Oh also we continue the theme of necessary killing and people calling for them too soon and people actually thinking it through – nice parallels with jake’s execution really. What were you thinking Abby? That it was preferable to anarchy? That as long as Earth is an option it shouldn’t be considered and so the… Continue reading
the 100 re-watch, episode 1×03 We all agree that the last two minutes didn’t happen, right? Right. Anyway. I like Wells a lot in this episode, particularly in the flashbacks, and given that I already liked him before…. thank god he didn’t die this episode right? SO MANY THINGS THAT COULD HAPPEN. On the other… Continue reading
You are seven when you watch your mother wither away with grief.
You run out into the fields the day she dies. They let you go, knowing you will not go far, not good Eowyn, not the obedient second child of Eomund and Theodwyn. They think you are crying, and maybe you are, but mostly you are smiting the ground with your feet and slashing your hands at the gently waving stalks of grass.
You smite the ground. You must wonder, with the memories of your father’s war stories still ringing in your tiny ears. You must wonder, with the adrenaline still high in your veins from a pretend sword fight with your brother in the stables that morning, the adrenaline now warring with grief. You must wonder how a woman of a house so very brave could wither like an ailing flower.
You swear you will never make such useless choices.
They will call you the names of flowers all your days, Eowyn, White Lady of Ithilien, though you do not know this yet. You are so determined not to be your mother. It will give you comfort that they never call you withered, drooping, delicate. They call you frosted. They compare you to a lily, death’s flower, and don’t even realize what they say. When they call you a flower, they describe one with a core of brittle steel.
They send you and Eomer to your uncle the king. Theoden is young and strong, welcomes you with warm, open arms. You are unconvinced. His son Theodred is your cousin, and his laugh is the loudest thing you will ever have the privilege to hear, until you meet a pair of hobbits. You do not smile back until Theodred challenges you to a duel with wooden swords in the stables.
Before you go to sleep that night, aching with more than bruises in this unfamiliar bedroom, you stare up at the unknown ceiling. You map the contours of the room. A good shieldmaiden knows her surroundings.
You make a promise in the dark, pledging all seven of your years against the long oath of your life. Your mother withered, but you will break. You swear it. When you go to the ground, food for white daisies, you will be beaten into it. You hold that promise to your chest. You have so few things these days that you can claim, but this, this is yours.
You grow. The streets of Edoras become your home. Theoden becomes your father, and Eomer’s, except that your names still are echoed with “children of Eomund.” You miss your father. You miss versions of your mother that you rarely even met in that last year.
Theodred learns a king’s ways, Eomer tags at his heels, and you tag at Eomer’s. They are good-natured lads, if distractible, and you are better at sums than Theodred. No one laughs like him, though, and you can see every person in Meduseld glow when they hear the sound of their young, strong heir.
Your uncle’s vision starts to go, so you sit with him and read him his reports. He is still strong, though, you tell yourself, and ignore the white creeping over his temples like frost.
You have other duties, too, now. Some were handed to you, lessons meant for a lady of the noblest house of Rohan. Others you seized, a conquest, a victory written in the hall steward’s leftover tasks and escorting the cook to barter for bulk goods. You are so desperate not to be useless.
You become a young woman. You barely notice. You are busy gathering up new duties and burrowing your hands and heart into the work.
Old man Hama, who served in the Riders for four decades and now cannot do more than whittle, has a little house, heavy blankets for his bed, some bread and two hot meals every day. It is one of the first tasks you gather for yourself, this delivery of hot meals to an old man who gave his lifetime to your uncle’s service.
There are dozens more, old men like Hama, old women with gnarled hands and secrets tucked in their aprons. Some of the women, like you, loved the sword. Some of them, unlike you, have seen battle. You would sit at their feet for days, as a girl, but now you bring them hot soup when you can and then go back to your uncle’s side.
You do not bring food to Old Hama or the others yourself, not every day, not as you grow older, and you feel guilty about it. You admire service, loyalty, and patience, you respect them.
Old man Hama whittles beautiful things (he knew dwarves in his youth, the rumor goes, and they taught him how to make the intricate toys he whittles for the children of Edoras). You do not wish to meet dwarves. Adventure was always the thirst in Eomer’s blood, why he beats at the walls of Theoden’s hall, ranges farther and farther on patrols, but not you. You wish the dwarves all knew your name, that in a hundred years the glory of your house was sung from peak to peak.
Your uncle grows wearier. He grows older by years in the space of months. You read him his reports, but you have to wake him when he falls asleep by page four. You take over scheduling his appointments and rulings. It is months before you realize that yours is not the only hand lightening the load.
Grima Wormtongue lurks in the shadows of your uncle’s hall. He gathers duties to himself, too. You do not think a fear of uselessness is what drives him. He certainly does nothing useful with the power he gains.
You can feel him watching you when you walk to your uncle’s side. You lift your head. You do your duty.
The subjects who bring you tithes of produce, grain, and fish are treated kindly. They return home better shod, better fed, singing the praises of Theoden-king. The traders from the north and south and west are treated firmly, richly, proudly, and return home glowing with reports of Rohan’s fine steeds.
You feel guilty that you cannot repay service with service, each good Rohan man and woman with your own hands. When you have time, you taste the veterans’ meals before you have them sent out. When you have time, you bring them out yourself.
The men of Edoras watch young Eomer and Theodred when they ride out, when they spar, when they sit respectfully or argue in council. The boys ride off to their first skirmish while you watch from the steps of your uncle’s hall. The men watch them. They watch you go back into the hall and get back to work.
You feel guilty. You feel like your hands are empty of worth more often than not. They watch you, Theoden’s men, Meduseld’s women, the veterans and the stable boys, the goose girls of Edoras. They count your deeds and they find you overflowing.
All your life you are strewn with death. Before your uncle begins to wither in his throne under a curse you cannot name, before your cousin rides to a skirmish and doesn’t come back, before Grima’s sly tongue banishes Eomer in Theoden’s name, you know loss well.
You wonder if you were born under a fell star, of a plague, or into one of your mother’s worst days. You ask yourself if you are damned. When a Nazgul lies dead at your feet, years from now, you wonder if it was meant to be a blessing, these curses you have borne. Did you walk so close to death because you were meant one day to wield it?
You with your death’s imagery, you are cold, fragile, frosted, hard, winter’s child and summer’s wraith. Proud, in all that pride’s a sin. Loyal, for all that the old loyalties cling to you, bind you, and bring you low.
Handmaiden to a broken house, you once watched your mother wither with grief and now you watch your uncle.
