#lean in on the fairytale and the Angela Carter and the company of wolves

[rosesnare]

𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚁𝙾𝚂𝙴 [ … ] 𝙱𝙾𝚁𝙳𝙴𝚁𝙻𝙸𝙽𝙴 𝙾𝙵 𝙵𝙻𝙴𝚂𝙷 & 𝙳𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙼 ,

ripe pink lips pursing against spring petals, the practice of a passion; mouth and flower indistinguishable, things one and the same, sticky with nectar / a breezeless night & the white gossamer curtains floating next to an open window, as if reaching for the girl sleeping within / a coil of black scales among the wet earth / an ornate vase filled with unidentifiable flowers: their bloom sudden & intoxicating under a ray of moonlight / sugar - spun glass fogged with the sighs of pleasure / a shift of feminine eyes behind a sheer veil / the red bead - tip of blood from a thorn's prick / an empty stone room filled with water and something hissing beneath it / a length of tulle used as a blindfold / the nectar of a ripe fruit spilling down lithe wrist, and the pink tongue that meets it / sweet voice deep and sticky with sleep, left by half in the dark honey of a dream / a bramble smelling thickly of flora, of strange roses and dew - wet desire, a scent so intoxicating it compulses you onward ⸺ forward, forward, into the thicket / the dark velvet eyes of a white ermine / blood left behind on a stone dais / bare feet in a slow pace along wet, thick moss, the drag of fine pale silk behind / the echo of harp and soft song played in the witching hour, a call that pulls you forth into the dark

( MUSINGS ) ⸺   ( WANTED ) ⸺   ( PINTEREST )

FULL  NAME     .     roscille halia alden     SOBRIQUET(S)  /  ALIAS(ES)  /  TITLE(S)     .     lady of house alden / the great rose, ( our lady ) star of the sea / ro, rosie, rose   AGE     .   twenty - eight  ( 28 )  GENDER  +  PRONOUNS     .   cis  woman,  she  +  her     ORIENTATION     .   bisexual, male lean     ALLEGIANCE     .   her family + her hungers

( + ) alluring, dreamy, curious, flirtatious, ambrosial, romantic, explorative, esoteric, persuasive, coy, imaginative, immersive, magnetic, charismatic, graceful, fervent, languid, affectionate, lunar, playful, elegant, enchanting, witty, creative, passionate ( - ) insatiable, selfish, vain, quixotic, precocious, demanding, gluttonous, enigmatic, spoiled, dissatisfied, lustful, fickle, impulsive, manipulative, jealous, fanciful, flippant, prideful, coquettish, woolgathering, prone to being consumed/addictions  TOUCHPOINTS      .      scarlett o'hara, gone with the wind. lucy westenra, bram stoker's dracula. katrina van tassel, sleepy hollow. juliet, romeo & juliet. helen of troy, greek mythology. sarah williams, labyrinth. vanessa, the little mermaid. margaery tyrell, asoiaf. ofelia, pan's labyrinth. kitty shcherbatsky, anna karenina. claire hamilton, etoile. lottie labouff, the princess & the frog. odile, swan lake. victoria, casanova. margot fenring, dune. ellen hutter, nosferatu. sleeping beauty, fairytale. thumbelina, fairytale. the love witch (2016). the company of wolves (1984). maleficent (2014). the bloody chamber by angela carter.

THE PARABLE & THE ROSE      .

she has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking, behind the hedge of spiked flowers, nosferatu’s sanguinary rosebud.

01. they find her amongst the rosebushes amid the storm. how long she had slept nestled amongst the thicket they cannot know ⸺ there are no signs of an intruder, no entrance in or out of the royal gardens; and yet the naked babe is so thoroughly soaked by rainwater she nearly slips from the hands of the high lady, falls to sudden death against the cold stone of the keep. slept through the thunder, she did, the septa whispers, peering avidly into the gossamer cradle. slept right through the great cries of the sky, it's violent tears... only to awaken at the flash of lightning. this much is the truth, at least. it is only the disturbance of light which stirred you. a wail so loud it could be heard above the crack of thunder; a cry so perfectly matched to the flash of lightning it seemed another twin of nature. and yet you bare no disturbance now, no shiver or ailment⸺ only a bright red spots on each cheeks, as if blood pools like a kiss. as if roses bloom beneath skin. the lady's eyes widen, grow deep and wide as a scrying pool. seem, for a moment, to glow red as the strange blood that curls beneath infant skin. a rose gifted to us by the gods. our rose.

all children mythologise their birth. It is a universal trait. you want to know someone? heart, mind and soul? ask him to tell you about when he was born. what you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. and nothing is more telling than a story.

