cryptid

What it says on the tin

 I had an abortive (at the request of the person whose mentions I was actually in) discussion about child abuse in Harry Potter vs Ender's game on bluesky today, and I wanted to talk about it a bit more. 

So Harry Potter is pretty gung ho about the general institutionalized abuse of the British boarding school system, but not in any special or notable way. There are abusive teachers, abusive scenarios, but those are always treated as bad apples/exceptions; there is a paradoxically strong faith in institutions like schools but the ministry etc. is generally portrayed as incompetent, or over run by well-meaning simpletons, unless they fit a particular kind of mode of how things should be. (It's so strange that the Ministry for Magic answers to the muggle Queen, like, why?) 

Ender's Game thinks treating children terribly is just sort of an inevitable part of growing up; yes a whole planet blows up in an unnecessary genocide, but it doesn't change the feeling that those Others (the Formics, the Piggies, etc) are just so incompatible with humans/human society that war is inevitable; it's tragic, and I really love the book, but I feel like saying it's some great polemic against child abuse while Harry Potter is entirely on board with it is a misreading of both series that actually kind of do them disservices. 

Of course, Card also thinks that the abuse and destruction of promising youths is an inevitable consequence of the correct system (Mormonism), while JKR radicalized herself on twitter, so neither series has particularly fun associations anymore. Which is a damned shame. 

I also think that HP has less of JKR's current awfulness than her recent books, because she had editors and, no matter how mean spirited they were, she wrote them before her true pokemon evolution into awfulness, meanwhile Card's fucked up self-hated homosexual neurosis nightmare is an integral part of the books. In other words, JKR's issues detract from her work (rocks in the soup), while Card's are often pretty bad but can add interesting texture (nuts in cookies instead of chocolate chips--it depends on the nut if that's fun or not!)

Originally written for the community dracoharry100 with the prompt "proof."


"What is this?" Harry asks, looking at the object in Draco's hand like it could hurt him.
Which, Draco has to grudgingly admit to himself, it could. It's a fragment of the Dark Lord's old homunculus form. It's inert without the malevolent spirit animating it, as magically active as an article of muggle clothing, but Harry doesn't know that. He can't know that.
"Proof," Draco says. "That you're correct. That... he's... back."
There's other proof--his father's mark flaring hotly, like a reopened burn scar--but he can't steal that to show to Umbridge.
"Why?" Harry asks.
"It's not right," Draco answers

Sometimes you end up more asleep during your translation than someone else's (oof). But overall it was a good discussion, and I am INCREDIBLY excited to go annoy some poor arborist about trees for classics reasons.

paper thoughts

I just finished reading "the symbolic value of grafting in rome" by dunstan lowe which falls into the really fun category of "paper refuting argument I wasn't familiar with but am now enjoying seeing destroyed" 

I guess in the georgics by virgil there's a tree that's been grafted to have a bunch of different fruits, and some 20th century classicists interpreted this as intentionally sinister. Now this dovetails pretty nicely with several beefs I have with some classicists, but that's a rant for another time. What's interesting is how the paper systematically goes through all the different ways that Vergil (and later authors!) talk about grafting, and it's almost always positive and fantastical. And that's really cool to me, how they see this scientific/botanical process and use it productively in poetry.

I'm really appreciating how nature focused this Vergil class is, instead of treating the natural imagery as surface nonsense to be mined for "more important" topics like politics.

art stuff

i'm participating in the kimo challenge, where you have to do a figure drawing and upload it at least once a day, and if you don't you're kicked out of the discord server, and it's surprisingly fun. I'm not doing the social stuff so much, but the drawing is fun. I'm not good at art, but making myself do An Art even if it's not a good one every day has been good, and the threat is cheery enough that it doesn't lead to the mental illness "now that there's a deadline I don't wanna even more"

I'm sort of fascinated by the implication that welcoming redditors is a... leftist agenda? 

But man, object lesson for why these kinds of horrendous "for the children" laws manage to pass, they get so much bye in by people who think they're genuinely helping.

the current tim drake/robin book is SO good, i've now caught up and i'm vibrating waiting for next month.
i haven't felt this way about a comic in ages.

I ship Timber so hard.

On that note, here's a fic rec:

and i ain't gotta tell him (i know he knows) by riveroflight.

Tilting at Windmills, Part Three
Title: Tilting at Windmills
Author: DragonLady
Summary: Keeping things separate becomes an impossibility for Hotch when it becomes clear he is the real target of an unsub striking in his childhood home town.
Warnings: Hotch issues, ANGST, slash, Criminal Mindsesque gore, ANGST, nightmare rape, and, in case I forgot to mention, ANGST. This is an Aaron Must Suffer fic, folks. Spoilers for the first two eps of Season 3.
Rating: FRM
Pairing: preslash Hotch/Reid, but primarily Hotch-centric
Disclaimer: Mark Gordon and CBS's. I merely borrow without permission, but with every intent to return.

Part One
Part Two

( Part 3 )
note: part 4 is no longer available and was not archived on the internet archive.