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furikku's and lienne's leads, who in turn are following innerbrat's.
That said, unlike those two I will extend the original the other way and be even more figurative in my delivery. I warn you that there may be clichés in this.
The beast is a large, lumbering, pondrous creature, strong and sleek. He resembles a superimposition of a sasquatch, a bison, and a boar, and his home is the forest.
The rider's true form is never seen. Hir armour is a dizzying patchwork of styles from different ages and places, some dusty and rusted, some gleaming as on the day they were made, all relics of vast and powerful empires and their mightiest warriors, but together they seem not to fit as well as one could hope. Hir face is forever concealed in shadows by a helm made from parts of seven iron helms moulded together with clay, leaving only two yellow glowing eyes. Sie appears to be male by hir dress and mannerisms, but denies having a gender if asked. Sie wears twelve swords, two of them huge two-handers slung across hir back, and carries a Bible with half the pages torn out and replaced with scraps of paper - often a page from another book - to serve as a meandering, palimpsestic diary. The rider is a decent reader but a poor fencer. Every so often sie will find a new piece of armour, or a new sword, or a new scabbard, or another scrap of paper to write on and put into the book; somewhat less often, such an article might be discarded on the forest floor. The rider's home is wherever the beast goes.
The beast is my instincts, my training, my acculturation: all those things that I can do without conscious and reasoned thought. The part I consider "me" obviously bleeds into both, but I seem to find slightly more of it in the beast.
The rider is my Logos, the parts of me that read and theorize, deliberate and reason - and rationalize after the fact, whether to steal credit from the beast's performance or as a first step in finding some way to ameliorate the damage. If you seem to be finding more of the rider here, it is mostly because the rider dictates the content of most of what I post in the relatively time-relaxed context of a casual Internet posting.
Both rider and beast are creatures of emotion and each is equally inseparable from them.
The rider is weighted by hir arms and armour and can only take slow, plodding, rattling steps to get anywhere. The beast is vast and strong enough to carry hir and all hir things with minimal effort, and he knows this. He only tolerates the rider for hir gift of foresight and reason which, wielded well and in the face of known dangers, let the beast steer clear of insult and injury without having to learn through them.
The rider and the beast can both speak, although it is only the rider who normally thinks of things in words. But despite the rider's infinitely superior training and erudition, the beast's cunning and eloquence make him more than a match in any argument. Under the right circumstances, when beast and rider are working with the same aims in mind, the rider committed to creating and articulating the theories and terms of what is to be said, and the beast committed to refining what is to be said and giving it life, they can be a formidable pair.
The beast is omnivorous and gifted with a natural curiosity about the world, but is essentially a shameless herd animal, blind to any other than immediate danger or reward, who follows the crowd, plows over those below him and cowers before those above him. He sees the rider as an uncomfortable equal at best, an uppity slave at worst, and rarely accepts an order from hir without backing by bribe or threat that does not already cater to his desires.
The rider is convinced that sie is the true and rightful lord and master between the two of them, and the beast exists to gather food for body and thought for hir. Sie continually seeks to best him through force of will: however, being much smaller and weaker and utterly dependent on him (hir burdens otherwise weigh hir down too much to get anything done), this almost never happens. The rider asserts hir position through arguments, bargaining, and threats, going through them in almost random order for certain older issues where the beast has previously demonstrated his uncooperativeness.
Deep inside, the rider seethes.
The demon is a long barbed whip the rider carries along with all hir swords, a black poisonous thing more refined and powerful than any other weapon sie wears. It is formed from the rider's prolonged ressentiment directed at the beast, the only creature vulnerable to the whip's paralytic venom. With it, the rider can exert hir will almost completely against the beast, but only to do one thing: stop.
Each time the demon is used, a piece of the rider's equipment corrodes a little, the clay in the helm cracks a little, and the eyes under the visor dim. No weight is lost or gained, but progress slows as the beast emerges from its stupor a little weaker than before. Yet it always remains stronger, faster, and more cunning than the rider. At night, the demon whispers in both their ears, enveloping their dreams in darkness and despair and contempt for the world around them - a price for the rider's only non-negotiable power.
The rider would try the carrot-on-a-stick thing, except that it is the beast who gathers the carrots and keeps inventory of them.
A Giant Other Beast costume sometimes works, but each one tends to work only once.
The rider's greatest weapon is the beast's craving for recognition and status, which he knows he is too weak to always take by force but which the rider can provide through hir guidance as a voice of reason and morality.
