Beasts of Beauty: Genderswap

So, I’ve touched on these topics in other posts, but I wanted to give them their own space as well. Which means today we are talking about Aerona and Chasen, as our Beast and our Beauty, respectively! Big spoilers ahead if you haven’t read Beasts of Beauty yet!

I knew that when I decided to make my Beauty a man that I wanted to make a big departure from the standard interpretation of Beauty that is often used in retellings and adaptations. There’s lots of adaptations out there with all sorts of different beauties, but a lot of them go the Disney-esque route where Beauty is an intelligent young woman who loves books and is often the responsible caretaker of her family. She’s often a bit of an outcast, not really fitting in with the people around her because she’s different and usually because she’s well-read in a society where a woman or at least a woman of her status is discouraged from pursuing those fields.

I like those versions of Beauty as much as the next girl, but in the original, she’s not as much ostracized by the village as much as she is her sisters because of their jealousy. Everyone calls her Beauty and compliments her on her good attitude despite the family misfortune, which makes her sisters bitter.

But since my Beauty is a man, I wanted to go a different route. If you remember my post about why I chose this fairy tale, I mentioned how Disney set up Gaston as a foil to Belle and the Beast because he was what their society valued in men as well as being handsome.

And I didn’t think it would be as strange for a young man to be interested in books, not as strange as it tends to be for women in most of these societies. Plus it worked well for what I had in mind for my Beast.

But when it comes to appearance male standards of beauty tend to be different from female standards. So Chasen fits those male standards. He’s tall, broad, muscular, has a little bit of stubble, and has a few non-disfiguring scars. He’s a huntsman who has been constantly training, traveling and fighting since he was thirteen, so he’s the perfect middle ground that women often find attractive. He’s no body builder, but he’s not suffering from a lack of strength and muscle. He certainly looks like a stereotypical handsome brute.

And if in the original, Beauty is well-liked, why not use that in mine? That’s why Chasen is popular in Rotham. Like how schools love claiming famous alumni even when those famous alums never think about their old school. It’s a badge of honor to say that guy came from us, we knew him before he was big.

And Chasen is famous enough for the Scholar to notice.

But the outcast aspect has become another iconic part of the character. And it makes sense. If the Beauty character has a good life back in her village, then the Beast keeping her captive or circumstances keeping her there, means there’s more desire to go home, and it becomes harder to justify an eventual decision to stay or return to the Beast. But if Beauty has no strong ties to her home, than it’s not really all that sad for her to stay with the Beast in the end. It also allows her to bond with the Beast as feeling like an outsider and different. It’s an important beat in the relationship.

So how could I make him respected in his village but also an outsider?

Well, it worked out perfectly since his country had been invaded by the empire. Because while his little village would think of him fondly since they only knew him as a child, the city of Arcier and Heidi’s associates would have no nostalgia associated with him.

And since part of the original is that Beauty’s father was a merchant, I wanted to include that in some way. But how did I include merchant parents in an invaded country, not to mention the three sisters he already had, and the grandmother

Which is why his parents became blockade runners. And gave his family their own goals and conflicting motivations as well as an important plot connection and reason for them to lose their fortune that directly connected to Aerona’s loss as well.

So Chasen’s outsider status partially came from his family being at odds with the Esmeans as Faenics as well as being considered traitors by their own people for dealing with the Esmeans. But that wasn’t all. Since he’s my male Beauty and a huntsman, intellect isn’t what makes him an outsider, it’s the fact he was the only boy raised in a family of girls. He has a traditionally masculine appearance and job but has feminine aspects of his personality and hobbies, such as a gentle approach and doing Katja’s hair.

But I also wanted to include the aspect of Beauty being at odds with her sisters. I like family drama.

And considering Chasen is a traveling huntsman who was absent for long periods of time from his sister’s lives, that was a perfect opportunity for him to struggle to feel like he belonged to his own family. Because while he’d been working hard trying to help provide for his family (as Beauty does with a smile in the original) his family had also been struggling to get back on their feet and forming their own dynamics without him.

So that’s how I reached my rugged, rough Beauty in Chasen. A bit of a twist on the usual intellectual Beauty, but since I was changing the genders, I figured I might as well go for it.

And some of Beauty’s iconic characteristics are spread out among his sisters. Heidi is the hard-working, practical girl determined to help her family. Della is the one who loves books and is quiet and a little antisocial. Katja is the youngest who loves roses.

And that’s the gist of how I adapted Beauty into our Chasen.

Now onto our female Beast. Aerona.

All of my characters are dear to my heart, but especially dearest are characters like Aerona and Aurelia, who I like to call deeply flawed women. But, putting a pin in that for a moment.

So interpretations of the Beast can go a lot of different ways. In the original, the Beast just looks like a beast. He doesn’t actually act all that beastly. He is kind, well-mannered, not particularly intelligent or capable of carrying on a conversation, but a gentleman. So that’s absolutely one way to go, and a great way to have the Beast by easily sympathetic… aside from the whole demanding a daughter in payment for stealing a rose part of the original. Pin in that too. We’ll get there.

