “that you write to me for the remainder of the summer.”

Wait, what?

“W-write?” you asked in disbelief. “As in…”

“Letters,” Hook finished for you. “Write me letters. I’ll give you the mailing address of the Jolly Roger. Write me everyday, and I’ll promise I’ll write you back whenever we dock. How does that sound?”

“O-okay,” you reply, still taken aback by the peculiar, and far more lenient than you’d expected, request. That was all you had to do? Write letters? As punishment for saving the life of someone he’d ordered to die? You must be dreaming.

“Oh, and,” Hook said, voice lowered as he leaned in close to you, until he was just a hair’s breadth away from your ear. You could feel his warm breath on your skin, his alluring scent of salty winds and something richer, deeper, filling your lungs. “I look forward to seeing you in the fall. Don’t forget me, my little mermaid.”

With that, he stood up, smoothing out the lines on his pants. “You wouldn’t happen to need a ride back home, would you, love?”

You shook your head no, too terrified of him changing his mind to spend another moment in his presence. You glanced back at the man lying behind you, still unconscious. “W-what about him? What will you do with him?” you managed to choke out, somehow finding your voice again.

Hook pondered this for a long minute, before finally answering, “He can live.” You let out a shaky breath. “But only because of you, little mermaid. And only this time. You go against my wishes again, and trust me, your punishment will be far more severe.”

And with that, he went back to his ship and sailed away.

You still muse about that day, thinking how different things would have been if you had changed just one little thing.

You kept your promise of writing him letters, too afraid to know what would happen when you had to inevitably face him in the fall to break it. At first, they started out simple. Ordinary recounts of your day, your favorite things, what you liked to do. As the weeks passed, you started writing more personal letters. How you felt about certain things or certain people, including your parents. You never spoke a word of that fateful day to them, knowing that you’d be grounded for life and forbidden from swimming ever again if they caught even a whiff of the danger you had put yourself in. 

Hook kept his promise, too. He wrote you back, although it was far less frequent than your letters. Even though he kept his responses short and concise, you always ended up hearing his voice in your head as you read his notes. You soon found yourself checking your mailbox daily, even getting to know the mailman rather well. The rush of dopamine you got every time you opened it to find a letter awaiting you was unmatched; you would always run upstairs to your room, lock the door, and pour over the note. Reading every line, every word over and over again, committing them to memory. 

You don’t know why you enjoyed these little letters so much. Maybe it was the thrill of having a secret that no one else knew of, or the absence of your usual loneliness every time you were reminded that somewhere out there, across the seas, was someone awaiting your letters, reading them, and writing back to you. Whatever it was, your heart started to form an emotional attachment to him without you even realizing it. 

Unbeknownst to you, that had been his exact plan all along.

It’s safe to say that once you started school at Merlin Academy, Hook’s—or James’s, as he insisted on you calling him—grip on you only grew. Things started out pretty normal: light conversations in class and stolen looks exchanged across the hall, mostly initiated by him. After the first few weeks passed, things between you two only grew. Secret meetings during lunch hours, rendezvous after school, and small gifts exchanged between the two of you. From there, it became brushing your hands together whenever you passed by each other, soft pecks on the cheek or forehead where there were prying eyes, and more passionate kisses when the two of you finally found time to be alone.

Truth be told, you don’t really know what you two are now. Normally, you would consider two people that partake in such actions to be courting, and you kind of assume you are. But James has never said anything about a relationship to you, and in all honesty, you’re too afraid to ask him. You feel terribly confused at his intentions towards you; on the one hand, he approaches you every day without fail, even if you try to ignore him or when your schedules don’t match up. Somehow, he always finds a way. On the other hand, he never asked you to be his lover, never even vaguely mentioned anything of the sorts. So, you decided, with a heavy heart, to not be too confident and consider yourself his partner. And unfortunately, that meant that he wasn’t yours, either.

Really, you never meant to grow so involved with the bastard pirate that threatened to kill you on the beach that day. But for some strange reason, instead of treating you coldly like he did everyone else, especially the other hero kids, he was softer with you. Considerate, even. You had half-expected him to want nothing to do with you after your first few interactions, but he kept seeking you out. You often opened your locker to a note inside, or entered your dorm to find a letter slipped beneath the door.

Today was one of those days. You had gotten a note telling you to wait for him in your usual place in the evening, after classes. So here you are, waiting, staring at the water fountain in the courtyard. You’ve always been transfixed by the way the water spurts out the center and splashes all around. It seems that whenever you’re alone with your thoughts, they always end up back to that fateful day you met James, and everything that’s happened since.

“Wait for me long, my little mermaid?” a deep voice whispers in your ear from behind. You jump only a little, far more used to James sneaking up on you now than you used to be. For some reason, it seems he loves to startle you by wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling you in close from behind, or speaking softly in your ear.

