#and then the tiger feeds your daughter to the goats but thars neither here nor there

[asthedeathoflight]

A while ago I saw a post making the metaphor that Armand was a tiger who really really wanted you to put him on a leash but he was still. You know. A tiger. So if you don't put him on a leash he's going to eat you. And while that mental image is very funny its always struck me as such an oversimplification of what was actually going on in Paris which was more like

Okay so imagine you're roaming through the countryside and you find this tiger who is guarding a herd of goats. And you're like hm. That's weird. Tigers aren't known for doing that. And you talk to the tiger and it turns out he HATES guarding the goats and he's a little bit afraid of the goats also. And you're like my dude why do you not just eat the goats. And he explains to you his very sad tragic backstory about how he was kidnapped and sold to a circus as a cub and they used his fear of fire to train him and eventually he was so broken in by being threatened and burned all the time that they were able to just abandon him here in the countryside with these goats and tell him to guard them, knowing that his lingering fear would keep him in line even after he was away from them. And this tiger looks at you with his big sad eyes and says im sorry about the goats and how they want to kill you but I'm just still really fucked up about the circus, you see. And what do you say in response to this, hm? Do you offer to help the tiger in any way? No, of course not. That would be silly. "You know who used to work in a circus?" you say, striking a match, "Me!"