Previously in this series: The sequel to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that Charlie’s mother deserves.
EXT. DAY. UNNAMED FRENCH VILLAGE. The THREE BLONDE TRIPLETS and GASTON are all sitting on the edge of the fountain Belle was reading at during the “Bonjour” number. The BLONDES look as serious as possible, for them.
TRIPLET #1: So I have a question.
GASTON: Sorry, what are your names?
TRIPLET #1: That’s not important.
TRIPLET #2 [simultaneously]: We don’t know, honestly.
TRIPLET #1: It’s really not important. What is important is that we are – and I think you have to agree? – objectively hot. Like, attractive, sure, pretty, yes, but also just generally hot. Right?
GASTON: I…yes.
TRIPLET #3: Like, just absolute babes.
GASTON: Incredibly and undeniably, yes.
TRIPLET #2: So just out of, I guess, super and total curiousness, can I ask why it is that having three absolute foxes fawn over you was totally meaningless to you during the entire movie?
TRIPLET #3: Because you could make the argument that Belle is more challenging or whatever because she’s not interested in you, I guess, but you have to acknowledge that we are easily as hot as she is.
TRIPLET #1: Like, stupidly easily. I feel like they used the exact same face template for all four of us, actually; there’s not even a substantive difference in our appearances, except we’re maybe a little bit bustier than she is?
TRIPLET #2: But no, it’s basically the same face with the hair switched out. And a little more makeup. And dressed more…wenchily, I guess.
TRIPLET #1: But the point is that it does not make any sense that a guy like you, who is super hung up on appearances, would turn down three total babes who are throwing themselves at you for a similar-looking babe whose dad everyone hates.
TRIPLET #3: I guess it’s the challenge? Right? She doesn’t want to have sex with you on top of a pelt or whatever, so that makes it more interesting for you?
TRIPLET #2: But, to be honest, you do not seem like the kind of guy who wants a challenge. You seem like the kind of guy who wants an adoring audience, 100% of the time.
TRIPLET #3: At all. Like, no offense, but you are clearly the kind of guy who loses interest in a woman who doesn’t seem constantly fascinated by him, not the kind of guy who’s determined to marry the broke offspring of the town pariah because she likes reading Perrault.
TRIPLET #1: Not to get too far afield here, but I also don’t see you marrying the type of woman who doesn’t want to hear about your hunting stats or antler jerkoff parties or whatever. Maybe trying to bed her once and then leave her in humiliation, but you’re the guy who marries someone who refuses to see his negative qualities and then cheats on her all the time.
GASTON: Sorry, am I just…not dead in this timeline? Like, is this conversation happening before I try to marry Belle, and I’m going to be dead soon, or is the fact that I’m considering getting together with one or more of you a sign that we’re in an alternate version of reality and I haven’t been defenestrated?
TRIPLET #1: Don’t worry about it.
TRIPLET #2: I guess what’s just frustrating about this situation is that you literally said “In this town there’s only she/who’s as beautiful as me,” which suggests that you are not interested in the chase qua chase, merely in her good looks, but we look a billion percent the same as her. And there are three of us. And we are blonde. And like, just, suppler, in general.
TRIPLET #1: Not to knock Belle’s appearance, obviously! We’re not interested in tearing her down to make ourselves look or feel better. Just…whoever drew us clearly used the exact same facial reference, and yet everyone around us acts like we’re three, I don’t know, stacks of chinchillas wearing a trench coat pretending to be adult women.
TRIPLET #3: It’s kind of weird that all you ever want to do to us is overhead press the bench we’re sitting on before charging after our slightly more flat-chested doppelgänger.
GASTON: I…fine. So, okay. Let’s say I agree that you’re roughly as good-looking, if not better-looking, than Belle herself, and that I have little to no interest in women who aren’t impressed with me. What is it, exactly, besides that you’re looking to get out of this interaction?
TRIPLET #2: Oiled-up four-way.
GASTON: Are…are the three of you related? Like, is this a sister thing? Because I don’t think I’m into that.
TRIPLET #3: Honestly, I have no idea. It would be weird if we weren’t related, right? Because we look so much alike.