You think you might break when Theodred dies, but you do not. You think you might break when Eomer leaves. You do not. You have been preparing for this for years, you realize. Your father rode out one day and never came back. Your mother turned her face to the wall, and she never came back. Your uncle snuggles into his thick robes, the ones you make sure will keep his limbs from chilling, his joints from aching. You are never sure he will remember your name.
You watch Eomer ride out into the hills with his three hundred men. You do not break.
You are left, alone, in your uncle’s hall. There are loyal men here, still, but all the loud, the brave, the strong, they followed Eomer. Those that remain are tired, loyal to Theoden’s ghost, or under Grima’s spell.
Tucked in your seat behind Theoden’s throne, you murmur soothing things to your drifting uncle, listen to your own heart break, and work on figuring the taxes with an abacus tucked in the folds of your skirt.
Some hours you have to escape. You go up to the watch towers. You think, Horses bite. You know this. Wild horses do, untamed horses, and you know that is not you. You, standing high on this wooden tower, staring into the teeth of the wind, a pretty banner, a cold grace, you know you are no wild horse.
You walk back to your uncle’s darkening throne room, preparing to wrap yourself in his withering grief and swallow none of it. You know you are no wild horse, but you swear you are not a tame one. You are a warhorse trained for battle, stamping in the stables. When Grima Wormtongue next turns unasked eyes your way, you bare your teeth.
Eomer is all you ever wanted to be. Or maybe Theodred—your cousin was bright, was strong, was allowed, and now he is dead. You wait on the sidelines of other people’s stories, trembling with what they call cold and you name bitter rage.
You will never wither like your mother. You whisper this promise to yourself at night.
But maybe you will break. You push yourself against the beams of your uncle’s hall, against the belt you pull tighter and tighter around your middle, against the cold cage bars you feel every time Theoden-king rasps “sister’s daughter” (two sins against your name). You push yourself against every nightmare. You will never wither, but some nights, late nights, cold nights, you hope to.
Where now the horse and the rider? Where the mother that wept? The cousin that laughed? The brother? They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadows, like a withering of the frost. How did it come to this? How did it come to this?
Three warriors and a wizard come out of the hills. There is bloodshed in your uncle’s hall. Your uncle screams under the wizard’s staff and if you had a sword—if you had a sword—
But then he stands, golden-haired, your blue eyes set in his own weary face, Theoden-king.
You want to go with him, to keep an eye on these strange violent people who have healed your king. You do not trust them, not yet, you wary child of dangerous hills. But your uncle says to trust them, to trust him. You let him go. After all, Theoden is not your mother. He came back.
As the weeks pass, you find your gaze drawn more and more to the dark Ranger from the north. They will tell stories of your love for Aragorn—maybe even you tell yourself a story of your love from him—but you know the truth.
You are not here for Aragorn. You were never here for Aragorn. You are here for the light in his eyes, the light on his swords, the deeds that trail behind his name. You want these things and more. (Pride is ever the bane of your house, but greed, greed too lingers here in the halls of men). You do not want the only legacy of your name to be none at all. Your mother left behind instructions on how to wither. She left Eomer. She left you behind, you and your cold nights.
But even that, even you—you are no legacy. You are Eowyn, daughter of Eomund, caretaker of Theoden’s hall. Even you are not Theodwyn’s legacy, not in name, not in any way that matters.
Rohan prepares for war. You know the number of every blade and shield they will take with them, the herds, the rations, the blankets and medical kits. You marshal supplies like a high general, and then you watch your men go to war without you.
You bristle, surrounded by women and children, tied down by a duty you cherish and hate with equal measure. Your hands are full of field rations and careful notes on supplies, and they feel empty, useless, cold.
After the battle, after the visit to Saruman’s flooded citadel, Eomer brings you news of Grima’s death like he thinks it will warm your heart. You are busy carrying the numbers of blankets and food stores in your head, doing spur of the moment mathematics and arguing with men thrice your size as they try to take more than their share.
You return home. You settle in and Rohan remembers what it is to be at peace. Then Gondor calls for aid.
Your uncle forbids you to ride with them. Aragorn denies you, and what’s more, he pities you. It is obvious. You remind yourself that you will never wither, not even under that pity. You will break and it will not be by this kingling’s hand.
Your brother laughs at you. You fume off into the night, like into a field when you were seven, and make bloody oaths to the dark. Eomer’s laugh (it will never be Theodred’s, never as large, though you swear you can hear some echo of it, swear Eomer learned half his ways from his cousin) cuts through the night again. You circle back and see the subject—a Halfling, the quieter one, Meriadoc Brandybuck. Merry looks like a child. His chin juts out, stubborn, fierce. He looks like you at seven.
You choose the name Dernhelm that night. When you pick out a fierce mare for yourself the next morning, you find yourself making sure she’s strong enough to carry two.
This time, you, too, ride to war. You do not ride alone. You can feel Merry shake beneath your cloak and you do not ask him which emotion drives him.
When you stand on Pelennor Fields, over your king, against a lord of darkness they say no man can kill, you still do not understand your mother.
Or maybe you do, just a little. You are never sure, not for the rest of your days.
You do not understand the withering, but there is something here, something worthwhile in this useless act. There is no killing a deathless thing. There is no saving the man gurgling his last on the ground behind you. But you raise your sword in challenge. You are a shieldmaiden of Rohan and you will stand by your king. You are Eowyn, Theoden’s daughter in all but name, and you will defy this horror until the very end of you.
But you are no man. They do not tell any stories of your end.
So you do not end here.
The Nazgul named itself deathless, above such petty things. But you have its shadowy life spilt out on your sword. Your arm is shattered, your heart is breaking. When you wake in the Houses of Healing, to Aragorn’s cool hand, the sharp scent of crushed kingsfoil, and your brother’s weeping face, you think, one of us was deathless, demon, and it wasn’t you.
You weep when you are told Theoden-king has passed away. You already knew, but you weep.
He will be deathless, you tell the Nazgul in your head. I will teach songs of him to my children. He will laugh in the halls of our fathers and watch them grow. You I will forget. You will pass like a shadow on the mountains.
(Your arm will ache all your days).
(But so will your heart, and one of these you have learned to listen harder to).
They leave you in Gondor, to wait and to hope, to heal. It feels like you have spent so much of your life sitting, watching horizons for patrols to come home, but that’s not true. This is: you have spent so much of your life catching glimpses of horizons as you swept from task to task, your hands full.
Now, you stand at the window of the Houses of Healing. You are injured foreign nobility in a city of white stone, the epitome of uselessness. You feel colder than you ever have. One day there is a warmth at your shoulder.
Faramir does not ask you for your smile, or for your death. He does not ask you to be warm. He does not ask to save you. He does ask you to walk the walls with him, but that is because you have nearly worn the floor to its knees from your pacing.
