#harry potter is a huge hit but it's effect on society was that we all just like fantasy now and not that we divide ourselves by fuckin like

[senadimell]

If you've got time to share, I'd love to hear more about your thoughts around Snape and Lupin.

@deathdaydungeon, here you are!

After a conversation with @frederick-the-great, I’ve been thinking about Lupin, Snape, and what they say about morality in HP. I’m not talking about the troublesome white hats, black hats morality, but am instead looking at from this angle: Lupin is nice and well-liked, but often lacks a backbone, whereas Snape is mean and disliked, but incredibly brave. Which is more important? I find Harry’s last sacrifice to be a useful point by which we measure their impact.

Lupin and Snape useful to compare on several important fronts.

As foils for each others’ teaching methods

The way they deal with social disadvantage

Their connections to Harry’s father and how they pass on James’ legacy

1) They both teach at Hogwarts, and are foils for each other in many ways. Snape is mean and takes away points. He’s seen as selfish. His classes are hard and unpleasant for Harry. He’s mean to Neville, and rather than encouraging him, mocks him and belittles him, which just adds to the overall disaster of Neville’s poor self-esteem mixing badly with potions class.

However, even Umbridge admits that Snape’s teaching methods work, and she’s working for Fudge who doesn’t like Death Eaters and has been defied by Snape in GoF, so we know he’s effective for a lot of people, if not Neville.

Yet, for all that, Snape saves Harry’s life multiple times. On top of that, Snape wants to keep the fact that he saved Harry’s life a secret.

“Very well. Very Well. But never--Never tell, Dumbledore! This must be between us! Swear it, I cannot bear...especially Potter’s son...I want your word!

My word, Severus, that I will never reveal the best of you? Dumbledore sighed, looking down into Snape’s ferocious, anguished face. “If you insist...”

DH 679, The Prince’s Tale

Conversely, Lupin is nice and rewards points. He’s seen as generous. His classes are fun and interesting for Harry. He’s kind to Neville, and expresses confidence in him that leads him to succeed and do well. That confidence is a huge part of Neville’s character development. I doubt he’d grow into the resistance leader in DH if not for the many times teachers expressed confidence in him, like Dumbledore in PS, Lupin in PoA, Fake!Moody in GoF, and Harry in OotP. Harry certainly approves of his methods:

“You’re the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher we’ve ever had!” said Harry. “Don’t go!”

PoA 424, Owl Post Again

However, it’s worth noticing that Hermione does worse on his exam than we ever see. She fails the Boggart test, and she and Harry were the only two people not permitted to experience the Boggart in class. Lupin’s teaching methods aren’t foolproof. Despite that, he’s overall seen as a nice guy and good teacher.

Yet Lupin endangers Harry’s life. The secrets he keeps are dangerous: his secret to keep is that he’s a werewolf and  actively endangered three students lives with his negligence, as well as the fact that he hid a secret about a believed and convicted mass murderer to save face with Dumbledore.

“That was still really dangerous! Running around in the dark with a werewolf! What if you’d given the others the slip, and bitten somebody?”

“A thought that still haunts me,” Lupin said heavily. “And there were near misses, many of them. We laughed about them afterwards. We were young, thoughtless--carried away with out own cleverness.

“I sometimes felt guilty about betraying Dumbledore’s trust, of course....he had admitted me to Hogwarts when no other headmasters would have done so, and he had no idea I was breaking the rules he had set down for my own and others’ safety. He never knew I had led three fellow students into becoming Animagi illegally. But I always managed to forget my guilty feelings every time we sat down to plan our next month’s adventure. And I haven’t changed...

Lupin’s face had hardened, and there was self-disgust in his voice. “All this year I have been battling with myself, wondering whether I should tell Dumbledore that Sirius was an Animagus. But I didn’t do it. Why? Because I was too cowardly. It would have meant admitting that I’d betrayed his tryst while I was at school, admitting that I’d led others along with me...and Dumbledore’s trust has meant everything to me. He let me into Hogwarts as a boy, and he gave me a job when I have been shunned all my adult life, unable to find paid work because of what I am. And so I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using Dark Arts he learned from Voldemort, that being an Animagus had nothing to do with it...so in a way, Snape’s been right about me all along.”

PoA 355, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs

Plan is emphasized because those trips that ended in “near misses” weren’t some impulsive romp. They were planned and coordinated in advance.

“I just saw Hagrid,” said Harry. “And he said you’d resigned. It’s not true, is it?”

“I’m afraid it is, said Lupin. He stared opening his desk drawers and taking out the contents.

“Why?” said Harry. The Ministry of Magic don’t think you were helping Sirius, do they?”

