![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I am not getting any e-mail and I don't know why. They just started coming, but anything from today before the last ten minutes seems to be gone.
I've been reading this book on the Shadow as in Jung (kind of a theme lately) and I'm reading about how the Shadow is all the things you repress in yourself, so you're enraged when you see them in other people. So somebody else could be a terrible person but wouldn't bother you as much because you're not repressing those kinds of things too much. What's horrible about it is I'm reading and knowing that my shadow…
Is post-GoF Ginny Weasley.
She's not the only one, obviously, but oh my god she so is my shadow. When I hear anyone defending her--even reasonably--I am filled with rage. Of course, being who I am (what I repress) I have to try to listen objectively and even admit when the person has a point, because I always want to be accurate and blah blah. Sometimes even I have to defend her because something's off. But what I really want to do is hex the person so that they shut up. Or say something mean that's probably like, "Don't start talking about Quidditch, you'll only embarrass yourself." Or run into the person and put them in the infirmary. This is why it's so strange when people say one must hate Ginny because one wants Harry for herself, because when Harry is liking Ginny it's hard for me to just not see him as a jerk. Like I picture them in their 30s as some dreadful couple I'd avoid. Unfortunately this isn't exactly objective canon analysis, so I can't usually just say that.
The one good thing about this is Lupin is a lot like me in this way--I mean, the kind of stuff he swallows--so maybe he hates her too. I believe when Ginny is throwing her temper tantrum in OotP Lupin quietly shuts the door. For Lupin that's probably the equivalent of smacking her in the face. Poor guy has to live with her.
Oh, the other thing I just read in one essay in the book that we tend to notice and react to Shadow things more in our own gender than the opposite gender--we can ignore stuff when it's in the other gender. I guess that's where fandom's OMG U R JUS JELLUS AND U DON'T LIKE GIRLZ!!1!!1
I was thinking about this in my ballet class, mostly because I have another Shadow problem there, or maybe it's just a pet peeve. Okay, in a dance class you often split into groups to do combinations. There is this woman who always GOES WITH ALL THE GROUPS! In this case there's just the two groups, but it drives me up a tree. The point is to split up so there's room. Yes, she's just one more person, but why the hell does she get to decide that she's the person who gets to dance whenever she wants because everyone else is only going once? What if everybody just decided to do that? (And btw, we're talking about somebody who's in class with some professional dancers--not me--and is herself not even really on the level the class is at. Every time I see her doing it I start stewing. Also she always winds up standing near me so I'm wishing there wasn't somebody so close to me because I don't like people behind me and look--it's her!
I've been reading this book on the Shadow as in Jung (kind of a theme lately) and I'm reading about how the Shadow is all the things you repress in yourself, so you're enraged when you see them in other people. So somebody else could be a terrible person but wouldn't bother you as much because you're not repressing those kinds of things too much. What's horrible about it is I'm reading and knowing that my shadow…
Is post-GoF Ginny Weasley.
She's not the only one, obviously, but oh my god she so is my shadow. When I hear anyone defending her--even reasonably--I am filled with rage. Of course, being who I am (what I repress) I have to try to listen objectively and even admit when the person has a point, because I always want to be accurate and blah blah. Sometimes even I have to defend her because something's off. But what I really want to do is hex the person so that they shut up. Or say something mean that's probably like, "Don't start talking about Quidditch, you'll only embarrass yourself." Or run into the person and put them in the infirmary. This is why it's so strange when people say one must hate Ginny because one wants Harry for herself, because when Harry is liking Ginny it's hard for me to just not see him as a jerk. Like I picture them in their 30s as some dreadful couple I'd avoid. Unfortunately this isn't exactly objective canon analysis, so I can't usually just say that.
The one good thing about this is Lupin is a lot like me in this way--I mean, the kind of stuff he swallows--so maybe he hates her too. I believe when Ginny is throwing her temper tantrum in OotP Lupin quietly shuts the door. For Lupin that's probably the equivalent of smacking her in the face. Poor guy has to live with her.
Oh, the other thing I just read in one essay in the book that we tend to notice and react to Shadow things more in our own gender than the opposite gender--we can ignore stuff when it's in the other gender. I guess that's where fandom's OMG U R JUS JELLUS AND U DON'T LIKE GIRLZ!!1!!1
I was thinking about this in my ballet class, mostly because I have another Shadow problem there, or maybe it's just a pet peeve. Okay, in a dance class you often split into groups to do combinations. There is this woman who always GOES WITH ALL THE GROUPS! In this case there's just the two groups, but it drives me up a tree. The point is to split up so there's room. Yes, she's just one more person, but why the hell does she get to decide that she's the person who gets to dance whenever she wants because everyone else is only going once? What if everybody just decided to do that? (And btw, we're talking about somebody who's in class with some professional dancers--not me--and is herself not even really on the level the class is at. Every time I see her doing it I start stewing. Also she always winds up standing near me so I'm wishing there wasn't somebody so close to me because I don't like people behind me and look--it's her!
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Do you consider Draco to be that kind of Jungian hate-on Shadow to Harry? I don't think I've ever seen Harry's reactions to Draco as that kind of loathing, not even in my first readings to the different books, in which I invariably get sucked in by Harry's pov and forget my own preferences. (The only exception: HBP H/G, threw me right out of Harry-mode)
I've been thinking of Draco more like a literary shadow, the shadowing having more to do with plot than their antagonism as different personalities. Although it's certainly true that Harry's using Draco as a measurement of himself and defining what he himself is not. Maybe I ought to reconsider, but the fact that I find H/D so attractive and right, to me, means they can't be loathing each other on that level.
Actually, I think maybe this sorts out, for me, why I am so fantastically squicked by Snarry. Harry's reactions to Snape (including reluctantly identifying with him after the pensive thing) says Shadow on the level of your Ginny/SM situation, and *feels sick now* I really can't think of any people it would be worse to put together romantically or sexually than this kind of Shadow dynamic.
Oh, and I think Umbridge definitely is Hermione's Shadow. :)
- Clara
From:
no subject
I think Harry has a number of Shadows and Snape is definitely the king. There's times where yeah, it is just more of a literary thing with Draco--although well...maybe it's more that Draco does mirror some things in Harry that he hates but they're just not the same things as Snape. Like when he first meets Draco he thinks of Dudley who is also a Shadow, being the pampered, fat kid who gets everything.
Harry never loathes Draco the way he does Snape but I think his reactions to him are still OTT to what he actually is. Like, he always assumes whoever is doing something to him must be Draco, and starts hating him more than Dudley when Dudley has tormented him far more. So I do think there's some projecting going on there ("I don't want any broom that Malfoy's got" or "Could he really be as arrogant as Draco Malfoy?") but it's not on the same level as Snape. Maybe it's that Snape is more an image of the possible Man!Shadow of Harry while Draco is the boy.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Oh, yes, absolutely! There just seems to be something different going on.
I think he fears being perceived to be like Draco, that Draco is what he feels he shouldn't or oughtn't be like, but that being like Snape is more an internally directed fear, something he, but maybe not the rest of the world, sees in himself, something he might be, and wants to supress.
- Clara