He does not believe he deserves to ask for things, this child of Gondor, this sun-browned Ranger who so loves his shadowed kingdom.
You hear stories of Boromir. You are glad Faramir does not love as hard as his brother and his father did, to death and madness. You have spent too much of your life understanding the costs of such love.
You corner the healers, offer your hands, ask to learn. You need something to do with your hands. They fill your hands, with bandages and pain, with herbs and poultices. There is a beauty in this. You are cold to your very bones, but there is a beauty in this. There is a usefulness and it warms you.
You say you will retire your shield and sword. You will learn. You will plant thickets of kingsfoil in your garden, and breathe deep for the rest of your days.
One day, you gift Faramir with a smile. One day, you gift him with your hand in his. One day, he asks a question and you say yes.
When you come home, a bride of Gondor’s steward, a veteran yourself, you stop to bring old man Hama a bowl of hot soup. You pack your dresses, your saddles, your sword, your abacus. When you ride down to the main gates, there is weeping in the streets. Eomer, king now, is ruining his dignity, but the people of Edoras cheer you through tears. “Our White Lady,” they say, and reach out to brush your skirts in farewell. You feel like you might glow, might burst. Your wounds are aching (they will ache every day of your life). You know the names of the people of this crowd, and they know yours. This, you think, is glory.
Gondor has been a city at war for so long. The homesteaders who live outside the walls are all hearty folk, stubborn and cautious. You pile your saddlebags with blankets and jerky, dried soup balls and your medicines, blank bound books for taking census notes.
They are wary of you, you pretty woman from Rohan. You ask them their children’s names. You ask them what they need. They grumble things but attach the appropriate honorifics. They eye the mud on your hem, and send you away. They learn that when they tell you what they need, you bring it, or when you can’t you return all the same, penitent, and apologize. Your medicines are used on oxen as much as people. You are invited in for warm milk and biscuits. They learn to badger the guilt off your face as well as any citizen of Rohan.
You and Faramir make a home outside the high white walls of Minas Tirith. You settle in the hills of Emyn Arnen, across the river from the great white city. These are the shadowed abandoned lands where Faramir walked as a Ranger of Ithilien. Slowly, step by step, Gondor reclaims its own.
Orcs still run wild in these hills. Faramir rides out with his men. There are pitched battles in the hills. The homesteaders have strong sons, have places to hide and to hide their winter supplies, have long years of experience in scavenging through the shells of their own pillaged homes after an attack.
You ride out with your swiftest mare and your sword, medicines and census records in your saddlebags, a few guards at your back. You have traded the name of shieldmaiden in for stewardess, for healer. You think you’re even less likely now to allow an orc to stand between you and your people.
You help a young woman cut her hair behind the stable, give her something to bind her chest. You introduce her to the guard captain as Eodred, a distant cousin, here to learn from Gondor’s finest. You tell her, like you tell every fledging young recruit no matter if you have watched their hair fall to the ground behind the stable, about the cold aches of war.
You are Theoden’s legacy. You are Theodred’s. You are Eomer’s hope and Faramir’s light. You are Theodwyn’s daughter. You have her blood and her pull towards oblivion, toward tattered memories and a love that scars the earth.
You and Merry go out into the Pelennor Fields before he leaves for the Shire. You walk slow to match the hobbit’s stride. The two of you find dozens of places where the grass is torn up and the ground scarred, by fire or curses or oliphants. You cannot remember which scar was yours, where the Nazgul fell, where Theoden fell, where you and Merry fell until your brothers found you.
Merry goes back to the Shire, but he and Pippin Took come back to visit now and then, dropping in to Rohan and Gondor, stopping by Fangorn to have tea with Treebeard. You walk the old battle fields with Merry every time, talking about your children, talking about your kingdoms.
Faramir teases you, calls it going out with old friends to look for old deaths. It is a morbid kind of humor that runs through your household, but a warm one.
You come home after a long day of distributing supplies, of reviewing potential sites for new settlers on this side of the river, of rocking babies while you settle their elders’ debates with a steely hand. Faramir lifts his head when you come into his study, puts down his pen.
You look at Faramir’s smile, the ink rubbed off on the side of his nose. You think, I love you. You think, I would not die for you.
The hills of Emyn Arnen tumble away outside the open window and Minas Tirith stands gleaming white in the distance.
I would die for this, you think. I would live for this.
BUT “THE LIBRARIANS AND THE APPLE OF DISCORD” MADE NO FREAKING SENSE. or at least, the part with evil!Cassie didn’t no i’m NOT TALKING ABOTU HER GOING ALL CRAZY MAD SCIENTISTS WITHOUT MORALS EXPERIMENTING FOR THE HELL OF IT THING (though eh isn’t that one of the things that pisses me off recently?) I can… Continue reading i know, i’ve made this post before (twice, possibly)
scrawlers: australopithecusrex: relax-o-vision: dedalvs: roachpatrol: kateordie: freezecooper: Ppl be like “ I want an actual male gem, not just Steven.” Jeez, it’s like having only one character to represent your whole gender in a group composed all of another gender is a bit upsetting huh? I wonder what that’s like no really can you even… Continue reading
arrowsforpens: xserpx: luna-prime: uchiprincess: youkoartemis: rage-quitter: himeshirayuki: mutisija: shippery: candysuits: raptortooth: grimdarkthroes: torpidgilliver: slighcooper: tennantstype40: femalemaincharacter: washingtub: luckticket: kawaiijohn: sousano: sugarfreekissu: luxio: factmix69-420: nayx: evaunit08: katara: no: trillow: is there a limit to how many comments will show on the posts now? cos the comment chain seems to go straight down from the original posts… Continue reading
fuckyeahjupiterascending: hns1387: fuckyeahjupiterascending: michaeljsingh: fuckyeahjupiterascending: “If you’ve been waiting for a female sci-fi lead character on par with Ripley and Sarah Connor, prepare… to keep waiting.” The Honest Trailers assessment of Jupiter as a protagonist As I’ve already observed, 2015 has been a very interesting year for high-concept movies with female leads. Nonetheless, it’s pretty clear that Jupiter… Continue reading The Right Kind of Hero?
Here it is, canon evidence that Salazar Slytherin was NOT a racist bigot. He was concerned for the well-being and safety of the magical community, which could have been compromised by letting the “common people” know that wizards and witches existed.
Shoutout to this fine lady for bringing this to my attention. Let’s further the argument:
Hogwarts was canonically founded around 990 A.D. – The Christians were finally taking hold of Scandinavia, meaning that all of Europe was now Christian. It was towards the end of the Dark Ages, or else the Early Medieval Period, which (In Europe) was famous for its intolerance of non-Christiandom, which included the teachings of Ancient Rome, Greece, and of course any Eastern countries. People were publicly defamed and in many cases killed for as much as considering these old ideas and teachings. These teachings really didn’t come back to light until the Italian Renaissance in the 14th century.