Lupin crossed to the door and closed it behind Harry.

“No. Professor Dumbledore managed to convince Fudge that I was trying to save your lives.” He sighed. “That was the final straw for Severus. I think* the loss of the Order of Merlin hit him hard. So he--er--accidentally let slip that I am a werewolf this morning at breakfast.”

“You’re not leaving because of that!” said Harry.

Lupin smiled wryly.

“This time tomorrow, the owls will start arriving from parents ....They will not want a werewolf teaching their children, Harry. And after last night, I see their point. I could have bitten any of you...That must never happen again.

“You’re the best Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher we’ve ever had!” said Harry. “Don’t go!”

PoA 424, Owl Post Again

What strikes me about this conversation is how Lupin shifts the blame around. This doesn’t start with an admission of guilt. He’s not leaving because the parents are right. He’s not leaving because he’s seen how dangerous he can be, or because he owns up to making an incredibly dangerous decision. He’s leaving because Snape forced his hand. If Snape didn’t do that, he would do the same thing he’s always been doing: sweeping his misdoing under the rug and promising himself privately that he’s going to change, but never doing it.

It’s always someone else’s fault for Lupin. That’s a neat tie in to the next point of comparison:

2. Lupin and Snape both experience marginalization in wizarding society, but in very different ways. Lupin faces socio-legal** marginalization and Snape faces socio-economic marginalization.

Lupin’s a werewolf. We see how prejudice affects his life, from his inability to find a job and his worn out clothes to his people-pleasing nature. He’s always acting nice and harmless. He does nothing to play into the condemning stereotypes he’s faced since childhood. Despite that, he still can’t find a job. Nobody will hire him, and people are scared to interact with him. From the way he talks about werewolves, it’s implied that this prejudice is held blindly across Wizarding society. Both Ron and Hermione are horrified to learn Lupin’s a werewolf. *** Later on, he’s legally limited in the kinds of jobs he holds and the kind of magic he’s allowed to perform. Lupin has no control over his transformations, and did not choose his condition.

Lupin’s not really wrong when pities himself. The odds really are stacked against him when he’s treated as if he’s a wolf 24/7, not just a few predictable times a month. His prospects are honestly awful.

The problem is, his condition is dangerous. Thus, the issue of victim blaming is particularly thorny for Lupin. He can’t just accept that he’s a monster for something he has no say over, and yet he can’t escape the fact that sometimes he is monstrous for reasons out of his control. He feels guilty for the people he could have hurt, but also seems to resent that people blame him for something that’s not his fault. The problem is that he carries that lack of accountability into spheres where he should be accountable, like not taking his medication and endangering children because of it.

Snape’s story is very different. He is poor in both the wizard and muggle worlds, and half-blooded, and was sorted into Slytherin as a child. He doesn’t have one condition against him, but checks boxes that make it hard for any one side to accept him. He’s too impure and poor to survive on his own for the Slytherin, but is a Slytherin with Death Eater friends and housemates interested in dark magic, which means he’s never going to fit in with the Order of the Phoenix crowd, especially when some of its members torment him at school. ****4

 This essay makes a convincing point that the wizarding world is not a meritocracy, and that people like Snape need powerful patronage to advance if they don’t have the money to support themselves.

I don’t consider the sorting a proper choice. I know Harry does, but I’m of the opinion that at age 11, very few people have been taught how to analyze different perspectives and make an informed decision. Most 11-year-olds are trained to obey their parents and accept their family’s ideology. Harry’s choice rests on very little evidence--most of what he knows is what Hagrid told him, and that he doesn’t want to be sorted into Voldemort’s house along with Draco Malfoy, someone who reminds him of Dudley. I don’t think Snape was very informed either (I’d love to know why), because he doesn’t realize why it Lily wouldn’t be sorted into Slytherin.

“You’d better be in Slytherin,” said Snape, encouraged that she had brightened a little. DH 671, The Prince’s Tale

Either the pureblood rhetoric just wasn’t strong in those days, or his mother didn’t tell him about that.

...“Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?”

James lifted an invisible sword.

“’Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!’ Like my dad.”

Snape made a small, disparaging noise. James turned on him.

“Got a problem with that?”

“No,” said Snape, though his slight sneer said otherwise. “If you’d rather be brawny than brainy--”

DH 671-2, The Prince’s Tale

It seems that most people just follow familial preferences. As to why Snape wants to be in Ravenclaw over Slytherin, my preferred interpretation is that he had a family legacy, knew that Slytherin rewarded the ambitious and clever, and that Slughorn, the head of Slytherin house, had a knack for making the kind of connections that a poor, clever boy would need to succeed.

