#batb meta

[stuckasmain]

I may be looking too into it, but while Cogsworth is looking at his mustache — look at his hand. It’s probably in the motion of the scene but, it’s like he’s holding up a pocket watch like he would’ve as a human.

[redeemedbytheking]

nowhere does the movie ever imply that belle wants to bang adam when he’s a beast. you guys NEED to be able to separate romantic feelings and sexual feelings. i know they go hand in hand for a lot of you but sometimes they don’t and that’s okay. i’m just exhausted by people calling belle a furry. it has never made sense to me and it never will. why is it so hard to imagine that she just simply loved him? do you truly not think it’s possible to love someone without wanting to have sex with them?

furthermore, and this always seems to be the crux of the problem, why do you think adam would have sex with her in his beastly form? adam knows he’s not supposed to be this way. he knows he’s truly human. and there is almost a 100% chance that he has told belle stories that clearly imply he was once human. you guys know they had conversations… right? you don’t think adam once said “i haven’t read this since i was a boy” or “i liked that author in school” or anything else to very clearly imply that oh yeah by the way, he’s a cursed human being. you don’t think she eventually figured it out? you think that belle, known curious problem solver, did not ever figure out that this beast and his talking furniture were all actually humans?? YOU KNOW THEY ALL TALKED TO EACH OTHER… RIGHT?

it always stems back to people wanting adam to remain a beast. or, rather, somehow, forgetting he wasn’t born a beast. thinking he’s just always been a beast. and is fine that way. when in reality he’s very imprisoned in his body. and no matter how comfortable belle begins to make him feel in his own skin, this is not the body he wants to have. he wants to be free. he wants to be human again - now more than ever!! there’s someone here now who he has fallen in love with!! don’t you think he became positively desperate to be human again? to have a chance at being a human with her??

i’m not saying it’s impossible for either of them to have had sexual thoughts about each other before the curse lifted. but what i’m saying is that i don’t think belle wanted to fuck him as a beast. and i don’t think adam wanted to fuck her as a beast. because they both knew this is not his real body, nor a body he was happy in. i think they were very much in love with each other, as in love as any romantic couple has ever been, but i just genuinely cannot imagine why either of them would seek sexual pleasure in the state adam was in. hell, take belle out of it, why would ADAM want to do that with her? he doesn’t LIKE the form he is in. he DESPISES his own body. and he knows what it is to be human. so just let him be human, for fuck’s sake.

[princess-in-a-tower]

I went through that BatB meta series and it was the best analysis of the dynamic of Beauty and Beast I had come across in my years of being in the fandom. That God tier meta was the one that made me jump into the Jonsa fandom.

Oh btw, you also put forward the possibility of pre canon Jonsa . You are a fucking icon.

Thanks anon! I’m glad you liked my metas! Being told that I convinced someone so thoroughly that they started shipping Jonsa is high praise indeed!

The BatB meta was possibly the best I’ve written so far. Unfortunately it’s unfinished.... I have yet to write Jon’s part, but at least I finished Sansa. If you guys make me feel guilty enough for not finishing I might get enough of a motivation to write some more lol!

The pre canon jonsa “meta” was not meant as a serious literary analysis tbh. It was more of a crack idea than anything, which came to me and @kellyvela during our reread of AGOT. I knew it would be controversial, but I didn’t really expect how much! 

Once again I believe I should say that I don’t think Jon and Sansa kissed pre canon, or that Jon had any kind of sexual attraction towards her. What I argued was that it was a case of COURTLY LOVE and nothing more. Just a tiny disclaimer because everyone is getting the wrong idea and putting words in my mouth that I never said/wrote.

[gleefully-macabre]

Hey, so I just read ur little Beauty and the Beast analysis post (the one that explains that kyle ron and eddie cullen aren’t Beast material) and u mentioned that u think that the whole “ive never felt this way about anyone” line was about respect and not love. I was wondering when u think the Beast actually fell in love? I’m just curious about ur take on it.

I know which one you mean, and that was my addition to someone else’s initial post and several additions by previous rebloggers.  Just a correction.

As for the Beast, I think respect became friendship which became love sometime during the montage between the library scene and his bath, which in my estimation covered the bulk of late fall/winter (thin shelf ice Belle encountered suggests it hadn’t been freezing long) into very late winter/early spring (most of the snow in the village and forest had melted, which implies a spring thaw).  Even with a margin of error for a warmish winter, that’s a significant chunk of time.

[astudyinchocolate]

broke: '17 improves upon '91 because Adam never once touches Belle without her first initiating.

woke: touching in '91 is fine! Belle initiates sometimes and Adam initiates sometimes, but clearly they are reading signals from each other that this is wanted touch.

bespoke: both '17 and '91 are fine in this regard. Belle and Adam have different histories and dynamics in each version, so neither is right or wrong. Both Adams respect Belle's wishes.

