Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Or, yes, it's problematic, but the magic goes on)

Let's talk Potter.

Again.


I don't want to say that the HP fandom has been dead since 2007 (when Deathly Hallows came out) or even 2011 (when Deathly Hallows Part 2 came out). Because it hasn't been. There are intriguing fan theories, beautiful fan art, the continuing lives of the actors. There is and was the site pottermore.com, the controversial quasi-canon source of extra-series information.


Willow started reading Potter around 2009. At least, that's when she started talking about it. [correct me if I'm wrong] I started reading Potter in the summer of 2012. It was part accidental, part a long time in the making. My family had owned Sorcerer's Stone for a while. I finally picked it up, and I was hooked. I went through the series in about two weeks, averaging a day for each book: I'd start a new book in the morning, read it during the day during breaks, and finish it usually by the time I slept. Neither of us followed the fandom from the first book release. But now we're both die-hard Potterheads, and I don't think either regrets it. I am a Potterhead.

But The Cursed Child is changing all that.

Primer: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a new play. It's Rowling-approved, technically canon. It's a script published on July 31, 2016 (because that's Harry's birthday, and also Rowling's. Though obviously not this year). It's a two-part, four-act play currently being performed in London. And it's a Thestral in the room for the fandom, and the fandom is doing some weird discourse about this.

Here's the problem as I see it, based on the discourse of other people who see it. The magic of the Harry Potter books is based on the fact that these characters do not just exist in paper and ink. They live. And Hogwarts and the Wizarding World live, too.

**Very Mild Spoilers**

Harry Potter is problematic. People can write essays on his flaws and his actions and his choices and his bumping into suits of armor when looking at maps and the significance of this in the revealing of his innermost thoughts. (Has anyone ever read Harry Potter and Philosophy? It's actually a quite fascinating set of essays.) Ron Weasley's friendship can be expanded by people who fill the spaces between the lines and between the scenes and between the chapters with day-to-day life at Hogwarts and the power of friendship and platonic love between two boys--men--who might as well have been born brothers. Hermione Granger's very canonical descriptions can be analyzed to their core by scholars or by fangirls or by the beautiful people who can be both or by the artists who bring their vision of Hermione to their very own lives.

Joanne Rowling took an idea that came to her on a train to Manchester and expanded it to fill seven volumes, thousands of pages of words that built a world hiding just behind a platform barrier from ours. And she set it loose into the world, and people built their own magic upon it. And since 2007, people have been drawn into the world of those books. People have been building worlds inside worlds, the stories of unvindicated characters.

And we were Book Eight. "We Are Book Eight" is a slogan of the Harry Potter Alliance. It's an organization that gathers fans of fantasy to bring them together in acts of real-world activism, fantasy expanding into the real world, love of community and words weaponized. "The Weapon We Have Is Love."

But now Book Eight is a position that's taken, a position usurped by a play that comes in nine years later. A position that was filled before it came. A position filled by the millions of pages of fanfiction and fan art and headcanons and ideas and activism that is Book Eight.

And all that. Gone. Vanished like potion out of Harry's cauldron in Snape's dungeon. Officially noncompliant. Cather Avery's Carry On, Simon after Simon Snow and the Eighth Dance. The feeling of finality of headcanons and fanfictions that all became AUs at the crack of midnight on July 31st.

People have written about the nextgen. Rose Weasley. Teddy Lupin. Albus Severus Potter. Scorpius Malfoy. Poof. Avada Kedavra.

So I'm against Cursed Child, on principle. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to read it or not.

My takeaway: Cursed Child has the same kind of impact as Pottermore.com. It's technically canon. Fanon doesn't agree. And while I was doubtful at first, I agree with fanon.

I want to read canon where Harry is no longer a main character. Where the nextgen is about the nextgen. Where the children of Dumbledore's Army have, like their audience, accepted the problems of the previous generation and moved on to bigger and better things. Where Teddy Lupin unites the Blacks and the Potters and the Weasleys. Where Albus Severus's name is a homage to two problematic headmasters who did wonderful things and terrible things and both for wrong reasons and redemption is in the form of a hero's son's name. Where not all the drama happens around the Quidditch field. Where there can be Slytherin hangings in the Room of Requirement. Where you don't need a time-turner to explore new worlds. The canon that's already been written by fans in the void of online and the caverns of seventeen-cent notebooks and in the King's Cross stations that are imaginations.

But I read The Cursed Child. In an evening.

