Of Swans & Snakes in The Lunatic Cafe
Nov. 1st, 2013 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratThe kids absolutely loved Miss Blatz last night! Pretty much all of them wanted to pet or even hold her, and she held up outstandingly, never getting worn out or irritated with them! When I put her back in her cage, her cagemate Sam (they have a mother-daughter relationship, Blatz thinks Sam is her baby) was waiting for her at the door, which is funny because usually Blatz waits at the door when I have Sam out because she's so fussy over her! Many of the kids also said they remembered her from last year. Obviously they were remembering Scurvy instead (I guess it's easy to forget he was black and white and she's just white) but I didn't correct them since, y'know, I don't wanna tell them that one died, but one little girl DID remember and wanted to know where he was so I had to. She was very sorry and advised me to get "one that won't die" XD She also wanted one of mine when I told her I had three others in the basement! One parent was pretty interested too, asking questions about their intelligence, if they needed shots, etc., so I was really happy to get the opportunity to spread rat-info as well as just showing off a positive representation for rats...of course, I overheard many kids telling their parents that they had petted a mouse, or in one case, even a puppy! Dang, she's not that big! I guess she's just so cute and cuddly that people don't connect her at all with the image of "rat" they have in their minds and figure she must be a mouse, since I've noticed many people have no idea what the difference even is (mice weigh a little more than an ounce, people, rats weigh a little more than a POUND!) plus mice tend to be represented more positively in media.
Anyway, this is just me going through a copy of The Lunatic Cafe that I found at the library to make notes on the introduction of swanmanes and naga, as I found them interesting.
SNAKES AND SWANS IN THE LUNATIC CAFE
- OH WOW there's a differentiation here between "shapeshifter" and "lycanthrope": A shapeshifter is "Most often an inherited condition. The family guardian dog, beast, giant cat. Mostly European. One person a generation has the genes and the changes" and it's not tied to the moon. Instead "A family guardian comes out when the family needs it. War, or some kind of physical danger." And "there are swanmanes. they are tied to the moon, but it's still an inherited condition." Ok,that's weird, I swear everywhere else I read it said swans weren't tied to the moon, I have go check the Wikis and see if she contradicted herself or my entire SWANS DUN COME FROM MOAD just lost a piece of its justification...yeah, the Wiki says that swanmanes are *not* influenced by the moon, so either the Wiki screwed up or LKH changed it in a later book.
- I'm just gonna mentally edit out the bit about the wereanimal family guardians being mostly European, because the idea of animal totems or animal ancestor or animal symbol for a clan/tribe/family/etc and similar things are not "mostly European" by a long shot and that seems to be that this is based on.
- Oh and the Daoine Sidhe can curse people to be therianthropes too like witches can. Good to know. Also neat that she mentioned them *after* Bloody Bones too.
- Hey, so, there's a body (Anita just killed a guy to prove a point) and the scent of spilled blood is making all the shifters in the room have trouble controlling themselves, even Alphas, but Kaspar is totally unaffected because, as he points out, he's not a predator. I bet you swanmanes can use this as a tactic. Anita actually compares them to sleepwalkers in how they move, it's like they all became zombies except Kaspar and a few alphas! Some even crawl like animals...yeah, swanmanes can use this. Just dump some blood everywhere, watch the lesser beasts lose control, and then gain upper hand in whatever situation is afoot
-Kaspar's business card says he does "Antiques and Collectibles" and I just love that.
-Kaspar says he'll help answer any questions she has, she asks even if they're questions "about what the hell you are?" Uhhh, you mentioned swanmanes earlier, Anita, you know what they are, and he told you he's a swan, even let you touch his feather-hair, exactly what is confusing you about what he is? (this is before she knows he's immortal to boot, which would have more understandably prompted the question)
- "Have you ever read The Swan Princess in its original Norse?" Wut? The Swan Princess is the 1994 movie based on the ballet Swan Lake. And while what the ballet was based on is debated, main theories seem to be either Russian folktales or on a German story by Johann Karl August Musäus, an author from the 1700s. NO NORSE, I AM PRETTY SURE. I'm pretty sure the swan maidens, swan shifting, and/or swans do show up in Nordic stories, but nothing called The Swan Princess or that has anything to do with the ballet Swan Lake. I guess that's why swans are moon-linked in this book? Because Odette (the ballet character) is a swan by day and a girl by night! Night = moon. And LKH probably just forgot later. And in the cartoon movie (which actually is called The Swan Princess) she specifically changes to human only under moonlight, and doesn't get to be human on nights when there's no moon. This book was published in 1996. The movie came out in 1994. HMMMM.
- Ooh, she finds the naga skin! Not like a shed snakeskin, but as in the poor naga was actually skinned alive while in snake form "there was something about the scales and shape of the head that reminded me of a cobra, but the scales, even in the light of the flashlight, gleamed with opalescence. The snake wasn't any one color. It was like a rainbow or an oil slick. The color changed depending on the angle of the light."