Nevertheless, once Snape was in Slytherin, the odds were stacked against him. The house in that era was full of people who would later be Death Eaters. “Dark Magic” wasn’t frowned upon among his housemates, and siding with Voldemort wasn’t yet widely acknowledged as a transgression by wider society.

“No, no, but believe me, [Sirius’ parents] thought Voldemort had the right idea, they were all for the purification of the wizarding race, getting rid of Muggle-borns and having pure-bloods in charge. They weren’t alone either, there were quite a few people, before Voldemort showed his true colors, who thought he had the right idea about things.…” OotP 112

Additionally, people like Bellatrix were in the years above him, and given how Fred and George acted with younger students, I think it’s highly likely younger students had to find a place in the hierarchy or be the target of ‘pranks.’ He was a halfblood, after all, and dirt poor.

Snape knew these people. He ate with them, slept with them, and went to class with them. It is so much easier to understand and befriend someone you spend time with. I’d say that most people who subscribe to problematic ideologies aren’t just awful to be around all the time, or else these movements wouldn’t gain any traction. They’re likely funny and nice to be around if you’re not on their bad side.

In addition to strong peer pressure to befriend the people who would be death eaters, he was also bullied four to one. His bullies received protection from the headmaster when he was nearly killed or permanently maimed. They were popular and well liked.

The best analogy I’ve heard to describe Snape's Hogwarts situation is that he’s a kid in a rough neighborhood who joins the local gang. It provides protection and the hope of social mobility, and from his perspective, the other gang fights just as dirty (his treatment by the marauders). He doesn’t stop to think that the system is flawed, or that the gang’s very existence indicates the failure of authority and threatens its members. He just sees himself as a kid with nothing who needs help with protection and advancement. We know that Voldemort hasn’t shown his true colors, and it’s possible he showed different faces to different people.

‘Now, yer mum an’ dad were as good a witch an’ wizard as I ever knew. Head Boy an’ Girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose the myst’ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get ’em on his side before ... probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore ter want anythin’ ter do with the Dark Side.

‘Maybe he thought he could persuade ’em ... maybe he just wanted ’em outta the way. All anyone knows is, he turned up in the village where you was all living, on Hallowe’en ten years ago. You was just a year old. He came ter yer house an’ – an’ –’ (“The Keeper of the Keys”)

Dumbledore’s cited as the reason they turned him down, not their blood status. I think there’s evidence that the wholesale anti-muggleborn campaign wasn’t a huge part of the first wizarding war, and wasn’t implemented until the second, even if there was anti-muggle propaganda. (Muggle=/=muggleborn). It’s implied that Tobias is abusive and that Snape hates him for what he did to him and his mother; it’s implied that faced class prejudice by the muggles around him as well:

“I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s End by the river,” she told Lily, and it was evident from her tone that she considered the address  a poor recommendation.

DH 665, The Prince’s Tale

When you read stories about people who are able to escape cycles of gang violence and poverty, there’s almost always someone who lifts them out. There’s someone who pushes them, or extends a hand, or believes in them. There are community outreach programs, or churches, or an English teacher that pushed them to do better and try out for a scholarship. That person is usually someone who knows what it’s like and knows how hard it is to get out.

Snape doesn’t seem to get that support anywhere. Slughorn doesn’t seem to notice him, for whatever reason. Lily doesn’t approve of his friends, but also doesn’t understand at all what the pull is--that it’s hard to swim against the current of what everyone else is saying, despite the fact that she feels the same pressure to end her friendship with Snape.

“… thought we were supposed to be friends?” Snape was saying. “Best friends?” “We are, Sev, but I don’t like some of the people you’re hanging round with! I’m sorry, but I detest Every and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, he’s creepy! D’you know what he tried to do to Marry Macdonald the other day?”

DH 673, The Prince’s Tale

In the very same conversation, the fact that Snape is not allowed to share what happened to him with Lupin and the werewolf incident means that Lily will never be able to understand what Snape is facing: That the leader of the good guys makes excuses for and protects people who recklessly endanger the lives of others.

“And you’re being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Wollow, and James Potter saved you from whatever’s down there--”

Snape’s whole face contorted and he spluttered, “Saved? Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends’ too!...”

DH 674, The Prince’s Tale

Later in the year after SWM, she tells Snape this:

“None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you.”

DH 675 The Prince’s Tale

She expects him to reject all of his classmates and stand against the tide, despite the fact that she knows how hard it is to do that and can’t comprehend why he sticks with his classmates. She expects him to be grateful to James Potter as if what he did was altruistic, because the Headmaster swore Snape to secrecy and he keeps his promises, despite the fact that someone else was spreading the story. (The fact that she says she heard it instead of talking about it like its common knowledge implies that she heard it from a friend, so our friends the Marauders likely weren’t keeping their lips zipped even if Snape was.)

