Soubi as Byronic Hero
If you're up for some serious meandering all over the place and a rather stream-of-consciousness assessment of Soubi as a Byronic (a sub-set of Bastard) Hero, click the cut.
Soubi, a Textbook Case of Byronic Hero
He's arrogant, rude, sarcastic, at times vile; he's moody, contemptuous, dismissive, taciturn; he's violent at times, powerful, charismatic, satanic, even; he's got no boundaries; he'll do anything for the shock value of it; he's intensely sensual and sexy to boot; he's taciturn, but his words can cut to the bone; he's amoral, he's an artist; he's intensely irritating and utterly fascinating; he always, but always, wears a mask. He's the hidden man.
We (the readers) want to slap his aristocratic beautiful face; we want to dismantle him and see what makes him tick; we want to mother him and cuddle him to death; we want to yell at him to STOP FOR FUCKSAKE STOP doing this or that; we want to fuck him like rabid otters and we want to hold him tight to our hearts and make the pain go away. Lots of us tend to forget he's an artist, a thing which implies rather more generous impulses and sensitiveness than the cold mask he wears would show; some of us actually never really get that, together with all of the above, he's also generous, vulnerable, affectionate and fundamentally decent.
He's the Byronic Hero - a subset of the Bastard Hero, a BH with a lot more angst - and, like Byron's Corsair - or Byron himself, for that matter - he's a study in the mask/reality dichotomy. I doubt KY has read Byron or even knows who he was, but she hit the Byronic nail on the head with her Soubi.
Granted, it's an archetype much older than Byron and, I'm sure, not limited to Western Literature, so no surprises here; but I find it utterly lovely that she follows the archetypal way of introducing him in her story.
Part of the fascination of the Byronic Hero is that the readers aren't allowed to see more than the mask for a hefty portion of the story. Some authors have even presented the Byronic Hero as a villain, or, to be more precise, with the kind of ambiguity in the presentation that nudges readers into thinking he's a villain.
When we meet Soubi, he's a rather disturbing sort of person. We are invited to react to him like Ritsuka does, shock, curiosity, anger and confusion. We are meant to be seduced by this lovely young man with the disgusting personality and the terminally irritating attitude. Women like bad boys, after all, don't they? This is put to the test when we discover he isn't such a bad boy, just as Ritsuka isn't really such a good boy. Will the seduction hold, when we find out he's rather tame and lame and a soggy cracker after all?
We do because, IMO, part of the fascination with bad boys is that one reacts to the Bastard Hero archetype and knows that hiding inside the bad boy there's a rather charmingly clueless good boy and one wants to nurture him and let him out of the bad-boy-ness cage he's locked in which makes it rather easy for True Bastards or Bastard Villains to ruin so many lives, in RL as well as in Literature; but part of it is the unholy glee and the sense of satisfaction that we feel when we discover the reason behind the words or the actions of people: we can rip off the mask and make sense of everything the character has done.
Well, apart from those readers who will always rewrite the character in their heads because their Disneyan sensibilities are hurt by dichotomies and they want a Hero to be Always Good and Noble and a Despicable Cad to be always the Villain. (for those who are not easily bored and are interested in a rant against this attitude in readers, here is my rant).
But let's go back to our hero - and I use the word 'hero' for a given value of herosity - or better to our deuteragonist because Ritsuka is the protagonist and Hero in Loveless; Soubi can be and become quite heroic - epic, even - but he's not the main character here.
I think he's a Byronic Hero more than a Bastard Hero because he's an artist. I can't help but feel that his art is just as crucial to him as his magic. In one of the end notes in the Tokyopop books, one editor says - very cogently - that Soubi fights as he paints, i.e. he uses the pain he feels as a tool, transforming it into spells or paintings that reflect the human condition that much more and are so that much more powerful or profound. That's true in a Romantic view of what art - magic is art in Kouga's world - and the artist are, but I think there's more. I think all Byronic Heroes are artists because, to be a full rounded complex character who's a decent person, the author must give them an outlet for all the pent-up - or denied - emotions that the character cannot express in other, more normal, ways.
Note how our subtle author never shows Soubi painting people. He talks about it, says he'd like to draw Kio or Ritsuka, but he never does it. One presumes that he must have been forced to, being in an Art School and all, but it's a rather vague presumption not really supported by what we see. What we see is that he uses colours as a sort of code for his emotions - a mirror code, I should say, the more he's down the brillianter (ugh, sorry) the colours he uses become - and that he's a butterflies-and-flowers man. It entrances me because it makes me think that Soubi is painting self-portraits all the time; that he's using the medium of brush and canvas to proclaim an identify and a self he feels he's lost. What could be more Byronic - and ironic - than the fact that this bitter, broken man keeps saying he's a butterfly? Lovely, erratic, fragile, ephemerous... Or is he saying that that is what he could become if he could get out of his chrysalis? Decode Soubi's paintings and you have the inner man, the Hidden Man, the Man Behind the Mask.
And you know? This is the quintessence of Kouga's art. There are so many levels to explore - don't get me started on the Real/Delusion/Dream/Game interaction - that every single stroke of the pen is significant. I adore it.
I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on this.
P.S. Also I'm pimping my Soubi (Hidden Soubi: lame, clueless and lost) fic here in my fic-journal or here at raburesu.
P.P.S. Ah, yes, my icon. I chose the image of Zombie!Soubi as seen by Kio because it makes me laugh like a hyena. Kio's idea of a zombie is a mix of Lautrec and Beardsley, never seen such a deco-decadent-Wildean zombie in me life! Mwahahahahahah!
