~~ collars. it's all about the collars.

[reenka]

I've had an odd realization-- which is probably only interesting to me, seeing as it's a bit of quibbling on my internal terminology, but ah well. That's what I'm here for, right. Right.

I've thought that one of my archetypal interests was the journey & transformation of 'The Monster'-- whatever/whoever is feared and loathed and made into a symbol of the Dark within a particular story/legend. This kind of archetype could manifest as a vampire or a murderer or even someone 'alien' like the present day prejudice against the queer, for instance. And while it's true that's an interesting subject, I think what I'm really fascinated with is 'The Beast'-- or rather, everything beastly and dark and dangerous (for it is untamed) within any and all characters.

I don't know if I'm particularly happy with dwelling on characters that are already labelled 'dark' or frightening, which is probably one reason I've never been particularly attracted to villains in fiction. I'm much more drawn to ambiguity and the inner struggle with one's darkness than the outer struggle with others' perception of that darkness. So 'the Beast' seems a more apt metaphor-- because, indeed, we all have the shadow of the Beast within us, since it's basically the Id. It's a difference of direction.

Really, I'm obsessed with the workings of the Id in every which way, but it's especially delicious when that unknown Dark within has an outer manifestation-- as in Remus, for instance, because it's especially stark when one's 'other' self is subdued, closed-in, maybe even kind in a way. That's why, perhaps, I've always loved The Beast (in Beauty and the Beast) and it's been a favorite type of fairy-tale for as long as I remember, along with The Frog Prince (which has a similar theme, actually) and The Snow Queen (yet again, with the redemption of the beastly little boy by pure devotion, though none of these boys were truly monstrous).

When I was little, the idea of love making the impossible possible was what most fascinated me about the romances in in the stories I read. That transformation, perhaps, is the very definition of the sublime-- to convert, to render finer, to elevate. And in making the transformation literal, the story acquires a sort of mythic resonance-- in making the Beast into a Man, of course Beauty learns to love truly, where love isn't blindness unless blindness is forgetting to see and learning to see past.


I was thinking, particularly, of my recent frustration with how difficult it is to make Harry respect Draco post-OoTP-- and it occurs to me that maybe respect is really a form of seeing without prejudice, of acknowledging someone's worth without the constraints of Ego, which speaks with the voice of fear. The Id fears as well, of course, but its fears can be overcome with a process of waking up-- of seeing what is invisible to the eye-- what is essential. The threat of death is nothing when one loves with one's whole heart, for one's fear is no longer for oneself. I believe that.

I love the Beast who is not a monster-- who is only a manifestation of his own internal fears. And once the Beast learns to see himself with kindness (and to love as he is loved), well-- he transforms. It's not so much that I think the human form is purer (in the fairy-tale), as I think it's simply recombined. The darkness is still there beneath the pretty face, but as long as he is loved, the Beast can wear that face without true fear of himself. I think... I think that in loving the Beast, the Hero changes not so much the Beast's nature (because he was always himself) as his self-perception. And when we believe we are beautiful-- and loved-- we change how we act towards others. We change in the ways that matter.

I think... well, it's easy to make the parallel about just why it was so important for Remus to have friends that loved & accepted him. That's what someone who perceives himself as the Beast thrives on, after all-- that acceptance. It really would be interesting to write/read an AU trying to extrapolate Remus's development growing up if he'd never become part of the Marauders. I wonder if he would've been-- not different in a blatantly worse way, precisely... but-- completely untamed. Deeply distrustful-- not so much unkind as unwilling. I don't know.

It really does appear that Remus was tamed, doesn't it? Sort of. I'm thinking of it in the sense it's used in `The Little Prince', which, btw, teaches one everything one needs to know about life as far as I'm concerned (heh). The Fox tells the Little Prince that one becomes responsible for what one has tamed-- but without that taming, there can be no connection. He could not play with the Fox when it was a wild Beast, but likewise the Fox said he needed the boy to tame him.

And to tame is to belong.

    "For me you're only a little boy like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you have no need of me, either. For you I'm only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, we'll need each other. You'll be the only boy in the world for me. I'll be the only fox in the world for you..."

"I'm beginning to understand," the little prince said. "There's a flower... I think she's tamed me..."

The fox became silent and gazed for a long time at the little prince.

