when i was a breeze i blew four dozen trees every morning to strengthen my gales and now that i’m grown i just raze them with ease, so i’m seven times bigger than wales!
A Beauty and the Beast AU where Belle realizing she loves Beast isn’t at some dramatic climactic event but during some randome everyday moment. Like, she’s filing her nails and just kinda glances up at him and he’s like doing something just as dull and it just kinda dawns on her that she loves him but she doesn’t voice it cause she isn’t exactly ready to confront thoes emotions and what they mean so she goes back to filing her nails but then is starts raining glitter and Beast is defying gravity in a glowing ball of light and the castle is changing back and everyone becomes human again. Then everyone is left in silent moment of shock and confusion and Belle, being completely unaware of what it takes to break the curse, is just staring around in horror while everyone freshly humanized comes running into whatever room she and Beast were in (probably the library) expecting to see something other than human Beast in a heap on the ground and Belle across the room in a chair frozen in shock and confusion and everyone just kinda looks at each other for a couple of seconds not realy sure what to say cause nobody is entirely sure what happened other than the curse was broken. Then Beast finaly gets up and looks around and realizes what this means and looks at Belle and is just like “you love me?” And Belle is just like “wat?”
ALTERNATELY: Belle falls in love slowly. As a result, Beast turns back into a human slowly. She overhears him singing in the shower (it’s amazing how old pipes echo) and realizes it’s that song she was trying to teach herself on the piano (okay, that the piano was teaching her). It’s sweet and mundane, and lovely. Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Beast is humming nervously as he looks at the fur clogging the drain. He thought at least he’d be free of male pattern balding since he’s cursed! Later, Belle gets a cold, and Beast brings her soup and sandwiches, and she curses at him because how dare he have such a hearty immune system, and he chuckles and leaves it. After he’s gone, she notices he cut the grilled cheese on the diagonal, crusts off, exactly right. Beast, downstairs, trips and falls, because the sudden lack of toe-claws threw off his balance.
And so on and so forth, so slowly she doesn’t really see it, she just assumes her memories were colored by her fear. Until one day, as he goes out to tend his roses, she yells “Bye, love you!” and when he comes back in, all excited, she nearly beans him with an encyclopedia, because “WHAT THE FUCK, WHO ARE YOU?” and Beast is just “You seriously didn’t notice me turning back into a human? You are so smart… and SO DUMB, I BEEN NEARLY DYING EVERY TIME, WHY DO I LOVE YOU, YOU BEAUTIFUL DISASTER WOMAN!”
So were you aware that the The Beauty and the Beast story we all know is a heavily abridged and rewritten version of a much longer novella by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve? And that a lot of the plot holes existing in the current versions exist because the 1756 rewrite cut out the second half of the novella, which consisted entirely of the elaborate backstory that explains all the weird shit that happened before? And that the elaborate backstory is presented in a way that’s kind of boring because the novel had only just been invented in 1740 and no one knew how they worked yet, but contains a bazillion awesome ideas that beg for a modern retelling? And that you are probably not aware that the modern world needs this story like air but the modern world absolutely needs this story like air? Allow me to explain:
The totally awesome elaborate backstory that explains Beauty and the Beast
Once upon a time there was a king, a queen, and their only son
But while the prince was still in his infancy, in a neat reversal of how these fairy tales usually go, the king tragically died, leaving his wife to act as Regent until their son reaches maturity
Unfortunately, the rulers of all the lands surrounding them go, “Hmm, the kingdom is ruled by a woman now, it must be weak, time for an invasion!”
And the Queen goes, “Well, if I let some general fight all these battles for me, he’ll totally amass enough fame and power to make a bid for the throne; if I want to protect my son’s crown, I have no choice but to take up arms and lead the troops myself!”
(Btw, I want to stress that this woman is not Eowyn or Boudica and nothing in the way her story is presented suggests that she had any interest martial exploits before or in any way came to enjoy them during these battles. This is a perfectly ordinary court lady who would much rather be embroidering altar covers for the royal chapel and playing with her child until necessity made her go, “Oh no, this sucks, I guess I have to become a Warrior Queen now” and she just happened to kick ass at it anyway.)
And the Queen totally kicked ass, but the whole “twice as good for half the credit” thing meant that no matter how many battles she won, potential enemies refused to take her and her army seriously until she had defeated them so no sooner would she fend off one invasion than another one would pop up on a different border.
