How Has No One Noticed This Giant Plot Hole In "The Little Mermaid" Before?

The Little Mermaid is one of the most beloved films in the Disney canon. It's so beloved, in fact, that despite millions of rewatchings, it seems like no one has ever really noticed a pretty glaring plot hole in the film, one which was brought to light by Facebook user Mary Falls over the weekend.

In an eye-opening post, Mary posed a pretty obvious question: if Ariel's whole problem in the film was that she couldn't speak to Eric, why didn't she just write down what she wanted to say?

"Ariel could have saved herself a lot of trouble if she had just learned to read and write," Mary wrote in the post. "She could just scrawl out an explanation of her situation for Prince Eric like, 'Hey Blue Eyes, I saved your life and then you fell in love with my voice, which I could probably get back if you just used your love to try to suck it out of my throat through my mouth here,' but like nicer and in princess language. Then they could go ahead and seal the deal."

Were we to assume then, that Ariel was actually illiterate? It would make sense, after all she is a mermaid and (let's face it) not the brightest of the Disney princesses. But wait! — she definitely couldn't be a illiterate because there's that scene where she reads Ursula's contract and signs her name on it.

"But then I figured, if she was the daughter of a king, she probably could read and write," Mary continued. "She probably had the finest underwater education available, especially since she was the star of the under sea orchestral extravaganza, which had absolutely no room for scrubs. Then it occurred to me, duh — they can't write underwater without those special pens, and they'd have to be able to walk to The Sharper Image to get those. But I'll be damned, she signed that contract with Ursula. So, Ariel is completely flipping literate and, in point of fact, has excellent penmanship!"

Mary tries to then give her the benefit of the doubt by proposing that she was just trying to play it cool and "take her game to the next level," but then there's no skirting around the fact that no independent, intelligent girl would choose to run around, as Mary put it, "miming like an adorable lunatic" instead of just eloquently writing out her thoughts.

So, unfortunately, there's only one conclusion to draw, which is that the option of writing to Eric simply didn't occur to her.

"Crushingly, Ariel absolutely could've closed from moment one and happens to be a moron," Mary concluded.

OK, so she's clearly not the smartest fish in the sea...But hey, at least we still have Belle.

H/T Huffington Post

What do you think of this fan theory? Had this plot hole occurred to you before?