The Tiger and the Prosecutor

Now seems as good a time as any to introduce the world to Tigris.

Tigris is not a figment, not one of the little-spirits. He is me. This is the most important bit, the bit you must understand. He is a part of me that has been around for as long as I have. I have only recently personified him, but he's no newcomer.

He is what is called a Holy Guardian Angel by some.(See Promethea for more info.)Personally I think that's a bit of a misnomer. He doesn't guard me in the sense of stopping bad things from happening to me, he just tries to make sure I'll be strong enough to stand up to bad things myself.

Tigris is always right. This can get annoying sometimes, but that's my problem. He's just and true, fair, and humourous to boot. He is, in short, the best part of me. The goodness on its own, undiluted. That's what his sort of thing is. I like the term 'inner angel', or better yet, 'shoulder angel'. Everyone has one. We don't hear them much. But that's because we don't listen, not because they don't speak.

I think of him as a big old marmaladey-golden saber-toothed tiger, with a very English voice.(The voice, in fact, of the fellow who was reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe on this old book-on-tape thing I had when I was tiny. I remember listening to it in bed, after lights-out...)But this is just a sort of shorthand, a quale. It helps me to personify Tigris like this, is all. It's the image that fits him, in my mind. It's easier to pay attention to him when I think of him as a being in his own right.

It's also easier to identify his opposite number when I personify her.

Her name is Franziska, and she is my shoulder demon. Again, not an actual demon, not an otherworldly being. Just me, in all the worst ways.

Unlike Tigris, her face and name are stolen directly from a character from a video game. Franziska von Karma. An unhappy and almost-unlovable little prosecutor-prodigy who I felt a sort of resonance with.

Franziska is weak and scared and angry about it. She is violent, out of control. Her self-esteem is in negative numbers, and she covers that by making like she's got a disgustingly large amount of pride, and lording it over everyone else. She is lonely and suspicious. She cannot bring herself to trust anyone. She's self-centred, too...can't see outside herself, and hates it. She is stuck in the hell of herself.

She is the voice in my head that is Tigris's opposite number.

She coalesced into an entity shortly after a revelation I had and a letter I wrote because of that revelation.(I shall post that here later; it used to be on my old blog at Sygnus before the site moved and everyone's blogs were axed.)And it's strange.

I don't seem to be able to hate her, now.

Oddly enough, neither does Tigris.