So when people did things the Christians couldn’t explain, they blamed it on Witches; people they believed to be inhabited by the devil, sent to earth to wreak havoc on every God-fearing man, woman, and child. So what did they do? Imprison or kill those people.
Now, here comes Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, who all agree to take pureblooded witches and wizards and teach them. But then they have to discuss magical folk who aren’t born from magic folk.
Gryffindor is brave and brash, and imagines the glory of having an entire society of witches and wizards with great command of their powers.
Hufflepuff is kind and loving, and wants to provide a sanctuary for all those who are under duress from the population at large.
Ravenclaw sees the merit in bringing all these different people together – the amount of information regarding magic that can be shared is the stuff of her dreams.
Slytherin is cautious. He recognizes that there is a great possibility for individuals to play spy for the Muggle community, in hopes to gain favor by outing them all the while hiding their own powers from muggles. He sees them as a potential threat, and instead of risking the safety of not only their own lives,but the countless volumes and tomes of ancient wizarding knowledge tucked away in their castle (see The Burning of the Great Library at Alexandria), Slytherin says “I really don’t think we should allow people with connections to Muggles in here. We could lost *everything.*
Gryffindor calls Slytherin a coward, saying they would fight back and beat down any who try to oppose them. Slytherin suggests they do all they can to avoid confrontation. Hufflepuff can’t bring herself to deny that sanctuary she’s built. Ravenclaw sees endless potential in bridging that gap between worlds with learning. And this is what drives them apart. Future racists and pureblooded elitists will take and twist Slytherin’s words, having heard only the story that has been passed down for a thousand years. They use words of caution to justify their want for genocide.
Slytherin isn’t the bad guy, here. And I am so down for clearing his name.
To continue the crusade to clear the name of Salazar Slytherin, I have more evidence for your consideration. This is regarding the Chamber of Secrets.
Now, the scene pictured above is one of Harry’s slightly less dull History of Magic classes, in which Professor Binns is asked to talk about the Chamber of Secrets. What we get from him is that the Chamber is a myth. There is legend surrounding it, no one is sure if it exists, etc etc etc.
Here is the VERY NEXT PAGE in the book, in which Professor Binns again admits to the Chamber (as we know it today) to be a complete myth. We find out, obviously, that the chamber isn’t a myth, but I believe that the purpose of the chamber has been fabricated over a thousand years by misinformation and slander.
Let’s check it out. Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Godric Gryffindor all know Salazar Slytherin and say “yep, he’s an upstanding man. Let’s start this school with him!” For a number of years, they had a school together and it worked out great. What we know is that there was a falling out, not Slytherin declaring they needed to murder muggle-borns! A disagreement that may have ruined friendships but did little else, I think.
What we know is that one of Slytherin house’s key virtues is self-preservation. As I discussed earlier in the thread on this post is that Slytherin was afraid of muggle-born witches and wizards acting as spies for the larger muggle community during a time in which wizards and witches were killed for their “demon powers.”
And so, when it comes to the Chamber of Secrets, I believe Slytherin built a Panic Room, not an Evil Lair.
Think about it. Slytherin is horrified that any day there might be an attack on the school. So he builds a secret chamber that only he (or another parseltongue, an incredibly rare magical ability) can open. He doesn’t want any double agents or spies to know about it, so he tells no one. He hopes, of course, that he never has to use it, but in the event that there is an attack, he can get the school to safety while he sets the basilisk on the attackers.
But I’m sure you’re looking at the basilisk and thinking “what sane man would put a monster in a panic room?” Glad you asked. I can consider two possibilities.
1) Slytherin put a basilisk that was under his control in the chamber, a creature that he could set loose on his enemies, aka, anyone attacking the castle. The basilisk would annihilate any army of thousands just by looking at them, and what’s more, it could get almost anywhere in the castle through the goddamn walls! That kind of power is exactly what you need to defend your castle. And again, ONLY HE or an heir could control it. I’m sure at this point he was thinking about himself and his potential progeny, not Tom Riddle some thousand years later.
2) Slytherin didn’t put the basilisk there, and it was instead placed there later by Tom Riddle while he was at school. I don’t have evidence supporting or disproving this.
So how does this get so misconstrued to modern-day Hogwarts lore? Maybe toward the end, the founders did find out about the Chamber. Maybe Slytherin said something to them, maybe he let it slip…maybe as they were cleaning out his room after he left, they found some journal entries about it. It could have been anything. But perhaps, in their wisdom, seeing no way to access the chamber, felt it best that no one knew about the existence of a (now) useless panic room, nor did they want anyone to worry about the basilisk.
Maybe word *did* get out, though. And not one of the founders wanted to admit that Slytherin didn’t trust their students, and so to most of the student body, Slytherin’s departure was suspect. And the moment they heard about a secret room that no one was quite sure about, they started inventing campfire stories about it.
Fast forward ONE THOUSAND YEARS and now everyone assumes Slytherin was always evil (despite being a good friend and founder of Hogwarts with three other lovely people) and created a secret evil lair to murder muggle-borns, which he could have easily done without a lair if that was *ever* his intention.
Okay. We’re going to do this now because I will probably not
rest at ease until I’ve corrected the unholy mess that is this post. It’s long, I get angry, I’m sorry. So here
goes:
1) A bigot is a bigot is a bigot.
If a person is using the language of “threat”
and “risk” to deny children – ELEVEN YEAR OLDS – an education because
of the apparent risk they pose to adults in the community, then yes, they are a
bigot. It’s no different from white parents being antsy because there’s one
muslim kid in their child’s class. It’s the same principle.
2) The witch
hunts did not start in earnest till the 15th century.
Please; even Wikipedia has extensively sourced material on how the witch
hunts really only started in the fifteenth century, in the Early Modern period
in Europe. The general entry on Witch-hunts (and I mean come on, all this shite is right here on Wikipedia for
you to read for yourselves, rather than relying on some ludicrously false idea of
what the medieval period was like) on Wikipedia has this under its medieval
period section:
Early secular laws against witchcraft include those
promulgated by King Athelstan (924–939 AD):
“And we have ordained respecting witch-crafts, and
lybacs [read lyblac “sorcery”], and morthdaeds [“murder, mortal
sin”]: if any one should be thereby killed, and he could not deny it, that
he be liable in his life. But if he will deny it, and at threefold ordeal shall
be guilty; that he be 120 days in prison: and after that let kindred take him
out, and give to the king 120 shillings, and pay the wer to his kindred, and
enter into borh for him, that he evermore desist from the like.”
