Talk:Merida/@comment-5933172-20141216033235/@comment-1672596-20141219132445

Agreed overall with your premise, Swoobatman, especially why Merida shouldn't be included. That being said, I do have to disagree with one point you made (well, technically two, but that's extremely minor):

You mentioned that the DPs were Damsels in Distresses who waited for their princes. However, only Snow White and Aurora literally only waited until their princes came for them (and even then, only Aurora was one who waited for her prince to come for the entirety of her character. Snow White did flee into the forest to escape her murderous stepmother and care for the Dwarves, so she at least had something to do besides waiting for her prince, and either way, their waiting for their princes were perfectly justified due to being in comas at the time). Ariel actually pursued her prince, not to mention even before meeting Eric, she already had plans to go to the surface and being among humanity anyways. She even saved her love interest at least twice if not three times, and was the first DP to do so. That's just going by the original film BTW, as she did plenty of other badass stuff in the TV series and even the various sequels and supplementary mediums. Belle basically sacrificed herself to save her father, not to mention broke the curse and even saved Christmas in one of the midquels. Jasmine did attempt to defy a law that frankly was pretty bad, a law that gets even worse considering it was in what was likely to be a Muslim country, and while she didn't exactly do much in the original film, she did get some genuine badass moments in the sequels and TV series. Pocahontas basically brought peace among the settlers and the Indians. I won't cover Mulan much, since it really doesn't need to be stated what she did (and besides, as you pointed out, her inclusion is controversial anyways), and Tiana basically spent most of her movie being badass (in fact, if anything, it was Prince Naveen who spent most of his time as the damsel in distress, which also earned it a spot on Conservapedia's "worst liberal films" list for partly that reason), and heck, Rapunzel was pretty much skilled anyways and other than Mother Gothel raising her was not really a damsel in distress at any point. I have more than a few complaints about the DP franchise myself, including that they're effectively creating Grimhilde clones, but them being damsels in distresses is not one of those things.

As far as my more minor gripe: I agree overall with your claim about the 5th Commandment and how Merida broke it, but I will point out that there are instances where it's better if you DO break it. I know that there was Schindler or some other Nazi official's daughter who broke that commandment by going against him by trying to save the Jewish people, and refused to follow her father's path. Under the most extreme interpretation of following that commandment, you'd even follow it if it meant breaking the other commandments, and even following it if your parent was closer to a parasite who doesn't give a care about you and would more than gladly sell you out even if you save them, and let's be honest, that's even worse. Now granted, Merida's situation is not comparable to the above, and I do very much agree with you that what she did was horrible (honestly, at least with Ariel, Triton did strongly imply that he at the very least wouldn't care if Eric was killed during the storm, if not hoped for that to happen just because he was human, not to mention even Jasmine did have every reason to object to the law, especially when the princes forced onto her doorstep, if Achmed is anything to go by, were horrible).