The Little Mermaid

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Hello, and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now.

I'm knowing I'll be wishing for a life where the people are today, but to do that, I'm going to need some wacky sidekicks.

Luckily for me, my co-hosts perfectly line up with the characters from Disney's 1989 animated masterpiece, The Little Mermaid.

So let me introduce Heath Eli Tom and Cecil or Flounder the Flatfish, Scuttle the Seagull, King Triton, and the crazy chef who sings about wanting to murder fish.

Okay, straight best friend with very bad advice.

It's not that I'm wrong about everything.

It's that I'm confidently wrong about everything.

And you have abs.

I feel like I have an advantage over any that aren't a swordfish.

I think I could probably win everywhere else.

I'll take them.

And that's what I have your respect.

And before we get started, I wanted to thank our patrons.

Patrons, if it weren't for you, I'd have to go back to my former career writing erotic versions of classic fairy tales.

And having access to that was terrible for Eli's productivity.

So if you'd like to help keep Eli on task, be sure to stick around to the end of the show.

And with that out of the way, tell us, Cecil, what person, place, think, concept, phenomenon, or event will be talking about today.

Today, we're going to be talking about the little mermaid, past and present.

All right.

And, Tom, you read an article and or walked past your kids watching a cartoon.

Are you ready to recount the tale for us?

It'd be a little fishy if I weren't.

At least a little.

And given the way that you usually use your intros to sort of sneak up on your topic, I don't want to, like, I feel like my best hope at an introductory segue is just take it away tom

all right there are many disney stories based on great literature there's oliver and company that's a retelling of oliver twist and we all know the lion king is a sanitized feline version of hamlet which is fine as someone who for this very show is always on the hunt for a good story i'm sympathetic to the need to look around for interesting tales to tell and retell in new ways.

Imagine my shock, which will soon be yours, when I learned of the original tale from which the beloved classic, The Little Mermaid, was drawn.

A hint here, it is maybe not worse than Sleeping Beauty, but it is definitely not better, and it may actually be worse.

Maya King wasn't Hamlet.

I think that was the name of the pig.

Yeah, but I heard a rumor that Zootopia 2 is based on Titus Andronicus.

I don't know how they're going to pull it off, but I am intrigued.

That would be so good.

I would love that so much.

Just Just bunny hops all covered in blood.

What's her name?

Something

hops.

Judy.

Judy Hops.

All right, so first, let's all re-familiarize ourselves with the Disney version, a movie which, released in 1989, earned $84 million at the box office and $235 million worldwide, despite worries that it would be a lesser-grossing film.

due to its appeal to a mostly female audience.

I guess neglecting to consider that half of all people are female and not all males are assholes.

A fact which we will continue to neglect for Check's watch at least the next 36 years.

I just love that someone at Disney in 1990 was like, okay, so what have we learned?

If the fish is fuckable enough, more people will watch it.

Write this down.

Fuckable fish.

No, I got, I already wrote it down.

I said that a while ago and you guys were like, finding Nemo is a dumb script.

We're not making that movie.

You guys are assholes about it.

Make the kid Andy Captain.

We're not making it.

The movie begins by.

The movie begins by introducing the ruler of both the sea and the mare folk, King Triton.

who in re-watching this movie with my wife brought both of us to the realization that she is definitely into muscular, gray-haired men with big dad energy.

A fact I found both validating despite routinely skipping tail day.

So I just, I want to point out that I used King Triton as Tom's analogue in the intro before I read this part.

I mostly did it because he's constantly breaking shit in the cartoon.

King Triton is happily being serenaded by his daughters in a concert praising what a great dad and ruler he is, a concert choreographed in its entirety by a hermit crab with a Jamaican accent.

This concert is supposed to be the musical debut of the king's youngest mayor daughter, 16-year-old Ariel.

What's that in fish years?

It's rule 34 years old.

But right as the clam shell that is supposed to contain his youngest daughter, ready to sing his praises, opens up, we see that the clam is empty.

Ariel has ditched the crab, and we soon see she's off exploring a sunken ship.

looking for banal human artifacts like she's auditioning for an episode of Hoarders, when suddenly she and her best friend Fish are set upon by an an enormous snaggle-toothed shark from which they narrowly escape with their lives.

Flounder expresses his relief at not having been eaten alive, but Ariel, a typical teenage psychopath who can only think of herself and has no grasp of reality or consequences, mocks her best friend for being afraid of nearly dying a very violent death.