"there was something on the snake's forehead, almost between the eyes. Something smooth and round and white. I ran my fingers over it. It was a pearl. A pearl the size of a golf ball."
Whoa, I wonder if it's that big in their human form? I imagine it more like a regular pearl when they're in human form, personally, especially since then they could pass it off as a bindi-type jewelry
-They find a fully-skinned-but-still-alive man nearby and he is, of course, the naga to whom the skin belongs. Being immortal, he can survive being skinned, which not even therians can
- Anita has to explain to everyone what a naga is, of course: Bigass cobras that can take human form or the form of snakes with humans heads. Also they're "the guardians of raindrops and pearls" hence the pearl in the forehead. Ok, how do you guard raindrops? Guarding pearls I guess I get but...do they just guard the one in their foreheads, or do they all have a stash somewhere like leprechauns with gold? I'm imagining this naga jeweler who will sell all the other stuff in his store BUT NOT THE PEARLS! Also, I love that they're not human-shaped beings who can take snake form....they're snake-shaped beings that can take human form.
- This also makes clear the distinction of naga and lamia, since beyond the latter being all-female it seemed to me they were both just immortal snake-people. So while the lamia are all-female immortal snake-people, they can, from what we've seen, only take a human form (albeit with huge snake fangs folded up against the roof of their mouth) and a form that is a giant serpent from the waist down, whereas the naga are immortal snake people who can be fully giant snakes, fully human, or a snake with a human head. There's no mention of naga being a single-sex species, so I'm going with the assumption they're not. Lamia have a deadly venom, and they also have some means (a separate type of venom, I think) of transforming human men into snake-like creatures like themselves so as to mate and reproduce with them (because LKH would be icked out by parthenogenesis or something, I guess) whereas there's no mention of naga having venom or how they reproduce. I'm personally going with the headcanon that they have a very potent version of cobra venom, and reproduce sexually by mating within their species and then laying eggs, but that's just my idea, there's nothing in the actual text about it.
-His skin is growing back when they go to talk to him in the hospital, which means we know they don't just survive injury, they heal from it. His name is Mr. Javad
- Hahaha Kaspar is trying to play up the "oh, I'm just a bird, I couldn't do anything" angle when they realize there must be a therian on the inside of the community helping the witches. AND THEN LKH ACTUALLY JUST MAKES THAT *FACT* WITH ALL SUBSEQUENT SWANS DX
- And then Edward kills him offscreen and gives his hide to Anita. Because there is no way Anita could ever kill a swan herself. She will never be that badass. Also, I still can't believe that "she has the skin of a fellow sentient being hanging on her wall" never registered to me as terrible and fucked-up and Not Okay while I was in high school. I guess it just didn't click to me because it was the skin of his swan form, not his human one, and I guess that's why it seemed okay to LKH? But it's not okay because THAT WAS A PERSON, NO MATTER HOW BAD!
Anyway, this is just me going through a copy of The Lunatic Cafe that I found at the library to make notes on the introduction of swanmanes and naga, as I found them interesting.
SNAKES AND SWANS IN THE LUNATIC CAFE
- OH WOW there's a differentiation here between "shapeshifter" and "lycanthrope": A shapeshifter is "Most often an inherited condition. The family guardian dog, beast, giant cat. Mostly European. One person a generation has the genes and the changes" and it's not tied to the moon. Instead "A family guardian comes out when the family needs it. War, or some kind of physical danger." And "there are swanmanes. they are tied to the moon, but it's still an inherited condition." Ok,that's weird, I swear everywhere else I read it said swans weren't tied to the moon, I have go check the Wikis and see if she contradicted herself or my entire SWANS DUN COME FROM MOAD just lost a piece of its justification...yeah, the Wiki says that swanmanes are *not* influenced by the moon, so either the Wiki screwed up or LKH changed it in a later book.
- I'm just gonna mentally edit out the bit about the wereanimal family guardians being mostly European, because the idea of animal totems or animal ancestor or animal symbol for a clan/tribe/family/etc and similar things are not "mostly European" by a long shot and that seems to be that this is based on.
- Oh and the Daoine Sidhe can curse people to be therianthropes too like witches can. Good to know. Also neat that she mentioned them *after* Bloody Bones too.
- Hey, so, there's a body (Anita just killed a guy to prove a point) and the scent of spilled blood is making all the shifters in the room have trouble controlling themselves, even Alphas, but Kaspar is totally unaffected because, as he points out, he's not a predator. I bet you swanmanes can use this as a tactic. Anita actually compares them to sleepwalkers in how they move, it's like they all became zombies except Kaspar and a few alphas! Some even crawl like animals...yeah, swanmanes can use this. Just dump some blood everywhere, watch the lesser beasts lose control, and then gain upper hand in whatever situation is afoot
-Kaspar's business card says he does "Antiques and Collectibles" and I just love that.