“We have decided, regarding witchcrafts, sorcery, and
murder, if anyone should thus be killed and it cannot be denied, they must pay
with their life. However, if they deny it, and at a threehold ordeal (three
innocence-tests e.g. drowning, fire, blessed-cake) be proven guilty they must
pay for it with 120 days in prison, and
their family must, after this time, pay to the king/government/tax collector 120
shillings, and the individual must pay wereguild (blood-reparation) to the kin
of the deceased and enter into a pledge with them that he evermore desists from
doing so again” (shoutout to essayofthoughts for converting the language)
Which in sum follows a pretty common cultural rule
concerning magic in all cultures, throughout the ages – you hurt someone
and it is “proved” that this hurt is the result of witchcraft, then you pay for
it. I think it’s a fairly reasonable kind of statement to make, given that it’s
not all that different from our laws against murder. I’m not sure why “magic”,
especially in the context of HPverse where magic does exist, is supposed to somehow preserve people from bearing the
weight of any crimes exerted against non-magic neighbours… And given the way
wix treat muggles in the books – obliviating them at will (hello yes, Goblet of
Fire World Cup anyone?) down to torturing them for sport (also, Goblet of Fire
World Cup when the Death Eaters make an appearance) and someone once proposing
to make muggle-hunting legal – it’s not an unreasonable sort of fear to have
imo.
(Keep in mind here, witches and wizards do have power that muggles don’t have access to and this, even though wix are a “minority” community does place wix higher on the power scale
than muggles. Muggles can retaliate only with weapons against a force which
they know nothing about. Think about
it. You’re living in a community with a bunch of people who have a kind of
power you don’t know the extent of, besides that they can kill without even
touching you, and you have to trust them to be good to you, even if they think
you’re dirt and inferior to them. So yeah, this is a case where I’d argue that
a minority community actually has more power than the majority community especially in the context of the medieval period. Unless you want to argue that all minority communities ever are persecuted,
in which case CONGRATULATIONS! Rich people who control the vast majority of the
world’s resources are now a persecuted minority!)
If you want more scholarly resources on the witch hunts,
there’s Kors & Peter’s Witchcraft in Europe, 400 – 1700: A Documentary
History, J B Russell’s Witchcraft in the
Middle Ages and Dissent &Order in the Middle Ages: The Search For
Legitimate Authority, this paper on the Medieval Origins of the Witch Hunts
from Cambridge Quarterly, this
sociology paper on the European witch hunt craze of the 14th -17th century from
the American Journal of Sociology and
this paper from The Journal of
Interdisciplinary History on the Historiography of the European Witchcraft.
This isn’t even like, 1/100th of the sources out there on the origins of the
witch-hunts/a survey of the scholarship on the matter. The consensus of all of them is that the witch hunts didn’t begin
in earnest till the 15th century, though there might have been persecutions
here and there. In fact till the 14th century, belief in the very idea of
witchcraft and that witches had the powers to do what some people claimed they
did was banned. To believe in the possibility of someone practicing witchcraft
was as much of a heresy as to practice witchcraft. It wasn’t until the 14th
century that the Inquisitions were authorized to prosecute for witchcraft and
even then it seems to have only been investigated incidentally during
investigations for heterodoxy.
TL;DR: You were more likely to get hauled up for heretical
beliefs and getting your theology wrong than you were for practicing witchcraft
in the medieval period.
3) The destruction of
texts on magic =/= persecution on the basis of witchcraft.
The post mentions that a lot of the texts dealing with
native magic practices were destroyed during the spread of Christianity through
Europe and while that’s certainly true of Norse magic (I know, because trying
to find non-apocryphal information on historical practices of Seidr is impossibly hard) I don’t think it
necessarily holds true across all of Europe, or hell, Britain. There’s a fair
bit of Irish and Welsh lore which survived, as well as Roman records on the
magical practice of druids (how much of it is true, we don’t know, but given that the
druids themselves passed their lore down mostly verbally this kind of is a moot
point imo) and a decent chunk of folklore magic survived and passed down quite
intact…
There’s a few points worth making here:
A lot of texts were being destroyed and counter-destroyed
as parts of various agendas during the medieval and early modern period. But I
don’t think that it necessarily means that all secular texts were destroyed and abandoned during this period. Iirc, Latin
was introduced into the nobleman’s curriculum via both the Bible as well as the Justinian Laws and the
Latin classics – similarly so with Greek – circa the reign of Charlemagne (~748 – 814 AD), during the Carolingian Renaissance. Here is a paper from the journal of The History Of Ideason the concept of the Carolingian Renaissance. This overflowed into the development of curricula at the European universities in the early medieval period. Sure, not everyone could go to
University to be educated, but these texts were definitely being studied at the
Universities of the times and given that the Arthurania (and its various
variations) became popular again in the 14th century or so, along
with the rise of the codes of chivalry, and that the Canterbury Tales are definitely
a thing which existed; it’s safe to say that the medieval period wasn’t just a bunch of people who suffered from
some kind of religious mania and never read/wrote anything else ever. That’s how they’ve been construed in our popular
imagination but it’s not necessarily an accurate image.
Given that in the course of my own research on
necromancy during the medieval period (because I needed information for fic
purposes, of course) I found several medieval codexes scanned on to online archives on how to summon demons
and other necromantic practices, I think it’s safe to say that not even writing
on magic was entirely stamped out or completely destroyed irl, let alone in HPverse.
A lot of folklore on magic & mythology was
incorporated into the church “lore” and survived albeit in syncretic form. I
think that’s true of most things tbh, I don’t think you can for a minute
pretend that any kind of belief/culture/cultural practice which exists today
exists in precisely the same form as it has always existed since the founding
of cultures. Cultures and societies are fluid and ever-changing, beliefs are
assimilated and discarded. In this case, a fair bit of folklore made its way
into shaping how the “commoners” practiced the formally introduced religion.
Honestly all you have to do is watch a few episodes of Horrible Histories to
figure this out on your own.
4) JKR on Salazar Slytherin
and Pureblood Mania:
Now that we’ve debunked the history parts of this post, let’s
move on to what JKR herself has written at various point in her books and Pottermore,
about the matter of witch hunts and pureblood mania.
In the Pottermore article on Purebloods and to some extent,
the article on the Malfoys, we’re explicitly told that prejudice against
muggleborns and muggles rose drastically after the institution of the Statute
of Secrecy (pretty much expected given that places most likely to vote in
favour of fascist & anti-immigration parties are also the places least in
contact with people from other races, ethnicities & cultures) and the idea that
muggleborns posed a threat because of the Statute only really came into its own
there. I think I’ll let JKR’s own writing
do the talking here.