The pair then heads to the surface, where we meet Scuttle.

a seagull and pathological liar whose terrible sense of his own personal self-worth inspires him to pretend he's an expert at all things human when in fact he just lies and makes shit up in a desperate attempt to be loved.

The Eli Bosnik story.

Okay.

It's very sad.

That's true.

It is.

Thank you, Tom.

Ariel is, of course, completely snowed by his bullshit because as we will soon discover, she is a very poor judge of character.

This is when we are now introduced to Ursula, who we know is the villain right away because unlike all the Mare folk, Ursula is heavy set with short hair.

Also, she has black octopus legs.

That's a bit of a gimme.

It turns out she is an extremely big mad at King Triton, who is her brother, and who banished her from the court of the Marefolk because of her lust for power.

Now, Ursula has been plotting and scheming for some way to regain power and get revenge on Triton ever since, and she realizes that Ariel's teenage rebelliousness may be her way in.

So he says, you're too conniving, so go off where nobody can keep track of you and what you're doing.

Don't you dare connive while you're there, though.

I blame everything that happens from here on on King Triton.

I do too, actually.

Now, Ariel is now back home, and she is in big trouble with Sebastian the crab for missing the concert.

And in the heat of the exchange, Flounder lets it slip that Scuttle has been teaching Ariel about the human world.

And Triton then completely loses his shit, driving his daughter away, at which point Sebastian is press-ganged into being a snitch and keeping tabs on Ariel, which Sebastian resents.

But since he's a little boot-licking bitch, he goes along with.

Okay, the king has like a 16-pack and a magical trident.

What the fuck is a little crap gonna do?

Like, kick him in the balls and run away or take over somehow?

I don't know.

He gets in them pubes.

He can at least make him regret that bullshit.

I don't know how big he is.

He's combing the pubes with the trident to get him out of there.

I'm not buying a special shampoo.

So Sebastian tails along behind Flounder and Ariel, and we discover Ariel's human treasures hoard, at which point she sings about how much she wants to be part of the human world, a feeling which only makes sense when we remember everything she knows about it was made up by a lying seabird.

Now Sebastian breaks the mood with more of his snitch-bitch antics, but just as he's getting most tedious, a shadow passes overhead on the surface and raises Ariel's curiosity, at which point she swims up.

It's a trawler.

She's caught, processed, and canned.

Good night, kids.

Have a great night.

Part of your

fucking Here we see a ship in the midst of the most insanely dangerous celebration possible.

They are shooting fireworks directly overhead while everyone on board sings sings and plays those accordion things you only ever see in the cartoons.

He means accordions, everybody.

Okay, I think Tom might be a man.

He said octopus legs earlier instead of pants.

A celebration is being held for Prince Eric, who gets as a gift a super sweet statue of himself looking like a baller, but which he receives with a churlish lack of gratitude because he too is a teenager and is self-indulgently myopic and cannot appreciate the time and effort that the gift very obviously would have cost.

Anyway, Ariel sees the whole exchange, and upon laying eyes on Eric, she is immediately loves him.

Tom hates kids.

He does so much.

You can just tell.

It's contempt.

He's just contempt.

He's just dripping the entire time.

All right, she's probably just lust.

He didn't deny it.

You notice that he didn't deny it.

He just kept reading.

Just smoothing forward.

Just smoothing forward.

She's probably just lust struck, actually.

They don't know each other, but they're teenagers.

And really, it's a tomato-tomato difference.

All right.

So, Tom, what expensive gift did you buy from your son that he hated and that you're still so bitter about?

I'm just saying

the statue of him on a big throat.

It's not true.

I've seen your alimony.

Suddenly, and when I say suddenly, what I mean is immediately and with no warning signs at all, there is a hurricane.

Because hurricanes on the ocean are sneaky, I guess.

Anyway, with the hurricane comes lightning, which strikes the mast and causes a fire that only a raging rainstorm like a hurricane could possibly put.

But it doesn't.

Anyway, it's complete bedlam.

And Eric ends up going ass over tea kettle into the water.

And then the boat explodes, which gives Ariel a chance to grab the man three times her size and easily rescue him and get him to the shore.

Just flopping up the beach with no legs in slow-mo like paywatch to revive the guy.

Now as Eric is waking from a prolonged unconsciousness resulting from surviving the percussive blast of a massive fireworks powered explosion, Ariel is above him, singing some more, but the sun kind of blocks things.

The prince has clearly suffered a massive traumatic brain injury.