I don’t say this to shift the blame away from Snape to Lily in regards to Snape joining the Death Eaters. I just want to point out that Lily wasn't someone who could help him break the cycle. He didn’t squander some chance she offered him. She just wasn’t enough to break him out--not empathetic, motivated, or well-informed enough. (I think the fact that they were peers plays a big role in that).

Ultimately, Snape did choose to join the Death Eaters. He did yield to peer pressure. He did obey his assignment and report the prophecy to Voldemort. He spent his youth yielding, following the path in front of him, and choosing what was probably the easier choice: stick with your group, find powerful friends, do what they want, and don’t ask too many questions about their methods. That’s what makes his decision to betray Voldemort so powerful to me.

Here’s part of the passage when Snape betrays Voldemort:

...The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone...His fear infected Harry too, even though he knew that he could not be harmed, and he looked over his shoulder wondering what it was that Snape was waiting for--

Then a sliding, jagged jet of white light flew through the air. Harry thought of lightning, but Snape had dropped to his knees and his wand had flown out of his hand.

“Don’t kill me!”

DH 676, The Prince’s Tale

He was terrified. He knew he was caught between the world’s two most powerful wizards, but it was worth it if he could save his childhood friend.

Then when Lily dies:

“Her son lives. He has her eyes, precisely her eyes. You remember the share and color of Lily Evans’s eyes, I am sure?”

“DON’T!” bellowed Snape. “Gone...dead...”

“Is this remorse, Severus?”

“I wish..I wish I were dead....”

“And what use would that be to anyone?” said Dumbledore coldly.

DH 678, The Prince’s Tale

Whatever motivation Snape had before is gone. A person’s life who is not his own is worth more than his own, and he’s drowning in guilt. From now on, Snape works to be useful in saving Harry’s life, and later many lives, at risk of death. His choices are a black mark on his record, likely making it difficult for him to get a job when he’s been tried as a Death Eater, and all of his wizarding connections are Death Eaters or their associates. He has no money or influence. Dumbledore hires him.

So Lupin has a single ailment and faces constant social and legal discrimination. He constantly tries to undermine people’s expectations about werewolves by being mild, but unfortunately is too afraid of rejection and its consequences to stand up against bad behavior or take full responsibility for his failings. He has friends who support him, but do it by engaging in risky behavior. He does not stop them. Perhaps he fears exposure and expulsion. Perhaps he just likes belonging for once. Either way, he does not come clean until forced to.

Snape is different; instead of facing outright rejection, he’s from a poor background and grows up surrounded by peers who join something somewhere between a gang and a cult while being bullied by people groomed by a rival organization. The headmaster of his school supports the rival organization and swears him to secrecy about an incident when they endangered his life, sending the message that his life is worthless. That same group continues to publicly bully him. He continues down this path until he realizes that it endangers something he cares about, and makes a decision that puts him at risk of being killed by the two most powerful wizards alive. He changes course.

Snape seems to view his problems as challenges facing him, whereas Lupin sees his problems as part of who he is, and not something he can change. Lupin seems to accept what happens to him in a fatalist kind of way. He sees what happens as inevitable and somewhat out of his control, whereas Snape never seems to blame his circumstances for him becoming a death eater, even though they clearly limited his options. I think that attitude matters. However, because Lupin’s facing a fictional magical malady, it’s difficult to fully blame him for that attitude.

Both Lupin and Snape have to react to powerful societal pressure that makes it difficult for them to succeed. Comparing them is apples and oranges at best, because their circumstances were so different. I don’t think you can judge either’s morality based on group identity, though.

3. Finally, they both act as a window on James: who he was, and what he means to Harry, who never knew him. That means in some way, they help pass on his parental legacy to orphaned Harry.

Hogwarts is Harry’s home, which means that the teachers are more than just teachers, but play a symbolic parental role in his life.

Hogwarts was the first and best home he had known. He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, had all found home here.

DH 697, The Forest Again

You can’t understand Harry without realizing what he lacks: a loving home and living parents. He’s always looking into the past to find his parents, and is saddled with a legacy he struggles to understand--why did he live, who were his parents, and what does he need to do now?

Lupin and Snape also share a connection with Harry that goes beyond a normal teacher-student relationship, unlike McGonagall or Flitwick. Snape and Lupin are more personally connected to Harry than the other professors because they know Harry’s parents and went to school with them. I will mostly focus on James from here on out since we know so little about Lily personally and Harry mostly tries to emulate or avoid his father’s behavior and legacy.