02. she is nourished on the mythology of this making. fed on the sand-grains of truth that have calcified into pearls. it is no way to live. it makes her skin glow. it leaves her ever-hungry. roscille is raised as a beloved daughter of the aldens & of the land, attended to especially obsessively by their mother, she who discovered her among the roses. she is told as lesson and fact that she is a gift from the gods, and that she will one day be proven as much as a sereen. that vittra will claim her hand, or perhaps atesia ⸺ brought cross the lands by the lightbringer herself, too beautiful to deny.

i thought i longed for her, before. now I begin to feel a longing so great, so sharp, i fear it will never be assuaged. i think it will mount, and mount, and make me mad, or kill me.

03. there are those who believe the queen, a woman once an alden, bespelled the king with a rose from the noble house's strange garden. there are those who believe roscille emerged fully formed from the roses. as a matter of arithmetic, of the lesser-understood science of alchemy, there are then those who believe she is an alden rose incarnate. that she wields the same enchantments as the magicked flowers, and has since birth; bewitching her family and lady-mother into adopting her as their own. her beauty a thing impossible, her desires & her song irresistible.

HEADCANONS      . trigger warning      :      pica ( swallowing of inedible objects ).

to the credit of skalds and rumourmongers, she does always smell of roses. inexplicably. even fresh from an unadorned bath, the scent persists.

a creature at odds with herself. simultaneously deeply loving and fickle. delicate and wild. dreamy and dark. lovely and playful and prideful and vain.

known for her immense talent as a harpist & compulsively lovely singing voice. despite being a girl who argued against anything she found unenjoyable/unentertaining as a child with a great deal of septas and tutors, roscille has always been drawn to the harp, and knows the power of her voice.

gluttonous by nature & commanded by her impulses, both bodily and of heart. perpetually hungry ⸺ for experience, for touch, food, love, for all the hidden portions of life. it both drives her and frightens her, this insatiable quality.

the deep, dark hunger that exists inside her has called into question where exactly she comes from. if it was not the gods, than who? who, or what, is responsible for this black feathery turnings in the pearl-gut of her stomach? who, OR WHAT, is she?

a devout creature, but not to faith. she worships that which fills her heart.

quiet unnerves her in more ways than one. she is used to the permanent clatter and clash of her home, where storms take place of calm sky. she needs motion, noise, restlessness. if there is none she will create it. that can subsequently make her a touch of a troublemaker; she is certainly in the least half wild and prone to wandering any place green or wet

related to the above, she's both deeply tactile and carnal; she is one with sensations and material, silk and rain, moss and cold pearls ⸺ and as a result, she is often in a state of undress. bodily pleasure, be it sexual or platonic, is incredibly important to her.

had more than one gardener fired at home for her hysteria over their perceived ill-treatment of the roses in her youth, and has become the overseer for the alden gardens in womanhood. they are one and the same, the thorns and the petals and roscille. she talks to flowers in general, and it would seem from her pauses ... they must talk aback.

among the rumours about roscille is that she was fed pearls as a child. that the only way to cease one of the lovely alden daughters from crying was to place the heavy, milky gem on her tongue and allow her to swallow. that her hunger for this taste grew hot and irrepressible, and her father was left with no choice but to sweep the seas surrounding them with great nets, dredging up every oyster in the bay.

v much envies sereens for their "ability" to be worth the gods blessing, for accomplishing what she was always told she was or would be

has a white ermine as a pet, named elio. he is both incredibly intelligent & notoriously mischievous/difficult to those who aren't roscille. has more than once been mistaken as a fur stole as he lays draped across the back of her neck. roscille adores him and had a collar of deep plum-coloured rubies commissioned for elio

exchanges love letters with many a soldier she's never met ... think marty of grease with a whole booklet of GIs who are writing her. she doesn't consider it duplicitous, she means everything she says. her heart is too big and ever-swelling. she needs each and every one of them.

tl;dr the place where dreamy, enchanting fairytale & dark tooth-laden folktale meet<3

WANTED      .