"I beg of you…tame me!" he said.

"Willingly," the little prince replied, "but I haven’t got much time. I have friends to discover and a lot of things to understand."

"One can only understand the things one tames," said the fox, "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy ready-made things in the shops. But since there are no shops where you can buy friends, men no longer have any friends. If you want a friend, tame me!"


--Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry

Comments

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Obviously now instead than thinking about anyone taming Remus I just thought about Harry taming Draco.

*melts back in the crowd*

[malafede.livejournal.com]

PS: You have a Snarry icon. *mocks till the end of days*

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

It's not a H/S icon if there's no Snape. Besides, I'm not ashamed of liking the pairing.


...I was also thinking of 'taming' Draco but I don't think it works very well. There's a lot of fics where Draco 'belongs' to Harry (likewise Harry belongs to him), but the dynamic is pretty different because there's no real 'beastliness' or 'wildness' this would overcome. Draco is a nasty little boy who's no danger to anyone but himself, plus he's already tame.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Er. What? You don't have to be ashamed of it for me to giggle about it, plus, that was a joke.

Good then. Still working for me, because of this:

"There's a flower... I think she's tamed me..."

And if he wasn't a monster in Harry's eyes, I don't think it would be so hard to respect him. Not wanking to get in a discussion of monsters now though, since I have my idea, you have yours, they are not mutually exclusive and just differently focused, blah blah blah. Plus, Draco's not tame. That's kind of funny.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I just meant... er... the 'mocking' would be more effective(?) if I was embarrassed about the link to H/S... or-- something. But I s'pose it's enough that you see it, yeah :>


It's hard for Harry to respect him in a whole complex of ways, it seems like. A bouquet, even. And it's all tied up with Harry seeing the name Malfoy as being equivalent to freak/bully/slimeball. Ahh, maybe it's just beyond me, but note that I've never seen anyone else do it 100% believably (in post-OoTP fic) in all this time. It's even harder while still in Hogwarts, without a 'break' first and without either of them growing up first. So it's not... I mean, the way one overcomes a false image is by seeing something in someone that contradicts it. Something beautiful and shining and real, something admirable.

So I wasn't denying Draco was a monster in Harry's eyes, just that he wasn't a beast-- that was my point. If he was a beast, he'd be a tame one, not a wild one. Harry's the wild one who'd need to be tamed more, actually-- and he was, kinda, by Hagrid & Ron & Hermione & such, but not all the way.

I meant he was tame in the socialized sense of him already loving people and being loved-- of feeling like he belongs. His father tamed him. He might not be nice and kind, but that's not how I meant 'tame'.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

It's just, you were making it look like I expected you to be ashamed for liking it. O.o Liiiike, everytime you rant at the evils of D/P and Heero/Relena, do you expect me to be ashamed? O.o I just, I just... *POUTS*

the way one overcomes a false image is by seeing something in someone that contradicts it. Something beautiful and shining and real, something admirable.

You mean Draco's not "beautiful and shining and real, something admirable" or he is? Sorry, I don't understand. But um. I don't think that's a monster you're talking about? More like, the victime of prejudice omg. (Like, I have a prejudice against this kind of storyline and always link it back to Snape for some reason. Maybe it's just I can't think of Remus of a monster... I am like, yeah, okay, so he's a werewold... yeah. But he's like, a good guy. So not monstruous. Maybe the metaphor is just too explicit to be real for me? Dunno.)

Draco's tamed to his Dad but not to like, Gryffindors (our norm?). BUT I agree both H and D are beasts in this scenario... funny because I was thinking about Miki and Kozue from SKU and how they can be seen as the Bride to each other alternatively, and how also the distribution of archetypes (...okay, that was a funny way to put it) is not perfectly symmetrical about H/D either. They are sort of mirrors in this also; Harry be the truly dangerous beast hidden beneath a tamed facade, and Draco the opposite? Though this definition leaves me dissatisfied.

Anyway. I was thinking about the way you always say H/D is about redemption of Draco for you, and I was thinking hey, this concept of "taming" could be the attraction for me to H/D when talking about how it influences the um, superego level? Or just the outside world.

