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| - Passing through Adventure Towns, The Hero hears from the Quest Giver that there's a hideous she-monster bedeviling the town. A creature so ugly she can stun those looking at her and make them wish they'd brought their brown pants, she's so repulsive. The worst part is that her monstrous mien is like a car-wreck, you can't look away. This may be compounded by her hypnotic gaze...which can be triply bad if it can also turn onlookers into stone. Except, once the hero actually sees her...she's actually rather pretty. Sure, she has snakes for hair, glowing red eyes, fanged teeth, bat wings, and scaled skin...but her face is perfectly symmetrical, even classically beautiful. The snake-hair is actually rather playful, and her scales are colored not like a deadly coral snake, but opaline. The ones on her face may even be pigmented to imitate tasteful makeup. Her body is probably nicely curvaceous, too. The hero has just met the Gorgeous Gorgon. Her beauty can be due to one of three causes. The most common is that she merely has an Informed Flaw in the form of her ugliness, much like older actors are treated as if they were teens due to Dawson Casting. Everyone reacts like she's ugly and says so, but the viewer doesn't really see why. Alternately, she may be using some form of Voluntary Shapeshifting or magical glamour to appear more beautiful than she naturally is in order to confuse the hero. The more subtle interpretation is that the townsfolk have Flanderized her ugliness because she's, well, a monster. This may be explained by her inhuman features and the fact that, if we were to meet a person with a snake tail or four arms in real life (for example), we would be scared too, or at least greatly surprised and startled. If the latter, this usually presents one of two alternatives. One, the ugliness is played up by the superstitious townsfolk, who are so scared of her appearance (or unintentional dangerousness) that none of them bothered to notice she's actually a Reluctant Monster and very lonely. This Gorgeous Gorgon will likely prove friendly and even pull a Heel Face Turn if "evil" when shown some compassion. Two, the "beauty" is merely skin deep and exotic. This creature is much like Daddy's Little Villain, she is evil through and through and hides it behind an angelic (scaled) face to confuse victims. She most likely wants to proposition the hero before mating, killing, and then eating him. (And if he's very lucky, it'll be in that order). This Gorgeous Gorgon is perfectly fine to kill. These two alternatives can be seen as playing with Beauty Equals Goodness. In the first, the slightly hidden physical beauty is a sign of the internal goodness, in the latter, it represents the danger inherent in Evil Is Sexy. Another less-often but still used trope is that the Gorgeous Gorgon pissed somebody off by being so good looking, and was subsequently transformed into a monster. The transformation, though, wasn't quite enough to make her ugly. The title of this trope itself, by the way, has solid foundations in Greek Myth: many tellings had the Gorgons as mortal women more lovely than Aphrodite, causing that goddess to curse them such that any who saw their loveliness would be turned to stone. Others went so far as to say the Gorgons were so beautiful, their faces could stop men's hearts. It's worth repeating that, despite Gorgon being in the trope name, other types of monsters and genders can have this apply. Related to Cute Monster Girl and Hollywood Homely. Compare Beauty to Beast, Bishonen Line, and But Your Wings Are Beautiful. For the trope about Gorgons, see Medusa. Examples of Gorgeous Gorgon include:
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