Beauty and the Beast misc + The Endling 25

[cabepfir]

Yesterday afternoon I found the time for another little Rumbelle fanart... To celebrate (?) the fact that this week I finished reading Bed of Thorns and now my life is empty and meaningless and that there’s only one week till Season 3b. An illustration from chapter 56 of A Bed of Thorns, The Iron Pot. Rumplestiltskin kisses Belle’s hair because he cannot touch her. Sigh. I even used a proper paper this time.



(the whole photoset can be found on tumblr here)

I've now started other Rumbelle fics... It is such a new world for me, and I have some suggestions and recs to look at, but as I'm generally picky, I reject many fics on summary alone (no extreme AU, no "Belle is working as a nanotechnology scientist and Mr Gold is her boss", etc etc), so I haven't found exacly that many fics to download. I've immensely enjoyed Luthien's fics - especially the Plain Jane (awwwd'oh!) and Awakening series. To feed my Beauty-and-the-Beast hunger, I'm also reading the original, 100+ pages long tale by Gabrielle de Villeneuve, and I went to watch the French movie. SOOOOO BAD. This is what I wrote on tumblr about it: (shameless copy & paste)


I was sooooo excited for this movie, I couldn’t wait to watch it (hell, I even changed my profile icon for it!), and for the first half I actually thought there were some redeeming qualities to it. Gorgeous outfits. Good cinematography on some scenes. Possible interesting setting during Napoleon’s times.

By the second half of the movie, I knew it was beyond saving. The film lacks all the important point in the story:

1. The Beast doesn’t request the father to bring back a willing daughter; (and therefore we lose the arranged-marriage-subtext which is ESSENTIAL to Beauty & the Beast)
2. The Beast doesn’t ask Belle to marry him; (and therefore Belle cannot refuse until she realises she loves him.)

On the contrary, the dialogue between Belle and the Beast is stilted and doesn’t follow a logic. Why ask for a ball and then tell the Beast he repels you? Why suddenly during a meal the Beast wonders if Belle will satisfy him? Not to mention:

1. Total lack of chemistry between the main protagonists;
2. No UST;
3. No I-can-spot-your-kindness-behind-your-ugly-appearance theme (see above: arranged marriage can produce your happiness, which is one of the main subtexts in original story.)
4. No speech or kiss between B&B when he transforms; only one kiss at the end without dialogue;
5. No “Will you marry me?” question, not even after the transformation.

Since I re-watched Skin Deep during the Christmas holidays, I checked a bit on the Beauty and the Beast storyline… not much but a bit. First I read (in French) the short version by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (can be found for free online.) Now I’m reading, thanks to this post, the longer version by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve. I rewatched the Jean Cocteau movie which is a masterpiece, not to say faithful to the abridged version (and enhanced by the triple presence of Jean Marais as Avenant, Beast and Prince.) I then learnt there are also modern novels about the talse, such as Beauty by Robin McKinley (I’d like to read it now.) Not to mention that I read Bed of Thorns and other Rumbelle fanfics. Well, Skin Deep is a Beauty & the Beast retelling 100000 times better than Christophe Gans’ movie. And I even remembered a romance I once read, A Rose in Winter by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, in which I now recognise a B&B retelling (and now I understand even much more my preference for “the Beast” over “the Prince” in that case.)

Last Thursday chapter 25/2.05 of The Endling went online... It is one of my very favourite chapters. Here, have some pages:










And now good night ;)