Neth Smiley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goatgodschild) wrote2023-03-17 07:59 pm
goatgodschild) wrote2023-03-17 07:59 pm
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Week 43, Entry 3
When I was younger, Jareth scared me no end, as well, as did Legolas, for related reasons.
It all started with this book, Fairies and Elves. It has beautiful art, but this particular book terrified me at the beginning of puberty. It makes no bones about how attraction to elf men, (and women, for that matter) nine times out of ten ends in an unpleasant death or mutilation of the human partner. If they want you as a partner at all, and not as something to use as a servant (serving food, nursing children, etc.).
They enjoy killing for the pleasure of it, feeding on you one way or other. You can protect yourself with what you can, but that's protecting the body, not the mind.
I trained my mind to clamp down in terror at physically attractive elves, believing that this was how I would be able to keep myself from being stolen away and mutilated.
In this reading, Jareth isn't read as an egregore, or a sexy monster, but someone who is, in all likelihood, maneuvering to use Sarah as either breeding stock or livestock. Most likely, she's not coming out of this sane -- the ending isn't triumphant, it's horrifying. I viewed the happy ending as a comfortable lie, told to get the story past the censors. You have to tack on a happy ending, so they did.
I want to underscore, this is what I believed then. Not now.
The other reason Jareth scared me was basically that his treatment of Hoggle reminded me of how more socially able girls treated me, but that's on me.
It all started with this book, Fairies and Elves. It has beautiful art, but this particular book terrified me at the beginning of puberty. It makes no bones about how attraction to elf men, (and women, for that matter) nine times out of ten ends in an unpleasant death or mutilation of the human partner. If they want you as a partner at all, and not as something to use as a servant (serving food, nursing children, etc.).
They enjoy killing for the pleasure of it, feeding on you one way or other. You can protect yourself with what you can, but that's protecting the body, not the mind.
I trained my mind to clamp down in terror at physically attractive elves, believing that this was how I would be able to keep myself from being stolen away and mutilated.
In this reading, Jareth isn't read as an egregore, or a sexy monster, but someone who is, in all likelihood, maneuvering to use Sarah as either breeding stock or livestock. Most likely, she's not coming out of this sane -- the ending isn't triumphant, it's horrifying. I viewed the happy ending as a comfortable lie, told to get the story past the censors. You have to tack on a happy ending, so they did.
I want to underscore, this is what I believed then. Not now.
The other reason Jareth scared me was basically that his treatment of Hoggle reminded me of how more socially able girls treated me, but that's on me.
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