TRIPLET: #2: In fairness, most of the female characters in town look alike.
TRIPLET #3: Female women. We’re not characters to, like, ourselves.
TRIPLET #2: Right, right.
TRIPLET #3: Okay, so just to stay on the safe side, we’ll all take turns on the oiled-up four-way, so it’s just one of us with Gaston right after the other, so this doesn’t get creepy.
TRIPLET #1: Well. Creepier
TRIPLET #2: We’re splitting hairs at this point, I think. The important thing to remember is that we owe it to one another to have wild and uninhibited sex, because of how good-looking we all are.
TRIPLET #3: Because we all are tremendously good-looking. Just to clear that up.
Tags: beauty and the beast, movies, sequels
Related Posts
The Sequel To Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory That Charlie’s Mother Deserves
Children’s Stories Made Horrific: The Beauty And The Beast
Scenes From The Divorce-Themed Sandlot Sequel That Wendy Peffercorn Deserves
Scenes I Imagine Feature Prominently In Risky Business, A Movie I Have Never Seen
Scenes From The Movie Foxcatcher, If It Were Actually About Mark Ruffalo And Channing Tatum Catching Foxes
Code Words For Lesbianism In Classic Films
GASTON DIES??????
I don’t remember that part of Beauty and the Beast at all. Did I block it out, while still remembering all the words to all the songs?
He falls off a castle into a deep ravine. It’s pretty metal, honestly.
Even more metal once you notice the skulls in his eyes:
I recalled him getting impaled on something, which I now realize never happened and that I am much sicker than Disney animators.
No, wait, he totally got impaled on a spire of some kind, right? That totally happened.
I FOR SURE have this in my head. It’s got to have been real!
He falls off the top of a tower/turret/some other castle thing, so I guess it’s implied? I never really thought about it either.
Probably quite a lot of us mentally write off any bottomless-pit-falling where you never, like, see a body as a mild inconvenience at best, because every other story at that age
Basically sets up the opening scene of the sequel. Gaston dusting himself off, climbing out of the ravine, winning a push-up contest against some wolves, whatever
push-up contest against some wolves oh hell yes
Did someone say wolves
Yep! He plunges to his death off of the castle during a fight with the Beast.
Yeah, they push him off the roof or something. It’s very tragic and doesn’t at all make me scream, “TAKE THAT, PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION OF THE PATRIARCHY!”
they don’t push him, he tries to stab the Beast and when the Beast writhes in pain Gaston trips and loses his balance and falls.
That is because it is Disney, villains can die but they must die as a result of their own foolish choices, not because the main characters kill them.
(Except in Mulan. Mulan and her team just straight up kill dudes left and right. Mulan is amazing.)
That irritates me for no good reason. Self-defense is an okay thing to show! YOU PUSH THAT BASTARD OFF THE ROOF, BEAST!
I have some all-caps feelings about this, apparently.
Mulan doesn’t just kill dudes.
Mulan EXPLODES DUDES. After giving drag makeovers to her army buddies.
We need more heroines like Mulan.
Also let’s not forget in addition to exploding dudes, crushing thousands of dudes to death beneath a deadly avalanche.
Three cheers for Mulan, the Butcher of Teng-Shao Pass!
That chameleon flat-out murdered Mother Gothel in Tangled when she wasn’t even really a threat any more. It was so weird to me — like, the leads can’t kill her even in self-defense but the annoying cutesy pet can? And that’s less disturbing than her just dying of accelerated old age?
That’s how Scar dies, right? Falling due to his own fault? I forget everything.
That’s how about 90% of Disney villains die.
(Though, in fact Scar actually survives his fall, and is presumably murdered and then eaten by his former hyena allies.)
I’m pretty sure Prince Eric impaled Ursula with that shipwreck in a pretty on-purpose manner…
Now I must spend the rest of the afternoon contemplating the deaths of Disney villains…
Wow, I never realized how much Gaston looks like Danzig until just now. That explains… something
Woah I forgot how strong/heroic Belle was, saving The Beast like that. I guess he also had his toe-claws (or whatever) to hang on with, but still.