Anyway, Ariel hightails it into the water and watches and sings about him from a rock about 12 feet away, which Eric doesn't hear because he's too busy proclaiming his undying love for the girl who saved his life and then sang right at his face.

Not enough CPR musical numbers.

Can I say that?

Took the words right out of my mouth to mouth.

We should also point out, by the way, that the explosion was at night and he wakes up up in the day and not like early in the morning, even, just in the full-on fucking day.

So God only knows how long her song was.

How long he was unconscious.

Now, Ariel has it bad for Eric, and she pretty much spends the next few days daydreaming about his stupid face.

And the whole thing stresses out the Jamaican hermit crab with the Greek name.

So he is compelled, too, to sing a song with the help of a host of ocean critters about how awesome it is under the sea.

And he actually makes a lot of really good points about the dangers of capitalism and the drudgery of work, while also pointing out that people eat fish, and a lot of her friends are fish, many of whom presumably also eat fish.

That last part isn't as compelling.

Anyway, that's probably why Ariel and Flutter just ditch out mid-song, and Sebastian then rats out Ariel's secret to King Triton.

Okay, honestly, if I rehearse a fully choreographed dance number about your hometown just to keep you off fucking teen Aquamon and you

fucking bow out halfway through.

I'm blowing up your spot.

I'm blowing up your fucking spot.

Telling your dad with the cum gutters.

Somehow, Flounder, who is a pretty small fish, managed to haul that huge statue of Eric to Ariel's secret grotto of hoarded human garbage, which is a nice gesture, but one which is short-lived because it is then the Triton bursts in.

And Ariel tells her dad that she's in love, which is forbidden because they are clearly different species.

and that is pretty universally frowned upon.

Looking at you, Washington State.

Wait, what?

They fuck animals there.

Oh, I didn't realize.

Oh, let me explain.

Those fucking hicks fuck animals.

They fucked all the animals there because they're in the middle of nowhere.

Fucking amazing.

And they are animals themselves.

Oh, my God.

That stays.

I thought I could do a nice little quick zing, but never to clarify.

with the exception of two cities everyone in washington state is a cross-eyed goon

that'll your dog if you tie it up so yeah i mean i don't listen there's data on that eboz furry is the number one relative term in washington state on pornhub yeah sometimes they google their thank you all right here we go

jesus christ how do i recover from this To prevent crossbreeding, the king furiously,

actually.

Unfortunately, the king furiously starts shooting laser beams out of his magic trident and blowing up a bunch of Ariel's stuff, including the statue of Eric, which she absolutely had plans for.

She lays a bunch of eggs in the water and then shakes the statue over him.

Damn!

I said, I was busy in here.

Now, while in the throes of her teen angst, Flotsam and Jetsum remind Ariel that parents just don't understand, but that maybe Ursula the sea witch might.

And she does.

Ursula explains that she can help give Ariel legs and make her human, but that the magic will only last three days unless she can convince Eric to fall in love with her and plant her a kiss.

Yeah, however, will she convince a teenage guy to kiss her with only three days to work with?

Oh, and also she's going to have to work her money maker at him because the payment for the deal is Ariel's voice.

But that, I guess, is also just a deposit because also the payment is if she doesn't secure the smooch, she is enslaved forever.

So the stakes are clearly very high.

And Ursula sings and dances lasciviously about in clearly untrustworthy ways in what is obviously an evil villain layer.

But Ariel is a dumbass teen and agrees anyway, loses her voice, which gets trapped in a magic shell.

Like the chocolate sauce you pour on ice cream and then it solidifies?

Like, is that what you're talking about?

I mean, look, they made the same pitch to me about college loans at that age, and they didn't even bother to sing, so I'm fucking hitting it.

You know,

I ain't getting a single song.

And they trapped your future in that shell.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm afraid I had to rake them across the cold.

For some reason, the transformation from mermaid to human also means that in addition to having human parts from the waist down, she suddenly can't breathe underwater, even though she could breathe just fine out of the water before.

So I'm not real sure how her respiratory system works.

The movie spends very little time on the intricacies of mere folk biology.

Anyway, Flounder and Sebastian help Ariel to the surface so she doesn't die, which is good because the movie still has quite a bit of runtime to fill.

And it also shows that if Ursula really wanted to cheat, she could have just won the bet with nothing but a few extra deadbolts on the way out of her house.

On the beach, Ariel, the 16-year-old kid, is very clearly now a naked human standing on the beach, which would only do if the movie were an anime rather than a Disney movie.