They’re also the last people who knew James to survive, and they die almost at the same time. They’re the only teachers apart from Dumbledore who give Harry private lessons. More importantly, these lessons are all tied thematically to Harry’s past. Harry’s experience with dementors and the patronus charm are his first re-encounter with his parents and his past.

Terrible though it was to hear his parents’ last moments replayed inside his head, these are the only times Harry had heard their voices since he was a very small child. But he’d never be able to produce a proper patronus if he half wanted to hear his parents again.

PoA 243, The Patronus

In the end of PoA, Harry sees himself and mistakenly thinks it’s his father.

“Come on!” he muttered, staring about. “Where are you? Dad, come on--”

But no one came. Harry raised his head to look atet he circle of dementors across the lake. One of them was lowering its hood. It was time for the rescuer to appear--but no one was coming to help this time--

And then it hit him--he understood. He hadn’t seen his father--he had seen himself--

Harry flung himself out from behind the bush and pulled out his want.

“EXPECTO PATRONUM!” he yelled.

PoA 411, Hermione’s Secret

So the patronus itself is linked up with Harry’s past, and his coming-of-age. He doesn’t rely on others to save him, but must do it himself. (Though Harry’s never really trusted the adults to save him.)  It’s interesting to note that Harry actually learns the Patronus charm under Lupin’s tutelage.

On the other hand, Snape introduces Harry to the unpleasant side of his father’s legacy. Through Snape, we see that James wasn’t just a little cocky, but a bully.

“Apologize to Evans!” James roared at Snape, his wand pointed threateningly at him. “I don't want you to make him apologize,” Lily shouted, rounding on James. “You're as bad as he is.” “What?” yelped James. “I'd NEVER call you a--you-know-what!” “Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you've just got off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can--I'm surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK.” She turned on her heel and hurried away.

....

He had no desire at all to return to Gryffindor Tower so early, nor to tell Ron and Hermione what he had just seen. What was making Harry feel so horrified and unhappy was not being shouted at or having jars thrown at him; it was that he knew how it felt to be humiliated in the middle of a circle of onlookers, knew exactly how Snape had felt as his father had taunted him, and that judging from what he had just seen, his father had been every bit as arrogant as Snape had always told him. OotP, Snape’s Worst Memory, emphasis added

It’s interesting note that Harry fails to learn Occlumency from Snape. (In fact, we never see Harry use magical skills he learned from Snape apart from Expelliarmus, which is...important). At the same time, he gains an important perspective.

You can’t have James without this part of him. However kind James was to Lupin, however brave James was when he saved his wife, he was neither kind nor brave when he bullied Snape. It’s uncomfortable and awkward, but it’s important.

When he had finished, neither Sirius nor Lupin spoke for a moment. Then Lupin said quietly, “I wouldn’t like you to judge your father on what you saw there, Harry. He was only fifteen —”

“I’m fifteen!” said Harry heatedly.

OotP

Harry rejects the idea that actively bullying someone is just folly of youth. He knows what it’s like to be disenfranchised. Regardless of what Snape and James’ relationship was, he didn’t deserve that kind of humiliation. And Lupin watched, and defends him. Harry has to grapple with that.

Ultimately, Snape and Lupin do more than just connect him to his past. They also teach him his two signature spells, Expelliarmus and Expecto Patronum. One saves his soul, and one saves his life and frees the wizarding world from Voldemort because of Voldemort’s fractured soul.

Snape and Lupin as moral counterpoints

How do we evaluate this:

“I’d never have believed this,” Harry said. “The man who taught me to fight dementors--a coward.”*****5

DH 213, The Bribe

and this?

“Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.

DH 758, Seventeen years later

Ultimately, I don’t think it’s really that useful to pit two people with different backgrounds against each other. At the same time, they represent two different halves of a question: when it comes down to it, should we try to be kind or brave? I don’t think you have to pick one, but when pursuing the two, there are bound to be moments of conflict.

I always come back to the lyrics to Last Midnight from Sondheim’s Into the Woods.******6

You're so nice You're not good You're not bad You're just nice I'm not good I'm not nice I'm just right I'm the witch You're the world

Snape doesn’t care about being nice. I think this is where most non-Snape fans start pulling out the pitchforks and torches. Snape isn’t nice, and he’s not nice to kids. He’s not nurturing.*******7 He’s abrasive, allergic to coddling, and petty when he can get away with it. In fact, most of the people he’s ‘nice’ to are significantly more powerful than him, or someone he needs to be on good terms with.

Lupin is nice. He’s mild. He’s often kind. However, he often picks being liked over standing up for something.