*ahem* Sorry.
Soubi, a Textbook Case of Byronic Hero
He's arrogant, rude, sarcastic, at times vile; he's moody, contemptuous, dismissive, taciturn; he's violent at times, powerful, charismatic, satanic, even; he's got no boundaries; he'll do anything for the shock value of it; he's intensely sensual and sexy to boot; he's taciturn, but his words can cut to the bone; he's amoral, he's an artist; he's intensely irritating and utterly fascinating; he always, but always, wears a mask. He's the hidden man.
We (the readers) want to slap his aristocratic beautiful face; we want to dismantle him and see what makes him tick; we want to mother him and cuddle him to death; we want to yell at him to STOP FOR FUCKSAKE STOP doing this or that; we want to fuck him like rabid otters and we want to hold him tight to our hearts and make the pain go away. Lots of us tend to forget he's an artist, a thing which implies rather more generous impulses and sensitiveness than the cold mask he wears would show; some of us actually never really get that, together with all of the above, he's also generous, vulnerable, affectionate and fundamentally decent.
He's the Byronic Hero - a subset of the Bastard Hero, a BH with a lot more angst - and, like Byron's Corsair - or Byron himself, for that matter - he's a study in the mask/reality dichotomy. I doubt KY has read Byron or even knows who he was, but she hit the Byronic nail on the head with her Soubi.
Granted, it's an archetype much older than Byron and, I'm sure, not limited to Western Literature, so no surprises here; but I find it utterly lovely that she follows the archetypal way of introducing him in her story.
Part of the fascination of the Byronic Hero is that the readers aren't allowed to see more than the mask for a hefty portion of the story. Some authors have even presented the Byronic Hero as a villain, or, to be more precise, with the kind of ambiguity in the presentation that nudges readers into thinking he's a villain.
When we meet Soubi, he's a rather disturbing sort of person. We are invited to react to him like Ritsuka does, shock, curiosity, anger and confusion. We are meant to be seduced by this lovely young man with the disgusting personality and the terminally irritating attitude. Women like bad boys, after all, don't they? This is put to the test when we discover he isn't such a bad boy, just as Ritsuka isn't really such a good boy. Will the seduction hold, when we find out he's rather tame and lame and a soggy cracker after all?
We do because, IMO, part of the fascination with bad boys is that one reacts to the Bastard Hero archetype and knows that hiding inside the bad boy there's a rather charmingly clueless good boy and one wants to nurture him and let him out of the bad-boy-ness cage he's locked in which makes it rather easy for True Bastards or Bastard Villains to ruin so many lives, in RL as well as in Literature; but part of it is the unholy glee and the sense of satisfaction that we feel when we discover the reason behind the words or the actions of people: we can rip off the mask and make sense of everything the character has done.
Well, apart from those readers who will always rewrite the character in their heads because their Disneyan sensibilities are hurt by dichotomies and they want a Hero to be Always Good and Noble and a Despicable Cad to be always the Villain. (for those who are not easily bored and are interested in a rant against this attitude in readers, here is my rant).
But let's go back to our hero - and I use the word 'hero' for a given value of herosity - or better to our deuteragonist because Ritsuka is the protagonist and Hero in Loveless; Soubi can be and become quite heroic - epic, even - but he's not the main character here.
I think he's a Byronic Hero more than a Bastard Hero because he's an artist. I can't help but feel that his art is just as crucial to him as his magic. In one of the end notes in the Tokyopop books, one editor says - very cogently - that Soubi fights as he paints, i.e. he uses the pain he feels as a tool, transforming it into spells or paintings that reflect the human condition that much more and are so that much more powerful or profound. That's true in a Romantic view of what art - magic is art in Kouga's world - and the artist are, but I think there's more. I think all Byronic Heroes are artists because, to be a full rounded complex character who's a decent person, the author must give them an outlet for all the pent-up - or denied - emotions that the character cannot express in other, more normal, ways.
Note how our subtle author never shows Soubi painting people. He talks about it, says he'd like to draw Kio or Ritsuka, but he never does it. One presumes that he must have been forced to, being in an Art School and all, but it's a rather vague presumption not really supported by what we see. What we see is that he uses colours as a sort of code for his emotions - a mirror code, I should say, the more he's down the brillianter (ugh, sorry) the colours he uses become - and that he's a butterflies-and-flowers man. It entrances me because it makes me think that Soubi is painting self-portraits all the time; that he's using the medium of brush and canvas to proclaim an identify and a self he feels he's lost. What could be more Byronic - and ironic - than the fact that this bitter, broken man keeps saying he's a butterfly? Lovely, erratic, fragile, ephemerous... Or is he saying that that is what he could become if he could get out of his chrysalis? Decode Soubi's paintings and you have the inner man, the Hidden Man, the Man Behind the Mask.
And you know? This is the quintessence of Kouga's art. There are so many levels to explore - don't get me started on the Real/Delusion/Dream/Game interaction - that every single stroke of the pen is significant. I adore it.
I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts on this.
P.S. Also I'm pimping my Soubi (Hidden Soubi: lame, clueless and lost) fic here in my fic-journal or here at raburesu.
P.P.S. Ah, yes, my icon. I chose the image of Zombie!Soubi as seen by Kio because it makes me laugh like a hyena. Kio's idea of a zombie is a mix of Lautrec and Beardsley, never seen such a deco-decadent-Wildean zombie in me life! Mwahahahahahah!
*ahem* Sorry.