( secret ) ex, masc 27 - 35 . will at some point become a proper wc up on the main ! many moons ago, the great rose of alden was kidnapped ⸺  so they say. they, these eponymous people, certainly have a great deal to whisper about, don't they? her song, cast with such an impossible sweetness over the sea, called to a crazed sailor who climbed the walls & took her in the deepest mouth of night. this was, in fact, actually the attempted elopement of roscille and her beloved. they made it only so far before alden ships recovered her on the shore of another isle, and in panic, unable admit to her transgression or her love, roscille claimed she had been taken against her will. though she did not divulge the identity of her lover, he was wounded by her story and inability to own up to their love in the face of adversity. something torrid and unresolved lives between them still.

misc      . homoerotic/codependent female friendships; despite never thusfar meeting, she has been in your dreams, and you recognize her instantly; "remember me love when i'm reborn as a shrike to your glorious thorn"; feyd rautha & lady fenring coding; sereens she is openly jealous of; those openly jealous of her; one who asked for her hand & she spurned only to regret it now; someone aiding in her quest to find where her origins truly are; frenemies; finger stuck deep into a wound pain/intimacy; classic bad influence but in the sense of mutual destruction, of their heart swelling to see her descend/follow her darkest impulses and join them; first love; previous event horizon that's never been forgotten / magical evening / "i remember that night i might just regret that night for the rest of my days".

[weather-mood]

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[variousqueerthings]

Daniel LaRusso: A Queer Feminine Fairytale Analysis Part Two of Three

Part 1

Part 3

6. Sexual Awakenings part 1: Love, Obsession, & Size Differences

[Insert that post talking about the creators making sure that Daniel’s antagonists were much bigger than him so that the audience would sympathise, spawning 10000 size kink fics]

I’m sure this won’t awaken anything in Daniel

Corporate wants you to find the difference between these two pictures

The hallmark of feminine fairytales tends to be growing into womanhood, with all those symbolic sexual under/overtones, searching for a prince, encountering monsters (or evil stepmothers), on the surface tending to be quite passive/reactive, but actually being about young girls and women getting out of their environment and choosing to tussle with those deep, dark desires – monsters. They’ve got to function within the limitations of power that they have – escaping an abusive situation through marriage, chasing forbidden desires under the guise of duress, asking questions about sexuality through things like symbolic plucking (flowers) or consumption (fruit) or pricking (needles), etc.

Daniel isn’t striking out to find his fortune or win a girl or a kingdom Like A Man, he’s not a threat to Silver, who – like Jareth in Labyrinth – is in control for almost the whole of the narrative, he’s not actually able to do much more than react until he makes the decision to stop training, and even then he’s immediately ganged up on and assaulted, needing to be saved by Miyagi while he stands and watches, bloodied and bruised. 

Daniel’s journey in the third movie is to be forced into an impossible situation, seduced by Silver, and then prove that whatever violence Silver did to him isn’t enough to destroy him. It is incredibly similar to Sarah’s in Labyrinth, who by the end declares: “you have no power over me,” and that’s her winning moment. Not strength, not wits, not a direct fight, (although Daniel does fight Barnes and gets beat up again – only winning in in the end by taking him by surprise, unlike in TKK1 or TKK2 where you could argue that he proves himself to be a capable physical opponent to Johnny and Chozen), but by declaring that whatever power was held over her is now void.

Daniel’s narrative isn’t satisfying in the same way, because the dynamic of Silver and Daniel only accidentally emulates this - it’s not an intention on the side of the film-makers.

When Miyagi tells Daniel that he has strong roots, when he tells him not to lose to fear and Daniel wins over Barnes (in an almost fairytale-esque set of events), on paper he’s defeated whatever hold Terry Silver has over him. In the film itself though, Daniel never defeats Silver (which will likely be confirmed once he returns in Season Four). Daniel cannot simply say “you have no power over me,” and see Silver shattered into glass shards. 