What does that result in? He doesn’t stand up for Snape. The bullying continues and keeps Snape firmly on his path. He wins the respect of the Gryffindors with the Snape Boggart incident but loses whatever credibility he had to tell Snape to ‘put their past behind him.’

On the other hand, Neville’s bravery in DH was nurtured by Lupin’s confidence. Neville kept hope alive and led a rebellion. Lupin is one of the few adults that Harry fully respects and trusts up until the Grimmauld place confrontation. (He likes Hagrid and Molly, but doesn’t necessarily trust them to make decisions in their best interest, while he usually respects Lupin’s judgement). Harry loves him, and it’s because he loved him and watched him die that he needs to act and fight back against Voldemort.

Ultimately, Harry’s relationship with James and the adults who pass on his legacy is one of the most important symbolic relationships in the book. The thematic resolution of the series is Harry’s act of sacrificial love.

He did not know what to feel, except shock at the way Snape had been killed, and the reason for which it had been done....

...He could not bear to look at any of the other bodies, to see who else had died for him. He could not bear to join the Weasleys, could not look into their eyes, when if he had given himself up in the first place, Fred might never had died...

He turned away and ran up the marble staircase. Lupin, Tongs...He yearned not to feel....He wished he could rip out his heart, his innards, everything that was screaming inside of him.

To escape into someone else’s head would be a blessed relief....Nothing that even Snape had left him could be worse than his own thoughts.

DH 660-662, The Prince’s Tale

He rushes to the headmaster’s office to escape into Snape's memories. His memories convince Harry that sacrificing himself is the expedient thing to do, and he heads to the Forbidden Forest. To enable is last sacrifice, he uses the Resurrection stone to witness his parents and his father’s friends. Their combined testimony is enough to ameliorate his personal fears about following through with this final act.

Lupin and Snape leave entirely different legacies behind. Lupin encourages and inspires. As an authority figure, he gives people like Neville space to grow and his compassion towards Harry gives him the strength to face his demons. Harry’s decision in DH to die must have something to do with the kindness he was shown, and the sacrifices people who loved him made for him, of which Lupin is a part. Despite what he saw in Princes’ Tale, Snape wasn’t one of the people who’d make an appearance with the Resurrection stone.

Yet Snape sacrificed his life for Harry and the wizarding world, entities that Snape didn’t seem to like and that certainly weren’t kind to him. His form of bravery is about endurance, tenacity, and willingness to do what is right even when you hate your allies and no one else is going to credit you for what you do. And that’s very Harry. Even if he hates Draco, he’s not about to let him die if he can help it. Harry has much more in common with Snape than Lupin, I think.

Since this is about souls, let’s return to the Patronus charm. Snape’s not the kind of person who typically inspires that kind of emotion required to cast a Patronus in others, at least from what we see in Harry’s perspective. Yet because he has experienced that love, he can cast it and shows Harry what needs to be done. Snape enables Harry to dive under the ice. Lupin’s the kind of person who can inspire a patronus, but isn’t the one to make the sacrifice play until after Harry confronts him about his duty to his family. Ultimately, though, they both sacrifice themselves in the Battle of Hogwarts.

* Ever since I realized how blatantly tangential Order of Merlin must be to Snape’s character motivation, that line has frustrated me to no end. There’s no way frothing-at-the-mouth PoA Snape just really coveted that Order of Merlin. He’s often petty, yeah, but if Lupin believes it’s just about that and has nothing to do with Snape’s real conviction about how dangerous Lupin’s actions were, he’s deluding himself. I hate that he passes it on to his students.

**Yes, I am making up words today. Lupin’s faces prejudice and discrimination on a social level enforced by increasingly powerful discriminatory laws.

*** It’s worth noting that if we take every book as equally valid canon, then there’s either widespread ignorance towards lycanthropy, as Lockhart convinces everyone he was able to “cure” the Wagga-Wagga werewolf, and as teenage Horcrux!Riddle said Hagrid raised werewolf cubs under his bed, or else lycanthropy is actually a wide range of conditions under a wolfy umbrella ranging from treatable to incurable. Lupin is our primary source for lycanthropy: he’s the one who tells us about Greyback, for example. If we hold the first two books as equally valid, then perhaps we only know about Lupin’s particular type of condition. That’s the Watsonian analysis, anyways.

****4 These footnotes are getting ridiculous. Basically, there’s no consensus on what Dark Magic is, and on what basis it’s Evil. This essay goes into things that are labelled as curses. I’m inclined to believe that the vast majority of Dark Magic is just Magic We Don’t Like for Reasons.

