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A review by stephbrittoleal
A Pequena Sereia e o Reino das Ilusões by Louise O'Neill, Fernanda Lizardo
1.0
Before anyone asks, y'all kids can have my feminist ID and kick me out of the club, if this will make anyone happy.
Maybe the editors' Portuguese prologue rubbed me too wrong (calling the original tale deliciously brutal, which is just a bit tad insensitive), with that eagerness of making the Disney movie the villain of everything even though people have been remaking The Little Mermaid long before Disney, and dragging the original tale along, as the original was just about a hetero naive girl having some cray cray ideas about love (and not one of the saddest queer love stories ever written, but okay, go off I guess).
Well, some things are on point: how older men groom girls into dating/marrying them, how we do a lot of things that hurt in order to be beautiful to society, how society pity women against women... But also, this book is no better than the last medieval torture porn I have read.
We need to stop thinking a girl is just a good character after she's brutalized. After she suffers so much she becomes cynical and violent. That a female character is just good if she have a lot of acceptable (toxic) masculine traits.
Putting the reason to be of the Salkas in one man (they are like that because a man....) Instead of placing that over not only the patriarchy, like no other kinds of dominance and prejudice existed.... The most powerful group of creatures in the sea are made because of men, when they could have decided on their fate for many other reasons. Idk, it rubbed me the wrong way.
Also, this straight-washed the entire story. Ofc it's all about a girl silencing herself for a man, like a stupid romantic silly girl, amiright? The Little Mermaid has nothing to do with longing for being loved in a world that tells you you are sinful and damaged, in a world that underwater or not, your love seems like an imposibility and people tell you those gays will go to hell (cough cough, the mermaid didn't have a soul, and sometimes people treat LGBTQ+ people as soulless, yeah), the fact that the Mermaid had a voice, but that didn't matter in her kingdom or out, it says a lot about the queer experience.
ALSO WHAT A SIN TO MUTILATE YOUR BODY TO LOOK LIKE A WOMAN WHEN YOU HAVEN'T BORN A WOMAN, AMIRIGHT????
Ffs, I can't even.
And one minor character being gay in the background isn't inclusive.
Gaia not being "a feminist" until the last two lines or whatever is not an issue, it's not even a thing. She has always been quite in favor of giving voice to the mermaids. A woman doesn't get less feminist for falling in love for the wrong guy (very progressive of some to judge a teenage girl for making mistakes).
I won't talk about the men here. The men define the plot. Gaia mostly reacts to the things happening. Every single woman there is reactive. Just because you pepper a story with hot topics of the modern feminist movement, it doesn't make your characters good.
She decided to be human, I will grant you that. But why not kill the fucker? I'm still to understand.
She's 16 and any older person could make her do things. I am not trying to tell a 70 something elder recruiting teen soldiers is manipulative. Not at all. She's not her mentor. If she cared, she wouldn't wait to the most convenient moment for herself to recruit a heartbroken and mind-shattered kid. (In her place, I would do exactly the same thing, but I am not nice).
And in the end, what changes from this super-woke Retelling and some oh so dark and edgy retelling only worried about torturing the women involved even more than the original? Nothing. In the end, after all fight, her grandma was right: living differently only brought her pain and no freedom. In the end, her society's limitating mentality was right. Who is benefited by this kind of mindset? You defeat the rules and ends up wounded and fated to destruction.
Idk, it would be 100% more progressive to have Gaia fall for Ling and finding love and comfort between the humans.
But all this is just my take on the thing.
And, yeah, sure. This is pure white cishet feminism, but the cover is really nice.
Maybe the editors' Portuguese prologue rubbed me too wrong (calling the original tale deliciously brutal, which is just a bit tad insensitive), with that eagerness of making the Disney movie the villain of everything even though people have been remaking The Little Mermaid long before Disney, and dragging the original tale along, as the original was just about a hetero naive girl having some cray cray ideas about love (and not one of the saddest queer love stories ever written, but okay, go off I guess).
Well, some things are on point: how older men groom girls into dating/marrying them, how we do a lot of things that hurt in order to be beautiful to society, how society pity women against women... But also, this book is no better than the last medieval torture porn I have read.
We need to stop thinking a girl is just a good character after she's brutalized. After she suffers so much she becomes cynical and violent. That a female character is just good if she have a lot of acceptable (toxic) masculine traits.
Putting the reason to be of the Salkas in one man (they are like that because a man....) Instead of placing that over not only the patriarchy, like no other kinds of dominance and prejudice existed.... The most powerful group of creatures in the sea are made because of men, when they could have decided on their fate for many other reasons. Idk, it rubbed me the wrong way.
Also, this straight-washed the entire story. Ofc it's all about a girl silencing herself for a man, like a stupid romantic silly girl, amiright? The Little Mermaid has nothing to do with longing for being loved in a world that tells you you are sinful and damaged, in a world that underwater or not, your love seems like an imposibility and people tell you those gays will go to hell (cough cough, the mermaid didn't have a soul, and sometimes people treat LGBTQ+ people as soulless, yeah), the fact that the Mermaid had a voice, but that didn't matter in her kingdom or out, it says a lot about the queer experience.
ALSO WHAT A SIN TO MUTILATE YOUR BODY TO LOOK LIKE A WOMAN WHEN YOU HAVEN'T BORN A WOMAN, AMIRIGHT????
Ffs, I can't even.
And one minor character being gay in the background isn't inclusive.
Gaia not being "a feminist" until the last two lines or whatever is not an issue, it's not even a thing. She has always been quite in favor of giving voice to the mermaids. A woman doesn't get less feminist for falling in love for the wrong guy (very progressive of some to judge a teenage girl for making mistakes).
I won't talk about the men here. The men define the plot. Gaia mostly reacts to the things happening. Every single woman there is reactive. Just because you pepper a story with hot topics of the modern feminist movement, it doesn't make your characters good.
She decided to be human, I will grant you that. But why not kill the fucker? I'm still to understand.
She's 16 and any older person could make her do things. I am not trying to tell a 70 something elder recruiting teen soldiers is manipulative. Not at all. She's not her mentor. If she cared, she wouldn't wait to the most convenient moment for herself to recruit a heartbroken and mind-shattered kid. (In her place, I would do exactly the same thing, but I am not nice).
And in the end, what changes from this super-woke Retelling and some oh so dark and edgy retelling only worried about torturing the women involved even more than the original? Nothing. In the end, after all fight, her grandma was right: living differently only brought her pain and no freedom. In the end, her society's limitating mentality was right. Who is benefited by this kind of mindset? You defeat the rules and ends up wounded and fated to destruction.
Idk, it would be 100% more progressive to have Gaia fall for Ling and finding love and comfort between the humans.
But all this is just my take on the thing.
And, yeah, sure. This is pure white cishet feminism, but the cover is really nice.