You twirl around, a delighted expression on your face, although you try to mask it with a feigned annoyance. “And if I say I did?”

“Well then, I’d have to find a way to make it up to you then, wouldn’t I, darling?” he purrs, using his hook to spin you around in his arms so you’re face-to-face. His lips make his way to yours, pulling you in for a slow, sensual kiss. You wrap your arms around his neck, bringing his head closer to yours, not able to get enough of his touch. 

The feeling of his skin against yours ignites something in you, and you find your mouth opening to give him more access as a soft whimper escapes your lips. One hand reaches into his hair, tugging at it gently from the base of his head, while the other one trails down the front of his shirt.

James leans into you even further, your bodies flush against each other now, as he deepens the kiss. You find yourself leaning against the edge of the water fountain, the cool sprinkles providing a welcomed contrast to your heating-up bodies.

Once you’ve completely lost your breath, you pull away just slightly, a love drunk smile on your face. “You had a request for me?” you whisper, panting, eyes full of adoration for the man you were interlocked with. 

James breaks into a grin. A genuine one, not one of the smirks he flashes to uphold his patented suave demeanor. “Ah, yes, how could I forget, my love?”

He pulls further away to give you two enough room to breathe, yet keeping his good hand on the small of your back. “I was reminded today that it's been quite some time since I’ve heard your voice, my little mermaid.”

You give a little smile, deciding to mess with him a bit. “Whatever do you mean? You hear my voice every day. I mean, you’re even hearing it right now.”

James cocks his head to the side and raises a single eyebrow, clearly aware of your antics. “Your other voice, love.”

You giggle. “Fine, all right. Only for you,” you say, giving him a peck on the nose. 

You sit down on the ledge of the fountain, turning back to stare at the water again. Although it has been a long time since you stretched your tail and went for a swim, simply seeing the rushing water soothes you. It isn’t quite like being immersed in it, but it still gives you some semblance of comfort. 

You reach into the pool at the bottom, letting the cool water rush along your fingertips as you inhale a deep breath. Through your mermaid abilities, your voice twists into an otherworldly song, filling the space with a mellifluous sound. 

James takes a place on the ledge next to you, reaching into the water to hold your submerged hand. You don’t really feel it, too transfixed on the rushing waves. You don’t see the way James gazes at you, like you’re his entire world. The softness, the tenderness in his eyes, which he reserves for you only. He looks at you not as if you’re his sun, something too bright to ever stare directly at, something violent and explosive and harmful, but as if you’re his moon. 

As if you’re the figure he watches every night before he closes his eyes, and the one he wishes to see again when he wakes up. As if you’re the only thing he notices every time the darkness envelops him, your presence never falling off the pedestal he places it on in his mind. Never losing its worth. He looks at you, your soft glow and mesmerizing shimmer, as if you’re the only thing filling up the night sky. The stars and constellations pale in comparison to you, especially on your best nights, when you shine so magnificently. 

You are the moon, and he is the tide of the ocean, constantly being pulled in by you. Never being able to escape the grasp you have on him, the grasp you are so blissfully unaware of. He stares at you in awe and wonder, bathing in your gorgeous light, so close yet always so far away. Sitting all alone against the dark backdrop of the evening sky, waiting for him to come back to you. And without reason, you always disappear. Always leaving him wanting more, waiting till the moment he can bathe in your presence again. 

As you sing, the tide gets pulled in by the gravity of the moon. Your lyrical voice bounces off the stone walls, surrounding you both, just as the moonlight surrounds the waves on that mystical night. 

But the moonlight is only a reflection of the sun’s glow, is it not? When daylight comes, the moon will pull away from the waves, its absence in the sky all but forgotten in the sun’s presence. And as dawn breaks, so too will the pull between the moon and ocean. 

part 2 coming soon!

If the little mermaid remake was made in 89

Someone finally put what I think into words!!! Thank you for this!

My Hot Take on the Ariel Controversy

Let me Preface this by saying I am a white man. I am not a member of the Black community, so I am looking at this controversy from the outside. As a little kid, The Little Mermaid wasn’t just my favorite Disney movie, it was my favorite movie period. This movie damn near made a marine biologist of me. I grew up absolutely in love with water because of this movie. Didn’t matter if it was Water type Pokemon, Waterbending, or Water Attribute Yugioh decks. This movie basically shaped me in a lot of ways. So, I’ve been excitedly waiting for the film to come out. I would say the only Disney live action remakes I’m as excited for is Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Black Cauldron because both are actually flawed enough that it’s a chance to atone for those movie’s mistakes and make them stronger films.

