#not the most confident in parenting fictional object children :P

[patches-and-her-selfships]

sometimes i think my relationship with my child f/os would be more like this

[kimyoonmiauthor]

What Harry Potter Got Wrong about Orphans and Adoption.

So, given the TERF that terfed all terfs. And given that I don’t want to profit from a terf... I’m posting this essay I did on Rowling I intended to originally post for a Magazine on how to write adoptees and adoption, but it fell through. Maybe we can learn something?

BTW, written before she went off the deep end of TERFing. Like 2007-ish or earlier. So this was before she went off about Native American Gods. Before she TERFed. And before she did some weird retconning --what I now call a Rowling... BTW, if you’re looking for a roast fest--this isn’t it. Credit to my wonderful voluntary, unpaid, though I tried to pay her Writer’s Assistant for the Harry Potter quotes. I couldn’t have done this essay without her.

The top reason that writers put in adoption or orphans into stories is because they feel that it will simplify the story for them. When I asked two different group of writers, the answer was almost universally the same, they felt that putting in an orphan should simplify the story. This, too, was the case with Harry Potter. JK Rowling explained this in 1999 when she was writing Harry Potter still in a Guardian interview, "...but Harry HAD to be an orphan - so that he's a free agent, with no fear of letting down his parents, disappointing them?" But unlike the previous adoption stories, JK Rowling have a fair amount of adopted persons and orphans, mostly intrafamily adopted.

Harry falls into the writer trap of the closer the blood ties, the less likely there will be attachment problems between child and care giver. This tradition started out with Brothers Grimm who changed many of the parents to step-parents. (The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar, p. 36) Also that in abuse, which is frequently associated with adoption, that it will make the orphan free to do what they like. However, this assumption is an error. Children by their nature want to please their caregivers no matter what relation they are. In the case of adding emotional and sometimes physical abuse that Harry endures, it does not free him from trying to please his guardians, the Dursleys. Being an orphan is not the key to being a "free agent" and the idea that adoption, in this case intrafamily adoption could simplify matters is in error. Harry Potter was an orphan left on the doorstep of his Aunt and Uncle's, the Dursleys by the Head Master of Hogwarts. This was after the sudden death of his parents. It is unlikely that the Dursleys would be automatically allowed to raise him and get guardianship, despite what the story says. On the British government website, it says that in order to adopt there has to be legal proceedings.

The steps of this include several visits from a social worker, at least three references with two outside references, preparation classes, a police check, and a full medical examination. They also have to register through an adoption agency and then apply for a court order which can take up to eight months. (https://www.gov.uk/child-adoption/adoption-assessment)

Even in the case where there is a step parent, the assessment still takes place for the family and consent has to be given. (https://www.gov.uk/child-adoption/adopting-a-stepchild)

This means the Potters, by no indication, had a will to give Harry up to the Dursleys, would make a far less likely that Harry would be placed in an abusive home. Add to that the fact that Harry's Aunt has a history of disliking her sister, they made Harry live below the stairs, and neither Mr. or Mrs Dursley have shown throughout the series to have any sort of patience with Harry, and the initial adoption looks even less likely.

Writing that one can be left on a doorstep disenfranchises the entire adoption community and the government who has tried hard to give a second chance to children like Harry. It ignores the parents that waited for those eight months, the feelings of abandonment that can manifest in some adopted people, as well as the care and thought that relinquishing parents may have for their child's welfare. Adoption is not a fictional object such as a dragon--it impacts real people and real lives.

However, this problem also continues because it ignores the fact that by adding two guardians to the story, there are more rather than less characters previously. Adding more characters is more, not less complex. There are Harry's parents, Harry's Aunt and Uncle and by proxy, his Aunt and Uncle's child. This means there were three characters added instead of the original three. This also means for each character there has to be at least a personality and background added for each character, if one is to be fair. This means in total, JK Rowling had to do more work rather than less work because now instead of three characters to work on she has six characters to work on, thus doubling her load.

Often adoption is combined with abuse in fiction and Harry Potter was no different.

Harry was abused emotionally.