He has way more tentacles in the anime version tongue.

Or octopus feet, as some people put

biscuits, mermanime.

So her little animal friends rig up a random piece of sail and rope that was laying about into a surprisingly fashionable dress just before Eric happens to wander onto the beach for seemingly no reason other than to find Ariel and take her to the castle.

He kind of recognizes her, but I guess her shockingly bright red hair and enormous eyes aren't distinctive enough to overcome her inability to say hello, and he brushes it off.

Okay, now be fair, Tom.

This movie was made in 1989 and men weren't aware that women could speak until Legally Blonde came out in 2001.

So like

Ariel is then given a bath.

And we are here glad that Neil Gaiman has no part in the story.

Come on.

Because it's perfectly innocent.

Jesus.

Though Sebastian has rather a tougher time of things.

After getting caught up in the sailcloth dress, he ends up in the kitchen where he encounters a chef who loves his job more than anyone I have ever known.

Seriously, we are supposed to see in this chef a man who is obsessed, fanatical even, but really.

What if what we are really seeing and failing to recognize because so few of us have ever felt it is just the natural zeal of a man who actually loves his work?

Anyway, he sings a song, song, he crashes the crab around, trashes the kitchen, but I just want to leave you heartened here to know that the passion for his work remains intact.

The next morning, the prince begins to give Ariel a tour of his kingdom, beginning with the nearby town.

And Ariel pretty much loses her shit at everything and behaves exactly like you would expect if you were with someone who had never seen anything in the entire world at all.

Eric takes this as charming rather than utterly insane, and soon the pair are on a romantic rowboat ride on a lagoon.

And you would think this would be the time for Eric to make his move, but this guy has absolutely no game, despite Ariel pretty much giving him every sign that she wants a snoggin.

Naturally, it's time for Sebastian to take charge and set the mood by leading the lagoon critters in a little mood music, though the refrain, kiss the girl, is somewhat on the nose.

I always wondered if that song needed extra verses on their wedding night.

Yeah, right.

Kick the tongue with your alphabet.

So

I'm putting my chip down here.

Best song in the history of Disney cartoons.

Barnan.

Come at me, frozen fan.

Whoa, come on.

I'll tell you to let it go anyway.

So made it easy on me.

Just as Eric is about to get over his performance anxiety, the eels, Flotsama Jetsum, who somehow have made their way from the ocean to what very much seems to be fresh water,

nonetheless turn over the boat and kill the mood.

Yeah, yeah, what could kill the mood quicker than everybody being soaking wet?

Is this a romance for Ben Shapiro?

What's going on here?

Now, Ursula realizes that what she told Ariel in the beginning, that men don't need a lot of conversation if there's a pretty face or the willing attitude, panics and transforms into Vanessa, a young woman without any octopus legs or tentacles

and with Ariel's voice.

Okay, should have kept those tentacles.

Like, read a porn hub year in review.

You know, you survived those tentacles.

Obviously.

So, Vanessa hypnotizes Eric into agreeing to marry her.

And this part I do not understand at all.

All Ursula needs is just for Ariel not to be kissed.

Marrying Eric not only is not necessary for the cock block, but it is very unclear what the end game would be for Ursula here, who does not seem to want Eric or want to be human or want anything really other than to hurt Triton.

So the whole wedding thing seems just weirdly overcomplicated when she could have just hypnotized them into like leaving town for a few days on a guys trip or something

and accomplish the same thing.

You are now in love with me.

Also, you can't stand the sight of octopus ceviche.

All right, but she doesn't realize this, so there's about to be a wedding.

Except that Scuttle happens to be flying by the ship where Vanessa, using Ariel's voice, is gloating about her evil plans.

And when she passes in front of a mirror, Scuttle sees Ursula in the reflection and realizes they've been played.

And he rushes over to Flounder and Ariel and explains the situation very poorly, despite it being a very straightforward story.

Okay, so there's, all right, let me go all the way back to the beginning.

There's this drag queen who called herself divine, right?

And so that's inspiration.

I don't know.

This seems like some glass houses shit coming from a guy whose essays on wacky Americana start with a melancholic dissertation on the fall of man.

For some reason, Ariel, with her human legs, can't swim at all.

So Flounder has to tow Ariel out to the boat while she clings to a barrel while Sebastian goes to fetch the king.

Scuttle realizes he's got to stop the wedding to give Ariel and company time to intervene.

So he flies around, recruiting a bunch of birds and seals and starfish and all the rest of that shit to fuck up the wedding.

