Can I find Mallory Ortberg/The Toast's version of The Little Mermaid?

December 5, 2017 2:33 PM

The marvellous humour/feminism/pop culture/literature/all culture, and Metafilter favourite, website The Toast has been sadly retired for a while now, but I thought it was all staying online for the present at least. Possibly one of my favourite things I ever read was Mallory Ortberg's beautiful, violent and empowered version of The Little Mermaid from her "Children's Stories Made Horrific" series but it's gone! It's vanished from the Google results and, where I've found old blogs, Pinterests, etc which purport to link directly to it, I get basically a 404. Did they get got by either Anderson's estate, Disney or whoever has the rights now? Anyway can anyone point me to a copy of the text at least somewhere? I neeeeeds it.
posted by Dext to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: The Merry Spinster

This delightfully disturbing collection of folk tales, fairy tales, and Bible stories from Ortberg (Texts from Jane Eyre, 2014), an expansion of her series Children's Stories Made Horrific from the cult-favorite website The Toast, delivers on chills, laughs, and much more.

Available in March.
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:42 PM on December 5, 2017 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I don't believe the piece is legally available on the web anymore, but Ortberg's collection of her horrific childrens' stories, The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, comes out March 2018 and should be amazing. It definitely contains the mermaid story.
posted by Rush-That-Speaks at 2:43 PM on December 5, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: You can see a copy of it on the Internet Archive.
posted by artistic verisimilitude at 2:45 PM on December 5, 2017 [17 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks to all. Both a (potentially dubious legality for sharing) online copy and a future book I can buy for the excellent friend I was searching it out for. Double win.
posted by Dext at 4:49 PM on December 5, 2017