The definition of what is and isn't considered Dark Magic is never explained: often it just seems to mean "a curse I don't approve of".  Even "curse" has never been satisfactorily defined, but we can certainly say that not all curses are regarded as evil, since some appear to be on the Hogwarts curriculum, and are certainly performed without censure.

*****5 While I paired the quotes at the top of this section together for dramatic effect, it’d be a shame not to look at the context of the Lupin fight.

“I thought you’d say [that your mission was top secret],” said Lupin, looking disappointed. But I might still be of some use to you. You know what I am and what I can do. I could come with you to provide protection. There would be no need to tell me exactly what you were up to. Harry hesitated. It was a very tempting offer.

Hermione then asks about Tonks.

“I’m pretty sure my father would have wanted to know why you aren’t sticking with your own kid, actually”... ...“I’d never have believed this,” Harry said. “The man who taught me to fight dementors--a coward.”

...“Parents shouldn’t leave their kids unless--unless they’ve got to.”

...“I know I shouldn’t have called him a coward.”“No, you shouldn’t,” said Ron at once. “But he’s acting like one. “ “All the same...” said Hermione.

“I know,” said Harry. “But if it makes him go back to Tonks, it’ll be worth it, won’t it?”

He could not keep the plea out of his voice. Hermione looked sympathetic, Ron uncertain. Harry looked down at his feet, thinking of his father. Would James have backed Harry in what he had said to Lupin, or would he have bene angry at how his son had treated his old friend?

DH 213, The Bribe

Harry feels personally betrayed that someone who has a family and child would abandon them. Here he is unyielding and accusing to someone he cares about in the hopes that they re-evaluate what matters. It’s a rather Snape-like tactic, actually. Or else a Dumbledore one.

I love the dialogue in this scene, but have some major issues with how Harry’s internalization drops out the window for shock value. JKR does the same thing when has Harry pull the Veritaserum trick in HBP. I don’t like it.

******6 The witch and Snape aren’t perfect analogues, since she’s decidedly more amoral in my opinion, but they’re both contractually-motivated characters whose humanity is shown by their (platonic/familial) love for a more “innocent” character and the guilt at the innocent character’s sacrificial death. Guilt doesn’t lead the witch to do anything productive, and for Snape it does, which is where they diverge on the character path.

*******7 Draco may be an exception to this. However, watching Snape struggle to build rapport with Draco in HBP leads me to think that while Snape’s been on Draco’s side, he’s still not “nurturing,” or in other words, good at cultivating trust and encouraging the strong and wholesome parts of someone’s personality to grow.  

[ba-mi-soro-orisha]

Tomi Adeyemi wants to wrap her readers in a “dangerous but warm” blanket. Her young adult novels—the hit epic Children of Blood and Bone and its highly anticipated new sequel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance—combine escapist fantasy with clear-eyed confrontations of race and power. “I was thinking: you’re creating a Snuggie,” the Nigerian-American author tells TIME. “It’s a violent Snuggie, but create the Snuggie.”

Adeyemi’s first book, which came out in 2018 and has spent 90 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, transports readers to the kingdom of Orïsha, where teenager Zélie Adebola is determined to bring magic back to her oppressed people. In the novel inspired by West Africa, Adeyemi’s protagonist teams up with a rogue princess to help fight the monarchy, which mercilessly wiped out magic years before in order to gain more power. In the sequel, Zélie discovers that the progress that she made in the first book has complicated ramifications, leading the kingdom toward a brutal civil war. Both novels are bruising accounts of unthinkable violence and persecution, evocative of bigger, real-world conversations about suffering and survival.

Children of Virtue and Vengeance is the second book in Adeyemi’s fantasy trilogy, which was part of a reported seven-figure deal that the Harvard graduate signed in 2017. The film rights for Children of Blood and Bone were acquired by Fox 2000 before the book’s release and over the summer This is Us writer Kay Oyegun signed on to write the script. Adeyemi spoke to TIME about how the past three years have changed her life, her dream cast for the movie and what she hopes her young readers come to understand about the world through her books.

TIME: In your author’s note at the end of Children of Blood and Bone, you explicitly explain how the plot connects to police brutality in America. What do you hope your readers learn about racism and power from your writing?

The whole thing started out as me wanting to explore the emotional PTSD of feeling like maybe I’m not Trayvon Martin, maybe I’m not Sandra Bland, but there’s nothing that separates me from being Sandra Bland. I felt like that wasn’t being talked about, even within black communities. So, I had to write about it as self-therapy. Because I was having anxiety attacks every time I was getting into my car and that’s every day. It was sort of making people realize that this stuff—constantly being exposed to people like me being shot, being assaulted, being harassed, being put at gunpoint—is trauma.