And fuck it up, they do.

In the chaos that follows, the shell necklace necklace is torn from Vanessa's neck, and Ariel gets her voice back.

Eric snaps out of it, and he realizes that Ariel was the right girl all along, and the two are finally about to kiss.

But the sun sets before he can lay one on her, and all hell breaks loose.

Oh, no.

Ariel turns back into a mermaid.

Ursula transforms out of Vanessa and back into

whatever it was that she's called.

An octopussy.

The octopus he grabs Ariel and pops into the ocean, where they pretty much right away run into King Triton.

Ariel finally apologizes to her dad for all the bullshit she caused, and Triton, who had been beating himself up for how his anger management issues drove away his daughter, tries to blast the contract Ariel signed to Ursula with his magic Triton.

However, even though Ariel is clearly underage and cannot even join the Columbia House CD Club at this point, much less sign a mortally binding legal contract.

The contract remains magically enforceable.

Well, Columbia House is way more expensive in the ocean.

It's a whole sand dollar.

So Ursula, seizing her chance, offers to free Ariel from bondage if she instead can enslave Triton, which is what she very obviously wanted to do all along.

Now, Triton, not exactly showing he's mastered the art of the deal, just immediately agrees and becomes a weird, shrunken seaweed creature or something and Ursula takes his crown and trident becomes queen of the sea the power immediately goes to her head and she and Ariel have a bit of a row but before Ariel can be killed by the much more powerful Ursula Eric who saw the glowing beneath the surface and surmised that that was where the action was swims below and strikes a glancing blow on Ursula with a harpoon before remembering oh shit he's got to breathe air Hmm not sure what that glow is but I better get down there and see if anyone needs stabbing Well, but based on his accent, he's American, right?

So, like, he's like, oh, yeah, there's a thing happening.

I better shoot it.

Yeah,

very realistic.

A fight ensues with Sebastian and Flounder throwing down with Flotsam and Jetsam, who are trying to drown Eric.

And Ursula attempts to shoot Eric, but Ariel grabs her hair, throws off the shot, and the eels are vaporized, which enrages Ursula even more.

It's then that she magically starts to imbignate herself to gargantuan size, raging about and yelling about how powerful she is and in her furious zeal ursula forms a huge whirlpool which sucks up the sunken ship from the beginning of the story

you guys can just feel the fucking tension now can't you

now for some reason this ship The ship which had sunk once before now not only floats, but is navigable in the maelstrom swirling about our heroes and villains.

And Eric climbs aboard and steers the ship through the raging currents, ramming the splintered bowsprit into Ursula, killing her, and sending the Trident and Crown tumbling back to the ocean floor and breaking the curse that had rendered Triton a shadow of his formerly mermanly self.

And he quickly regains his trident and crown and order is restored, with a man now firmly back in control of the seat of power, saving the world from the capricious whims of the untrustworthy feminine.

Who, to be clear, we just watched get straight up impaled in this children's movie.

And after all, the sea spray settles, Triton realizes that Ariel is still Jones and Hard for Eric, and he remembers he has like a half a dozen other daughters, so he could just spare this one.

And he blasts Ariel with some magic and turns her human so she can get with Eric, which she does.

All right, well, I'm emotional now, so we let it take a break.

Take a quick break for a little apropos of the thing we were just talking about.

All right, little ones, now that you've brushed your teeth and taken your medicine, who would like a story?

What's this?

No bedtime story?

Sorry, Paba, we're just a little worried that your stories might not, um,

you know, hold up super well.

Generationally, we mean.

No, what are you talking about?

These are classic tales.

No, they are.

They are.

But a lot of them end in murder or death?

Quite a bit of sexual assault.

Good deal.

Now, children, aren't you being just a little son?

Child abuse in a cannibalism.

Torture.

A lot of eye removal.

A lot.

All right, that's it.

If you're going to insist on no bedtime story, then I shall bid you goodbye.

Papa.

don't be upset, Papa.

No, no, no.

No, I shan't be convinced to stay, but I shall have you know that tonight's selection, The Jew and the Rapeable Cricket, was my favorite story as a boy.

I think we're good.

Yeah, that's good.

You know, from me, dog.

You don't know what you're missing.

I feel like we do, though.

We know.

No, my fist fits up there fine.

I just don't think people get that, like, I'm a puppet in that moment.

Well, how are you moving your mouth?

Oh, that's a good question.

Like, yes, I mean, my, I'm, I'm, I'm, okay, well, I would totally get that you're a puppet from that.

