I’m in front of the software now, and i’ll say this. Failure to Become would probably mean a failure to Obtain human form again. I’m not sure how a failure to Conceive would lead to a Consequence of Learning.
So if she stopped reading, Gaston would stop harassing her? Are they really trying to get across the point that Belle is harming herself by dreaming about far off places?
Do you see how final that is in comparison to your first example? She leaves, she’s done. All is good. She can read her books wherever she wants.
But if she stops reading, or thinking that she’ll find answers in books, she still has an egomaniac to deal with.
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Hm… yeah, this seems pretty inarguable.
Okay I am ready to entertain the idea that you and @Gregolas are right, (Belle is in Universe). I guess I was really stuck on a) the idea that she’s a Be-er and b) the idea that the Beast is a Universe character because, well he’s stuck in this beast body and trapped in a castle.
@Gregolas what’s the argument for the Beast being in Mind? Is it his belief that “no one could ever love a beast”?
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What affect does this have on others?
Well, his situation (the curse) affects everyone, right? The village forgets about him (though I’m not sure how much that really bothers them), his staff obviously, Belle’s father and then Belle.
Is he affecting everyone with his curse? Or did the sorceress put everyone under a curse?
(I would have been better able to discuss this yesterday without my pesky day job distracting me!)
I find it interesting that we’re repeating the same discussion we had with Cars but reversed. Maybe we should start a thread about Mind vs. Universe.
Anyway, I’m coming around to the idea that Beast is in Mind. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense – his mindset is really at the heart of everyone’s problems. And the concerns under Mind seem to fit too. I’ll need to think through this some more later. It would be great to get others to weigh in as well (hint-hint @mlucas).
Yeah me too!
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Sorry I’ve been following the thread but having trouble remember the movie very well.
I did find an old email conversation with a friend I’d seen the movie with (and who dabbles in Dramatica), and I started out thinking Belle was a Do-er, but wasn’t totally sure if I was focusing on her personal issues enough. I wavered between Mind and Universe for her in that conversation.
The IC’s domain isn’t at the heart of everyone’s problems – that would better describe the OS domain. The IC domain is at the heart of the IC’s problems AND/OR the heart of the IC’s influence on the MC. (But agreed sometimes the IC impacts everyone around them, that’s what I like to call the “bull in the china shop” variety of IC.)
If you think about what the story’s trying to say, the Beast’s mindset is problematic because if he didn’t hate himself then the curse wouldn’t really be a curse. Not to mention it’d be a lot easier to fall in love! Also, his attitude toward the sorceress at the beginning is what started all his problems. So I do like Mind for the Beast.
Then you have this weird, dreamy bookish girl who likes different things and doesn’t fit in with the “normal” folk in her town, and through the story she teaches the Beast that he’s not terrible just because he’s different. I definitely think Belle is Steadfast and that at the end the Beast adopts her point of view. (Whatever that is … “different is awesome” ? “live for what you love regardless of what others think” ?)
But I’ve always felt the story’s argument was a little undermined by the Beast becoming an overly handsome prince again. I think it would be cool if he transformed back with a bunch of scars from all the times he scratched himself or bashed his face into the stones in anguish … but Belle still loves him just the same.
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Thanks Mike. Okay, call me convinced on Beast in Mind. The more I think about it the more sense it makes.
So @Gregolas what do you think about:
OS: Psychology/Becoming
MC: Universe/Future
IC: Mind/Subconscious
RS: Physics/Obtaining
That allows us to have Requirements/OS Benchmark in Conceiving.
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This is also the same Throughline arrangement for most Romantic Coming-of-Age stories…
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I think I’m going to have to ponder it a bit and maybe catch a few minutes of it on Netflix for a fresh look. As far as Beast in Mind, I know why I’m putting him there, but every time I try to explain I feel like I veer off into OS problems.
This part, for example. When I’d try to write about the Beast responding to the sorceress it always felt like OS. But I read Mike’s description and then it occurred to me that I could have said he was Prejudiced against the sorceress for her looks. That’s why he was turned into a beast. Because of what he thinks, not because of his external self. So I like that.
In the meantime, let me ask💪 again. Could you either discuss Becoming further or maybe Future? What is problematic about either?
Maybe it would be better to figure out what the OS throughline is, first. On that, one tricky question is, is the town part of the OS prior to the townsfolk finding out about the Beast? (In the 2017 version the townsfolk have loved ones at the castle that they were separated from by the sorceress’s curse, but I can’t remember if that’s true in the cartoon.)
I think everyone in the town, though, is cruel to Maurice (Belle’s papa). Because of all the characters involved this must be in the OS, at least partly, right? (They’re also cruel to, or at least unaccepting of, Belle, but that’s a bit harder to parse out from the MC throughline until the OS is nailed down.)
Plus, the sorceress herself is kind of mean. Her punishment is a bit crazy – sure the Prince and maybe some of his toadies deserved punishment, but she punished everyone far and wide including poor little Chip! That fits a problematic manner of thinking too.
