(slightly loony about Luna)
Sep. 29th, 2004 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaIt just occurred to me as a sort of struck-by-lightning thing, that I -can-, in fact, see why/how someone would dislike Luna on principle. It's that whole loopy-but-with-no-real-substance thing. Like, those people who prance about spouting nonsense and acting oh-so-silly-and-odd with those over-the-top outfits and multi-colored beads and ten necklaces and five Zulu charms and three rabbit's-feet and eleven little mice strung on a string around their waists or whatever. I myself would probably avoid that sort of person if I saw them on the street. This reminds me of BtVS, y'know, with that vision of Andrew and Warren prancing around in 'heaven' singing 'we are as GODS', etcetc.
I think it's degrading and a silly stereotype of what 'wild' or weird girls are like, really. Of course they're crazy, moon-mad, completely out there swinging from clouds and eating daisies. Oddness, weirdness, intuitive brilliance-- that's one thing. Acting like you're on crack and happy about it is another thing altogether. I don't nod and smile if people eat daisies and sing silly songs in make-believe languages, I wish they'd get some sort of help.
Insanity is a touchy subject with me, of course.
On the one hand, I'm deeply fascinated with madness and particularly its connections to genius and 'truth', as well as truth-seeking. For instance, you could see a character like Fox Mulder as being 'mad' by societal standards, but he's not, really. The point of Luna, to me, and why I identify with her, is that she's not mad, not that she is. Sure, people think (perhaps even the author thinks) that she's loopy and 'out there' and so on, but she just sees things in a different way-- she doesn't sing at shadows and prance about with some wild light in her eyes.
It just bothers me because I keep seeing Luna portrayed with an emphasis on her 'madness', her complete goofy untetheredness, and it sort of hurts because I was a lot like Luna (as I imagine her) when I was a child. The funny thing is how little that sort of behavior-- distant gazes, non-sequiturs, idiosyncratic beliefs, a sort of otherworldly calm-- has to do with madness, really. It's a dreaminess, instead, really. A real Luna type isn't that loud, mad, raving hippie-- she's more of a quiet childlike fey creature, paying attention to invisible things and not quite touching the world and drawing her own conclusions. In the quiet of a childhood spent in isolation-- especially without one's mother (or father, in my case)-- the whole world silently blossoms into strangeness. Things acquire layers of make-believe 'secret' aspects where flowers talk and the moon shows you the path into faery and the dark is full of unnameable, glorious monsters.
Honestly, I don't know anything about these bright, falsely happy empty-eyed people that pass for Luna for so many people. Do they really exist? They probably do. I have had no traffic with them, and want none. Quiet doesn't mean dull; alone doesn't mean insane; different doesn't mean one's mind is scattered to the winds but rather often that one's mind is overly focused on the things others don't bother paying attention to, instead.
I don't care about Luna's earrings or her odd eyes, but it seems that's all most people notice. People are so distrustful of belief, even when the person is on a search for their own truth, while most of them simply accept a whole array of stranger and more frightening dictums as Truth, completely wholesale. I myself spent a childhood lost in a sort of twilight forest of fleeting beliefs and daydreams, picking things up and abandoning them. I know what it's like to see things and want to see more, no matter how strange. Luna is not mad. It's more like Luna is saner than the rest of her peers, maybe.
~~
EDIT - Er. I am interested in what other people think of Luna, positive and negative, btw....
I think it's degrading and a silly stereotype of what 'wild' or weird girls are like, really. Of course they're crazy, moon-mad, completely out there swinging from clouds and eating daisies. Oddness, weirdness, intuitive brilliance-- that's one thing. Acting like you're on crack and happy about it is another thing altogether. I don't nod and smile if people eat daisies and sing silly songs in make-believe languages, I wish they'd get some sort of help.
Insanity is a touchy subject with me, of course.
On the one hand, I'm deeply fascinated with madness and particularly its connections to genius and 'truth', as well as truth-seeking. For instance, you could see a character like Fox Mulder as being 'mad' by societal standards, but he's not, really. The point of Luna, to me, and why I identify with her, is that she's not mad, not that she is. Sure, people think (perhaps even the author thinks) that she's loopy and 'out there' and so on, but she just sees things in a different way-- she doesn't sing at shadows and prance about with some wild light in her eyes.
