What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

wizzard890:

fozmeadows:

It’s 2am and I just this second realised that the reason so many Disney princesses have male animal companions is because it gives them someone to talk to who isn’t a female friend (and thus another female character), but who doesn’t act as a rival for the male love interest. If you replaced every talking male animal in Disney with a human girl, those films would look really different.

yeah but only three of the eleven canon disney princesses have a male talking animal companion at all, so like. I don’t feel like this actually holds up. the point of most disney princesses’ animal companions was to give them someone to talk to, not someone to talk with, because many of the early films were adaptations of stories that saw their heroines isolated as the audience was getting to know them (Cinderella, Snow White, Aurora). disney keeps this up half out of paying homage to early princesses, and half out of wanting to sell plushes of a cute animal. 

can we please stop trying to blame all the wider ills of society on the disney princess movies

It’s not just those three though? And when I say “talk”, it’s not always with words - I mean animals who act as characters. Ariel has Flounder and Sebastian. Belle has Cogsworth and Lumiere. Jasmine has Raja. Mulan’s best friend is Khan, and she hangs out with Mushu and a cricket. Pocahontas spends vastly more time with Flit and Meeko than Nakoma. Merida has a horse, but no friends. Rapunzel has a chameleon. And even if, as you say, the tradition is just a homage to those early stories, that doesn’t explain why none of the animals are female.

I’m not blaming all society’s ills on Disney. I’m just pointing out that this is a pattern with a consequence.

(via wizzard890)

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    old post but still sadly accurate
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