And, well, objectively, I disliked the first three acts (of four). In hindsight, that might be due to the script medium, a medium I feel maybe didn't capture the magic in its stage directions and cast descriptions that can be built up by a few well-written full sentences or a shot in a movie. It might be due to the time-travel plot that I felt was a little bit cliché. It might be due to the characterization, where every returning character felt like a shadow (Ron, Ginny) or a parody (Hermione, Harry). And all the opportunities that fans have written for Ginny's strength or Ron's imagination or Harry's hope or Teddy Lupin's power to unite families or anyone's opportunity to build interHouse relationships weren't there. It might be due to the worldbuilding and the flashing through different realities that seemed almost without plot. It might be due to the fact that I didn't really like it from the beginning, and I went in with a preconception, something I regret.

But the fourth act got better. And it redeemed, for me, a little bit, the plot. In the fourth act, I was reading to find out what happened next, not to move through pages. This feels hollow and short, but I quite liked the ending. Considering the beginning, I think it was a good ending.

But it's like the How To Train Your Dragon movie adaptation. I don't think they're the same characters. I don't think Cursed Child Ginny is Original Ginny. I don't think Cursed Child Draco is Original Draco. Because Original Ginny would have grown up differently. Original Draco would have been redeemed.

Here's what I'm doing following The Cursed Child.

1. I've read the book. I've acknowledged its existence and its impact. I've noted that objectively I disliked the book at first, but it got better in the end.
2. I will continue to recommend Harry Potter as one of the best things I've ever read. I will recommend Harry Potter as the original seven. I don't think I will recommend The Cursed Child.
3. If I want to write fanfiction in the near or distant future, I will write is as if J. K. Rowling's final words on the subject were on Pottermore.com or in the "All was well" of the epilogue.
4. I will continue to Be Book Eight.

What are you doing?
~Citali

Happy Birthday, Jason Todd!

Jason Peter Todd, Batman's second Robin. Killed by the Joker at age 14. Came back to life; became the Red Hood.

Happy birthday, Jaybird.

A Very Short Post on a Very Underappreciated Character

So I was rewatching Doctor Who, and I watched "The Christmas Invasion" (one of my all-time favorite episodes), and then I basically went on a rant on the Camp NaNoWriMo chatroom. This is a slightly edited, elongated version of that rant. Apologies for excessive analysis and run-on sentences.

Mickey Smith. Mickey, good old Mickey, faithful, reliable, steady as a rock, watches helplessly as Rose wanders farther and father away from him. She has seen things and people that he can never, will never, imagine, and each time she visits, his heart breaks a little, doesn't it? Because this Rose, the one that stands up to an army of Sycorax, the one talking back to a Dalek's "Exterminate!", the one holding the Doctor's hand and positively glowing with happiness? It's not his Rose, not the Rose he fell in love with. She is so much more, but she is not his anymore, and that breaks Mickey's heart.

Mickey watches as Rose and the Doctor fall head over heels for each other. He stands by as they gallivant across the galaxy, hand in hand, making memories and chasing trouble. He understands-- and this, this is important-- Mickey understands that what Rose Tyler needs is something that he can't give her. But the Doctor can, you see, and it's oh so obvious that the two were made for each other. So Mickey Smith steps aside and lets the Doctor and Rose tumble through their epic romance. And the best part? He's not bitter, or petty about it. Not overly so, anyway. He will still always be there for Rose and the Doctor, but as a friend. Always a friend.

Here is what I love about Mickey: he moves on. He accepts the challenges life throws in his path, and he moves on. Alternate universe? Fine, I'm staying, I have a duty to this world. Rose Tyler madly in love with a time-traveling alien? Let her be happy. Mickey moves on from what he cannot change; he goes freelance and marries Martha Jones. (By the way: that was an amazing cameo.)

So yeah. Mickey Smith, everyone.

~Willow
P.S. Ten was the best. No question.

#SayNoToHYDRACap

It is true what they say:

"With great power comes great responsibility."

Marvel Comics knows this;

after all, it's a classic Spider-Man line, isn't it?

On the other hand, it is also true that

power corrupts, and that

absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Marvel Comics

has just proven that never

has a truer word been spoken.

I write this

Regarding the recent controversy

Surrounding the release of a new comic featuring

Steve Rogers as Captain America

(which, as you might have heard,

he has not been in a while.)

This is all well and good, only...

Plot twist.

According to the writers of this issue--

(Imagine I am reading this out loud.

My voice is heavy with sarcasm.)

--anyway, according to the writers of this issue,

Steven Grant Rogers, Captain America,

is HYDRA. And always has been.

Wow.

First of all, how dare you?

How dare you take something that was

written by Jewish writers to oppose Hitler

(in a time when it was not wise to oppose Hitler)

and say, "oh, yeah, he's been a 

Nazi all along"?

