Gorgeous Gorgon: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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Except, once the hero actually sees her...she's actually rather pretty. Sure, she has [[Good Hair, Evil Hair|snakes for hair]], [[Red Eyes, Take Warning|glowing red eyes]], [[Fangs Are Evil|fanged teeth]], [[Good Wings, Evil Wings|bat wings]], and [[Reptiles Are Abhorrent|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 [[Flanderisation|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 [[Snake People|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.
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Another less-often but still used trope is that the Gorgeous Gorgon [[Jerkass Gods|pissed somebody off]] [[Vain Sorceress|by being so good looking]], and was subsequently [[Baleful Polymorph|transformed into a monster]]. The transformation, though, [[But Your Wings Are Beautiful|wasn't quite enough to make her ugly]].
The title of this trope itself, by the way, has solid foundations in [[Greek Mythology|Greek Myth]]: many tellings had the Gorgons as mortal women more lovely than Aphrodite, [[Jerkass Gods|causing that goddess]] to [[Baleful Polymorph|curse them]] such that any who saw their loveliness would be turned to stone.<ref>although some versions of the story say that the gods instead cursed them with ''ugliness'' that turned all onlookers to stone, hence Medusa's classic snake hair and scaled face</ref>
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]].
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* The Gorgon in the ''[[Xanth]]'' series is pretty and the [[Reluctant Monster]] version. The petrification was the result of her magical talent, [[Power Incontinence|which she couldn't turn off]]. She eventually married Magician Humphrey, who cast an invisibility spell on her face to keep anyone from being able to look at her enough to become petrified. She was still able to partially petrify cheese through the invisibility to make 'gorgon-zola cheese', which was noted by Dolph to be a little crumbly.
* ''The Shambleau'' in the classic short story of the same name by C L Moore. She is both [[Nightmare Fuel]] and hugely desirable to the protagonist...
** The Shambleau is pretty much the intersection of
* Max Fraj's ''Chronicles of Yeho'' features the protagonist's encounter with an incomplete [[Reluctant Monster]] example - a girl who encounters an unknown [[A Wizard Did It|wizard]] in her dreams, who casts some sort of spell on her eyes. The girl awakens with an always-on petrifying gaze and barely manages to lock herself in a cellar while keeping her eyes firmly closed. {{spoiler|The protagonist's ability to summon random items lucks out - he had previously summoned sunglasses.}}
* In [[The Laundry Series]], "gorgonism" strikes humans randomly, from old South Asian grandmothers to young attractive middle-class girls (presumably, males also). When a gorgon looks upon a target, her gaze turns some of the target's carbon atoms into silicon, resulting in instant flaming death. Gazing upon a gorgon whose eyes are closed or covered, on the other hand, has no effect.
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** Except being 15' tall and frequently eating people. She's cute in some appearances, though, especially the comic where she was complaining to Blockbuster that her monster claws could handle VHS tapes, but not thin DVDs.
* The Gorgon and Elan from ''[[A Magical Roommate]].'' They actually both look pretty normal, excepting the snakes.
* The Kendril species in ''[[Last Res0rt]]'' consists almost entirely of
** They still wear masks, though.
* ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' has a few characters who qualify. First of all, there's Phix, who has a bit of a [[Hot Librarian]] thing going, despite being a sphinx. On top of that, an [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/another-scholar/ actual gorgon] (mildly NSFW, even though nothing is showing) seen at the library fits this trope quite well.
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* A gorgon appears briefly in ''[[Justice League]].'' Except for the green skin and snake hair, she is fairly average looking and, oddly, has a New York/Jersey accent.
** A far darker example exists in ''[[The New Batman Adventures]]'' with Calendar Girl (who is also a [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]]): Formerly a model for calendar magazines, she underwent several surgeries to make herself more beautiful, but she wasn't able to reconcile with her "hideous" features, and thus decided to go on a revenge spree against her former employers with calendar-themed crimes. The aftermath of the battle reveals that she's actually very beautiful, but she keeps on shrieking not to look at her as if horrified at her own appearance while arrested.
* ''[[American Dragon: Jake Long]]'' has Medusa and the gorgons as a group of attractive, [[Alpha Bitch
* ''[[Gravedale High]]'' also had an attractive gorgon cheerleader, named "'Dusa".
* ''[[Monster High]]'' has a rare male example with Deuce, who only has scales and snakes on his head, which he fashions into a mohawk. Otherwise, he is your typical handsome teen. To be fair, "attractive monster people" is pretty much the whole theme of the series.
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