Yes, this is all accurate
Except Gaston wasn’t defenestrated, he slipped and tripped off the roof
antler jerkoff parties
I KNEW there was a name for this phenomenon!
I’m obviously going to the wrong kind of parties.*
* (I am not actually going to any parties).
Maybe let’s advertise on cragislist?
Sounds good!
Holy god why did I never notice how similar their faces were?
I always thought Gaston was gay and thus chased Belle because he knew she would never marry him and he could just say that she was the only one worthy of his love so he would never have to marry and no one would ask any questions.
Actually, he and Prince Adam would have made a TRULY dashing couple.
“Every last inch of me [winks] is covered in hair”
Don’t overlook the ever-faithful LeFou!
(I don’t know what it says about my life choices that I’ve already read Beast/Gaston fic, but as it was awesome, here’s a link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/209784)
Just when I was trying to NOT be on AO3.
http://every-flavored-bean.tumblr.com/post/112569…
YES! Unless they are female villains, but those probably all have the same female villain shape too.
Oh nope… Mother Gothel has the same face shape as in your link.
Mallory is just continuing to knock it out of the park with summing up my feelings about characters in Disney movies.
+1,000,000 for the use of “defenestrated.”
YES. It’s a term even superior to regicide.
On par with “deleterious”.
“…it would be de-leterious and de-terimental to my career.”
My very favorite thing about defenestration is when you look up “The Defenestration of Prague” and it turns out there were multiple Defenestrations of Prague, I guess because that’s what people get up to in Prague. Like it’s not The Defenestration of Prague!, it’s Which Defenestration of Prague are you referring to?
“That’s how we roll, son.”
Never go upstairs with a Czech.
I feel like there’s some kind of “more popular than defenestration in Prague” axiom to be made out of this fact.
Visiting the window where the Second (!!) Defenestration occurred was genuinely the highlight of my visit to Prague. Such a distinguished history!
“I’m especially good at defenestrating!”
TEN POINTS FOR GASTON
But… he was tossed off a balcony, not out a window. (Unless I’m remembering wrong??)
Debalconation?
I think the balcony was reached by way of a window. I’m accepting it on a technicality.
Fair. I just feel 1,000,000 might be too many points for a technicality. Still an awesome word though. I’ll allow it. 😉
WENCHILY.
New favourite adverb.
“suppler” also plays a key supporting role here.
Look I don’t mean to be the gross person in all of this but I’m kind of not buying the idea that Gaston isn’t going to go for a four-way just because those girls are sisters.
THIS. I feel like he’d be more into it, actually? Because how many other dudes in that village are going to get that offered up on a platter?
Unless beer commercials have been lying to me, a common hetero male fantasy is simultaneously bedding twins or sisters. Which is just, ugh. I guess most straight men are so lacking in sexual imagination that they figure it must be twice as hot to sleep with two people who look a certain way instead of one person who looks a certain way.
And you know Gaston religiously watches whatever is the antique French version of beer commercials.
Gaston is the STAR of antique French beer commercials.
No….one….plays like Gaston
Saves the day like Gaston
No one gets in a triplet four-way like Gaston
“This crisp pilsner taste is IN-VIG-O-RATING!”
Oh my godddddddd, crisp pilsner taste
I have a feeling that it is also a fantasy about being so desireable that you cause women to violate traditional long-held taboos against incest.
I am not saying that all dudes are like that, but there is definitely a kind of dude who is like that.
And that kind of dude is Gaston.
I think that this is entirely correct.
It’d be so much work! I’d prefer to not be spinning plates, thank you!
In this fantasy, the man doesn’t have to do any of the work, and the women exist only to pleasure him.
Okay, but like, I couldn’t go for it, and I was writing it, so I had to…SIDESTEP THAT.
Agreed. Gaston wouldn’t stop for something as trivial and not-about-him-as-that.
Yet, he spent the entire movie evading those triplets, individually or jointly, to pursue Belle, even though it’s not like that would get in the way of pursuing Belle.
