[hero/shadow = still #1 OTP. le sigh]

[reenka]

I've just finished 'Wolfskin' by Juliet Marillier, and while it's interesting and I like the main characters (one of which is the Plucky and Strong Yet Fragile and Feminine Heroine), I can't help it... the most intriguing part of the book is the bond between the straightforward, kind yet quick-to-anger warrior boy and the snarky, cunning, needy, lonely yet ruthless sociopathic boy whom he shared a blood-oath of friendship with during their childhood. Mmmm. The warrior-boy's denseness and simplicity and loyalty set against the other's insecurity and need to prove himself and sheer single-minded desire to get what he -wants-... oh, it's like music to my ears.... And yes, I admit, in its basest elements it's really proto!H/D to me.
    And much as I understand these two are 'straight' both by author intent and common sense in context of their times and history, I can't help it-- I can't help but feel -this- is the more striking love-story, no matter how honestly heterosexual the warrior boy may be. This is the archetypal relationship between Hero and Shadow, and to me, nothing could really equal it in meaning or intensity, since it represents the basic union of Light and Dark of everyone's nature.

It occurred to me that the reason I'm so very fascinated strikes to the very heart of the reason of why I slash, why close male friendship means so much to me-- and the emotional stuntedness and closed-in inability of the latter boy to communicate his real self sort of underlines the 'normal' situation. It's almost like-- almost like -all- boys are a little sociopathic compared to ourselves (the girls, I mean); it's like they're often this closed in and verbally eloquent about everything but what lies in their hearts, so scared and insecure and ruthless in their defensiveness.

It also reminded me of the exchange I recently had with fictualities about being able to see the surviving 'half' of a pairing happy after the 'end'-- in a situation like with Frodo and Sam, where Frodo had little left to give before he'd finally departed and Sam had his wife and children. In my natural inclination, I'd say 'settling' is bad, even if the person is unaware they're settling for something 'lesser' or not as intense and deeply vital. I'd rather a character be miserable with the one they can't bear to love or lose than content with the one who merely makes them uncomplicatedly happy. But then, I'm rather perverse. -.-

I was thinking (with some chagrin), of how friends normally tend to make you uncomplicatedly happy, especially female friends (in my experience). If a friend isn't monumentally messed up, your relationship isn't likely to be fraught or angsty in terms of betrayals and secrets and overall tragedy, though clearly misunderstandings and resentments are normal. Uh, this is all 'in my experience'. And so, perhaps this is only the life of a relatively tame, easy-going female like myself-- men are much more likely to hold things back, to be eaten up by ambition and divided loyalties and duties, to be rotted from the inside with feelings they simply -can't- express, to be-- emotional basketcases, basically. And of course... of course, that's why I love them.
    More to the point, that's why I love to slash them, leaving aside the hot boysex for a sec.

I can't really imagine a healthy relationship here, and can't guarantee this rift in the boy's soul can be mended with the love and faith another clueless boy can offer, but oh-- oh-- the very idea. The possibility. It is like the dream of somehow bridging the gulf between Self and Other; more desperate and dark than any mere love-story, but also more painfully close to the heart, perhaps.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's a good sum-up of the LOTR situation. Though I'd add that the other thing is that Rosie simply doesn't really exist as part of the story. She's not set up in the beginning at all. Sam is free to follow his master. The one time she maybe is hinted at is when Sam is describing his vision from Galadriel where he imagines a house and a garden with...and doesn't speak the name. It's not even as obvious as Aragorn's moments of thinking about Arwen, which isn't much.

Then suddenly he brings her up just in time to go home--I tend to explain it as Sam having this great relationship with Frodo we're invested in and then he comes home and marries the girl he liked who worked at the local Dairy Queen. Perfectly respectable thing for him to do, but why should the readers care? In fact, one of the things I remember hating about that deleted chapter was Rosie claiming she knew Sam was coming back that day before she heard him, which just read to me like the classic Mary Sue being forced into the story as if she was somehow involved when Tolkien forgot to write her that way.

So the thing with Rosie is that whatever you imagine about her she's not just Rosie, she's a domestic life with children. It's no random thing, imo, that Sam already has Elanor when Frodo leaves, because his choosing Rosie over Frodo would be a very different thing than choosing Rosie and Elanor over Frodo, just because it would set up a triangle in a way the book very much avoids.

I mean, I've always felt--and I think this is one of the things I like about Mira's "Rain"--that Sam is naturally a domestic kind of guy in a way Frodo obviously isn't. At the root of their personalities Sam is a caregiver and natural family man and Frodo is naturally introverted and solitary. It's part of what makes their relationship so interesting. Sam and Rosie, by contrast, work because they are compliments of each other, very much the same. But Rosie could therefore be anyone. The personality we do see of her certainly works with Sam; there's something to build on there if you're writing Sam/Rosie. But frankly, she could still be anyone. Sam would have built the same kind of family bond with another girl had he come home to find Rosie married to someone else. Frodo was one of a kind for him. So when you're writing Sam "torn in two" that's always going to be there. When he misses Frodo he misses the person, when he misses Rosie she's tied up in sixty years of companionship and sharing children.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

I think it's actually because I understand Sam's motivation as being related to his own nature and predilection towards comfort/domesticity rather than passionate devotion that I feel this dissatisfaction with the *idea* behind um, actually choosing that as one's life. Like, if it's not perilous passion, I feel cheated on some level if someone's being left behind-- though at the same time, I still accept the character's (Sam's or the Wolfskin's) choices and natural inclinations. It's like our conversation about Ennis-- people's choices show us who they really are, and there's nothing that could really be done about that. But sometimes that bothers me, too :>

I don't want to force my values onto characters that don't share them, but at the same time grow dissatisfied with stories that support values I find bland, if that makes sense :> So I accept the character but resent the story :>