So a live action remake of my childhood favorite movie in an amazing underwater setting with live action depictions of what mermaids look like? Hell yeah, I was excited for this movie. And then the news came out that Halle Berry got the part, only to find out the correction that the part went to Halle Bailey. My general reaction is honestly conflicted. I can fully understand both sides of the argument. On one hand, Ariel isn’t pulling a Hamilton. It’s not taking real life people that actually existed and altering their ethnicity for a political statement. Which just makes the historian in me cringe. Ariel is not a real person. She’s a fictional mermaid. Even in the original book, I don’t think her appearance is ever described, so even in the original fairytale, you could say that she’s black and it wouldn’t change anything. But I think the reason there’s such a backlash isn’t the fact that she’s black, so much as the fact that Ariel is already a recognized brand name character. In this case, you are not changing the race of a fictional character, like when Brandi was cast as a black Cinderella. That was a separate adaptation of a fairy tale. It was its own standalone thing. But, if that Brandi movie was made by the Disney corporation as the live action remake of their Cinderella, it becomes a bigger issue because Disney already has a canon version of Cinderella. And thus, this dips back into Hamilton syndrome, because it is altering the ethnicity of an existing character. I don’t believe the outcry is just that Ariel is black, so much as the fact that Ariel is an established face in Disney marketing. Ariel was the first ginger Disney princess, and she’s looked that way for 30 years. We’re used to her looking a certain way, and now this new movie is in a way, disregarding that 30 year legacy. She’s looked that way for 30 years and now out of the blue and for no real good reason, Disney is repackaging Ariel as an entirely different ethnicity, and I think it sort of draws the movie into the Uncanny Valley. It’s Ariel, but it doesn’t look like the Ariel we’ve been seeing for 30 years, thus causing people to react negatively.

As for myself, I’m indifferent. I’ll admit I was very disappointed by this news. I’d been looking forward to a live action remake of the movie I watched as a kid, so I expected a white redhaired actress to play Ariel. This isn’t how I imagined Ariel would look if she was a real person. It’s not the faithful adaptation of my favorite kids movie that I’ve been excitedly waiting for since I first heard about the live action remakes. It’s very underwhelming because it’s not what I wanted for a live action retelling of this story. But, that doesn’t mean I hate it. It’s just disappointing and not what I was hoping for. But if anything, Into the Spidervirse has already taught me not to trust these initial beliefs. When I saw the first commercials for Into the Spiderverse, I questioned why Spiderman was just suddenly and randomly a black kid now. I don’t really follow the comics, and I was completely unaware of the existence of Miles Morales. To me, it just looked like they turned Peter Parker into a black character for no reason. But the art style looked cool, and I was at least mildly intrigued. Then the movie came out, and suddenly everyone was calling it this fantastic movie. I finally got a chance to watch it, and yes, every last drop of my uncertainty was eradicated because it was a genuinely amazing film. I think even if he had just been a black version of Peter Parker, I would have still fallen in love with the movie because the end product was way more amazing than my initial reservations toward it. So, I’m hoping black Little Mermaid is the same way. That my reservations toward it won’t matter. That the visuals will still be amazing. That it will still look and feel like The Little Mermaid.

And frankly, if Disney was fine with repackaging Ariel as a minority for the sake of the movie, I would genuinely have preferred it if she was in the LGBT community over being POC, mostly because the Little Mermaid is flooded with LGBT themes and symbolism. See, The Little Mermaid was written in 1836 by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen at the time was in love with his financier’s son, Edvard Collin. But Edvard was in love with Henriette Tybjerg. Andersen wrote the Little Mermaid as a covert love letter, recasting himself as the mermaid so that it would be acceptable in their era. So, the fact that Ariel herself is a gender-swapped version of a bisexual male author, it would make far more sense from a literary and history standpoint to cast either a gay male star with a prince love interest, a lesbian star with a princess love interest, or recontextualize Ariel as being transgender, whether it be the male transitioning to female just as Hans wrote himself as a woman to publish the story, or as an assigned female at birth mermaid becoming male upon becoming human. This to me just feels more in line with the actual context of the story and makes the change to Ariel feel less out of the blue. If Disney was ever going to make one of its fairytales gay, this is kind of the perfect one to do it with.

So, in summation, it’s not the look I wanted. It’s not what I was hoping for, but I’m not foaming at the mouth threatening to boycott the movie either. Frankly, I’m just gonna wait and see how it looks in the first trailers. If I end up passing on this movie, it’ll be because it looks bad, not just because they decided to make Ariel black. Although if they don’t cast a drag queen to play Ursula, I will be mad at this movie for missing a golden opportunity to make itself fabulous. But until I see more, I’m just kind of indifferent. Not happy, not angry. It’s just a thing that exists. It’s the quality of the film that’ll make or break whether or not I like it. Because even a seemingly perfect casting choice, like a certain 2017 live action remake, doesn’t guarantee a good product. And at least this casting choice can sing.

Ariel, listen to me. The human world is a mess. Life under the sea is better than anything they got up there.

Women’s History Month - My Favorite Disney Princesses:

9. Ariel (The Little Mermaid, 1989)

“I don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad.”

THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989) Dir. John Musker And Ron Clements