Right?

Thank you.

So it's not, it's not that.

Gentlemen, I got him.

Got what, Tom?

And why are you wearing a black jumpsuit?

Did you try taking a dance class again?

No, no, no, no, I'm still banned from the whole studio.

That is so unfair they did that.

Yeah, thank you.

No, but I got my data back.

Your data from who?

From data brokers.

You know, all kinds of websites and apps collect your data and then they sell it, resulting in more spam in your inbox and even your mailbox at home.

So I had to do something.

I mean, Tom, why don't you just use

incogni?

Is that a NOAA drug?

Because I got work on Monday.

I can't.

No, no, no, no.

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That's incogni.com slash citation.

All right, guys, thanks.

Well, I guess I better give back these chips full of data.

Tom, those are pop chips.

Are they?

You get those from the break room?

I don't know.

I was repelling.

Sure.

Repelling, yep.

Tom, I said no.

Just try one.

He'll bite you.

It's true, he will.

Hey, guys, what are you doing?

Yeah, is I'm trying to put Noah in a gift box again?

Okay, first of all, Lucinda would have loved that.

And second of all, Noah, I'm trying to get him to eat a vegetable.

That's poison.

It's not poison, man.

Guys, me and Heath have been at this for a while.

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I'm not a child, Cecil.

Tom currently has you in an arm bar over a celery stick.

Okay, but still.

But yeah, he does.

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All right, guys, thanks.

I hate while we got him, do you want to try that box thing again?

Last time, Tom, nobody wants that surprise, man.

I think she'd like it.

So, what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an Organic Valley farm.

Organic Valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

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When we last left off, Tom was walking you through an awkward part of my sexual development.

Tom, tell us how much worse it could have been.

All right, so that's the Disney version, and it's fine.

It is.

It's got some catchy tunes, it's got some zany antics, and as Disney movies go, really has very few problematic elements, at least compared to the source material, which was written by Hans Christian Anderson and which was originally published in 1837 as part of a collection of fairy tales for children.

Again, I need you to keep in mind that this story was meant for children to read.

For children.

And not to take over Tom's essay or anything, but Hans Christian Andersen is one of history's most fabulous gay drama queens.

He left the original draft of The Little Mermaid, this story, on a straight man's pillow at Charles Dickens' house because he was mad at him for not returning his affections.

Affections that Hans Christian Andersen had never bothered to tell him about because they had never spoken.

What's the wind condition there in Hans's head?

This guy's going to pick up this book and be like, holy shit, this book I found on my pillow is pretty well written.

It's a kid's book and it's pretty well written.

You know what I could really go for?

Sex with a man.

All right, so here's the story.

The little mermaid lives in a kingdom underwater, ruled by the sea king, her father, her grandmother, and her five older sisters.

The little mermaid is fascinated by the world above the surface and is very excited to turn 15.

You see, all mermaids, when they turn 15, get a kind of mermaid rumspring, and they get to swim up to the surface and check out the world above.

And since all of the little mermaid sisters are older, each of them gets to check out the surface world before the little mermaid.

And each of them are pretty much like, meh, on the whole thing after a while, which I do get.

Now, when it's a little mermaid's 15th birthday, she pops up above the waves and she sees a ship where everybody is celebrating the birthday of a prince.

And even though she only sees the celebration from a distance, she is immediately love struck by the prince, which is good for him, since a storm kicks up and sinks the ship.

The prince floats down beneath the waves.

And at first, the little mermaid gets all excited because she thinks he's there to hang out with her.

But she soon realizes that no, no, no, he's drowning and that's bad for him.

So she saves him, but nobody saves the other sailors and they all drown, all of them.

And also, sometimes it just rains corpses if you're a mare person.

And that's just the fact of mare.

Oh, wow.

Mom, I'm going out.

You are not, young lady.

It's literally raining men right now.

Yeah.

Hallelujah, mom.

I'm a metaphor for fucking gay sex.

Pay attention.

I'm saving the prince from boring henero stuff.

Did you know this is what you guys were from Banner at the beginning?

God damn it.

All right, but I love this, though, because it implies that when they do their rum spring,

they don't go to the land.

They just go to the surface.

Right?

See, you figure Ariel was the first one that didn't just go up there and say, huh, it's all blue and flat.

This isn't fucking boring.

All right, so the little mermaid saves the prince and takes him to the shore near a temple.

And she doesn't sing, and he doesn't see her, and he has no idea who saved his life.