The film is a contradiction: It wants to be a masculine sports film, but it exists in the same realm as Goblin Kings seducing young girls with the promise of: “Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.” Unlike Sarah, Daniel doesn’t claim the power that’s been promised to him on his own terms. His subtextually sexual awakening is so corrupted that all he can do is pretend it never happened.

Still, Daniel proves in the film that his strength is not in his fists. It’s in his praying to the bonsai tree that’s healed despite a violent boy brutally tearing it in two.

These looks on Daniel and Silver though?

So why does Silver become obsessed with him? What’s up with all those red outfits (that he doesn’t wear in Cobra Kai)? What does the temptation reveal about Daniel? How does it recontextualise TKK1 and TKK2? Is Daniel bisexual? (yes).

Ah, beach-Daniel, in your red hoodie and your cut-off jorts. Iconic hot-girl summer vibes. 

If you didn’t want me over-analysing this, you shouldn’t have put him in so many red outfits and then have this man leering at him like he wants to eat him alive.

Surface-level it’s not hard to read into a Dude Story: Masculine power fantasies are about strength in a very direct way. Fighting, control, suaveness – and if you’re not the most traditionally masculine of guys, asserting dominance through being a good lover or intelligent or overcoming that unmanliness in some way through beating the bully or convincing the hot girl to go out with you, levelling up in coolness. Being A Man. It’s not too dissimilar from Daniel’s arc in the first movie, if you watch it without taking later events into account, although Daniel is never interested in proving himself as a man, and more in making Miyagi proud. Still, he does win and gain respect, and arguably “get the girl,” although Ali’s interest in him was never dependent on the fight.

7. Sexual Awakenings Part 2: Sexual Assault, Liberation, and Queerness

Feminine power fantasies are often about sex. Metaphorically. More accurately it’s “owning sexuality.” Even more accurately: “Freedom.” They also inhabit a fluid space in which empowerment through monstrous desires and non-consent can happen at the same time. And on top of that, many of these “fantasies” are actually being written by men, so whose fantasy is it really? A lot of them are based in oral traditions so presumably they were originally from the mouths of women, even if modern iterations (starting with Grimm’s collections) are filtered through cis men’s perspectives.

All of that being acknowledged: In Angela Carter’s “The Company Of Wolves,” Red Riding Hood unambiguously sleeps with the wolf. Belle discovers her freedom from expectations and unsuitable suitors (and in some versions, evil stepsisters) by falling in love with a Beast (the original novel was written by a woman, the 18th century Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve). Jareth informs Sarah of his obsessive devotion to her in Labyrinth. To lean into horror for a moment – Buffy is stalked and eventually has relationships with both Angel and Spike, Lucy in Coppola’s Dracula (which I have mixed feelings about) is raped by the werewolf and Mina is stalked by Dracula, The Creature Of The Black Lagoon kidnaps Kay (the lead’s girlfriend) – subverted in both The Shape Of Water in which Eliza forms a consensual relationship with the amphibious sea-god and in the short-lived horror series Swamp Thing, in which the connection is purposefully framed as seductive…

and in The Karate Kid Part Three Daniel LaRusso punches a board until his hands bleed because an attractive, older man tells him to and in this moment he gives in to what he (thinks he) wants.

Not all of those examples are equal. Some are consensual, some are hinted as abusive and/or stalkery, all of them have large age gaps, and a few are outright non-consensual.

But they’re all fantasies.

They’re all power-fantasies.

Except for Daniel, because he’s a man and the idea that being obsessed (lusted) over by an older man who keeps you in his thrall, specifically because you tickle his fancy for whatever reason, because you’re beautiful, breakable, different – could in any way be considered empowering is a difficult concept to wrap your head around. It doesn’t contain that “but I’m a good girl, I’d never go off the path and pluck flowers if a bad wolf told me to, honest,” societal context or the social context of rape culture. It’s closest comparison is closeted (perhaps even unknown until that point) queer identity.

There have recently been some comparisons of Daniel LaRusso to Bruce Bechdel in Funhome (and everyone who says that Ralph Macchio ought to play him in the upcoming movie: you’re right and I’m just not going to enjoy it as much without him). I’ve written a post about Sam being the heir to his legacy and trauma, specifically as a queercoded man. It’s not dissimilar to the plot of Funhome in a lot of ways.

