Comment on Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 13:58:57 GMT

Your link just led to an Aladdin icon, so I assume you had something else in mind.

When I was rereading the thread, it also occurred to me that Ursula was the hard part. My take is that she's what she is for much the same reason crime bosses are what they are-- power, safety, and excitement-- with the last two having to be balanced. It might be interesting if there was a family tradition of being outlaw magic users.

However, I'm not a feminist, though I agree with a lot of feminist ideas. I think men and women are fairly similar, and that means some women are going to be very bad news. I'm inclined to think that the status differences between men and women have a lot to do with men being (for reasons that aren't clear to me) better at group violence. It's not about the upper body strength.

Ursula could be an outcast from her own society because she's mean and irresponsible. You could spin a story about her which goes either way-- the octos are actually dominant (or at least secure/isolated), and they exile their criminals who then predate various cultures the octos don't care about.

Alternatively, the mers dominate the octos, and Ursula has ambition and no place inside respectable mer society to use it.

Real world octopi are short-lived. How would that affect their approach to prisoner's dilemmas? A claim that they're unreliable because of their short lives could also be used to justify prejudice against them.

However, I'm just noodling here-- I've only seen the movie once.

Discuss