The little mermaid's confused by the whole death thing.

So she has a chat with grandma, who explains that humans don't live nearly as long as mermaids who live for 300 years, but humans have immortal souls and they go to heaven.

Well, mermaids just die and turn to sea foam because they're soulless, which kind of explains Ariel's red hair.

I feel like grandma's really let a lot of philosophically important concepts slide up to this point.

She's kind of having to play catch up.

The little mermaid is in love with the prince, to be sure, but really, what she really wants is an immortal soul.

The prospect of turning to sea foam is just not appealing to the younger generations.

Strong disagree.

So the little mermaid pops over to see the sea witch, who lives on the bad side of the coral.

Now, the sea witch makes her a deal.

She can have legs, but in exchange, the sea witch wants her voice.

Well, actually, the sea witch wants her tongue, which she is going to cut out with a knife, not use magical laryngitis.

Oh, and also, if she becomes human, she can never return to the sea because the change is permanent.

Oh, and also, drinking the potion will feel as if a sword has been run through her.

Okay, still, it is not all bad news because she is going to get some really sweet gams out of this thing.

Like gams so great, she'll be the best dancer in all of the world.

pulling some serious moves that no one has ever been able to pull off before, except the pain of losing her fish bits will never leave her.

Not ever.

And every single step that she takes will feel as if she were walking on knives and her feet will bleed terribly as if she were walking on knives.

It is a very knife-centric bargain, really.

Okay.

At this point, it feels like the sea witch can't actually do the thing she promised and she's trying to talk her way out of this.

Sorry, you like walking on knives?

Seriously?

No, wait, I wasn't finished.

Also, he's gonna fucking splain stuff all the time have you heard of the blockchain it's the fucking worst

okay okay you're out also

even though the sea witch can give her fleshy bits rather than fishy ones She can't give her a soul.

The only way to get a soul for this girl is if the prince loves her and marries her, because then part of his soul can flow into her.

But if the prince marries someone else instead, then the little mermaid will die of a broken heart and become sea foam.

So, just to recap,

this is not a good deal.

Doesn't seem like a good deal, no.

The mermaid agrees anyway and has her tongue immediately cut out of her face.

You think that's a bad deal?

You should see what they had to give up for Columbia House back then.

Cecil, I don't like to note a note, but that's like the third Columbia House reference this month.

Do you have something you want to talk about?

I just wanted 13 CDs for a penny, Eli.

It's like getting fucking

You wanted guitar skills and you met at the crossroads, Cecil.

What happened happened?

I paid off my college loans before I paid off fucking college house.

The now tongueless 15-year-old kid swims to the surface with her bottle of potion and makes her way to the shore near the prince's castle, where she drinks said potion.

And again, the pain is so intense that she passes out on the shore, no longer a mermaid, but now a fully naked human.

The prince wanders by and sees this naked girl and is immediately, and this is a quote, taken by her beauty and doesn't seem to mind when he discovers that she's mute.

What he likes best is watching her dance.

And so she dances again and again for him, even though it feels every time like she is dancing on knives and her feet are just bleeding everywhere, which he has to notice or wonder about, but still he makes her dance for him.

And she, knowing that deal, does.

Just squishing around like she's in blood soaked galoshes, silently screaming.

And this dude is like,

nice.

Yeah.

It's fucking terrifying.

You feel like you'd do that long enough, you could learn how to draw a little, like a blood portrait by the end of the dance, right?

You just hold it up.

Look, I did Jim Morrison.

All right, now the prince really likes the little mermaid, and she becomes his absolute bestie.

And he confides all of his secrets and innermost feelings in her, safe in the knowledge that she can't spill his secrets since her fucking tongue was cut out of her body.

He doesn't fall in love with her, though.

He's a fair bit older, and he's just not that into her.

And he's straight, Hans.

He's married with children.

So the prince thinks of her more as a kid's sister, which is kind of nice and wholesome, but like not if you're the one dancing on knives, hoping to build some romantic tension here.

Now, as for the prince, he is getting a lot of pressure to marry the girl from the kingdom down the road, but he's resistant to the idea because he doesn't love that girl.

All of which he confides to the mermaid who's no longer a mermaid.

Now the mermaid perks up on hearing this until the prince confides that who he really loves is the woman from the temple where he washed up on the shore because he believes it was the temple girl who saved his life.

Well, it turns out that the temple lady is one and the same as the princess from the neighboring kingdom.