Option 1: he’s gay, and figures Belle would be the most efficient beard, and she’d stay out of his tavern-slash-home when he had company over without complaint.
Option 2: he’s impotent, but depends on projecting virility to enhance is social standing. Any one of those three would tell pretty much everyone in town if LeFeu even once rose to the occasion, but Belle has no friends and would protect his secret (or she wouldn’t understand it).
Option 3: Since it wasn’t his idea, he decided to act disgusted by it because he gets off on being superior. Taboo or no, nothing strikes more fear into Gaston’s heart than a woman having unapproved sexual desires.
I don’t know, I think we do have to give some credence to the possibility that Gaston is the kind of guy who likes GETTING things more than he likes HAVING things — it’s meaningless for him to be adored (since obviously he deserves to be adored, and it’s not meaningful to get what you know you’re already entitled to), but when someone doesn’t adore him he views it as a kind of existential affront that needs to be resolved.
I think this kind of explains Gaston’s rapid escalation to “I am going to marry Belle THIS AFTERNOON” — to solve his existential anxiety he’s created a fantasy world in which she does adore him, and any time she reissts it, he ratchets up the stakes as a way of drowning out that resistance.
Yeah, it’s a trophy thing. Belle is harder to get, and therefore more valuable as a trophy–and then when she turns him down, I think the Entitled Ego Monster just takes over. He would absolutely get bored and start cheating on her in a matter of days if they did end up getting married.
Gaston was always the scariest Disney villain to me, because he’s actually pretty realistic. I’ve never met an Ursula (unfortunately), but I sure as hell have met some Gastons.
“The harder to get, the better to have.”
I’ve met an Ursula and I’m pretty sure the whole thing was exhausting for the both of us
I had a high school history teacher who was a dead ringer for Ursula. She made a kid drop out of school by pointing and laughing at him for referring to Europe as “in a very real sense, the center of the world.” (Don’t worry about him, he ended up doing very nicely in the financial sector). She was awesome.
Only if a Mercator is a “very real” representation of the world. I would have pointed and laughed too.
This seems as appropriate a place as any to mention my childhood conviction (born of watching The Little Mermaid over and over and OVER) that Ursula was actually Ariel’s mother and forced to live in exile because Ariel’s Dad was a total jerk and like, threw her out with nothing or something.
Oooh, I like this theory.
I always thought that she and Trition had had some kind of affair in the past, since it’s never really explained *why* she wants to get revenge on him so badly, but is mentioned that at one point she lived in the palace.
That’s totally true. Gaston is a hunter, after all. On the other hand, he’s really just fixating on Belle now. Those triplets have known him for a while. I wonder what his excuse was for them all along?
Who is to say that Gaston has not already had sex with all three of those triplets, possibly multiple times? It’s entirely possible they hold little to no appeal for him because he has already gotten anything he could ever want from them.
This is Gaston in hell, right?
This is what would happen if Sartre wrote for Disney.
Please. They are clearly his entourage, Gaston is way ahead of his time on the advertising front and hired some hot girls to follow him around and talk about how great he is in front of other people until they believed it; and while they love their jobs as freelance greek chorus and throw themselves into the role completely they’d never actually get with him, because they are consummate professionals
Unconsummated professionals?
Yes, I can get on board with this! Once Gaston dies, they shrug and move to Paris, where they are the toast of the beau monde.
I am now choosing to think of The Triplets of Belleville as a sequel to Beauty and the Beast.
Glorious!
Look, he’s just not into blondes, okay? It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that his mother was brunette and into books and was always kind of aloof and vaguely disappointed in him, no matter how strong he got or how much he grew his ego or his pectoral muscles to mask his vast inner well of insecurity. Nothing to do with that at all.
I actually really want to read this story. Although I suspect I would still lack any empathy whatsoever for Gaston.
Gaston’s mom reading The Feminine Mystique, thinking about all the eggs she scrubbed off pans over the years, occasionally recalling the painful experience of giving birth to someone with such a goddamned big head, sighing audibly over the top of the book as he presents her with yet another Mother’s Day gift of antlers. “Just put them with the rest and refill my wine glass, okay?”
