Inner vs. outer beauty

[Ireth]

I've dealt with subverting the "good = beautiful, evil = ugly" trope in my Faerie duology before, mainly by having the evil characters be even more beautiful/handsome than the good ones; now I'm working on going in the other direction, with a good-aligned, genuinely ugly character who is neither secretly evil nor secretly beautiful. Said character is the illegitimate child of a goblin and a human (haven't yet decided which is male and which is female). Being a half-breed, she has both the good and bad qualities of her goblin half: on the good side, the immortality and eternal youth and vigor inherent in all Fae and part-Fae (to an extent, as excessive breeding with humans throughout a bloodline would eventually dilute the Fae component of the blood to essentially nil), and possibly senses better or different than a human's; on the bad side, the ugly (to a human) face and body of a goblin. She doesn't bother hiding her ugliness with a Glamour, since she knows it's all just a lie. She is ironically named Caoimhe (pronounced KEE-va), which means "beautiful" in Gaelic.

Caoimhe lives alone in the woods of Faerie, ashamed of her hideous appearance and wanting only to have someone who isn't a goblin find her beautiful -- specifically, she wants a man to kiss her, and not just a peck on the cheek. One of the male protagonists does (haven't decided which one yet), being familiar enough with fairytales to expect her ugly exterior to be only a Glamour, and thinking she'll turn beautiful once the kiss is over. Much to the protagonists' surprise, Caoimhe still looks the same, but she is much happier now that she's been kissed. The man who kissed her does not regret having done it, saying that she's beautiful on the inside, and not in the sense that her literally half-Fae, half-human blood is a lovely shade of purple (even though it is). Caoimhe goes on to reward the protagonists for their kindness in ways I haven't yet decided.

Is this a good way to go about handling this trope, or should I just write what I want without thinking too hard about tropes at all?

 

[Androxine Vortex]

Romance isn't my forte so here's my two cents. If you don't go too in detail about it but get the message across then it will be fine but adding depth would add greater effect. hope this helps and good luck!

 

[Ireth]

It's not exactly romance, as the kiss doesn't lead into a relationship between Caoimhe and whoever kisses her. Thanks for your input though.

 

[Phin Scardaw]

I think if you want to play around with creative twists then see where it takes you, but I wouldn't worry too much about planning your story around such thing UNLESS they are central themes.

Shrek is a good example of a successful story that puts such tropes on a clever spin.

PS - Hey, Ireth. I'm back on MS. I was overwhelmed for a few weeks with finishing The Elfan Song as well as other projects. How goes your writing? Well, I hope!

 

[Ireth]

I kinda had Shrek in the back of my mind as I was thinking this over, lol. Beauty vs. ugliness isn't a huge theme of either book, but there are instances in the first book of some Fae being misjudged because of their alliances with either of the two Courts -- an Unseelie ("evil") Fae thought to be evil but who turns out pretty decent (if quite flawed), and a Seelie ("good") Fae who really isn't as nice as the heroes think she is.

Good to see you back, Phin. Congrats on finishing your book! My writing isn't going as well as I've been hoping it would, unfortunately. I keep getting ideas, but none of them really help me out of the places I'm stuck in.

 

[Phin Scardaw]

Good to see you back, Phin. Congrats on finishing your book! My writing isn't going as well as I've been hoping it would, unfortunately. I keep getting ideas, but none of them really help me out of the places I'm stuck in.

Where are you stuck? Are you posting threads to get the help you need?

If you're up for reading the whole thing, The Elfan Song is pretty much ready for your perusal. You are the one devoted reader I have here on MS! Of course, it's still a first draft, but I feel it's pretty solid as it is. This is the cover art I've created:

The Elfan Song Cover - Mythic Scribes

 

[Feo Takahari]

Being a half-breed, she has both the good and bad qualities of her goblin half: on the good side, the immortality and eternal youth and vigor inherent in all Fae and part-Fae (to an extent, as excessive breeding with humans throughout a bloodline would eventually dilute the Fae component of the blood to essentially nil), and possibly senses better or different than a human's; on the bad side, the ugly (to a human) face and body of a goblin . . .

Caoimhe lives alone in the woods of Faerie, ashamed of her hideous appearance and wanting only to have someone who isn't a goblin find her beautiful . . .

I'm not sure "you're pretty on the inside" is the best moral to set up here. Many of your readers will more readily empathize with "you shouldn't worry about conforming to a single standard of beauty." (Your readers won't be half-goblins, but some of them may be half-black, half-Asian, or otherwise skew from the Western European standard of beauty that fantasy used to constantly push on us back in the day.)

That said, I usually don't worry about morals, and if Caoimhe was raised by humans and had little contact with goblins, it's understandable that she'd be incapable of evaluating her beauty or lack of same in goblin terms. Just don't push her thought processes on the reader, and you can get away with almost anything.

 

[Ireth]

Very good points, Feo. I don't intend to push her thought processes on the reader, as the scene in question won't be from her point of view. Thanks very much for your input.

 

[Christopher Wright]

Have you read the Arthurian story "Sir Gawain and the Loathely Lady?" It's not exactly the same thing but it's the first thing I thought of when I read your summary.[1]

-------
[1] As an aside, it's also remarkably feminist, given the time and sensibilities when it was first told. At least, the version I read was.

 

[Ireth]

I haven't read that. I'll see if I can find it and give it a look, it sounds interesting.

 

[Krieger]

Write what you want, tropes be damned. Worrying about how each element of a plot fits into some neat little box hasn't done anything for me except distracting me from writing.

On a completely unrelated note, your MC's name makes my brain hurt. As a reader who doesn't speak Gaelic, there's no way I'd ever get Kee-va out of Caoimhe. In fact, had you not given the pronunciation I'd probably still be making weird faces at my monitor, trying to wrap my tongue around that many vowels in a row.

I'm not saying there's no room for exotic names or terms in fiction, especially F&SF, but I think that they should be easily digestible by your average reader.

But, as I said write what you want, tropes--and my opinion--be damned. Just couldn't resist an opportunity to rant about that particular pet peeve.

 

[Ireth]

Caoimhe's not the MC, but your opinion still holds water. XD I'll have a glossary in the back of the book giving the pronunciations of the more difficult Gaelic and Welsh character names, and at times I've had the characters themselves remark on the differences between spelling and pronunciation, such as with the particularly troublesome name of Lóegaire. One character who sees the name written only after hearing it pronounced has the thought, "How the heck is THAT pronounced 'Lee-ra'?"