And when the prince finds out, he's ecstatic and he agrees to marry the princess at once the marriage is going to be celebrated aboard a wedding ship and the little mermaid is of course invited since she's the prince's bestie though he has no idea that she's heartbroken and about to die and turn into sea foam just before dawn at the last minute the mermaid's sisters pop out of the water and they've got a dagger and they explain to the little mermaid that there's a loophole in the sea witch's deal.

If the mermaid kills the prince, he can't marry someone else.

And if his blood drips onto her feet, she'll get her fish bits back and can be a mermaid again.

It's not a great deal since she has to become a murderer, but it's a better deal than the sea witch gave her.

Killing someone bound by a contract is always an option to get it nullified, which is why none of you know where I live.

None of you.

Right?

Yeah, I won't even tell this motherfucker's my name.

Ultimately, the mermaid can't bring herself to murder the prince.

And instead, she throws herself and the dagger off the ship and into the sea, where she dissolves into sea foam.

But she doesn't die.

Instead, she becomes a luminous spirit known as a daughter of the air.

And she ascends into the atmosphere where she is greeted by the other daughters of the air who tell her that she has been transformed because she really wanted a soul.

And she tried really hard, and turning into sea foam would just be kind of a waste.

So she is then given 300 years to do good deeds.

And if she can do enough of them, kind of like my name is Earl, she's going to receive her soul and go to heaven.

Though presumably none of the other mermaids or her mer family will be there because they didn't valiantly not commit murder one time and they're just all seafoam now.

Wait, one last thing.

If you get a book on your pillow and you fuck that author nicely, you also go to heaven and none of your bigot fucking family is there because they suck at the end.

End of book.

Oh, and the moral of the story is that kids should behave because kids that behave shorten the mermaid's time that she has to spend doing good deeds, while misbehavior lengthens that time.

But that doesn't make any sense as a moral because if doing good deeds is a chore for you, maybe you suck and shouldn't go to heaven.

And also, if she spends more time doing good deeds, then more good deeds get done.

Though it's probably better than walking around on knives, just bleeding everywhere.

No, that's fair.

So, if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be?

I have heard the mermaids singing each to each, and I do not think they will sing to me.

I don't either.

Are you ready for the good?

Why not?

All right, Tom, if Hans Christian Anderson was alive today, he'd obviously be making fish porn, like a bunch of it.

What would be his best title?

God,

A

Chum Inside Me, Jesus Christ, B

skate, skate, skate.

Or C,

two girls, one scout.

Oh, God.

Fantastic.

Chum inside me, I guess.

I don't know.

I don't want him to send that out loud.

Whatever you said was going to be right.

Oh, crap.

Oh, sure.

All right, Tom.

What other fairy tales did Hans Christian Anderson write as passive aggressive notes to straight men he was in love with?

A,

the little boy who tried things because maybe he liked them better.

B, the beetle who knew what the other beetle liked better than butterflies.

Or C,

the ugly duckling.

Seriously, this dude did this shit all the time.

He's the Peter Teal of Victorian England.

I guess they'll guess the ugly duckling.

That's great.

That is great.

All right, Tom.

What song did they play at the Little Mermaid's Wedding?

Oh, God.

A,

all about that bass.

B,

wall-eyed girl.

C,

hey, soul sister.

Or D,

throw your hands up like the coelacanth told us by Mackelmore.

Like the coelacanth told us.

Like the coelacanth told us.

Ceiling can't hold us.

That's who the coelacanth told us.

That's so amazing.

That's Jesus.

And then mackerel more.

That's just too much in one place.

I don't know.

It feels like a lot.

It does.

It feels like heavy weighted players.

It's amazing.

All right.

Well, I think it's obvious that Tom was going to win one way or the other, if for nothing other than reminding me what a fucking banger under the sea is.

So, Tom, you're our.

All right, Cecil, you're next, buddy.

All right.

Sounds good.

All right.

Well, for Heath, Tom, Eli, and Cecil, I'm Noah.

Thank you for hanging out with us today.

We're going to be back next week.

And by then, Cecil will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can listen to Cecil talk about Joe Rogan with Michael Marshall on their show, The Know Rogan Experience, or listen to various combinations of us on cognitive dissonance, the Skeptic, God Off Movies, Dear Old Dazz, Scathing Atheist, D D Minus, and probably some other shit.

There's too much for me to remember all of it.

And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com/slash citationpod or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com.

But once again, I have dropped my pen, said the cricket.

That's it, I'm going to boarding school.

Let him finish.

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