Historically, the Malfoys drew a sharp distinction between
poor Muggles and those with wealth and authority. Until the imposition of the
Statute of Secrecy in 1692, the Malfoy family was active within high-born
Muggle circles, and it is said that their fervent opposition to the imposition
of the Statute was due, in part, to the fact that they would have to withdraw
from this enjoyable sphere of social life. Though hotly denied by subsequent
generations, there is ample evidence to suggest that the first Lucius Malfoy
was an unsuccessful aspirant to the hand of Elizabeth I, and some wizarding
historians allege that the Queen’s subsequent opposition to marriage was due to
a jinx placed upon her by the thwarted Malfoy.
With that healthy degree of self-preservation that has
characterised most of their actions over the centuries, once the Statute of
Secrecy had passed into law the Malfoys ceased fraternising with Muggles,
however well-born, and accepted that further opposition and protests could only
distance them from the new heart of power: the newly created Ministry of Magic.
They performed an abrupt volte-face, and became as vocally supportive of the
Statute as any of those who had championed it from the beginning, hastening to
deny that they had ever been on speaking (or marrying) terms with Muggles.
Magical opinion underwent something of a shift after the
International Statute of Secrecy became effective in 1692, when the magical
community went into voluntary hiding following persecution by Muggles. This was
a traumatic time for witches and wizards, and marriages with Muggles dropped to
their lowest level ever known, mainly because of fears that intermarriage would
lead inevitably to discovery, and, consequently, to a serious infraction of
wizarding law.
Under such conditions of uncertainty, fear and resentment,
the pure-blood doctrine began to gain followers. As a general rule, those who
adopted it were also those who had most strenuously opposed the International
Statute of Secrecy, advocating instead outright war on the Muggles. Increasing
numbers of wizards now preached that marriage with a Muggle did not merely risk
a possible breach of the new Statute, but that it was shameful, unnatural and
would lead to ‘contamination’ of magical blood.
As Muggle/wizard marriage had been common for centuries,
those now self-describing as pure-bloods were unlikely to have any higher
proportion of wizarding ancestors than those who did not. To call oneself a
pure-blood was more accurately a declaration of political or social intent (‘I
will not marry a Muggle and I consider Muggle/wizard marriage reprehensible’)
than a statement of biological fact.
JKR furthermore completely debunks the idea that muggleborns
were viewed with anything approaching suspicion during the 10th
century with this statement from the entry on Purebloods on Pottermore:
Slytherin’s discrimination on the basis of parentage was
considered an unusual and misguided view by the majority of wizards at the
time. Contemporary literature suggests that Muggle-borns were not only
accepted, but often considered to be particularly gifted. They went by the
affectionate name of ‘Magbobs’ (there has been much debate about the origin of
the term, but it seems most likely to be that in such a case, magic ‘bobbed up’
out of nowhere).
So let’s be very clear here. Slytherin’s views were
considered outliers at the time which certainly suggests that muggles were not
thought of as posing anything approaching a significant threat to the magical
community at all – which I think my write-up on the history of the witch-hunts + JKR’s own writing on the witch hunts amply explains. Muggleborns were considered unusually gifted because of their
ability to perform magic instead, so it’s more likely that Hufflepuff,
Ravenclaw and Gryffindor represented the mainstream views of their time and
weren’t necessarily fighting for some kind of airy ideology of
bravery/acceptance/collecting knowledge that they’d attached themselves to.
Speaking of which JKR is pretty damn clear that the founders
quarrelled over Slytherin’s views on muggleborns. Like, it’s not subtext or
in-text propaganda. JKR’s outright written it as part of HPverse history.
Where Slytherin’s views gain traction is after the institution of the Statute of
Secrecy following what I think was a particularly bad spate of persecution at
the hands of James II – under whom the witch hunt craze reached its zenith.
William of Orange took over in 1688, but I’m guessing that by then the damage
had been done to the wizarding community and presumably also, William would have
had other struggles in consolidating his power before he could get to dealing
with the witch hunt business. It’s under this condition of fear and resentment followed by separation from the muggles that
the ideology of pureblood supremacy really comes into its own and muggles go
from being just odd and harmless weirdoes into the image of a villainous and dangerous Other. This is in 1692. That’s nearly 700 years after the founding of Hogwarts. That’s when
muggles really started to be viewed as a threat to the wizarding world. Not
during the early medieval period. Not even under the rule of Queen Elizabeth
the First. In 1692 during the reign of William of Orange.
In the essay Harry mentions Wendelin the Weird, who actually
enjoyed being burnt at the stake so much, she allowed herself to be captured in
disguise forty-seven times and
escaped each time using flame-freezing
charms. The Fat Friar was executed because church members grew suspicious of
his ability to cure the plague by poking people with a stick and because he pulled rabbits out of a wine cup so it’s
not exactly like the dude was exercising caution over here or even trying to be
circumspect. Nearly Headless Nick enjoyed what seemed to have been a
pleasant life until he somehow cocked up fixing Lady Grieve’s (lady-in-waiting
to Henry VII) teeth and made her grow a tusk (like holy shitballs how bad do you have to be at magic to do that)
instead, after which he was imprisoned and executed the next morning in an
obvious parody of Tudor justice.
(The Tudors were a whimsical bunch to live under.)
There’s a few lessons/inferences we can make here:
The probability that actual wix were affected by
the witch-hunts is probably much less than we imagine they are or indeed, the
magical community imagines they are. Wix had a whole variety of charms to keep
their neighbours from ever really getting on to them – muggle repelling charms,
which we know is a thing given that Hogwarts was concealed by them all the way
back in the 10th century (besides being Unplottable and therefore, not-findable by wizards as well, so please don’t trot out their muggle repelling charms as
incontrovertible proof that they were afraid of muggle persecution; in all
likelihood they wanted to keep the castle out of any conflicts and to keep the
children in an environment where they could safely practice their magic without
accidentally hurting some random wanderers), anti-flame freezing charms to save
them from being burnt, Obliviates to make sure your neighbour never remembers
what happened to them and so on and so forth. You would probably have to have
been really daft (Sir Nick) or really obvious and careless (the Fat Friar) or
some kind of weirdo (Wendelin) to get caught for actually doing magic on
muggles. I mean ffs, the magical world can cover up a huge war during the
seventies in Britain where muggles are being killed in addition to magical folk
and you want to talk about how they were terrified of exposing the Statute?
Hon, that’s your answer right there.
The community probably most at risk for being
persecuted for magic is DING DING DING YOU GUESSED IT: MUGGLEBORNS. Guess why?