The other interesting source that’s been going around in connection with Daniel is the essay “The Rape of James Bond,” which discusses the use of sexual assault as a plot device for women and not for men: “About one in every 33 men [in the US] is raped. … [your statistically average, real life man] … doesn’t have a horde of enemies explicitly dedicated to destroying him. He doesn’t routinely get abducted, and tied up. Facing a megalomaniac psychopath gloating over causing him pain […] is not the average man’s average day at the office.” That last bit is just a descriptor of Terry Silver, (although I take issue at the blasé use of psychopath).

The two part youtube essay  Sexual Assault of Men Played for Laughs posits that there is nothing more de-masculinising than the threat of sexual assault and therefore any narrative that features this “rightfully” must mock any man who has been a victim or who fears being a victim of sexual assault. It is feminising. There is nothing more humiliating – and therefore unheroic – than a man dealing with sexual assault.

So what do we feel when we see an attractive young man being put into a vulnerable position by an older man? A trope associated with female characters, a trope that is considered unpalatable for men (see reactions that happened when the hint of sexual assault was introduced in Skyfall).

Was it the fact that he was being threatened, or the fact that James’ next line is: “what makes you think this is my first time?”

Some thoughts added by @mimsyaf​ are around the idea of safety in how a lot of cis women might relate to this narrative through Daniel’s eyes. He’s not a woman, he has – societally – more power than a girl or woman would have, which makes this a different watch to, say, if Danielle were to go through the same narrative. Daniel doesn’t carry that baggage of rape culture, or of the male gaze that you might find in a similar scenario of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Christine in Phantom of the Opera (and once more the age differences between these characters and the men who love/lust over them are substantial), which makes the narrative “safer” to engage with.

I agree with that, although as a transmasc person I also come at it differently. I specifically like to headcanon Daniel as a trans guy and find his fraught interactions with masculinity through his own non-toxic lens relatable, as well as the way other boys and men react to it – also I think Terry Silver is hot. I know there are people who write Terry Silver with female OCs, which is also a form of empowerment.

On the flipside putting Daniel in this space runs a risk of fetishising him as a queer youth who is either Innocent and Pure, or a bisexual stereotype that deserves to be assaulted for not being a real man. After all, Real Straight Men don’t run the risk of sexual assault.

 Alas, the road to empowerment never did run smooth. 

The comparisons between the way Daniel is treated by the text and how female characters are often treated in texts are undoubtedly there. Through Ralph Macchio and TIG’s casting and the direction and acting, but also within the text itself. 

It might not be with the same purpose as Neo’s symbolically trans journey, but it puts the whole narrative that Daniel’s going through from TKK1 under a different light than if there had only been one movie that ended on a triumphant sports win and a girlfriend.

Johnny’s masculinity and the use of tears as liberation, now that’s a whole other analysis….

[iamdoctorscarlet]

Fairytales and Dark Romance

In Week 6 of Adaptation in Film, we discussed the short story “The Company of Wolves” by Angela Carter, the article “Between the Paws of the Tender Wolf: Authorship, Adaptation and Audience” by Lorna Jowett, and the film Company of Wolves. 

The film and the story shows the theme of stranger danger. It portrays the woman as a target for men’s desire. This is much like how the film shows a wolf targeting the woman is his prey. Throughout the film he tries to get her to kiss her. He tries and fails at times, he eventually kisses her, but she pushes him away. While she does not seem into it, through the course of the film it goes from her having fear to love, leaning on the dark romance aspect. The film can also be a “gothic fairytale”. Within its world, there is dream-like imagery, a young protagonist, nightscapes, the supernatural, familiar places, excess, metaphors, and psychological terror. 

The article by Lorna Jowett mentions how Carter’s story “The Company of Wolves” comes from oral tradition. These oral traditions had a purpose to tell stories that were able to discuss many cultural taboos. This calls back the purpose of this story being not to trust strangers, even within the familiar. Everything may be normal around you but there could be a someone of something that wants to disrupt that normality. Yet, the monsters, more apparently in the films, have a combination of both hypermasculinity and vulnerability. This creates a feeling of both danger and appeal.