[2015-10-07] adding jesus tag b/c gnomic will
[2023-12-02] adding gender tag b/c holy fuck lmao
furikku's and lienne's leads, who in turn are following innerbrat's.That said, unlike those two I will extend the original the other way and be even more figurative in my delivery. I warn you that there may be clichés in this.
The beast is a large, lumbering, pondrous creature, strong and sleek. He resembles a superimposition of a sasquatch, a bison, and a boar, and his home is the forest.
The rider's true form is never seen. Hir armour is a dizzying patchwork of styles from different ages and places, some dusty and rusted, some gleaming as on the day they were made, all relics of vast and powerful empires and their mightiest warriors, but together they seem not to fit as well as one could hope. Hir face is forever concealed in shadows by a helm made from parts of seven iron helms moulded together with clay, leaving only two yellow glowing eyes. Sie appears to be male by hir dress and mannerisms, but denies having a gender if asked. Sie wears twelve swords, two of them huge two-handers slung across hir back, and carries a Bible with half the pages torn out and replaced with scraps of paper - often a page from another book - to serve as a meandering, palimpsestic diary. The rider is a decent reader but a poor fencer. Every so often sie will find a new piece of armour, or a new sword, or a new scabbard, or another scrap of paper to write on and put into the book; somewhat less often, such an article might be discarded on the forest floor. The rider's home is wherever the beast goes.
The beast is my instincts, my training, my acculturation: all those things that I can do without conscious and reasoned thought. The part I consider "me" obviously bleeds into both, but I seem to find slightly more of it in the beast.
The rider is my Logos, the parts of me that read and theorize, deliberate and reason - and rationalize after the fact, whether to steal credit from the beast's performance or as a first step in finding some way to ameliorate the damage. If you seem to be finding more of the rider here, it is mostly because the rider dictates the content of most of what I post in the relatively time-relaxed context of a casual Internet posting.
Both rider and beast are creatures of emotion and each is equally inseparable from them.
The rider is weighted by hir arms and armour and can only take slow, plodding, rattling steps to get anywhere. The beast is vast and strong enough to carry hir and all hir things with minimal effort, and he knows this. He only tolerates the rider for hir gift of foresight and reason which, wielded well and in the face of known dangers, let the beast steer clear of insult and injury without having to learn through them.
The rider and the beast can both speak, although it is only the rider who normally thinks of things in words. But despite the rider's infinitely superior training and erudition, the beast's cunning and eloquence make him more than a match in any argument. Under the right circumstances, when beast and rider are working with the same aims in mind, the rider committed to creating and articulating the theories and terms of what is to be said, and the beast committed to refining what is to be said and giving it life, they can be a formidable pair.
The beast is omnivorous and gifted with a natural curiosity about the world, but is essentially a shameless herd animal, blind to any other than immediate danger or reward, who follows the crowd, plows over those below him and cowers before those above him. He sees the rider as an uncomfortable equal at best, an uppity slave at worst, and rarely accepts an order from hir without backing by bribe or threat that does not already cater to his desires.
The rider is convinced that sie is the true and rightful lord and master between the two of them, and the beast exists to gather food for body and thought for hir. Sie continually seeks to best him through force of will: however, being much smaller and weaker and utterly dependent on him (hir burdens otherwise weigh hir down too much to get anything done), this almost never happens. The rider asserts hir position through arguments, bargaining, and threats, going through them in almost random order for certain older issues where the beast has previously demonstrated his uncooperativeness.
Deep inside, the rider seethes.
The demon is a long barbed whip the rider carries along with all hir swords, a black poisonous thing more refined and powerful than any other weapon sie wears. It is formed from the rider's prolonged ressentiment directed at the beast, the only creature vulnerable to the whip's paralytic venom. With it, the rider can exert hir will almost completely against the beast, but only to do one thing: stop.
Each time the demon is used, a piece of the rider's equipment corrodes a little, the clay in the helm cracks a little, and the eyes under the visor dim. No weight is lost or gained, but progress slows as the beast emerges from its stupor a little weaker than before. Yet it always remains stronger, faster, and more cunning than the rider. At night, the demon whispers in both their ears, enveloping their dreams in darkness and despair and contempt for the world around them - a price for the rider's only non-negotiable power.
The rider would try the carrot-on-a-stick thing, except that it is the beast who gathers the carrots and keeps inventory of them.
A Giant Other Beast costume sometimes works, but each one tends to work only once.
The rider's greatest weapon is the beast's craving for recognition and status, which he knows he is too weak to always take by force but which the rider can provide through hir guidance as a voice of reason and morality.
[2015-10-07] adding jesus tag b/c gnomic will
[2023-12-02] adding gender tag b/c holy fuck lmao
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Date: October 31st, 2008 14:41 (UTC)