The cruelty and lack of acceptance / tolerance that’s first shown with Maurice in the town, then springs up further when Gaston riles everyone up against the Beast.
So maybe the OS is something like “the enchantress’s curse: cruelty begets cruelty” or something like that.
But do the transformed castle inhabitants suffer from problematic manners of thinking? I can’t recall… (EDIT: I guess they’re all involved in convincing the Beast to change his ways…)
Ahhh, you’re right. I was so focused on throwing a wrench at the MC works I kinda just accepted this without making it more difficult!
I [quote=“mlucas, post:54, topic:948”]
is the town part of the OS prior to the townsfolk finding out about the Beast?
[/quote]
The way the live action version handles it, i’d say yes. I’m pretty sure it’s made clear that their memory loss is part of the curse brought about by the Beasts misdeeds.
yeah, I can go with that.
So I attempted to rewatch it with an analytical eye, but it didn’t work. Got caught up in the story and forgot all about storyform. I’m not typically an emotional guy, but…
I knooooow she’ll never leave me, even as she fades from vieewwww
Gets me every time. Is there a quivering lip emoji round here?
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I feel pretty good about Psychology. In addition to your points (partially quoting myself):
- The sorceress puts a spell on the town, causing them to forget about the castle. (Version I saw. Not sure about the cartoons).
- The only way to get out of the curse to convince someone else to fall in love with you.
- Gaston is the ultimate low-life manipulator, the kind of guy who surrounds himself with sycophants and tries to gaslight Belle into believing that she’s always been in love with him and pressure her to marry him (by staging a wedding in front of her house with the whole town watching).
- In the castle, the servants are always trying to manipulate things so that Belle and the Beast fall in love.
- Gaston gets a brilliant idea: if he can just convince the magistrate/authority guy to commit Belle’s father to the asylum, he’ll have leverage he can use on Belle! (Was this in the movie, or just the play?)
- When Belle shows the town that the Beast actually is real, Gaston manages to turn that around too–and convince the village to riot against the Beast.
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So how is the Concern about Becoming? Full disclosure: I’m leaning toward this one as well, but need a push to go all in, so I might argue against it.
Becoming the Beast is the beginning of almost everyone’s problems (including the village?) and the solution to everything is Becoming a man again.
I considered Being (Being a Beast) but I don’t think that really fits. This is a case where I lean on the later terminology for clarification. Of the four Concerns under Psychology:
Playing a Role
Conceiving an Idea
Developing a Plan
Changing One’s Nature … by far seems this seems to best fit as the Goal and OS Concern.
This is my trouble with using Becoming the Beast as a gist for this and why I’m not 100% on board with this quad. The story isn’t saying that They have a problem because the Prince has been turned into an animal. It’s saying the Prince was turned into an animal (the They problem) because he couldn’t see the beauty within the sorceress when she appeared as a poor old beggar or whatever. From there, the sorceress doesn’t seem to have any problems. And the castle residents arent having troubles from attempts at turning him back into a human. They have trouble getting the Prince-now a beast-to believe…I’m probably going to fumble a bit here…that the curse can be broken because who could learn to love a beast like him? There’s not really much trouble in getting Belle to fall in love with him once he starts acting like a decent person (wait, is the moral of this story that unattractive people should stop being jerks? Ah, crap). So is this ‘seeing the beauty within’ stuff a transformation that needs to happen? Or something that needs to be conceived of?
So if he had just been mean to a poor old beggar but hadn’t been turned into a Beast, would everyone still have a problem? (He would still have a personal attitude problem of being repulsed–Mind–by her of course.)
BTW I see the Beast (and to an extent the servants) as OS Protagonists who are pursuing the Goal of Becoming. It concerns everyone else of course in one way or another, but they are the ones who have the most interest in achieving it.
It’s actually interesting – not sure if this was in the movies but in the play I watched she actually re-appears at the end (kind of in the background) to watch as Belle tells the Beast she loves him. So in that version at least, she’s shown (to the audience) to still be interested. It felt like a nice full-circle resonance to me – maybe that’s why.
I see this as quite clearly cause/effect. In order to become human again (Becoming) everyone needs to conceive of the idea that someone could love a Beast (Requirement of Conceiving).
You could write a version of this story where the Goal is Conceiving – Belle realizes she can love a Beast, and the Beast realizes he can be loved – but then wouldn’t that be the end of the story? Why have him transform into a man again at all? Of course if you did that, even if the Beast was okay with it, the servants/household knickknacks would still have the very serious problem of not becoming human again.
Oh, I just got an idea for a darker version! In order to get everyone to Conceive of the idea that that he can be loved (Goal) , first he has to Become human again (Requirement). You know, looks do matter…
I guess another option would be to have a Goal of Conceiving and give us the transformation as a Dividend. But in this case Dramatica puts Dividends in the Universe quad, so he would get a transformation a dividend of what… Future? Progress? I think that’s a stretch. Also I have hard time seeing his transformation as just a Dividend.
= Requirement
= Goal/Concern.
I think anyway. 