So she spent the majority of her young son’s life away from the castle leading armies, but it was OK because she left him in the care of her two best friends, who just happen to be fairies! This was an awesome idea because a) fairies have magic, and therefore are like the best people to protect the prince from any threats and b) fairies consider themselves to be so above humanity that the lowest fairy outranks the highest mortal, so they’d have no interest in taking a human throne. Good thing they were both good fairies instead of one good and one evil one!
(Spoiler: they were not both good fairies.)
So the two fairies basically take turns raising the prince until he’s old enough to rule. And on the eve of his twenty-first birthday, the evil older one comes into the prince’s bedroom.
“So listen, kid. You’re about to become king, your mother’s on her way home from the war to see you crowned, and I have a third piece of good news for you! You see, I’ve actually been spending so much time here lately because Fairyland’s become a bit too hot to hold me for reasons totally not related to me being secretly evil. And if I have to hang in the human world, I might as well reside in the upper echelons of it, so even though as a powerful fairy I completely eclipse your puny human status in a staggeringly unimaginable way, since you’re about to be king and since my premonition that I should stick this whole guardianship thing out because you would be hot one day has totally proved accurate (go me), I will graciously lower myself to allowing you to marry me. Please feel free to grovel at my feet in gratitude. (Btw, we can totally start the wedding night now, we’ll tell your mother about it when she arrives tomorrow.)”
Went and saw Beauty and the Beast, and I just had to share my experience because it was so pure?
So, like, I get into the theater, find myself a nice spot smack dab midscreen, which is WAY EASIER without thirty people traipsing in behind you in a group, lemme tell you, and I’m just sitting there, by my lonesome, scrolling tumblr and watching whatever weird stuff they’ve got on screen, and a family comes to sit in my row, which was the only empty one not right in front of the screen. Sat down what I thought was a seat away from me until I saw a little girl in an adorable ass red dress climbing over mom and dad to sit next to me.
Totally fine. I was just off of center and they got to sit right in the middle of the screen, and when she finally gets settled this little girl looks up at me, with a soda half her size in one hand, and somehow both popcorn and candy in her tiny little lap, and she stage whispers to her mom:
“She’s by herself!”
Mom looks embarrassed, but I smile and wave off the apology.
I go back to my phone, only to realize someone is tugging at my sleeve. Little girl looks up at me, all wide eyes and curiosity, and holds out a napkin filled with popcorn and chocolate. Like, I remember being a kid, and I remember how important candy and popcorn at the theater are, and I think she thought she was saving my life by offering this sustenance.
I almost fucking cried guys, kids are the best.
So I take it and thank her and let her talk my ear off for a few minutes until she needs a drink because she has been talking SO MUCH her mouth is dry. This kid is going places, guys, I’m telling you right now, because she picked up that cup the size of her torso like a champ and angled the straw just right and continued to try to talk to me around her gulps.
While this is happening, on the other side of me another mom and daughter sat down, and, turns out, the girls know each other. I’m guessing, based on the gumption of Red Dress, that they probably met in the lobby before they went into the theater.
Girl number 2, I’ll call her Princess Dress, because it was a fantastic dress and when I told her so she proceeded to point to every princess along the neck and name them and give me their Stats, proceeds to have a conversation across me with Red Dress.
Both sets of parents were looking like they wanted to bury their heads in their hands, but I was having a blast.
Anyway, eventually lights go down, we get into the movie, and for the most part Red and Princess were content, although every so often Red made sure to pass me a handful of sticky half-melted chocolate.
Watching a live action version of a movie that I watched for the first time when I was their age was a fuckin’ trip, man. Like. I got super emotional over things I didn’t expect to, and during the wolf scenes I was actually mildly distressed, because Princess was gripping the hand rest so hard on my right I thought she was gonna break it. Any scene I laughed or snorted at got a peal of laughter from my two new best friends, so hopefully no one has to go home and explain why I nearly snorted out my drink during “Be Our Guest” when they went for a visual gag for “After all miss, this is France!”.
During the ballroom scene, Red turned to her mom and whispered “The Beast is handsome!” and it took so much for me not to lean over and whisper back “Girl same.”
But my favorite, MY VERY FAVORITE part of this whole experience was when Gaston shot the Beast – FOR THE THIRD TIME HOLY HELL I KNEW IT WAS DARK BUT GODDAMN THIS IS A KIDS MOVIE ISN’T IT – Red patted my arm because yeah, okay, I was maybe crying a little, look, I know what happens but the movie made me feel things okay. Anyway, she like, pushes herself up in her seat and leans in close and she goes “It’s okay. He’s gonna be okay.”
The point is, children are so pure, and everyone should always watch movies with strangers.
Steel Phoenix Studios 