Tarzan and Beauty and the Beast
How did the place your muse grew up in affect them?
Growing up on the prairies gave Rachel an affinity for and an appreciation for the snow and all things winter. She loves it all and it’s where all of her best childhood memories come from. However, most of her life was spent on the west coast, and as a result, she can never truly divorce herself from the mountains and the ocean. That’s her heartland. That’s where peace is. In fact, it’s the reason that she actually has a favourite body of water - which is a strait, by the way.
How has your muse changed as a person over their life? Have they changed for the better or for worse?
She has changed a lot over the course of her life. She was a happy go-lucky kid when she lived on the prairies but her young life on the west coast was far from idyllic. She’s had a lot of experiences that have made her a bit volatile. That’s what trauma does and she’s had to work really hard to become a better person and divorce herself from that. But she’s much stronger and while she has a hard time trusting people and believing that they actually have her back because she has really bad abandonment issues, she still chooses to be kind and persist. She chooses to believe in the best of people and in the best of humanity.
He has definitely changed for the worst. While he was a very smug and obnoxious kid, he was still, overall, a good person. Self-absorbed and overconfident, sure. But a good person. He cared deeply about his relationship with his sister, but he was constantly used for his success growing up and it really embittered him to the point that even his relationship with his sister fell apart. And now, he cannot believe in relationships that don’t start and end with ownership.
He has not changed a great deal. In fact, he’s only grown more and more into the person he was kind of always meant to be when he was a little kid. He always knew where he wanted to be and what he wanted to do and everything he’s done was done to strive towards that goal. I’d say he’s only ever gotten better, because now he can actually do the things he’d spent his whole life studying instead of just studying them. Now he can actually take a far more active part in his passions rather than just learning them as a child, though that had its own value and excitement for him.