"We've been dropping hints for a while--"

No, you haven't. Please.

Spare me.

Second of all, how dare you?

Captain America, the paragon of freedom,

the very embodiment of America--

not what it is, but what it should be.

Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.

How dare you take Steve Rogers

(kind Steve Rogers, humble Steve Rogers,

selfless Steve Rogers, good Steve Rogers)

and turn him into a white supremacist?

Third of all, how dare you?

How, might I ask,

am I going to explain to my little cousin

(she idolizes Cap; who doesn't really?)

how will I explain to her that the hero

she looks up to,

the person she wants to be

 when she grows up,

is a Nazi?

How dare you?

Fourth of all, how dare you?

This travesty is akin to

Bucky Barnes saying that

he consented to brainwashing.

It is like taking MCU T'challa

and forcing him to say that

his father deserved to die,

it is as if Tony Stark

set aside the suit

because,  he says, the world doesn't 

deserve protection.

It is like Natalia Romanova

confessing, a smile on her lips,

that she enjoyed the murder she was forced to commit.

(as if she would ever. no, no, Natasha could never. would never.

likewise: never could Captain America be HYDRA)

It is worse.

This is taking every Holocaust survivor,

and every Holocaust survivor's descendants,

and slapping them.

Telling them that they deserved it.

How dare you?

(This has been, lovely readers, a poem inspired by shock and disbelief and deep, deep rage.)

~Willow

After

I sense a disturbance in the Force: Spoilers!

Luke gives him a Jedi's funeral, for which he is impossibly grateful. (You don't deserve it, says a voice in his head. It sounds like Palpatine's. He pushes the thought aside.)

No, the important thing right now is: where is he? He's fairly certain he's dead. Wait. If he's dead, how is he thinking? He lets out a huff, then another thought occurs to him. His breathing is... silent. For the first time in twenty-six years, he can exhale without the accompanying whoosh of his suit. Slowly, not daring to believe it, he looks down.

Hands, both flesh. Feet intact. He reaches up, trembling, to touch his head, and feels-- hair? Yes, hair, the roguish curls he last remembers having during the Clone Wars.

Nope. Impossible. He's hallucinating. (You can't hallucinate if you're dead, Ani. This voice sounds like Padme, and it's equally soothing and heartbreaking.)

How is this happening? He was a Sith for close to thirty years; shouldn't he be burning in some Force-forsaken netherworld?

"Always so dramatic, Skywalker."

The voice is not his; he has not heard it in decades. (There is a lump in his throat. It was not there before.) He looks up and there they are, alive and well-- well, not alive, but standing there in front of his eyes is the Council: Mace Windu, the one who spoke to him. Plo Koon. Ki-Adi-Mundi. Depa Billaba. Kit Fisto. Even Piell. Adi Gallia. Saesee Tiin. And standing in the front, green-gold eyes filled with liquid wisdom, Master Yoda.

He does not hesitate before dropping to his knees and prostrating himself in a full kowtow. "My masters," he manages to choke out, "I am so, so sorry." It is an incredibly inadequate apology, he knows. "I... failed you. I failed the Order, I surrendered to the Dark. I have done such horrible, horrible things, and I am so sorry."  Words cannot express his guilt. He hopes they understand that. Even so, he does not dare to raise his eyes from the ground. Cowardly to the end, Skywalker.

"Anakin." This voice (one more familiar to him than any other in the galaxy) is rich with warmth, with kindness. "Anakin, get up."

And oh, if anyone could ever break him, it was Obi-Wan. The sound of his voice shatters Anakin's resolve; suddenly there are hot tears rolling down his face, and Obi-Wan is helping him off the ground and embracing him. (He is sobbing like a youngling now, because this is Obi-Wan, and Force, he has not seen him for so long...)

After a minute or so, Obi-Wan holds him at arm's length and examines him."No, Anakin. You did not fail me."

"Master, I killed you."

At this there is a ripple of amusement in the Force. "Only because I let you, my young friend. Only because I let you."

Anakin smiles through his tears. Typical Obi-Wan. "Where am I, Master?" he asks.

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow in an all-too-familiar expression. "I would have thought that was obvious, Anakin. You're dead."

"I know that, Master. But where am I?"

It is Master Windu who replies. "You are one with the Force, young Skywalker."

"Or," supplies Obi-Wan helpfully, "rather colloquially, you are a ghost. A Force ghost, to be precise."

"That doesn't make sense, Master. I was Dark. How am I one with the Force?"

Master Yoda steps forward, and Anakin kneels to face him. "The Chosen One, you were. Jedi you were; Sith you became."