/words

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

First of all, the icon wasn't about H/S at all for me-- you may have seen the original pic, but I didn't included Snape in it. To me it's just a Harry pic. Plus, I don't rant about D/P-- I just say 'meh', but I don't dislike it actively like I do D/R or S/D. Heero/Relena, I also don't mock-- I actually don't mock anything. It's the mocking/giggling that would be more effective if I felt awkward or embarrassed. But anyway.

You keep mixing up terms, it seems like. I was consciously separating 'beastly' and 'monstrous' and talking only about the Beast. I know Remus isn't monstrous. I know. That's why I said he wasn't! And also connected him with the Beast which is not the same as the Monster, because (as I said) the monster had to be seen as fully alien/malevolent and not just dangerous and wild.

I don't know who's afraid of Draco or would believe he's a 'truly dangerous beast'. I mean. Harry? Ha! None of the Gryffindors think he's scary. And besides, the 'beastliness'-- that's a question of self-perception, which, was actually my point about how it's different from the Monstrous.

Another thing about this archetype as I see it-- Harry can't be a real Beast hidden behind a tamed surface. Taming isn't surface-- that would defeat the purpose of this deliberate act of love. Taming a change of self-perception within the Beast and the one who loves him, after which point the Beast and the Hero(ine) belong to each other. So someone could be seen as 'monstrous' beneath the 'normal' surface-- but we are -all- Beastly deep within (that is, we all have the wild Id)-- the whole point is not that the Beast becomes hidden but that's loved and thus transformed into no longer really being wild/dangerous to the one who loves.

And H/D isn't about redeeming Draco... I mean, I want to redeem/make Draco grow up/mess with Draco's arc, but that's not what H/D is all about or anything. The whole mutual belonging which so many people include in the H/D dynamic-- the possessiveness-- that doesn't really fit the archetype because in that dynamic, someone would have to be not the Beast (in other words, the Hero), and I meant that Harry would be more likely to fit that role of Beast than Draco where Draco would probably never quite be the Hero (though it'd be nice). The whole thing is a mess of terminology gone wild. That's why I said to start with that it doesn't fit with H/D.

[malafede.livejournal.com]

*POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS* *POUTS*



*aside, invents archetype where the monster is embraced by the beast by taming the beast and the beast's rage*

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Not wanking to get in a discussion of monsters

I love myself.

*wanks*

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Draco is a nasty little boy who's no danger to anyone but himself, plus he's already tame.

Can I say this is so what I like about him?:-D I mean, he is so tame. He's such a domestic animal--he's just really not housebroken. That's why I love him as a ferret, tame but not the kind of pet that everybody thinks of first. What's so tragic about him as how badly he's tamed, you know? That's why I love that moment when Lucius appears in the CoS movie, because Draco's yapping at Harry and when Lucius touches him with his cane and he jumps makes me think of a person who's trained their dog to be nasty to everyone except its master.

I think that's partially why I often get so involved in fics where Draco has to survive on his own, like a tame animal thrown into the wild (whether it's "Welcome to the Real World" or that new story...damn, what's it called...it's very good...The Long and Winding Road? I think the author is Lucinda Malfoy). Or Adela's story too. Because dealing with Draco really does seem somewhat like dealing with a badly trained animal.

Of course, the fact that he's a domestic animal doesn't mean that one can't get bitten by him. He's still an animal. We can't really judge animals and put some down because they're not cool and wild.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Heeeeee!!1 You're so one of the reasons I love Draco (...when I do) <3 Just... the way you see him, one can't help but go, 'omg, he's the cutest thing EVAR!!1' teeheee<3

Yes, that's exactly what I (didn't quite know I was) getting at-- he is a domestic-- but poorly trained-- animal, ahahahah. 'Nasty to everyone except its master', yeay!!1 HEEEEEEE!! Omg, he's so adorable. The yippy little boy >:D Getting tangled between Harry's legs~:)) And making messes~:)) And entirely too much noise~:)))!! And biting ankles >:D And insisting on sleeping in one's bed >:D The impossible boy!ferret <3<3<3 Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

That's where I was going with the Apache!ferret!Draco, too-- wanting to see him in the wild, 'cause it's interesting to see how Draco deals when he's overwhelmed and faced with the completely unexpected. I mean, in a way, it's just that I like to torture him (eheheh) but also 'cause I think he's quite adaptable. Or at least flexible. Y'know. One of those :> *wildly nods*