Wow new headcanon just established
So basically, Gaston is Schmidt from New Girl:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wukrMXXtvw
That…makes a lot of sense, actually!
“The important thing to remember is that we owe it to one another to have wild and uninhibited sex, because of how good-looking we all are.”
Writing this down to use. This is how it works, right? Mallory wouldn’t lie to me?
the best/worst part of this was that i never realized they were triplets? I thought it was just “compared to belle all girls look the same/are boring”
Sure, the triplets are fawning over him, but can they cook? Belle is probably already keeping house for her dad. Gaston has a lot of strapping young sons in his future, he needs a wife who is willing to spend all her time cooking eggs for other people. And surely she already adores him, quietly. Look at him! Of course she does. Quiet adoration will do. Who wants to hear a woman talk, anyways? </gastonlogic>
“Is new pussy gonna teach your kids to read? NEW PUSSY’S ILLITERATE!”
Now that I think about it, Gaston + all three triplets sounds like an ideal marriage. One to bear strapping sons, one to cook the eggs, one to gaze admiringly at her husband and sigh prettily on his arm at the tavern. They can rotate duties as needed, everyone’s happy, if the townsfolk aren’t aware that there’s a MASSIVE CASTLE RULED BY A BEAST AND ANIMATE FURNITURE in their midst, surely they can overlook a little polygamy.
Also they’re identical triplets; even if the town isn’t willing to accept polygamy, that’s got to be a pretty easy secret to keep.
Commenting for the first time to say that I was one of the fawning triplets in my drama school’s production of Beauty and the Beast and I totally embraced my role. I was all OVER Gaston, looking hot as hell. I never understood why he didn’t just ditch the annoyingly perfect Beauty for my totally shameless portrayal.
I like you.
I always felt sorry for those girls!
Because: okay, Belle ends up with the Beast. Ex-Beast. Whatevs. Gaston ends up dead.
And every other guy in the town is *absolutely fugly*. Like, I would maybe sleep with them for a million dollars, but otherwise? NOOOOOOPE.
So I hope for their sake that either they move quickfast or they’re actually at least a little bit bi-or-asexual, because otherwise, wow. Prospects ain’t good.
Gonna be honest here, those girls are in some kind of medieval France and wouldn’t date the local lord just cause he’s some kind of misanthropic beastman in a dracula castle. The way the European nobility carried on, if the baron’s heir only had horns and fur you were basically being ruled by Brad Pitt. They had their shot and threw it away.
HMMMM we know they didn’t fall in love with the beast and break the spell but is it canon they didn’t date? Aside from the fact that the town as a whole was surprisingly oblivious to the castle and the beast until Gaston raised his angry mob? Maybe the triplets came back to town one day after a long absence telling everyone there was a beast in the castle (and he had the nerve to not fall in love with them!) and they were dismissed as hysterical and delusional.
wait were the terms of the spell that he had to fall in love with her, not vice versa? Because man that makes the whole thing a whole lot darker
If it’s the other way around, well, the curse apparently considers Stockholm syndrome close enough so long as all the proper words are said and the required procedures are followed so I don’t see how a little gold-digging wouldn’t do the trick likewise (I truly love your immense wealth and access to sentient bling!). If they’re too idealistic about romance to give it a whirl then I’m sure there’s some very nice uggos in that town with wonderful personalities they’ll be very happy with.
Oh right yes it was that someone had to love him. And good point that loving the wealth should have been indistinguishable to Belle loving the books! But I can still imagine them running off into the woods to see what’s up with this mystery castle and its bachelor inhabitant (seriously, this movie leaves me with so many unresolved questions).
Perhaps Lumiere couldn’t control himself around all those heaving bosoms and set their dresses on fire in a clumsy attempt to cop a feel. That would explain why the wardrobe has stocked up on ladies’ gowns.
I think your mention of Lumiere suggests a solution to the triplets’ problem: There were at least several dozen male servants in the castle, surely a few of them turned out to be less ugly than the villagers once they became human again.
man we saw human Lumiere I would not hold out hope on that front
Actually, this whole conversation has me worried that the Beast and Gaston, in this movie’s universe, are the only decent-looking men in ALL OF FRANCE, possibly THE WHOLE WORLD, because…yeah, the suddenly-human servants? A world of no.