Because the kids actually live with muggles and are less able to control their
magic in their childhood and are actually at risk of exposing their magic (and
probably putting their families in danger from society) to people at large. notyourexrotic expresses this much better over here in this post. Hogwarts
would have been protection for these people, but no, what we’re doing here is
what literally every anti-immigration politician fuck has done in the past few
years and talked about how muggleborns would pose a “threat” to the stability
of magical society because of the risk they posed in exposing their society to
the muggle world. Yeah, maybe if you gave
them the support they needed they wouldn’t be at risk of doing so.
Leading off from this, it’s also likely that a
high proportion of muggles were impacted by this as well, especially if they
had muggleborn kids.
Where I imagine the witch hunts really would
have an impact on pureblood wix/wix communities proper is when whole villages were
being investigated for witchcraft which honestly was something which only
really started happening in the 16th-17th century
(especially under James II).
Also spies, really? An eleven year old is going
to want to be a spy on people who do magic because??? ????? ????????? I can
think of scenarios where a seventeen year old might agree to do something like
that but the only scenario where I can imagine such a thing happening is
when the seventeen year old has been isolated and injured and hurt by magical
society enough that they think it’s worth betraying them to find some kind of
home for themselves among a society which has promised to reward it, in this
case, muggle society. Like. In which case, the people clearly at fault here would be MAGICAL
SOCIETY. For injuring a muggleborn on the principle that they were a
muggleborn.
Salazar Slytherin has nothing to stand on concerning his prejudice. Nothing to legitimate it at all.
6) Cuthbert Binns.
Now that we’ve covered the historical accuracy of witch
hunts, who they would have been most
likely to have affected and how this fear of muggles is directly connected to
the institution of the Statute of Secrecy, I think it’s safe to say that we can
make this inference about wizarding history: it’s not objective.
I mean, history in general is not objective. What you have is multiple perspectives about a
series of events. In this instance, we get Cuthbert Binns’ version of history
which as we’ve seen over here, has little to no basis in history – either in
real life, or in the context of HPverse. We know that the curriculum at
Hogwarts is overseen by the Board of Governors, who consist of men like Lucius
Malfoy, as well as the Ministry of Magic – which happens to be in the pockets of
men like Lucius Malfoy. We also know that Cuthbert Binns has been around for a
long long time, so it’s safe to say that he hasn’t really acquired any new
perspectives on history or on muggles or muggle-wizard history/relationships
for a long long time.
In which case, it all begs the question: just how accurate
is Binns’ narrative of witch burnings? Is he simply reproducing a version of
history which has been produced and reproduced over and over again since the
institution of the Statute of Secrecy, to justify the actions of wix and moreover, to justify their hatred of muggles?
Is he a reliable narrator here, or is JKR employing an unreliable narrator to
tell us how wizards think of their history – supplying ample information on the
side to show us just how imbued with propaganda and pureblood ideology this
version of history is?
I think that this is very
much what JKR is doing here and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. If
Cuthbert Binns is a reliable mouthpiece, then so too is Severus Snape, Barty
Crouch as Mad Eye, Dolores Umbridge, Gilderoy Lockhart, Quirinius Quirrell –
any teacher, for that matter, at Hogwarts. But I think the books spent enough time
showing us just why this is not so for
us to not fall into the same trap here!
7) The Chamber of
Secrets.
A few things. JKR has told
us explicitly that Salazar put a basilisk in there. JKR has also told us
explicitly on Pottermore and in the books as well, that Slytherin and the
others quarrelled over the matter of letting in students of different blood
purity. We’ve also seen JKR’s own writing on the prevalent views on Muggleborns
at the time, so it’s clear that Slytherin was a statistical outlier.
Look at the structure of the Chamber of Secrets and tell me
what about it suggests that it is a “panic” room. Here are quotes from Chapter 17, Slytherin’s Heir, from The Chamber of Secrets:
And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, he
saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes
set with great, glinting emeralds.
He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit
chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to
support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long,black shadows through the odd,
greenish gloom that filled the place.
He pulled out his wand and moved forward between the
serpentine columns. Every careful footstep echoed loudly off the shadowy walls.
He kept his eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of
movement. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following
him. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, he thought he saw one stir.
Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a
statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back
wall.
Harry had to crane his neck to look up into the giant face
above: It was ancient and monkeyish, with a long, thin beard that fell almost to
the bottom of the wizard’s sweeping stone robes, where two enormous gray feet
stood on the smooth Chamber floor.
… watched Riddle stop between the high pillars and look up
into the stone face of Slytherin, high above him in the half-darkness. Riddle
opened his mouth wide and hissed — but Harry understood what he was saying…
. “Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.”
Harry wheeled around to look up at the statue, Fawkes
swaying on his shoulder. Slytherin’s gigantic stone face was moving. Horrorstruck, Harry saw his mouth opening,
wider and wider, to make a huge black hole. And something was stirring inside
the statue’s mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths.
Something huge hit the stone floor of the Chamber. Harry
felt it shudder — he knew what was happening, he could sense it, could almost
see the giant serpent uncoiling itself from Slytherin’s mouth.
Everything about the structure, from the snakes twined
around the pillars and the doors with emeralds,
mind you, in the snakes eyes, to the giant statute of Salazar Slytherin,
suggests less place to retreat to in time of emergency and more “shrine to
Salzar Slytherin”.
The Chamber of Secrets itself is such an interesting room
because like. If ever there was a room as steeped in pure ideology, it’s the
chamber? The whole structure revolves around Salazar Slytherin; it’s a
self-glorificatory room and tbh that’s always what I’ve wondered a little about
Slytherin and its obsession with blood purity – if it was not a kind of
narcissistic self-worship that became reified into this idea that blood really
was the source of magical power and virtue in the wizarding world. The
flip side to murdering people for their supposed inferiority is the
glorification of the self – which is something you see a lot in fascist art and
propaganda; all based around either a single glorious figure, or an idealized
figure that people are meant to aspire to. I think that’s very much something
that’s going on in the Chamber of Secrets and the entrance being situated in
the girl’s toilet is something which amused me no end because again, JKR
strikes with a visual pun, but also again we get the “submerged in ideology”
image, because descending down this path gives you people willing to murder children for
being ‘inferior’ and having the wrong kind of blood and posing a ‘threat’ to the
superiority of pureblood society.
… the Chamber of Secrets is pure fascist ideology embodied,
it is not a panic room. Everything about its architecture is
reminiscent of the kind of architecture you’d get in a totalitarian fascist
state and it has a fucking living declaration of war and genocide (the
basilisk) living inside it, put over there by the man who created the room.
