One thing I was really interested in looking for when searching for art was images that portrayed the Little Mermaid. I wanted to see different interpretations on how she looks to artists based on the Disney version and other adaptations as well.

I came across this image and it immediately brought a smile to my face.

We only briefly talked about this in class, but I do have so many thoughts on the new live action Disney version of The Little Mermaid. In this version, Halle Bailey is casted as Ariel and has gotten a lot of criticism thrown at her. There have been many blatantly racist comments made towards her being Ariel and quite frankly I think it’s outrageous.

In this image, I think the artist did a fantastic job at portraying who Ariel really is. In the Disney movie, Ariel loves her sidekick Flounder and she’s known for her beauty. This image does Ariel justice. It has her long red hair, her green tail, her sidekicks, and other sea creatures as well. The colors are bright and the contrast between the darker blues and her red hair and darker skin tone just pop. People are criticizing Halle Bailey, but it’s just an excuse to be racist. She has everything she needs to be the perfect Ariel. She has the red hair; the beautiful singing voice and I’m looking forward to seeing the movie no matter what the critics say.

I had never read or heard of the version of the Three Little Pigs by Roald Dahl before reading it for this class. Since I had never read it, I was really engaged throughout the short tale. There are many different versions of the Three Little Pigs, and in the versions that I read in the past the pigs all lived. So, this was a different take on the tale that I already knew. Personally, I looked at the three pigs with sympathy. They were trying to build their, two of them were eaten by the big bad wolf and the last pig was killed by Little Red Riding Hood houses with not much explanation. It was a shock at first to see her show up in this tale, I laughed when the pig called her up to save him. It was really shocking that she pulled a “pistol from her knickers” and then killed the wolf and the pig. In her own tale, she doesn’t have much agency at all, but in this story, she has more agency than the pigs, which I think is interesting for Dahl to do. It’s a story about three pigs, but they really don’t have much agency at all.

Ever since I was a little kid, I always loved being creative. I loved making up my own stories or just daydreaming. I was never a big fan of science or math since there only seemed like one way to approach a certain topic. That’s why books were always a safe space for me. I could just read and read for hours and escape from the real world and delve into a beautifully crafted fictional world. Even though these worlds are fictional and not real, they are very much real to me. Harry Potter, The Mortal Instruments, The Maze Runner, and An Ember in the Ashes are all fictional worlds that make me insert myself into them and really live and breathe through them.

            I remember when my sister started reading Harry Potter, I instantly wanted to start reading it as well. Partly because my big sister, whom I look up to, is reading something and loving and the other part is because I absolutely loved to read. My parents were always reading to me as soon as I was born. As I grew older, I always wanted one of them to read me a bedtime story, I wouldn’t go to sleep without it. Now that I’m older, nothing much has changed. I still read every chance I get whether that’s a physical book or reading books on my phone, it’s always been a hobby of mine and I think it always will be.

            That hobby of reading eventually grew into a love of writing. Now, I have a love of writing my own creative stories or just writing my thoughts down in a different and creative way. One day, I hope to write and publish a novel. I’d be happy if I was able to publish just one thing. It’s always been a goal of mine since I was in Middle School. My love of writing and reading has only grown and contributed to my goals of where I want to go in life.