I mean, I could fanwank a glimmer of hope and imagine there were some strapping stableboys who used to be…Christ, whatever they have in stables…that we didn’t see.
Unfortunately due to restructuring at Disney they cut the sequel that would have expanded on the Highlander-esque past rivalry between the Beast and Gaston, which lead the latter to dark sorcery to sabotage his competitor for the crown of France’s Handsome Man.
After all, nobody ever explains the witch that we only get secondhand accounts of, who appeared out of nowhere then promptly dissapeared to same. It was so very, very long ago and there’ve been so many changes adapting to life as furniture in a derelict castle, that none seem to recall how under her rags that old beggar woman was roughly the size of a barge.
And then of course he has to marry Belle, because they are responsible for repopulating the earth with good-looking children. The triplets, being marginally prettier, may be able to produce gorgeous offspring with one of those bakers or winemakers in the town, but Gaston has to get with Belle and hope his handsomeness genes are dominant enough to wipe out any recessive traits for looking like Maurice.
I’m not so sure Gaston is concerned about his legacy. I get the feeling Gaston hasn’t eaten only four dozen eggs in a very, very long time. All the townspeople know him, and love him, and know not to be anything like him; as their fathers did, and their fathers before them. There’ve been many towns, many Belles, but there can be only one Gaston.
He’s made sure of that.
“It was so very, very long ago and there’ve been so many changes”
Ten years we’ve been rusting, needing so much more than dusting…
oh well okay then the “Gaston is actually a warlock who’s turned France into a private farm for some kind of attention-based vampiric immortality spell” theory may not be entirely textually supported
But really, what is time to a sentient, anthropomorphic candlestick? Besides, rust doesn’t appear overnight, especially if all the objects in the house retain a sense of personal hygiene after their transformation, which we see when Mrs. Potts bathes Chip. So, ten years of rust on top of.. what? Hundreds of years of careful self-polishing?
It was both — “If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return…” So Stockholm syndrome is okay but he really had to be into it too.
It’s the part where he actually lets her go that indicates that he’s learned to love, though. He puts someone else’s needs in front of his own.
Also he gives her a giant library so basically everything about their relationship is Good and Right LALALALALA I CAN;T HEAR YOOOOOUUU
And really, having a Hapsburg chin is fine, so long as the rest of your head is large enough to balance it out. The horns and fur just give some symmetry.
Gaston as Tantalus, neck-deep in the village fountain with a trio of oiled-up blondes propositioning him just out of reach
Gaston as Sisyphus, continually rolling a trio of blondes up a hill only to see them slip (oilily) from his grasp and roll back down on purpose, yelling woooo
Gaston, mostly certainly in the Hades run by this gentleman:
yelling woooooo
Oh man, this was meant to be in reply to mikelywhiplash’s comment that this must be Gaston in hell, and I didn’t see that my comment un-nested. Sorry so non sequitur!
No, no. Don’t apologize. The non sequitur makes it so much better.
I got a notification anyway?
I was running through hells in my head – Robot Devil, No Exit, Bill & Ted – and the Hades one is WAY better.
i love you
oh man. ohamanohmanohman. There. You have done it. Sympathy achieved. Beautiful. Oh gosh, I need a book about this STAT.
Ok, except even as an eight year old all excited because Belle was a brunette and all, I was pretty sure Gaston wasn’t really actually interested in any of the ladies. Now I’m sure of it. Since I’m pretty sure most Toasties agree that Beast is better than the milquetoast Prince Beast, can we just set Belle up with a library and give Prince Beast to Gaston? /fanfic
NOBODY doesn’t love Robby Benson.
“Yeah, I’m a monster…..but I was in ‘Ice Castles’.”
“Can’t argue with you, Beast.”
The messed up bull monster thing was really all he had going for him, absent that as a normal dude he’s just Ariel Castro.
Unnamed French triplets, I hereby dub thee Cerise, Aurelie, and Chloe.
