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The Little Spitfire (Committing to the Joke)

Somewhere high above and beyond your imagination is an adventure in fantasy.

The Little Spitfire is a joke taken way too far and one that I have committed to solely for the meme. It is a Skylanders take on the story of The Little Mermaid (1989), replacing the original cast with our own flame-spirit SuperCharger Spitfire, optimistic lark Stormblade, gloomy Dreadwalker Nightfall and many more.

The Context

This joke came about while I was brainstorming cutscene dialog for a cutscene in my fan-game. This cutscene took place in an underwater kingdom and I was listening to "Under the Sea" to give some ambience. What I had come up with was that all Skylanders of all elements had been magically protected against the waters and were now swimming freely beneath the waves, making their way to an underwater palace. Spitfire and Stormblade would be chatting as they swam, with the conversion involving Spitfire expressing difficulty/confusion at swimming. Stormblade would then suggest he "does it the mermaid way" and would “demonstrate” what she meant (furiously wiggling and spasming up and down like a maniac). Spitfire would then copy her (much more fluidly and gracefully due to his merman-esque body shape). The conversation would then go as follows.

Spitfire: For some reason, I feel like I should get up on a rock and sing about being part of the world above.

The reason that the conversation would go this way is for 3 reasons:

1. This fan-game establishes that all Skylanders are fans of Earth media and consume a lot of it. Spitfire alongside others is quite familiar with Disney movies like The Little Mermaid.

2. The fan-game itself is very musical in its mechanics, so Spitfire having the urge to sing isn't that strange. In fact, singing is a necessary requirement for unlocking the main power in the story. Specifically, it’s working together with others and being in-sync with one another as well as being able to work in harmony that’s necessary. Singing and dancing being the easiest way to achieve that so that’s what everyone’s been doing. That's why Stormblade asks if they're going to sing later. She sees it as an offer to both have some fun and try and work together to harmonize.

3. Spitfire is willing to humor Stormblade's optimism and slightly odd suggestions like accepting offers to sing karaoke with her or play dancing games with her. If she wants to sing and dance all silly after a mission, he’s happy to join her. It’s not his usual style, but he doesn’t mind it, plus the above reasons of harmonizing would give him good reason to do it too.

Now, I didn’t disregard this at all, because quite frankly, I like merfolk way too much and I saw Spitfire having a tail similar to them as the perfect opportunity to make the above conversation into a wonderful brick joke that still made sense in the setting (I’m imagining either a full theater production of it, or just those two singing on a rock on the beach for fun). To quote myself: “I’ll be honest, it’s the fact he doesn't have legs. I was like "yeah, I can merman this”. I mentioned this in the Portal Masters Lounge Discord server and user “Firedanne” asked the following:

“Does he dream of living up in the sky and collect raindrops and pieces of shot down planes?”

I said “no, but that’s a great idea” and quickly the two of us realized that it made a lot more sense than Spitfire being a merman under the sea (which already doesn’t make a lot of sense, full admittance). And…well, the joke went from there and it did not stop. After replaying the official soundtrack for The Little Mermaid, I decided to do it for the meme and bring you all…whatever this can be considered. Crack post, probably.

The Actual Idea

Summary: Deep inside the volcanoes of Skylands, fire-spirit Spitfire lives in a glowing arcadia of magma and flames. But Spitfire wishes to live amongst the clouds, however his father King X** forbids him from realizing his dreams. One day, after saving the life of* Y**, a creature from the air, Spitfire finds himself smitten with* Y and makes a deal with a devious deadly witch to become an Air creature and must earn Y*’s love before time runs out.*
*X and Y are placeholders because I don’t actually know who will fill those positions. More on that below.

The Plot

The plot would be the movie’s plot albeit with potential for some minor modifications to it, either to be more Skylanders-y or just because. Not entirely sure but I see the plot as having the same beats and basic layout but being somewhat different in execution. It absolutely has the songs though, I’m not getting rid of that.