“Now, you listen here, boy.” he snarled. “I accept there's something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn't have cured – and as for all this about your parents, well, they were weirdos, no denying it, and the world's better off without them in my opinion – asked for all they got, getting mixed up with these wizarding types – just what I expected, always knew they'd come to a sticky end-” Chapter 4 pg 46 (Uncle Vernon)

And he was abused physically through neglect.

"Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age." Chapter 2 Pg20

This continues such that the Dursleys treat Harry as he is not there once Harry gets the upper hand.

"Harry's last month with the Dursleys wasn't fun. True, Dudley was now so scared of Harry he wouldn't stay in the same room, while Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn't shut Harry in his cupboard, force him to do anything or shout at him- in fact, they didn't speak to him at all. Half- terrified, half-furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it was empty." Chapter 6 pg 67 The idea is that the adoption puts distance between the child and their caretakers, thus they must love them less. But this assumption talks about the amount of love based on title, rather than love is universal despite title, which would be a positive message for children to have--that title does not matter in the amount of love one can give or receive. In fact, this was one message I, personally, did receive from adoption, but I still see the myth continued, especially through fiction that title matters on quantity rather than the type or quality of love.

Abuse of a child, psychological, emotional or neglect does not mean that the child will become a free agent to decide what they want. Often children from such circumstances become overly compliant, withdrawn and passive. They can become hyper vigilant and have learning problems.

(https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/signs.cfm) This would make Harry, in the case of the systemic and relentless abuse of the Dursleys more dependent and less of a free agent as JK Rowling intended.

Despite this, credit does have to be given to Ms. Rowling in fixing the adoption issues in the last book of the series, though this does not completely turn the tide for the other six books. This most likely came about because Voldemort, the top villain of the book was also described as an orphan. So along with Voldemort, Ms. Rowling added Amy Benson, Dennis Bishop, Ted Lupin, Billy Stubbs, an unnamed Orphan and Eric Whaley. (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Orphans) Only Ted Lupin is fleshed out and talked about as having a happy intrafamily relationship, which is only reflected on by Harry at the end of the seventh Harry Potter book. This would make it pass the more than one orphan and the polarized orphan syndrome, but just barely and maybe barely doesn't really count if dropped in at the last minute.

This makes Harry the principal character with which adoption ideas are drawn from with the second character being Neville Longbottom, whose grandmother is very strict with him, which undermines his self-confidence initially. This makes both adopted people in the book someone to pity and built on false assumptions of how adoption works.

Neither character are really given a chance to show what a loving, supportive family would be like, which may actually make Harry more, rather than less of a free agent as JK Rowling initially stated. Harry's confidence would boost which would give him the power, as shown in the books, to try new things, dare to rise up and be more consistent for his character development. There would be less characters overall that would have to be mentioned.

This series does manage to avoid many of the traps of writing orphans, but only achieves this at the very last book in a sweeping last minute save, which is worth noting, however, that means that for the span the books were written the titular character of Harry and eventually Neville's home life influenced how orphans were viewed.

This goes to show that not only does adoption complicate the plot with the addition of characters, but it also does not make any character more or less of a free agent to do what they want when they want it. They are still beholden to their parents, alive or dead. And that abuse has nothing to do with adoption, so should not be combined as an excuse, especially if one wants to make the child free to make healthy decisions for themselves. *** Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept. Chapter 2 pg20Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. Chapter 2 Pg20

The Dursleys often spoke about Harry like this, as though he wasn't there – or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug. Chapter 2 pg 22Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-coloured bobble hats – but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large, blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a roundabout at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house,too. Chapter 2 pg.19

“I'm warning you,” he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Harry's, “I'm warning you now, boy – any funny business, anything at all – and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas.” Chapter 2 pg.23 ( Uncle Vernon)

Harry lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had a watch. He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't be sure the Dursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn't risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food. Chapter 2 pg27

“Get the post, Dudley,” said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper. “Make Harry get it.” “Get the post, Harry.” “Make Dudley get it.” “Poke him with your Smeltings stick, Dudley.” Chapter 3 Pgs 29-30

“I'm not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took him in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?” Chapter 3 pg 31 (Uncle Vernon)

Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun – last year, the Dursleys had given a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks. Chapter 3 pg 36 ( Harry Potter)

“Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as – as- abnormal – and then,, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!” (Aunt Petunia)

Harry had gone very white. As soon as he found his voice he said, “Blown up? You old me they died in a car crash!” Chapter 4 pg. 44

“Now, you listen here, boy.” he snarled. “I accept there's something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn't have cured – and as for all this about your parents, well, they were weirdos, no denying it, and the world's better off without them in my opinion – asked for all they got, getting mixed up with these wizarding types – just what I expected, always knew they'd come to a sticky end-” Chapter 4 pg 46

(Uncle Vernon)Harry's last month with the Dursleys wasn't fun. True, Dudley was now so scared of Harry he wouldn't' stay in the same room, while Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn't shut Harry in his cupboard, force him to do anything or shout at him- in fact, they didn't speak to him at all. Half- terrified, half-furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it was empty. Chapter 6 pg 67

[babbelcause]

11/11/11 Tag Game

I was tagged by @charlotteltracey, thank you, it’s a great game :) I’m not sure I know enough people to tag either x)  I’ll tag @fausthound, @semantictheory, @thegaylinguist, @mike-yams, @somehistoriancalledmike, @languageoficeandfire anyone who would like to join :)

Here are my answers:

1. What book have you reread the most?

I couldn’t tell!  It’s a tight race between the Harry Potter series, children’s books, and comics. 

In children’s books I re-read every now and then Claude Ponti’s George Le Banc -literally George the Bench-. It’s a short book about a day in the life of a park bench and the surreal events it witnesses. It’s tender, inventive and full of puns. The drawings are absolutely beautiful, intricate, and swarm with funny details. It’s the sort of book you can read several time and still notice new things. 

Honestly I lost count of how much I read Gotlib’s Rubrique à Brac, the Smurfs, or Gaston Lagaffe. I often think of Gaston’s adventure these days, as I too am a clumsy office junior in dire need of a creative outlet :p 

2. What was the last book you dropped and why?

I’ve dropped several non-fiction books lately because I don’t know how to read them : i want to retain as much information as possible but don’t really have the time and energy to ‘study’ the content in depth. There’s of course another category of books I dropped because I find them uninteresting, the latest was some story about some nurse or midwife in a Women’s health clinic setting. 

3. What is your current/most recent creative project?

I got myself a sewing machine in January and this afternoon I sawn cute little bags to wrap birthday presents. I’m quite satisfied with the result :) 

Aside from that, I have an on-going project of turning an old story of mine made of losely connected episodes into a full, coherent story. It’s slow, I don’t plan on showing it to anyone. I do it for my own pleasure, to toy with character design, characters archs, and to get back into writing as a hobby rather than an occasional activity.

4. What band/artist has you been listening to the most recently?

I got the chance to see Rodrigo y Gabriela in concert last week, which lead me to re-discover their music. It ended up giving me an earworm, which I’m currently trying to get rid of with copious amounts of Mark Knopfler’s music... 

5. Where do you most want to travel to?

New Zealand, for so many reasons! There’re lots of countries I’d like to see (again), but I already feel guilty enough about my carbon footprint...

6. Are you learning a language right now? If so which one and if not which would you like to learn?

I’m practicing my Dutch a lot these days, mostly at work. I’ve been getting a lot more fluent and confident (Talking! With a Dutch person! Over the phone!), and I’m still frustrated over my lack of small-talk abilities in that language. And I feel slightly smug when I see that coworkers 20 years my senior can barely string a sentence together

7. What is your favorite video game?

The Sims 2, definitely. Days and weeks of my life have been swallowed by that game. I downloaded content, built complex, multigenerational stories for the characters, wrote and followed new rules to make the game more interesting and challenging. I loved playing it, but I refrain from it these days because I know I can be so caught up in playing that I forget about everything else... and that’s not very good for my mental health

8. What are you most excited about in the near future?

Meeting friends I haven’t seen in aaaaaaaages!

9. What is a childhood nickname you had and how did you get it?

I never really got any nickname. Some of them were based on my actualy name but they never really caught. 

10. Who is your favorite fictional character?

Gaston Lagaffe, Antigone, Samwise Gamegee, Briony Tallis, Amy Santiago, die Marquise von O.,..  I don’t know, I don’t do favorite with characters, I love them for different reasons. 