"I know, Master. I am so sorry." He is a rather tongue-tied ghost, it seems, only able to repeat one phrase of apology.

Yoda waves his gimer stick."Know this I do! Interrupt me not!"

Anakin bows his head in acquiescence.

The diminutive master harrumphs, then continues. "In the end, bring balance to the Force, you did. Die a Jedi, you did." He chuckles. "Only thirty years too late were you!"

Anakin winces. "Yes, Master."

"A joke it was, Skywalker. Bear no ill will, do we."

"I am responsible for so much death and destruction, Master. How can you just forgive me?"

"Jedi we are. Hate we do not, young one. At peace be. Your fall, the will of the Force it was."

He rises from his kneeling position and addresses the whole Council. "Thank you, my masters. I do not deserve this... but thank you."

"There is nothing to thank us for, Anakin," replies Obi-Wan. "Now come. Qui-Gon's been waiting for you a very long time. And Anakin?"

"Yeah?"

Obi-Wan smiles. "Welcome home."

FINIS

Hope you enjoyed! *hands you a tissue box*

~Willow

All Rise For the General (Episode I)

It's Willow here, with the first of my series of Star Wars posts. Enjoy!

Let's talk about Leia Organa. Princess, senator, rebel. Mother. Force-sensitive who chooses a different path. Who, despite having lost nearly everything, never even considers the dark side. (Skywalker boys, take notes. This is how it's done.)

We meet her first in A New Hope as she's captured by Vader and his stormtroopers. Leia never so much as flinches, going so far as to sass the man who captures her. ("I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.") Remember, this is a girl barely out of her teens. She's twenty. She's incredibly tight-lipped about the rebels' whereabouts, resisting interrogation by a menacing torture droid. Tarkin threatens to blow up her home planet, yet she remains silent. Tarkin actually does blow up her home planet-- and she lies, says Dantooine.

Think about this for a second. This twenty-year-old just witnessed a planet exploding. Millions of deaths. The destruction of everything she's ever known and loved. The massacre of her family. Yet Leia Organa maintains the presence of mind to lie to Grand Moff Tarkin about the rebel base. She allows herself no time to grieve. When Luke and company rescue her, she focuses on the task at hand. She snaps at Han, fires at stormtroopers, and comforts Luke when Obi-Wan is killed.

She allows herself no time to grieve. Even after the Death Star is destroyed, after Luke and Han are rewarded for bravery, she remains stoic. She has a duty to the Rebel Alliance, and she will bring down the Empire if it's the last thing she does. Do you think she never second-guesses herself? Do you think she doesn't blame herself for her parents' deaths? Leia pushes down her pain and carries on, something her biological father never learned to do.

To Be Continued

I hope you guys enjoyed this! This... Leianalysis will be continued in future posts. Please, don't hesitate to send me feedback. After all, as befits a Jedi, "I come to serve".

~Willow

Get Ready to Rock... Yourself Back and Forth While Crying!

Willow here, with (yet another) list. This one (as the title suggests) is about works of fiction that leave fans in tears and bereft of their ability to even. However, for this list, I'm not limiting the content to books. Movies and TV episodes count, too.

Beware: Spoilers.

Let's do this!

• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K.Rowling)
• Do I even have to explain this one?
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (J.R.R.Tolkien)
• This is heartbreaking in both the book and the movie because FRODO! NO! Apologies. I suffer from the occasional fangirl attack.
• If you didn't cry at this part, look up the song "Into the West" by Annie Lennox. 
• If you still didn't cry, then either I'm overly emotional or you're an Uruk-hai.
• Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• 2 words: Order 66. Need I say more?
• Also, Mustafar.
• The Fault in Our Stars (John Green)
• Again, no explanation required.
• BBC Sherlock Series 2 finale, "The Reichenbach Fall"
• John's reaction is more heartbreaking than the actual fall.
• Doctor Who Series 2 finale, "Doomsday"
• ROSE! NO!
• Sorry again.
• Avengers: Age of Ultron
• Pietro! We really didn't see that coming.
• Brisingr (Christopher Paolini)
• Oh, Oromis...
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 5 finale, "The Wrong Jedi"
• Oh, for goodness' sake, Snips, stop it.
• Now We Are Six (A.A.Milne)
• There's a chance that you haven't read this or didn't think it very sad. I personally found it heartbreaking.

(Violently sniffs) What? No, no, I'm (sniff) fine. It's not like (sniff) I'm dissolving into a puddle of (sniff) feels right now or (sniff) anything.

Happy (sniff) reading! 

~Willow