Behind Saint Mark's church, with the leg of a man upon his shoulder

[sovay]

Dear brain. Let me start by saying that it's not that I don't appreciate you dreaming—I haven't had a dream I remembered since the beginning of March that wasn't some kind of grotesque or obvious anxiety nightmare. But while I'm sure it raised the intellectual bar for the next few nights, I really didn't like dreaming about a community event that turned into a race riot (in the dream I thought pogrom). A white man ran out of the school below me carrying the chewed arm of a brown-skinned child in his teeth. Said he was a wolf, only the difference was, a wolf's skin was hairy on the outside. It is interesting to represent racism itself as lycanthropy. Werewolves in mainstream fiction lately seem to function more more as metaphor for marginalized groups. I'm sure something powerful could be done with the reversal if it hasn't already. But it will probably not be me this week and anyway it was a very upsetting dream, thank you.

Comments

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a remarkable unpleasant dream.

[prezzey.livejournal.com]

Uhh, indeed an upsetting dream X[ *offers hugs*

I remember a call for vampire and werewolf stories where they were supposed to be written as big, bad, evil creatures... so that'd be something along these lines, except less elaborate. But I don't remember what the antho was called and whether it ever saw the light of day. :/ It was last year (two years ago?).

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to represent racism itself as lycanthropy. Werewolves in mainstream fiction lately seem to function more more as metaphor for marginalized groups.

I began getting tired of the "monster/villain is just misunderstood" trope a few years back, partly because it feels like its been done so many times, partly because... I don't know -- I feel like it's being done with characters where you have to either excuse the fact that they actually killed people, or else completely rewrite the story from the ground up to make them the innocent victim: someone on a thread the other day said they'd like a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in which Hyde did nothing worse than have consenting sex with adult males, and I said, well, that would be an interesting story, but it would also be a completely *different* one.

ETA -- and by coincidence, I just came across this, which seems relevant: Dungeons & Dragons with Philosophers. (http://existentialcomics.com/comic/23)

[ashlyme.livejournal.com]

*kicks your dream and offers hugs*

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

That's a horrible-sounding dream, and I'm sorry you had it.

Werewolves in mainstream fiction lately seem to function more more as metaphor for marginalized groups. I'm sure something powerful could be done with the reversal if it hasn't already.

It could be.

I can't think of a specific example of it being done, although something is teasing at the back of my mind; however, I'm probably combining the Werwolf militia units and an illustration of Charles Manson as a werewolf in Adam Parfrey's Apocalypse Culture (1986), the which I read at what I suspect was rather too young an age.