The other interpretation that’s little more Disney inspired is the Beast looks and acts like a Beast. At least, the Beast often has some kind of temper or attitude. There’s also other interpretations where the Beast doesn’t look like a beast. They could someone or something that looks human but isn’t, or is human but might have scars or a disfigurement, or just a hot guy with a bad attitude. Beast is a rather flexible idea.

But the whole point of this, for me, at least was to let a woman be a beast. So I went with the looks like a beast, a huge wolf-like beast. Not even close to humanoid looking beast. A straight up gigantic wolf. But… part of the original story is that Beauty sees the Beast’s human form, a prince, in her dreams. So I said, we’ll go with she turns back into a human for one hour at midnight. But… she still looks like a beast. Don’t worry, Aerona’s physical appearance is getting its own post.

And she acts like a beast.

Another important aspect about the Beast is how and why were they cursed? The Disney-esque version is that the Beast did something to deserve it, and he has a lesson to learn. Another route is an evil enchantress, fairy, or whoever, does it because they’re evil and the Beast doesn’t deserve it. There’s nothing wrong with either, and I decided to go the evil wizard route, which meant I had to figure out the why.

And if you’re an evil person who can curse someone into being a really powerful monster, why wouldn’t you use that to your advantage? So that’s how the aspect of the Scholar wanting Aerona back came in. Which brings me to my next point.

So… and maybe I just haven’t found them yet, but I don’t often see Beauty and the Beast retellings lean into the aspect of humanity and what makes a beast a beast? Often times, especially if a Gaston character is involved, it will be touched on, that it’s our actions that make someone a monster not appearance, but that’s not what I was interested in.

If a human is cursed to look like a beast, especially one that doesn’t look remotely humanoid in any way… what does that do to their mind?

And if my evil wizard has a purpose for my beast… Why not focus on this aspect of what makes us human? Is it our appearance? Our actions? Our minds? Our souls?

I knew early on I didn’t want true love to be my cure all. Because if the curse can be broken by love, why can’t the Beast love someone, romantically or platonically, inside the castle they live in? Why does it have to be an outsider? And the humanity aspect fascinated me, so I decided what better way to make a curse impossible to break (because we’re going to all this trouble to make a monster for our own evil purposes, we don’t want this curse to be able to be broken, but it has to have a way) than to make it hinge on something that can be conditioned out of someone, especially a child? It’s dark, but you don’t turn a human into a monster and things not get a little dark.

So that’s where my beastly aspect came into play. Why would my Beast act human when she doesn’t believe she is? She has no reason to.

Coming back around to those pins, I wanted Aerona to be deeply flawed because often in these retellings, the Beast is the one who has the most growth. So she’s got a lot of baggage, a lot rage, and not a lot of experience dealing with them in healthy ways. She’s rough and hardened and bittered to the world.

One of the biggest challenges of retelling Beauty and the Beast is the whole… captivity aspect. Some readers love Beauty and the Beast retellings, but really don’t like when the Beast holds Beauty captive even though that’s part of the original story and the Disney version. Beauty choosing to take her father’s place is a huge aspect of the story. It shows Beauty’s character, her great selflessness and love for others even at the cost to herself. But falling in love with someone keeping you captive is… not great.

I like all types of retellings, but I knew I didn’t want to skirt around that issue. I like to go for the most intense option whenever possible. Which meant I didn’t want Chasen to be trapped at the manor by outside circumstances. But I also didn’t want this to be too Stockholm Syndrome-y. It’s a tough line to walk.

So I thought about it and decided, and since I wanted my Beast to act like a beast, I would have her hold him captive, but I would give her a good reason. She wasn’t doing it for a selfish reason like trying to break her curse, but it was too protect the fairies from a huntsman who tried to kill her. And… in order to level the playing field, Chasen was going to have his own equally good reason for trying to kill her, and while she was holding him captive, he would be trying to figure out how to take her captive.

And he was going to succeed.

It’s rough and messy, but it puts them on equal ground. I think the hardest part to swallow is the power imbalance and the idea of falling in love with someone controlling you, so since they both do equally awful things to each other, it puts things into balance in a way that can be worked through.

I figured if I was going to have my female Beast be beastly, I shouldn’t hold back.

I love love love women who are allowed to be flawed and allowed to grow. I love angry women. Bitter women. Women who struggle with their dark, ugly hearts. And I love seeing them grow. Because I think there’s hope in redemption, and that even in those dark moments, there’s hope. That no one has to stay in that dark, angry place.

Aerona has been so shaped by her traumatic experiences, conditioned to believe she’s not even human, and so full of grief and rage and bitterness to the world. And it’s still not too late.

She goes from “The world isn’t kind, and it never will be,” to “Maybe the world isn’t always kind, but don’t you still believe we should give it the chance?”

Because Aerona’s story is about growth and hope and healing, and all of that starts with a woman who is allowed to be flawed and bitter and so full of rage at the world.

Because there are young women in the world who might need to see it. Because maybe they never felt like Beauty in how good and kind she was, maybe they struggle with their anger and their flaws. Because there are young women who feel more like the Beast than the Beauty, and this story was always for them. Because if after all that Aerona has been through, if she can still find the strength to have hope and to grow and to face the world, so can we.