posession

[kradeelav]

possession themes/IC story thoughts that’s been on my mind lately~

+ cw for [ gestures vaguely ] stuff related to the above, revenge fantasies, plus tangential gnarlyness.  you have been warned.

(this probably counts as a giant spoiler in itself, but w/e.)

how an author approaches possession, imo, tells you a lot about them.

 

this ties into similar themes that i see occasionally in jemison’s books (heinously powerful magical beings being Othered or bound, subsequently used by folks in institutional power, and exploring that line of thought to its horrifying conclusion) but something that strikes me as relatively unexplored is possession as … dominance - absolutely fucked-up malicious revenge dominance in the same headspace of other nasty shit i’m not going to poke a stick at publicly.

possession as a twist on revenge fantasy, essentially - and crucially. from unlikely sources.

walking back on the topic a bit, i see Generic Dude revenge fantasies in media trending all the time which are pretty fucking dark and yet - it’s a topic that coworkers can talk about openly … like westworld at the coffee pot, or whatnot. remarkably blase.

and I … wait. so. very patiently. for the same kind of artistic freedom to be opened for anyone who’s been systematically at the other end of brutality in an organized fashion.

because my god, it’s there. and certain … emotions don’t go away just because they’re ugly enough to wish away. 

(‘revenge fantasy’ itself is a crude phrase for something that can’t be contained in a neat bow of ending, as a perpetrator to be hunted (and again, ended with relief).)

I feel like a lot of times authors (a) want to skirt around real revenge fantasies and the root emotions entirely (counterproductive, imo. you can’t un-feel an emotion) because it’s not in their system to think like that (still fair, not everyone’s wired the same), (b) hammer home too quickly that that line of hate is Bad. Period, What The Fuck. and scurry on (also counterproductive, even though I get where it’s coming from), © not want to engage because it’s not their story to tell and/or they’ve brought into the whole … ~*defenseless sweet innocent victim*~ narrative bullshit.  or, also just .. shy away from it because of a few hundred other reasons.  (not their brand, practicality, wariness of being sicc’d on by the morality mob, etc.)

still, at this point, you’d think we’d have more.  god knows there’s enough material.

(tangent to a tangent: another reason why I think hellsing (new drinking game: count the times krad mentions that infernal series) struck a chord with unlikely demographics is it went right into the heart of this - bordering on snuff film exploitation, even - with Integra/Alucard/Seras being coded as anything but a straight cis white dude and just bluntly taking a chainsaw, er, gatling gun to their worst nightmares.) 

(I’m not going to excuse that it was flagrantly tasteless at times, but it had balls.)

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I’ve never billed IC as a revenge fantasy because it isn’t, really; not any more than Hellsing is - (a twisted righteous path of gothic justice, yes). 

still - it circles around the ugly in a variety of pasts (are there sins of the ancestors that are impossible to wash away?), the ugly in archetypes (the classic question - what makes a monster? visually, in actions, or all the above?), and yes - the ugly in emotion.

i’ve gone on about this before - but the tightly linked nature of bad emotion / bad actions / bad person (You Are What You Feel) in media/stories these days stands to be teased apart as it’s found wanting.  Rarely is there a pause or acknowledgement of the root emotion as one would respect a raw and open wound (and allow it to breathe) - and rarely is it questioned with why with respect to time and effort (–to finally allow it to heal).

.

Possession is by nature an active step beyond taboo boundaries -

- technically it can be consensual, but the line gets blurry quite fast and hard once when you factor in story and the occult system in place.  IC disregards the living (and the tangle of sentience there) and instead uses the dead not out of any moral squeamishness (I have a few “Hard Nopes”, but this is not one of them) (clearly) - but more … exploring what it means to be a stranger in someones (-your own) skin.

Not having the right -and society’s acknowledgement - to ones own human body, i have found, is a common thread in stories about the Other. 

Flesh and agency is stripped away in obvious and less obvious ways (and in dizzyingly, sickeningly creative ways because humans will human), with alienation being the resulting (eventual) side of the coin, and goes full circle back to nameless emotions about the ugly side to existing. 

What right does one who shouldn’t exist - have to emotion?  have to a body? 

(-have to a future, even?)