Huh. Okay, well according to the Disney Wiki, apparently their names are Claudette, Laurette and Paulette, and they are known collectively as the Bimbettes. So.
Also, according to various occult sources in the Disney Extended Merchandising Universe, the Beast’s semi-canonical real princely name is “Adam.” Yeah.
As a side note, take care not to linger at the Disney Wiki site. Its effect is similar to that of TVTropes, except the horrible obsessive corners of your soul that it illuminates are all copyrighted by Buena Vista Entertainment.
Adam???!!
I am already willing myself to forget this information.
Yeah no kidding, when BobOfSeals said “he and Prince Adam would have made a truly DASHING couple,” I thought the reference was to the character from the He-Man cartoon. It made sense! Or if not a dashing couple, then at least a well-oiled one. “Side of beef, do you take this other side of beef…”
Their first date was awkward. Prince Adam took his shirt off and Gaston was all like: “Who are you?! What have you done with Adam? You resemble no one I have ever seen before.”
My, My, My, My Gaston https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqInJ5Nmijg
(this is also what I thought of during that scene in “Match Point”)
**Lefou returns to town after the final battle**
LEFOU: “I’m afraid to tell you all that our beloved bastion of bellicose machismo, Gaston, is dead at the hands of the Beast.”
TOWN: “KILL THE BEAST!”
LEFOU: “No, no, he’s not a beast anymore. He’s actually now a super muscular hot guy–possibly hotter than Gaston.”
TOWN: “WHAT?”
LEFOU: “Yeah, according to the town bylaws, we have to now surrender our masculine allegiance to him or face castration.”
BOOKKEEPER: “Yep, yep, that’s right. Says so right here. Article 3, Section II. All townsfolk of Simple Village must surrender their adoration to whatever man, and I quote, ‘beist the hottest.'”
TOWNSPEOPLE: “WHO WROTE THESE BYLAWS?”
BOOKKEEPER: “If my memory serves, two hot guys who preceded Gaston. The first was elected mayor within days of hitting puberty.”
My eyes were always glued to the triplets whenever they were onscreen. So I caught SO MANY continuity errors. Their dresses changing color, their hairstyles switching around. (Scroll up and look at those images! In the first one, they all have the same hairstyle! Nononono. There’s the Belle, there’s the Reverse Belle, and there’s the Combover.)
The errors particularly offended me because I had a favorite triplet, somehow.
I KNOW, that shot where their hair was all the same has never ceased to bother me!
One of them has a kind of Precursor-Jasmine and one of them has Ariel’s quiff! Or they’re SUPPOSED to, anyway.
As a kid I read a comic from one of those Disney fan magazines for kids that had one of the blonde sisters dress like Belle and put on a brown wig to look like her, and pretended to be Belle in order to accept Gaston’s proposal. Has anyone else read that? I don’t know if this was an AU or if it took place while Belle was at the castle before Gaston died. I don’t remember how it ended (possibly because my dad finished grocery shopping and didn’t want to buy me the magazine).
This is verging on “Vertigo”.
I like it.
Theories –
1) Gaston has a small penis or ejaculates prematurely or otherwise has some failing that makes him very insecure, which is why he engages in such OTT performative masculinity all the time. He rejects the triplets and seeks Belle because that way he avoids the failure and humliation he dreads in bed.
2) The triplets are TOO into Gaston. Gaston is a hunter, and he judges his fitness as a hunter by the difficulty of his prey. The triplets don’t give any chase; they are following after him practically licking his hand. He wants the victory of conquering Belle. Her aloofness adds to her appeal. Catching your loyal hunting dog is not a victory; catching the fox that runs away is.
3) Gaston is an entitled douchebro who has never been told “no” and cannot comprehend Belle’s lack of interest, and is thus fixated on her
4) Gaston really likes smart chicks.
4) is “If Gaston Were Your Boyfriend.”
B-b-but how can he make everyone else jealous of him if his wife has two identical duplicates? (I feel like the inevitable poly solution probably didn’t occur to the scriptwriters.)
