My thoughts on Gaston

Mental State

Ha ha, don't worry. I'm not going to talk to you about my mental state, this fanfic is still about Gaston after all. I re-read my top five villains list and realised I went on and on about myself, so I'll try to keep that from happening.

This chapter is not going to talk about depression or anxiety, because that's not what this is about. This is a fun fanfic that I use to get my opinions out, not something to bring everyone down by talking about how much your favourite character wants to kill themselves.

(He totally doesn't, by the way. Gaston's fine.)

Okay, okay. I know I said I wasn't going to talk about myself, but this is crucial (sort of) to the chapter;

So in the summer holidays I went to Scotland. And when I was at the airport I went and bought two books for the journey. One was a trashy romance-ish book that I figured out the ending to halfway through. The other was called 'Confessions of a Sociopath'.

(Do you think I'm going to get sued by the author by talking about it? Nah, who'd sue Wattpad?)

Anyway, this book was a biography by a diagnosed Sociopath talking about what does and doesn't make someone a sociopath, and I think you can see where this chapter's going on from here.

SO, let's whittle down the main traits the author said sociopath's usually have:

Superficial charm

Good intelligence

Eeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ...I dunno. We've discussed this in previous chapters and there isn't a concrete answer. His plan is brilliant but his actions are crap. He charmed everyone but he's still an asshole. This one is tricky. Leave your thoughts down below.

Absence of delusions and other signs of rational thinking

Unreliability

There was never a scene in the movie where Gaston broke a promise or held out on his word. He paid the Madhouse-owner-person. (The creepy undertake dude, remember him?). Oh! Right. He stabbed the Beast when he promised to leave the castle. Right, by bad. So yes, Gaston is unreliable.

Untruthfulness and insincerity

Now, I don't actually remember a time when Gaston actually lied in this movie. At all. He was totally honest about what he was doing, and didn't hold anything back. But I think that's just because there was no reason to lie. He told the truth and everything almost went according to plan. True, he pleaded with The Beast when he was hanging off of the roof, but that was in a moment of blind panic. And there was no reason to be insincere. He got everything he wanted, until he died. Yes, he cried a bit when he almost died, only to kill the person who saved him (The Beast, if you were confused. I'm talking about The Beast) but again, that was panic.

Lack of remorse and shame

Boom. I doubt he even realised what he was doing was wrong, honestly. And remember when The Beast let him live, only for Gaston to literally stab him in the back? That doesn't seem like shame to me. Seems like Gaston still can't learn from his mistakes, which we'll get into later.

Inadequately antisocial behaviour

As mentioned before, sociopaths have an abundance of charm. So while you might be thinking 'but he's so social with everyone in the town', that wasn't being social. That was being charming. We don't know what's going on inside Gaston' head, we might just be getting sucked in by his charm like everyone else. And when in that marketplace scene did you actually see him strike up a conversation with anyone? It was just Belle and Lefou. The most we have is him asking people to get out of the way so that he can talk to Belle.

Of course, there's always the wedding scene, but that's two lines. "Thank you all for coming to my wedding. Now I'd best go in there and propose to the girl" Cue laughter. That was it though, the only person he really talks to personally is Lefou, instructing him on when to start the band. And maybe someone else was in charge of the wedding. Maybe Gaston spends most of his time alone, it doesn't seem like he goes hunting with anyone else.

Poor judgement and failure to learn from experience

Yes. From the way Belle reacts to seeing Gaston in the marketplace, and the way she talks about him to her father, means that this is not the first time she's spoken to him. And I'm willing to bet it wasn't the first time he's hit on her either. And most people would learn after the whole 'wedding incident' that no-means-no. But nope, it's less about actually getting married now, and more about showing whose the best. 'No one makes a fool out of Gaston'.

Pathological egocentricity and incapable for love

Egocentric? Check. Incapable of feeling love? ... let's ignore that one, I don't really want to get into it. I may like this fanfic, but I'm still a Gaston fan. I don't want my ships destroyed by learning he can't feel love. That's like the motional equivalent of an asexual.

Unresponsive in general interpersonal relations

I think that this means that he cares little for relationships with other people, and is only using them as a means to an end. This 100% his plan. He doesn't care for Belle at all. He doesn't care for anybody but himself and Lefou, and even that last one's a stretch. He just wants to marry Belle in an effort to show that he is the best. Top Dog. Big Cheese. You get the jist of it.

Fantastic and uninviting behaviour with drink and sometimes without

From a five minute search on the internet, I've learnt that this means 'the behaviour of charisma to the point of recklessness'. And if I had to sum up Gaston in one phrase, that would be it. He is almost effortlessly charming, until he needs to use it to get something that is not being given. Then he gets a bit mad. (A bit? He tried to kill a man!) Oh, hush you.

And about the drink? "More beer?" "What for? Nothing helps." Although I love the thought that Gaston and Lefou were just drunk that night, and the song 'Gaston' is happening inside their heads. Although Gaston is like, six feet tall. The amount of beers it would take to get him drunk would be the same amount to kill Lefou. So, maybe it was all happening in Lefou's head? Drunkenly proclaiming his love for another man while Gaston discreetly tries to get them home, before they're kicked out.

Suicide threats rarely carried out

I know, I know, we weren't supposed to talk about suicide in the chapter, but as you can see it is a part of what I'm talking about. However this has very little evidence to back it up. At the end of the final climax it's not like Gaston held an arrow to his stomach and said that if Belle didn't marry him he'd kill himself. Ha ha, suicide jokes always get a laugh. I'm sorry.

Sex life impersonal, trivial and poorly integrated

This basically means his sex life is unimportant to him and not an affair of the heart, and I'm not entirely sure about this one to be honest. It would be all too easy to say that he wanted Belle because he was attracted her, but we've discussed in previous chapters that that's not why people in that era proposed. And he's definitely a demi-sexual so that basically rules out that.

This theory has very little evidence to go on. As expected they wouldn't talk about a characters lust in a Disney movie. Unless it's in a creepy cathedral surrounded by terrifying hooded figures singing a badass musical number.

Failure to follow any life plan.

The first time I read that last one, I thought it meant that he doesn't have a life plan. Which didn't make any sense because he had a grand speech planned about settling down with six or seven sons, dogs and 'my latest kill roasting on the fire'. That doesn't sound like someone who doesn't have a life plan to me.

But then I realised that it meant he doesn't follow through on that life plan. Now, true, his plan is a complete flop, but that isn't his fault. It was a series of circumstances and his own madness that kept him from his goal. And, throughout the entire movie he's still following the same plan; get Belle to marry him and settle down, as mentioned before. He talks to her in the market (fail), he sets up a wedding to propose to her (fail), and he tracks down her boyfriend and tries to murder him (fail fail fail).

And yes, I am aware that The Beast wasn't Belle's boyfriend until the end of the movie, I just wrote it for comedic effect.