11. If money were no object, what is the first thing you would buy?

A house in my parents’ street. I’m tired of living at my parents’ but my neighbourhood is a village and I love it with all my heart. 

Here are my questions :

If you could cook a dish to perfection, what would it be ?

Is there a book that no-one seems to love as much as you?

What’s the film everyone loved but you just couldn’t get into ?

Have you ever collected objects ?

If you had all the space and money you need, how many pets would you have and which ones ?

What’s the subject you don’t really understand but you wished you did ?

What skill would you like to have ?

What’s the latest interesting piece of information you learned at uni/work/doing your hobby ?

If you could be a fly on a wall and oberve without being seen, where would you go and why?

What new domain would you explore if you had the time and ressources for it?

A thing you feel everyone should know ?

[omniversalobservations]

All-Star Superman (2005)

Another invocation technique that the magician can employ is called the assumption of godforms—where with “concentrated imagination of oneself in the symbolic shape of any God, one should be able to identify oneself with the idea which [the god] represents.” Comics writer and practicing magician Grant Morrison describes the process in his essay Pop Magic. The Gods of myth are primal forms, expressions of big ideas that have been here long before us and will remain long after.Morrison writes that, for example:

“ANGER is one of those Big Ideas and LOVE  is another one. Then there’s FEAR and GUILT “So…to summon a god, one has only to concentrate on that god to the exclusion of all other thought. Let’s just say you wish to summon the Big Idea COMMUNICATION in the form of the god Hermes, so that he will grant you a silver-tongue. Hermes is the Greek personification of quick wit, art, and spelling and the qualities he represents were embodied by Classical artists in the symbol of an eternally swift and naked youth, fledged with tiny wings and dressed only in streamers of air. Hermes is a condensation into pictorial form – a sigil, in fact – of an easily recognizable default state of human consciousness. When our words and minds are nimble,when we conjure laughter from others, when we make poetry, we are in the real presence of Hermes. We are, in fact, possessed by the god.”

Morrison is keen to point out that there need not be a ghostly or real reason for this. As Crowley wrote:

“In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.”

Still, two questions arise. if these Gods are not ‘real’, why invoke them at all? Morrison answers that for us nicely:

“People tend to become possessed by gods arbitrarily because they do not recognize them as such; a man can be overwhelmed with anger (the Greek god Ares), we can all be “beside ourselves” with passion (Aphrodite) or grief (Hades). in life we encounter these Big Ideas everyday but we no longer use the word “god” to describe them. The magician consciously evokes these states and renames them gods in order to separate them from his or her Self, in order to study them and learn.”

So for example, “You may wish to connect with Hermes if you’re beginning a novel or giving a speech or simply want to entertain a new beau with your incredible repartee”. Practical magic then. Choose a god based on their qualities; what Platonic ideal or archetypal human experience they represent, and invoke them in order to know and learn from them

[...]

Morrison too advocates drawing upon fictional entities in magical practice:

“So once I got into the chaos magic thing, I started to think well if all I’m doing is triggering a state of mind can I do the same thing with something I know to be unreal? And I would start instead of summoning up Greek gods or Voodoo Loa, I would summon up Metron from the New Gods or HP Lovecraft monsters, or the Cenobites from Clive Barker and get the same thing. It was all about, okay, so even fictional things appear as long as they correspond to the specific feeling that you’re trying to create using this ritual method.”

Could Superman work this way? Certainly the religious and mythopoetic elements of the Superman story our often argued. Noting the Jewish heritage of Superman’s creators some commentators have read Superman as a Moses figure. Superman’s home of Krypton was about to be destroyed by events beyond his parents control. In Biblical Egypt the Israelites faced the mass murder of their male children. Both the infant Moses and the infant Superman were saved from death by their parents, one placed in a reed basket and sent down the Nile, the other in a rocket sent into space and bound for Earth. Both children grew up in foreign cultures, discovered and raised by adoptive parents who realise their true potential. Superman disguises his Kryptonian heritage with the human persona of Clark Kent, just as Moses was forced to keep his Jewish ancestry a secret.