I think the description of the room speaks for itself and
the fact that JKR has independently confirmed that Slytherin did put the basilisk in there, it’s safe
to assume that Slytherin also set the code that would make his statue release
the basilisk from within its depths – which imo, I think is pretty telling
about the kind of person Salazar Slytherin was. I don’t think he really cared
about the wizarding world at all, I think he care more for his idea of it and for him, it was important
to preserve that idea and that ideal which he had conceived of – a typical
tenet of fascist ideology – and to do so, he actually hid a goddamn weapon of war inside a school full of children
with the intent that some day one of his heirs would continue his genocide on
his behalf.
WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY LAST POINT
8) All of this
reminds me disturbingly of the kind of rhetoric used to defend fascists,
racists and people who have committed genocide and large scale ethnic
cleansings.
Sure, Salazar could have killed muggleborns in any number of
different ways if he wanted to. But the thing about ethnic cleansings and
genocides is that the violence is rarely clinical or efficient. There is a huge symbolic element to violence. Arjun Appadurai more or less expresses this
idea in his paper Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of
Globalization. The gist of his analysis, based on the ethnic cleansing of
Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide of 1995, states that the violence enacted on
the bodies of those being killed was never just about killing them, but was performed in such a way as to symbolize their “different-ness”
from Hutu bodies – even though it is nearly impossible to distinguish between
who is and who isn’t. The form of violence enacted on their bodies serves as a
marker and a distinguisher. I think it’s a point worth bringing into the
discussion here because it’s exactly what
Bellatrix does when she carves the word mudblood into Hermione’s arm. There is
no difference, magically, between her and Hermione – carving that word there
makes all the difference.
I just want this quote here to illustrate why this kind of violence
is never satisfying and why it continues and moreover, why it continues to justify itself as “rational” and “acceptable”:
“Of course the violent epistemology of bodily violence, the
`theatre of the body’ on which this violence is performed, is never truly
cathartic, satisfying, or terminal. It only leads to a deepening of social
wounds, an epidemic of shame, a collusion of silence, and a violent need for
forgetting. All these [acts] add fresh underground fuel for new episodes of
violence. This is also partly a matter of the pre-emptive quality of such
violence: let me kill you before you kill me. Uncertainty about identification
and violence can lead to actions, reactions, complicities, and anticipations
that multiply the pre-existing uncertainty about labels. Together, these forms
of uncertainty call for the worst kind of certainty: dead certainty.”
Everything about the Chamber of Secrets and the basilisk
being placed there to kill muggleborns is symbolic. Salazar is the one who
cares about protecting blood purity, it is his face that the wizarding world must look to when the time comes to rid
themselves of “the threat within”. He chooses a serpent to symbolize himself –
and tbh, if I wanted to there’s probably a whole level of Freudian analysis we
can make here, but lbr, the Chamber of Secrets is pretty much a kind of
hypermasculine fantasy without even getting into talking about how Salazar
chooses a snake; a symbol not only of
cunning, but of fertility, luck and protection – and to enact violence upon
muggleborns & muggles. It’s almost too obvious in its symbolism, but here we are with a very clear message being sent out:
that muggles and muggleborns do not deserve protection, they are not the kind of population that is to be
protected and they will be murdered by this symbol of all of these things
because they are less than human and the “evil within”.
Speaking of which, so much of the rhetoric in this post
focuses around muggleborns as the “evil within” or the “threat within”. I’m
genuinely curious here, does no one see the parallels between this kind of
language and the language used to justify the persecution of immigrants,
minorities and for fuck’s sake, used to justify the Holocaust? I think tumblr
user brotheralyosha puts it best here in this reblog of a post I made:
The idea that “foreigners” in a community are really spies
for outside powers who might destroy the community from the inside, and that
therefore need to be kept separate and defended against, is a fundamental
ideological component of fascism and white supremacy.
Here’s a poster, by the way, from the films which more or
less centre around the whole crux of this post – muggleborns posing a threat to
wizarding society from inside. It’s Death Eater propaganda, for the record:
The reason I’ve sat down to write a 5k word rant about this
post, with links to sources and stuff, is because I am genuinely disturbed that these are things we can say and endorse
unironically in fandom because they form
the crux of real world ideologies that have been used to murder people on the
basis of race, religion, ethnicity and sexuality. This is exactly the kind of defence that has
been used to bolster their arguments.
You know what I find invariably when people mention a “threat”
to their societies?
It’s the powerful majority speaking about a
minority they have been made aware of, which pose a threat to the social norms
and structures they have imposed on themselves to govern their lives.
There is almost never any actual threat, beyond a hysterically exaggerated one –
remember what I said earlier about the places most willing to vote in right
wing fascists being the ones with the least diverse populations, repeat that
again over and over again to yourself – which focuses on the idea of a “pure”
society which must be preserved. Societies are not pure, cultures are not pure;
they have always been syncretic, they have always been changing, they have
always been fluid and dynamic and anyone who tells you otherwise is
lying.
I’m sorry but J K Rowling did not write seven books of what amounts to a war against
this kind of ideological defence – Salzar Slytherin actually had the right
idea, he was the only founder who cared about the wizarding world but history
pilloried him as “paranoid” and “evil” because he chose to take “precautions”
against the “danger within” (honestly, do you think there aren’t actual
Nazis and Neo-Nazis and Anti-Semitists and racists and fascists who are spouting
this shit in defence of Hitler right now? Let me tell you, there
probably are!) – to have fandom spout it back in defence of a character
in the name of redeeming Slytherin house from its tarnished and “false” image
in the books. She deconstructed the whole mythos of muggleborns being a threat,
both historically and in the present day to show just how wrong Salazar Slytherin, Voldemort and the Death Eaters were in their beliefs. Congratulations!
You have missed a crucial point of the Harry Potter books in favour of
redeeming a character because you want to give kids who are sorted into
Slytherin “representation”.
Redeem Slytherin house as much
as you want. But don’t you dare use the defensive language of racists,
fascists and neo-nazis in your posts in an effort to “redeem” a character in a
bid for whatever twisted-ass idea of “representation” you’ve conjured up for
kids who are scared of being sorted into Slytherin on Pottermore. There is a
line and that line has been fucking crossed here and I am furious, but even
more I am frightened because this is the
sort of language that has been employed to tell me, an Indian immigrant living
abroad, that I am a threat to all that is good and noble about UK society and here we are, with fandom using it unironically in
defence of a character that JKR left no
ambiguity whatsoever over concerning their bigotry.
Please please be critical of the ways in which you choose to headcanon and defend characters who are clearly portrayed as bigots in the text!
It’s shit like this which makes me want to leave fandom.
Monsters' Queen 