• One of the most significant plot changes would be the role of Flounder if Stormblade takes that role. Stormblade would be a being of Air who would be Spitfire’s best friend and also his wingman, assisting him where necessary and such. Essentially, she’d be a much more extraverted and adventurous Flounder who’d act as Spitfire’s wingman and on-land ally (she’d be a secondary protagonist almost). Because in canon, the two get along and seem to be on friendly terms, I can imagine Stormblade as Spitfire’s good friend and the one who tells him all about the sky, brings him stuff, goes exploring with him etc. Plus, the opportunity for both to duet songs like Part of Your World and Stormblade soloing Kiss the Girl is a lot of fun to imagine.

• After that, the rest of the plot changes would boil down to some slightly different scenes, different dialog (but with the same intentions) and so forth. Since the story would take place in the sky, the setting would also be different, but that wouldn’t really affect things all that much aside from some wording changes.

The Characters

Here’s the current cast list as it stands. The question marks mean I don’t know if that person I picked really fits at all, but it also means I don’t know who would be in that role at all.

The Little Spitfire Cast

Spitfire would be a flame spirit prince who lives beneath the surface in a massive volcanic kingdom. This is to keep his “no legs, merman tail” thing; now he has a reason to swim everywhere and also explains why as a flame spirit, he can’t simply fly upwards (and on that note, he doesn’t have his wings either, or his technical enhancements; he is pure fire and rock-body). He is stuck underground, but sneaks above onto the surface to explore and collect things that fall from the sky, birdwatch etc. He’d go to the witch and that’s where he’d get his wings and tech enhancement, but of course, he’d give up his voice and have the “get a kiss before 3 days is up” condition.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky for me. On the one hand, I could make Stormblade the Eric of the story (so she would be the Y character) and it would work perfectly fine. But on the other hand, I’ve also got another role for her, an expanded-upon version of Flounder’s role as detailed above and that also works perfectly. Both options for her work out really well because her canon relationship with Spitfire makes her ideal for both positions (as detailed in the plot section). I’m torn about what to do with her because if not her, I don’t know who would be the Eric role. It could be a man or a woman, but I’ve got no clue who I’d pick. I know who I wouldn’t want, but the elimination game hasn’t been super helpful.

The easiest role to choose however is definitely Nightfall as Ursula. She’s a Dreadwalker, she’s got the spooky colors, she’s menacing-looking, she has the tentacled hair and she absolutely would kill it singing “Poor Unfortunate Souls”. And while she’s not evil in personality, her personality would make her a more believable Ursula in comparison to say, Splat. Nightfall being of the Dark element also helps; she’s opposite to bright fire and daylight.

The roles of Sebastian and Scuttle were also OK to come up with, but I’m not too sure about them all. I went with Smash Hit for Scuttle because he’s a rather weird fellow, so he fits with Scuttle’s rather strange self. Dive-Clops is Sebastian solely because he’s the smallest of the cast (I’m talking about him suitless, mind you) and I thought it would be hilarious to put him in a crab costume, or something like that. However, neither of them are Fire or Air elementals, so in the context of the story, it doesn’t make all that much sense.

The role of King Triton is completely up in the air. I have no idea who could, would or should be in his role in the slightest. I know it should probably be a Fire elemental, I just don’t know who. The role of Eric is also unknown for reasons detailed in Stormblade’s entry above. I don’t have a set person at all; the closest I got to someone who wasn’t Stormblade is Ka-Boom and that was for a joke where Ka-Boom auditions and Spitfire struggles to drag him places, and also gets crushed underneath him because of size differences (to me, Ka-Boom look bigger than pretty much every Skylander by a large margin). It was not a serious consideration at all, full disclosure. I don’t have a serious consideration for Eric except for maybe Stormblade as discussed above.

The Music

I’m weak and I always make playlists and this joke is no exception.

• Fathoms Below: Opening song. Would need to be changed to be fire-related.

• Part of Your World: Sung by Spitfire (maybe Stormblade too, depends on her role). Would have to be air-related, not water-related.

• Under the Sea: Sung by whoever ends up being Sebastian. Also would have to be fire-related, not water-related.

• Part of Your World (Reprise): Sung by Spitfire and no one else.

• Poor Unfortunate Souls: Sung by Nightfall.

• Kiss the Girl: Sung by whoever ends up being Sebastian or by Stormblade, depending on her role.

And that's it. That's the entire thing. If anyone has suggestions for roles, throw them at me because I am out of ideas entirely. Completely out of ideas.