Heheh I think his bad training is more amusing than say, Sirius's type of wildness >:D Though I know what you mean about coolness. He's just cool in an entirely different way, ahaaha. Though very few people make Draco wild/cool in that way in fic, actually-- they just make him overly precise & sophisticated & with the stupid shiny veneer of tameness rather than the real thing. *sigh*
Ahhh, he's a domestic animal that still has wild rages-- best of both worlds, hehehe >:D Awwww.

answering here? can't reply to comments below

[malafede.livejournal.com]

:/

Drama aside, I thought about the Beast tonight and I am still bored as hell by and uninvested in overt beasts like Lupin, BUT I also thought you were right when you said Harry is the Beast, not Draco. Draco's obviously Beauty, what was I thinking?

(see? this is what i mean with you disagreeing with me out of a reflex... or not, that was you saying that. anyway. why is it that when I say 'Nasty to everyone except its master' you make faces at me? >:O)

can unscreen drama if you like ^^

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Harry's closer to the Beast, at least in OoTP. Draco's still no Beauty~:)) But... he could be. Maybe. He'd probably try to leave much earlier. And never volunteer... actually, he might, for his father. Hmm. And he might grow to love the Beast though he'd be -really- bitchy and complain a LOT. Harry's not -quite- the Beast because... um... well, lots of reasons. But it's more of a fit that way than the other way :> I think you were trying to connect monstrous!Draco with a beastly!Draco and... it just doesn't go.

Hahah, did you say those exact words? I think that when SM says it, she's kind of um... not 100% serious~:)) Or at least I take it in a light-hearted way where I need not invest full analysis into it. With you, I'd probably be like, 'what does she mean, Master?', whereas with SM, I'm like, AHAHAH SM MADE A FUNNY AHAHAHAH. Or something. SM also gets to say anything 'cause she's Yoda. And I'm like... what am I? I think I'm Obi-Wan. >:D And you're Anakin AHAHAHAHA sorry couldn't resist.

Re: can unscreen drama if you like ^^

[malafede.livejournal.com]

YOU CALLED ME ANAKIN PREPARE TO DIE. EEEWWW STUPIDEST VILLAIN CHARACTER ARC EVER.

Draco's the monstrous flipside of the Beast. (Was thinking yesterday how Kozue is the monstrous flipside of the Rose Bride. OH THE KOZUE LOVE (http://ohtori.nu/gallery/book2/FilmBook2-77.jpg).)

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think it's that you refer to Draco as 'monstrous' which always brings it back to Harry and how Harry sees him, which also bothers me. I just want him to be -Draco-, like I want Harry to be Just Harry. It's like, even if they think/fear they are, they don't have to be defined by each other. It's... not good for one's individuality.

Besides, what do you mean 'flipside'? Is the Beast's flipside the Monster....? I think they're just different, or rather-- opposite poles perhaps, but not reflections. The monstrous is alien & malevolent & dark-- how is wildness a flipside?

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Ops O.o I meant the monstrous flipside of Beauty.

He can be both Draco and the Monster. In fact, if I didn't think he was Draco first and foremost, I wouldn't be interested in his role as a monster also, ie how fucking wrong Harry is about him.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Well. At least we agree that Harry is fucking wrong about him ♥

hee

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Also, you conveniently avoided the point that SM agreed with me that Draco is tame, though badly housetrained >:D

Re: hee

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Because with the "badly housetrained" she was implicitally agreeing with me on the "different kind of tame" bit, clearly.

/nods wisely

Nya nya.

Re: hee

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

...and you say -I- disagree just because :P heh
I always said that I meant a very specific kind of 'tame' and... stuff. Which, er... may or may not be what either of you meant ^^;

Re: hee

[malafede.livejournal.com]

TAMED BRIDE FLIPSIDE (http://ohtori.nu/gallery/tarot/Tarot08.jpg) is what I mean.

Re: hee

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

...and clearly it's what SM means also :>

Re: hee

[malafede.livejournal.com]

I'm sure if SM knew SKU she would agree with me.

There should be an "ATTACHE" cap on that pic. There is in my artbook. (http://ohtori.nu/gallery/maison/Alone30.jpg)

Re: hee

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think you're both very pretty.

Re: hee

[malafede.livejournal.com]

Yes, but I am prettier.