[gastvn]

PTSD!LeFou

Let’s talk about this deleted scene from Beauty and the Beast.

So - throughout the entire movie, LeFou is portrayed as an incredibly strong character. He never slips for a moment, keeping his calm even when Gaston does not. He questions Gaston’s morals and even outright disagrees with him right before “The Mob Song.” It’s been explicitly stated that both he and Gaston fought in a war (probably the Seven Years’ War), and even though Gaston shows blatant signs of PTSD, LeFou, for some reason, doesn’t.

In this moment, LeFou shows a strange, OOC moment of vulnerability. He mutters, “I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be here,” to himself and hides in a water closet for a few moments (until his moment of peace is interrupted by Monsieur Toilette).

I feel like this deleted scene shows how repressive LeFou was of his PTSD - and maybe even emotions? Being friends with Gaston sadly conditioned him into thinking that none of his feelings mattered - the whole relationship was very convoluted and Gaston-centric. As evidenced in the scene in the forest with Maurice, he’s one of the only people who can calm Gaston down when he’s angry (by referencing “the war” and “widows,” even if it might pain him to do so).

Besides the obvious, I think one of the reasons this scene was cut is because it shows LeFou being weak and displaying a certain helplessness. The rest of the movie doesn’t portray him in this way, and it’s frankly very uncharacteristic. If this scene had been included in the movie, however, it would’ve told us that LeFou is definitely repressing... well, if not PTSD, then something.

(Above gif is from this gifset. Full scene can be viewed here.)

[bellesdiaries]

If the village hadn't stormed the castle, do you think Belle would have come back? And similarly, do you think she would have left in the first place if her father wasn't in such immediate danger?

Hi Anon. I do think Belle would have returned to the castle, especially based on her emphatic remark, “Of course I came back. I’ll never leave you again.” Given enough time apart, Belle probably would have missed being with the Beast. Before they met, she carried this deep need to go on adventures, to learn more about her mother, and “to have someone understand”…understand her. He gave her all those things and more. He gave her freedom before he even set her free. The issue is whether or not Belle would have made it back in time to break the curse. Thankfully we never have to find out, because the mob accelerates the timeline!    

While I don’t think Belle would have run away from the castle again, I like to hope that Beast would have eventually let Belle go anyway. The only way Beast can demonstrate to Belle how much he loves her is by setting her free. It might have taken a few more days or weeks–or perhaps occurred that very same night regardless–but at some point, he would have recognized how much Belle misses her father. (Maurice is the reason they meet; so to bring the story into closure, Maurice also has to be the reason they part. The exchange of “You set me free, but I want to stay” needs to happen. As Belle declares, she can’t really be happy if she isn’t free, and Beast wants her to be happy. Belle needs a reason to choose to be with him on her own.)

Even that same night, had Maurice been just fine, what might have transpired? 

In the mirror, Belle watches her father all alone in their cottage, making another music box, this one playing a more solemn version of “How Does a Moment Last Forever.” She studies him with gentle longing, bittersweet tears filling her eyes. After some time, as agonizing as it is, Belle hands the Beast back the mirror, shaking a little. “Thank you,” she whispers. As they return to their separate wings, he notices that she carries herself a little more solemnly, a little less certain, a little less like the Belle he knows and loves. He can see the life being stolen out of her the longer she’s trapped here. This becomes a nightly ritual for them, as much as reading by the lake has become a daily pastime. They dance, and then Beast lets her borrow the mirror for a few minutes–until her sorrow becomes too much for him to bear. Until she either asks or he offers to let her go, to see her father just one last time in person. She uses the enchanted book to return home, only home doesn’t feel quite like the home she remembers. The cottage feels almost as empty as that dusty attic in Paris. As much as her heart soars being with her father again, her heart also flutters with a yearning to return home to him. 

Anyway… The benefit of life and death situations is that they stir up feelings faster. I see the events surrounding Maurice and the mob invasion as catalysts that propel Belle and Beast into action. While Belle would have realized she loves him eventually, it might not have been in time to break the curse. 

[fairytaleslive]

Belle bringing up her freedom

- You think you could be happy here? - Can anybody be happy if they aren’t free? I think we can all agree that this is one of the best lines the 2017 adaptation brought us. And it gets better if you think about Belle’s response in the context of that scene. In both the animation and the Broadway musical, Belle goes basically “Yes, I am happy here, yes, I want to stay with you, but I miss my father.” In the 2017 version, Belle is more like “I can’t even figure out what I am feeling for you since technically I am still your prisoner, so let’s address it.” Basically, she brought up the issue of her freedom only after the Beast started to talk about feelings.