Another variation says that Superman is a Christ figure. Like Jesus, Superman is sent by his father from the ‘heavens’ to save mankind (albeit one at a time). Both are raised by adoptive parents of humble means-Superman by farmers, Jesus by a carpenter. And both possess extraordinary powers that they use for the benefit of mankind. Furthermore, Superman’s real identity as Kal-El, son of Jor-El, has theological significance, “El” being a semitic word for ‘deity’ or god.

[...]

Perhaps then, like Jesus before him, Superman  is the latest incarnation of dying and reborn god, or of the Solar deity variously known as Horus, Sol or Apollo. In his book Supergods Grant Morrison neatly summarises what archetypal function Superman, as the latest manifestation of a perennial form, then serves. superman, he writes, embodies our species ‘loftiest aspirations’. As such Superman “was brave. He was clever. he never gave up and he never let anyone down. He stood up for the weak and knew how to see off bullies of all kinds. he couldn’t be hurt of killed b the bad guys, hard as they might try. He didn’t get sick. he was fiercely loyal to his friends and to his adopted world. He was Apollo, the sun god, the unbeatable supreme self, the personal greatness of which we all know we’re capable.” (Supergods, p.15)

It seems obvious why one would want to invoke Superman and absorb those qualities. What’s peculiar to Superman however is his tendency to leave the pages of his dimensional universe and manifest himself in our 4-dimensional realm.

Take Alvin Schwartz’s story in An Unlikely Prophet for instance. Schwartz was a writer of both Batman and Superman for seventeen years in the forties and fifties. Later he was contacted by a Buddhist monk named Thogden. Thogden claimed to be a Tulpa, a ‘thought-form’, a being thought into existence by a Tibetan mystic. Thogden proceeds to take Schwartz on a spiritual journey that takes in many of the familiar stopping points on the twentieth century magical path-shamanism, quantum physics, and of course, superheroes. Schwartz’s journey apparently continues in A Gathering of Selves, which focuses on Batman (who as Morrison points out is the Lunar counterpart to the Solar Batman). As it happens, I haven’t yet read the second book so if anyone knows more about it I’d love to hear.

Most important right now though is Thogden’s claims that Superman, too, is a Tulpa.  That Schwartz’s (or perhaps all the readers and creators) thought and focus on Superman have given him some kind of materiality; some ability to manifest in and interact in our world. Certainly, Schwartz has an experience that may or may not be evidence of Superman’s intervention. Grant Morrison has also had a magical contact with the Superman thought form. As he said in an interview with Newsarama:

“My specific take on Superman’s physicality was inspired by the ‘shamanic’ meeting my JLA editor Dan Raspler and I had in the wee hours of the morning outside the San Diego comic book convention in whenever it was, ‘98 or ‘99.

“I’ve told this story in more detail elsewhere but basically, we were trying to figure out how to ‘reboot’ Superman without splitting up his marriage to Lois, which seemed like a cop–out. It was the beginning of the conversations which ultimately led to Superman Now, with Dan and I restlessly pacing around trying to figure out a new way into the character of Superman and coming up short…

“Until we looked up to see a guy dressed as Superman crossing the train tracks. Not just any skinny convention guy in an ill–fitting suit, this guy actually looked like Superman. It was too good a moment to let pass, so I ran over to him, told him what we’d been trying to do and asked if he wouldn’t mind indulging us by answering some questions about Superman, which he did…in the persona and voice of Superman!

“We talked for an hour and a half and he walked off into the night with his friend (no, it wasn’t Jimmy Olsen, sadly). I sat up the rest of the night, scribbling page after page of Superman notes as the sun came up over the naval yards.

“My entire approach to Superman had come from the way that guy had been sitting; so easy, so confident, as if, invulnerable to all physical harm, he could relax completely and be spontaneous and warm. That pose, sitting hunched on the bollard, with one knee up, the cape just hanging there, talking to us seemed to me to be the opposite of the clenched, muscle-bound look the character sometimes sports and that was the key to Superman for me.

“I met the same Superman a couple of times afterwards but he wasn’t Superman, just a nice guy dressed as Superman.”

Source: Nth Mind