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ysobelI don't get story ideas much any more because I don't write. (Partly I don't write because the mechanics are hard and awkward, and writing a paragraph feels like a marathon. But partly there is a self-reinforcing cycle where I don't write because the ideas don't come (or they come as a vague concept with no idea for execution, or they come and then immediately die in the throes of logistics) which means I don't write which means the ideas don't come which means...)
But lately I've been wanting to do a retelling of Beauty and the Beast where "Beauty" is an ironic nickname: she is disabled, deformed, probably has vitiligo, whatever. And so they call her Beauty to mock her. Maybe even she's visually impaired so they're doing it to mock her intelligence/perception as well (ha ha she doesn't even know we're making fun of her, how pathetic is that)
And then today I realized: the Beast, often, is cursed such that they look like they act. I don't know quite how disabled!Beauty meets her Beast, but I have this image of her hearing the curse story and going "what no that's *bullshit* i mean do i look this way because I'm a horrible person? Does (Gastón analogue) look like he acts? Pretty sure not. Fuck this."
...and then I'm like well what if part of the purpose of the curse is that the pre-Beast had an attitude of "disabled people are inferior" and so got made disabled as a very ineffective morality lesson
...and then I spent about half an hour flailing about because AUGH NO, red alert red alert, you are going to fuck this up in completely ableist ways, flaiiiiiil.
Because my brain is logical like that...
But lately I've been wanting to do a retelling of Beauty and the Beast where "Beauty" is an ironic nickname: she is disabled, deformed, probably has vitiligo, whatever. And so they call her Beauty to mock her. Maybe even she's visually impaired so they're doing it to mock her intelligence/perception as well (ha ha she doesn't even know we're making fun of her, how pathetic is that)
And then today I realized: the Beast, often, is cursed such that they look like they act. I don't know quite how disabled!Beauty meets her Beast, but I have this image of her hearing the curse story and going "what no that's *bullshit* i mean do i look this way because I'm a horrible person? Does (Gastón analogue) look like he acts? Pretty sure not. Fuck this."
...and then I'm like well what if part of the purpose of the curse is that the pre-Beast had an attitude of "disabled people are inferior" and so got made disabled as a very ineffective morality lesson
...and then I spent about half an hour flailing about because AUGH NO, red alert red alert, you are going to fuck this up in completely ableist ways, flaiiiiiil.
Because my brain is logical like that...
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Date: 2017-08-09 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-09 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-08-09 10:03 pm (UTC)...so in what ways does Beast's impairment fuck with him, and is it permanently imposed?
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Date: 2017-08-09 11:43 pm (UTC)(Actually I half want to have it so that Beauty drags Beast to the enchantress to get the curse removed and the enchantress is all "what? No you just have (blah blah condition), it's just a coincidence that it kicked in at the same time. The curse was people forgetting about you.")
I know I want ... I *don't* want a fix-it ending. Which is not to rule out happy endings, just no magic un-disabling. (Although there's a part of me that wants the Beast to get *offered* a cure/decursing and go "actually no, this is who I am now, $oldidentity can stay forgotten".
The fucking-with is definitely partly self-imposed -- I'm thinking someone who took pride in their appearance and believed the "disabled and/or ugly people arent fully people" thing, so that *being* one triggers a tailspin of "everyone will hate me now that I'm not a person" ... but I ... hmmmm.
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Date: 2017-08-10 12:02 am (UTC)*pompom*
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Date: 2017-08-09 09:20 pm (UTC)