I think about Harrow and Crux a lot actually and I need to talk about it a little bit or I might scream. because like- Crux sucks right?? we all agree on this, he is an awful, wretched old man who was abjectly abusive to one of two little girls left in his care after the deaths of their primary care takers.
but then his relationship with Harrow in specific makes me insane bc he loved that girl SO MUCH. that was his daughter!!!! maybe even more so than she was Priamhark and Pelleamena’s she was his!!!
and HE KNEW just like they did exactly what had to be done to create her, he watched her grow up reviled by her parents and he looked at that little girl and just… loved her? no questions asked, no morality hang ups, she was worth every sin committed to get her.
because that’s the thing about Crux i think for me, the moment he conceived of Harrow’s existence she was what he was loyal to, not the ninth or the reverend parents or even god just his kid; the rest of the ninth loved Harrow because she was The Reverend Daughter, Crux loved Harrow because she was Harrow. and because she was Harrow she was literally more important than anyone else.
and what does that do to a person? because I can guarantee right now that it was not good for either of them, like at all. Harrow was traumatised, fundamentally hubristic and a literal actual child, with a very confused moral compass, who by age ten had become fully complicit in the abuse of the only other child she had ever met!!! she did not need yet another grown adult enabling her to become worse!!
an idea I see thrown around a lot when discussing the potential kiriona-John dynamic that I think works really well and is also interesting when applied to Harrow and Crux, albeit in a slightly different way is : what if your dad was the worst man in the universe and also literally the only person who really wanted you? how do you contend with that?
ALSO the fact that in Nona we find out that half his grudge with Gideon is that she didn’t die for Harrow!! her parents fear it but Crux is BITTER about it!! he’s so angry that she, in his eyes, has been failing to do right by Harrow her entire life because she could never die right!!
anyway, all this to say I can’t wait to see Harrow try to navigate her grief over Crux’s death in AtN while contending with the fact that he was fundamentally complicit in her continued abuse of Gideon for years and years, which ultimately led to gideons degradation of self and set the groundwork for her sacrificial suicide.
not to mention yet another person she desperately loved dying in a way that is unquestionably in service of her continued existence, unasked for and without giving her a snowflakes chance in hell of saying goodbye. again.
i think a large part of his hatred for gideon is not just that she didn’t die for harrow, but also that this fact is actively upsetting to harrow. he calls her (iirc) “a millstone around my darling’s neck.” gideon is a reminder to harrow of what she is, and harrow hates to remember what she is, and so crux punishes gideon for “making” her feel that way.
also something i think about occasionally is that, in harrow’s roleswap fantasy, the nova au, crux still loves her. harrow’s subconscious goes out of its way to establish that crux still loves her. now, is this necessarily a state of absolute reality? no, of course not. but the fact that harrow earnestly believes that crux would side with her if she was usurped, that he would care for her just the same if she weren’t a necromancer, weren’t the reverend daughter, if the sacrifice made for her was entirely in vain, is telling. she really, truly believes that his love for her is unconditional. which is no small thing, for harrow.
Okay. Say you ask a small child to draw you a house, and they come up with something like this:
ALT
For the purposes of this analogy the child is shit at colouring in, because I only wanted to give the general idea.
So, we can all agree that the child who draws a house probably isn’t trying to communicate anything in particular other than “look at this cool house I drew”, right?
Cool.
So… Why is it seemingly in the middle of nowhere, when most children live in houses with neighbours?
Why is the main body a square and the roof a solid triangle when that doesn’t look like any house that has ever been built anywhere?
Why does it have a wood-burning stove with smoke actively coming out of the chimney, even though the sun indicates warm weather?
Why is the sun smiling? Why is it yellow?
Answer: because the child has seen picture books, and films, and the drawings of other children, and has on some level absorbed that this is what a house is meant to look like.
Face to face, the child almost certainly wouldn’t know where to begin communicating “yellow is a colour culturally associated with happiness and warmth, and two dots accompanied by a curved line symbolically represent a smiling human face, so I have combined these attributes with the sun to convey that it is a very warm and pleasant day”.
Or “historically most houses in my country used fire for heat and cooking, and even though this is no longer the case for the majority of households, most media portrayals of houses are inspired by other, older, media portrayals and therefore include the chimney. I have chosen to follow this trend.”
Or even, “I have poor motor control because of my age, and large, 2 dimensional shapes are easier to draw than anything involving detail and perspective”.
Yet this is all information that you can pick up from detailed study of the house drawing.
Ultimately, it’s not about what the writer intended. That’s what the whole death of the author thing means.
If you think of literature like as a conversation, then think of all the analysis stuff that your English teacher keeps trying to get you to look at as like body language. It’s the stuff that the other person doesn’t even necessarily mean to communicate, but that can tell you a hell of a lot about what they mean.
Ok, loves, so we’ve all got the message that joking about suicide is bad for your mental health. Now we need to get on “joking that the planet/all of humanity has no future is bad for societal health/encouraging resistance to bad shit.”
As someone who works in conservation I can confirm this is true. Stop it. Joking that we don’t have a future or that humans are too stupid to educate really is harmful to conservation.
ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don’t think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it’s the thinking millennial’s astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.
I don’t think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR’s bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn’t to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn’t give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.
She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don’t know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!
This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you’re above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.
No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don’t have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.
Hi, I’m Mel Stanfill. I am a scholar at the University of Central Florida whose research focuses on fan studies, and I want to understand the opinions of media fans about the use of generative AI tools (like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and others), both in general and as part of the creation of works like fan fiction and fan art in particular.
If you would like to share your thoughts, please take this online survey that will take approximately 15-20 minutes and tell me what you think:
Mina: “Alright, everyone pinkie swear right now to put Vampire Me down if I hop the line between death and undeath.”
Van Helsing and the Suitor Squad: “Depressing, but sure, absolutely.”
Jonathan:
Mina: “…Jonathan?”
Jonathan: “Yes?”
Mina: “Will you promise to slay me if I get vampire’d?”
Jonathan: “Mina, I will not lie to you.”
Jonathan:
Mina: “Jonathan. I need you to look me in the eye and promise to murder me martyr-style if I get too undead.”
Jonathan: “Fine. I can promise to kill.”
Mina: “Me? Vampire me?”
Jonathan, making unbroken eye contact with the four guys who just promised to behead and impale his wife if she stops being human enough: “I guarantee there will be killing involved if Vampire You happens.”
“Give to this dog son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be Javert.”
I think a lot about the folkloric story that Victor Hugo describes (or invents) in Les Mis, that uses dogs/wolves as a metaphor for that way that Inspector Javert betrays his own social class. It feels very fairytale-like, so here’s a Lotte-Reiniger style adaptation. Many thoughts, many emotions. I may animate this eventually. (And thanks to @valvertweek for the motivation!)
ALT