It just bothers me because I keep seeing Luna portrayed with an emphasis on her 'madness', her complete goofy untetheredness, and it sort of hurts because I was a lot like Luna (as I imagine her) when I was a child. The funny thing is how little that sort of behavior-- distant gazes, non-sequiturs, idiosyncratic beliefs, a sort of otherworldly calm-- has to do with madness, really. It's a dreaminess, instead, really. A real Luna type isn't that loud, mad, raving hippie-- she's more of a quiet childlike fey creature, paying attention to invisible things and not quite touching the world and drawing her own conclusions. In the quiet of a childhood spent in isolation-- especially without one's mother (or father, in my case)-- the whole world silently blossoms into strangeness. Things acquire layers of make-believe 'secret' aspects where flowers talk and the moon shows you the path into faery and the dark is full of unnameable, glorious monsters.
Honestly, I don't know anything about these bright, falsely happy empty-eyed people that pass for Luna for so many people. Do they really exist? They probably do. I have had no traffic with them, and want none. Quiet doesn't mean dull; alone doesn't mean insane; different doesn't mean one's mind is scattered to the winds but rather often that one's mind is overly focused on the things others don't bother paying attention to, instead.
I don't care about Luna's earrings or her odd eyes, but it seems that's all most people notice. People are so distrustful of belief, even when the person is on a search for their own truth, while most of them simply accept a whole array of stranger and more frightening dictums as Truth, completely wholesale. I myself spent a childhood lost in a sort of twilight forest of fleeting beliefs and daydreams, picking things up and abandoning them. I know what it's like to see things and want to see more, no matter how strange. Luna is not mad. It's more like Luna is saner than the rest of her peers, maybe.
~~
EDIT - Er. I am interested in what other people think of Luna, positive and negative, btw....
no subject
Date: 2004-09-30 01:21 pm (UTC)(Sirius and James split the lyrics, I'm thinking, with one of them on guitar and the other on bass. Kingsley can be their drummer, who doesn't talk.)
Draco would totally be into glamrock, don't you think? And Harry would be in, like. A boyband! with Ron and Neville and Dean and Seamus, they could be the Gryffindors. And Draco would loll around their dressing room in skimpy sparkling clothing and black leather pants and get glitter on their furniture and pout a lot and Harry would lean over to kiss him and tug on his lower lip and Draco would press a hand to Harry's back and later, when he was on stage, Draco's handprint would shine in the spotlight and all the girls would scream and Harry would smile and sing and dance in formation, and feel Draco there, in the small of his back.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-30 01:33 pm (UTC)ARG NOT THE BOYBAND, nooooooooo. *hiiiiides*
See, I totally think about this sort of thing way way more than I 'should' (to my non-existent shame), and actually I've truly contemplated continuing my `Gravity' Harry-fic and turning it into this adventure longfic where I start off looking in on Draco, who's a punk-rock bassist (or drummer!) in Liverpool (OH I KILL MYSELF, I REALLY DO). I totally think canonish!Draco is more punk rock than glam rock-- it's fanon!Draco who's more glam (not that I don't want to see Draco in girly slinky shiny things because OBVIOUSLY I DO). But anyway, punk!Draco amuses me more, 'cause it utilizes his rage against The Man (i.e., HARRY AHAHAHAH omg I just semi-squealed in the public lab) and also kind of plays on his obsessive addictive tendencies-- so he'd do drugs and drink himself stupid and be all skinny-strung-out-white-wizardboy-stranded-in-Muggle-Liverpool or maybe he could be in Scotland somewhere, omg the <333333!!
...And then, y'know (in my unwritten fic) a demon from the nth dimension finds Draco and makes him an offer he cannot refuse-- power, of course. And Harry coincidentally is after these demons (on behalf of the Ministry) so he tracks them down to where else, Liverpool-- and so he finds our ickle strung-out-and-angry-as-fuck!Malfoy playing bass guitar in a dim dingy Muggle club :D :D Ripped jeans and black t-shirt and THE WORKS, man. *dreamy sigh* "I'm here to arrest you... Malfoy?" AHAHAH oh thelove.
...Though 'The Gryffindors' is a totally rockin' name. Mmmm I'm totally there with the handprints and everything, however. *drifts off* THE LIP NEEDS TO BE TUGGED, IT SO DOES!!! I'm glad you recognize this deep and essential facet of how the universe WORKS, man.
Still, boyband/glam makes my eyes cross a bit ;))