#i know crystal sora is a closer parallel to ice anna but this is little mermaid oNLY zone

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

soriku little mermaid thread part 2

(Part 1)

Part 2: Saved by the Light

Starting with Ariel singing “Part of Your World”. I’m not gonna go line by line or anything, just wanna paraphrase certain parts. If you’re not familiar, the song is basically about Ariel wanting to live in the world outside of the ocean. Lol, cutting to the chase. Again, it’s basically Kh1 Riku.

One thing I want to specify is that even though the song is called “Part of Your World”, she doesn’t actually say “your” in the chorus at all. Not when she first sings it in her secret cave, where she has her collection of human stuff. Ariel just wants to be part of “that” world—the human world.

When she’s singing this, she’s in her cave, which has an opening at the top. The hole lets in light from the ocean’s surface, and Ariel reaches for it, but she can’t actually reach it obviously (bc the hole is too small lol). It’s all an obvious metaphor for how Ariel is stuck underwater while wanting to live up on land.

I wanna note that while the human world is obviously the land, what Ariel actually sings about, what she dreams of, is being in the sunlight. She reaches for the light above her cave, what you assume is the sun above the water. Underwater, sure, there’s light, but the light isn’t properly/directly touching her, she can’t directly feel it, it doesn’t fully reach her. She dreams of being outside of the water, so she can spend her days directly in the sun's light. The light represents and literally touches—encompasses—everything Ariel can’t have. (lol it’s a reverse lion king)

I gotta repeat how Ariel feels trapped in the water, and she is reaching for the light.

Cough. Riku trapped in darkness, reaching out his hand...to Sora. Riku, wanting to be, to live, in Sora’s light in general. (Letting Sora’s light shine onto his darkness.)

A shadow blocks out the light over Ariel’s cave, and she swims to the surface to check it out. Turns out it’s currently nighttime, which means the light Ariel was reaching for was actually the moon. Moonlight.

(Recoded flashbacks; the memory of Kh1 Riku reaching for the moon and bringing his hand to his chest dramatically, owie)

It gives me thoughts about Sora’s light, and vaguely hearing the idea of Sora being the moon, and Sora being closer to darkness than light. Like, as a personal headcanon ig, perhaps Sora’s light seems so bright because he’s reflecting Riku’s light, the way the moon reflects the sun, and has no light of its own. We know Riku’s light is like. Inhumanly bright. Like, Riku doesn’t just seem to have a bright light in his heart. It seems like he is light itself, or at least he’s connected to it in some way. Especially with all his sun imagery. So to me it’d make sense that even if Sora was merely reflecting Riku’s light (not to mention Riku’s light shines directly onto Sora’s heart), because Riku’s light is so impossibly bright, Sora’s would seem extremely bright as well. The reason Riku’s bright light hasn’t been “obviously attributed to him” is because he was cloaked in darkness ig. The way the sun’s light isn’t visible at night, though it continues to shine, and is only seen at dawn. And I mean, the light second to the sun in the day, is the light of the moon at night. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Anyway, the shadow Ariel saw was a ship. It’s shooting fireworks into the sky, and I mention this because I always gotta mention fireworks lol. Ariel swims up to the ship, sees the crew celebrating, but when she sees Eric, she instantly falls in love. And it just reminds me of how Riku has only ever had eyes for Sora, even since childhood lol.

But why is the crew celebrating? Apparently it’s Prince Eric’s birthday. And for his birthday, he is presented with—a statue. A statue, of himself. Of Eric. Man.

SORA’S STATUE. goodness.

Grimsby, the man who commissioned the statue, apparently had originally intended it as a wedding present, but that didn’t pan out because Eric didn’t fall for the princess he had been set up with.

“Believe me, Grim, when I find her, I’ll know. Without a doubt it’ll just—bam—hit me, like lightning.”

...sure, Sora. But it makes me wonder, once Sora does realize—would it be all at once? Versus Riku, who took his sweet time putting it to words in DDD lol. Who knows.

But lightning does strike—the ship. The ship burns, Eric’s heavy ass stone statue sinks into the ocean, Eric risks his life to save his dog—

Now Eric is drowning.

Sora, at the bottom of the abyss. But in my mind, it lines up more with Sora’s breakdown. His darkness caught up to him and overwhelmed him, and he finally confessed to feeling worthless. Riku expressed his belief in Sora, which helped Sora persist after death, and Riku sacrificed himself, which created the tear in time that let Sora rewrite the fated fall to darkness.

Riku saved Sora.

Ariel saves Eric.

We see them on the shore, under a cloudy sky the morning after the storm. Eric is breathing, but unconscious. Ariel calls Eric beautiful, when the night before she’d called him handsome, and I mention it because I love that line lol. Ariel touches Eric’s cheek and starts singing “Part of Your World”, but with changed lyrics.

This time, the song is specifically about Eric, not just humans in general. Ariel’s priority—her dream—has changed. Man. It’s DDD and Kh3 in one song! Nice.

The clouds part and the sun shines on Ariel and Eric on the shore. A literal ray of light.

Eric starts to wake up (and the sun only shines on him once Ariel’s voice wakes him), and he sees a girl surrounded by a bright light—

Eric, saved by the light.

Sora, saved by the light.

—and the girl is singing a song. “...part of your world.”

Your world. And I’m just here, thinking about Riku, and how his quote has changed from being about important people, to being about one important person. Riku doesn’t just want to see the outside world anymore, he wants to be part of Sora’s world, part of Sora’s life. ????? How to be “okay”??

Of course, Ariel has to swim away before Eric fully wakes up and realizes she isn’t human. And all Eric knows is: “A girl...rescued me. She was singing. She had the most beautiful voice.”

AND THAT’S IT, that's all he remembers. He only knows this mystery girl rescued him, he vaguely saw what she looks like, he heard her song, and that she has a beautiful voice.

Ugh. So little yet so much—SORA.

I can’t get over the in-game implication that at the very least, like Eric, the one moment Sora has memory issues with, is Riku’s sacrifice. Specifically the event of Riku saving him.

He doesn’t seem to remember the sacrifice, or who saved him, if Sora remembers he needed saving, which it seems he does. In eng, Sora tells Nameless Star that he “thought it was all over” for him, but that someone told Sora they believed in him.

All Sora remembers. Is that he was in trouble, that he was screwed, and that someone believed in him. And he acknowledges that that’s what’s helping him keep going, to literally persist after death.

But Sora doesn’t seem to remember WHO saved him.

The way Eric doesn’t know WHO rescued him.

And when I think of Eric only knowing Ariel by her voice, by her SONG (bc he didn’t get a good look at her)—I have to think of Sora and Riku’s song. The one that plays either completed or with half the song missing when Sora either defeats or loses to Yozora. Dearly. Beloved. And the fact Eric doesn’t know exactly what Ariel looks like—is a detail for later.

Another note I wanted to make was that at first, Ariel was reaching for the light. But now, we see that Ariel IS the light.

Riku reaching for Sora’s (moon)light, only for Riku to end up being the (sun)light himself.

??????

(Part 3)