-Kaspar says he'll help answer any questions she has, she asks even if they're questions "about what the hell you are?" Uhhh, you mentioned swanmanes earlier, Anita, you know what they are, and he told you he's a swan, even let you touch his feather-hair, exactly what is confusing you about what he is? (this is before she knows he's immortal to boot, which would have more understandably prompted the question)
- "Have you ever read The Swan Princess in its original Norse?" Wut? The Swan Princess is the 1994 movie based on the ballet Swan Lake. And while what the ballet was based on is debated, main theories seem to be either Russian folktales or on a German story by Johann Karl August Musäus, an author from the 1700s. NO NORSE, I AM PRETTY SURE. I'm pretty sure the swan maidens, swan shifting, and/or swans do show up in Nordic stories, but nothing called The Swan Princess or that has anything to do with the ballet Swan Lake. I guess that's why swans are moon-linked in this book? Because Odette (the ballet character) is a swan by day and a girl by night! Night = moon. And LKH probably just forgot later. And in the cartoon movie (which actually is called The Swan Princess) she specifically changes to human only under moonlight, and doesn't get to be human on nights when there's no moon. This book was published in 1996. The movie came out in 1994. HMMMM.
- Ooh, she finds the naga skin! Not like a shed snakeskin, but as in the poor naga was actually skinned alive while in snake form "there was something about the scales and shape of the head that reminded me of a cobra, but the scales, even in the light of the flashlight, gleamed with opalescence. The snake wasn't any one color. It was like a rainbow or an oil slick. The color changed depending on the angle of the light."
"there was something on the snake's forehead, almost between the eyes. Something smooth and round and white. I ran my fingers over it. It was a pearl. A pearl the size of a golf ball."
Whoa, I wonder if it's that big in their human form? I imagine it more like a regular pearl when they're in human form, personally, especially since then they could pass it off as a bindi-type jewelry
-They find a fully-skinned-but-still-alive man nearby and he is, of course, the naga to whom the skin belongs. Being immortal, he can survive being skinned, which not even therians can
- Anita has to explain to everyone what a naga is, of course: Bigass cobras that can take human form or the form of snakes with humans heads. Also they're "the guardians of raindrops and pearls" hence the pearl in the forehead. Ok, how do you guard raindrops? Guarding pearls I guess I get but...do they just guard the one in their foreheads, or do they all have a stash somewhere like leprechauns with gold? I'm imagining this naga jeweler who will sell all the other stuff in his store BUT NOT THE PEARLS! Also, I love that they're not human-shaped beings who can take snake form....they're snake-shaped beings that can take human form.
- This also makes clear the distinction of naga and lamia, since beyond the latter being all-female it seemed to me they were both just immortal snake-people. So while the lamia are all-female immortal snake-people, they can, from what we've seen, only take a human form (albeit with huge snake fangs folded up against the roof of their mouth) and a form that is a giant serpent from the waist down, whereas the naga are immortal snake people who can be fully giant snakes, fully human, or a snake with a human head. There's no mention of naga being a single-sex species, so I'm going with the assumption they're not. Lamia have a deadly venom, and they also have some means (a separate type of venom, I think) of transforming human men into snake-like creatures like themselves so as to mate and reproduce with them (because LKH would be icked out by parthenogenesis or something, I guess) whereas there's no mention of naga having venom or how they reproduce. I'm personally going with the headcanon that they have a very potent version of cobra venom, and reproduce sexually by mating within their species and then laying eggs, but that's just my idea, there's nothing in the actual text about it.
-His skin is growing back when they go to talk to him in the hospital, which means we know they don't just survive injury, they heal from it. His name is Mr. Javad
- Hahaha Kaspar is trying to play up the "oh, I'm just a bird, I couldn't do anything" angle when they realize there must be a therian on the inside of the community helping the witches. AND THEN LKH ACTUALLY JUST MAKES THAT *FACT* WITH ALL SUBSEQUENT SWANS DX
- And then Edward kills him offscreen and gives his hide to Anita. Because there is no way Anita could ever kill a swan herself. She will never be that badass. Also, I still can't believe that "she has the skin of a fellow sentient being hanging on her wall" never registered to me as terrible and fucked-up and Not Okay while I was in high school. I guess it just didn't click to me because it was the skin of his swan form, not his human one, and I guess that's why it seemed okay to LKH? But it's not okay because THAT WAS A PERSON, NO MATTER HOW BAD!
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no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 01:24 am (UTC)I kind of missed the whole Anita-has-the-hide-of-a-humanoid-creature-on-the-wall thing too in high school. I was probably too busy being impressed with Edward :)
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Date: 2013-11-02 05:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-11-02 08:47 pm (UTC)