I did read a fic where Gaston was trans, and admires Belle for not fitting into the archetype of what their village demands a woman be, tho: http://disney-kink.livejournal.com/4400.html?thre…
Okay, I think I’ve waited long enough to post this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcuI6K9daIw
At first this was my favorite part:
“Sorry, am I just…not dead in this timeline? Like, is this conversation happening before I try to marry Belle, and I’m going to be dead soon, or is the fact that I’m considering getting together with one or more of you a sign that we’re in an alternate version of reality and I haven’t been defenestrated?”
Except then this came along:
“Are…are the three of you related? Like, is this a sister thing? Because I don’t think I’m into that”
And now I cannot decide.
I read a fic once where one of the triplets became good friends with Belle after the events of the movie. For yuletide, maybe? It was good.
“GASTON: Sorry, am I just…not dead in this timeline? Like, is this conversation happening before I try to marry Belle, and I’m going to be dead soon, or is the fact that I’m considering getting together with one or more of you a sign that we’re in an alternate version of reality and I haven’t been defenestrated?”
“Wait, is he not dead?” was actually my first thought upon starting the article, and then I thought, “No, don’t be nitpicky, just go with it,” and THEN YOU ADDRESSED IT, and everything was perfect, and my heart was filled with joy.
Belle sings “Every morning just the same/Since the morning that we came/To this poor provincial town…”
She wasn’t born there. She was a relative newbie. And nothing else had changed since her arrival — no more newcomers. Gaston had had the triplets’ admiration his whole LIFE (and, quite honestly, probably had the triplets too –and Gaston might well be the “there are women you fuck and women you marry” type). He was bored with them. Belle was, per the song, the only exciting thing that had happened in YEARS.
Also Belle did not appear to have to work for a living and her father seemed to own property. The triplets were waitresses.
I always assumed Gaston had ALREADY bedded and abandoned the triplets, and that’s why they bored him. They were still hanging around sighing after him, which in his mind was only right and just, and he probably bangs them when he’s got nothing else to do, but he’s over it. Belle’s the new challenge.
I just have to leave this here:
Well, it kinda makes sense the lizard would turn out to be a cold-blooded killer. *flees*
“So just out of, I guess, super and total curiousness, can I ask why it is that having three absolute foxes fawn over you was totally meaningless to you during the entire movie?”
I had this exact thought when I first saw the film, and I was ten years old. It came closer to breaking my suspension of disbelief than the walking, talking furniture.
There’s more to life than being really, really, really, ridiculously goodlooking.
“Oiled-up four-way.” YES.
Except, fuck off Gaston. In my head, it’s Belle and the Triplets *all the way*
okay, so, while we are all here, I am going to go ahead and complain about how INCREDIBLY nonsensical this movie’s timeline is. Literally no aspect of the passage of time makes sense at any point in the entire movie.
Like: what year is it? Belle’s blue dress does not actually correspond to anything anyone has worn at any point in history ever, but you could kind of mayyyyybe make a case for 1820s if you squint. But her big gold dress (and Beast’s fancy outfit too!) appears to be pre-Revolutionary, or at least sort of like a pre-Revolutionary gown as drawn by someone who has never actually seen one. And if the Beast was cursed shortly before the French Revolution, that would at least explain how an entire fully-staffed castle and a member of the nobility went missing without anyone noticing. But they’ve only been cursed for ten years! Those are not Empire outfits! What the fuck.
and WHILE I’M AT IT, how old was the Beast when he was cursed? Because (again, cursed for ten years) he doesn’t seem to be much older than Belle when he’s un-cursed, and she’s early-20s at most. Did the enchantress curse a 14-year-old? Not cool, enchantress.
Also, here is a fun game: try to track the passage of seasons based on the presence of foliage/snow in the background, and tell me how long a period of time the events of this film cover, or even what month it is at any given point. Go on. TRY.
I think she actually cursed an 11 year old. Which btw why was an 11 year old in charge of which old ladies got to stay in the castle for the night?
I think she actually cursed an 11 year old. Which btw why was an 11 year old in charge of which old ladies got to stay in the castle for the night?