So, that’s book one. I wanted people to empathize. Many of these issues come from dehumanization and a lot of dehumanization is a direct result of no-to-poor representation. If your only exposure to a person of color is as the villain in this or that, then psychologically that is activated when you are doing something with a person of color. I had a friend say, “What if Harry Potter had been black?” If the Boy Who Lived was black, then does Trayvon Martin get shot? Because that’s someone you empathize with. Fought for. Cried for. Someone you feel like you’ve gone into battle with. And that extends to the person you see and say, “Oh, that guy looks like Harry.” Humans are that simple.

For book two, I created my dominoes and I’ve just got to throw them and see where they land. It was more organic to the story, but what I was exploring, again, are things that real people have gone through—that they are going through today, that they will go through all the time. My books are about pain, but hopefully foster empathy.

Children of Virtue and Vengeance begins with an unexpected twist. Though Zélie has restored magic to the oppressed people of Orïsha, the monarchy and military now have magical powers, too. Why was it important to you to show people who abuse their power gaining even more?

It’s in two parts: one is a life lesson and one is a lesson about society. The life lesson is we always have goals—which are important because they add a purpose to our lives—but when you achieve a goal, it’s never quite what you expect. It’s also a commentary on the nature of power in general. The older I get, the more I learn about the world and its institutions. There are entire systems built on oppression and class. There are things you will probably never get enough wealth and power to topple. But what I believe you can do is move the needle. If you look in the book, you can get magic back—but the problem wasn’t really magic. It was the institution. Because even when you had magic, you were oppressed. Now, you have magic again and guess what? You’re still oppressed. It’s about learning that these are institutions that are very hard to completely overthrow—but that doesn’t mean you can’t make great change.

How do you find that fantasy and magic can help us understand our reality?

I wrote stories without magic as a kid, and then I read my first Harry Potter book and I never went back. If you could do anything in a book—and this is not a knock on contemporary writers, it’s just for me, personally—I don’t want to write about that awkward first kiss. Let’s go! Am I shooting lightning out of my forehead when I blink? You can do anything. I just always loved magic, fantasy and adventure. Growing up, I appreciated the psychological power of fantasy, but I didn’t go into it as this powerful tool to effect change and make people think. I’m like, “I like big lions!” Sometimes, it’s deep. Sometimes, it’s “lions are cool.”

Why do you write for young people?

I don’t change my writing style or plot. The only part of my work that I change because I am labeled as a young adult author is making sure that everything in my book is a clear example of something good or something bad. Let me eliminate the gray area. Writing for younger audiences doesn’t mean it has to be all good or all clean. It does a huge disservice to pretend that childhood means that you get a pass on trauma. A lot of trauma, I think, happens in childhood and then gets carried into adulthood. Then, that trauma creates trauma. So, you’ve got to both address it and heal it—early.

But I have to be really clear about what’s good and what’s bad. For a scene where things get romantic, I take alcohol out of the equation because I’m not trying to give an example of a gray zone of consent. This is supposed to be a positive example of two consenting people making a choice. Those are the kinds of decisions that I’ll change because it’s YA, but my readers are 8 to 80. So much YA crosses over; they are really exciting stories on the surface, and then underneath the best ones have such incredible things to say about the world. YA readers are also the most passionate readers. Look, I’ve talked about Harry Potter 18 times today. If you love something when you are young, that’s a part of you forever. Those stories are always in that warm, fuzzy part of your heart that the world tries to freeze over. To get to be that for so many young readers, to get to see their passion and enthusiasm and creativity, it’s the best.

Do you know how the trilogy will end?

I knew the ending before I even hit book one. I’ve been excited to write book three.

Are you in the process of writing it?

Hell no. It’s been three years, back to back. Even before I got my book deal, I wrote the first draft of Children of Blood and Bone in a month, then I wrote the second draft in a month and I did it that fast because I wanted to get into a writing competition. I kept thinking there was going to be a break in the process, but it only accelerated from that impossible speed to publication and book two went even further. So, I’m healing right now. I’m learning to sleep. I’m learning to wake up.

How have the last three years changed you?

I was a baby adult when I got into this. Now, I feel like a 60-year-old woman. I’m less self-conscious. I’m like, this what I need and I’m not asking your permission, I’m just letting you know. It’s a different energy. It’s a different swagger. But I like this version of myself. She wasn’t always there—she was forged through incredible pain and suffering, but she’s here. And she’s ready to go.

In 2017, it was announced that Children of Blood and Bone will be adapted for film. What has that process been like for you?

It’s been really cool because it’s with Disney/Fox and Lucas Films. It’s been three years and even though the team has shifted and grown, just to have so many people at the top of their game so passionate and excited and enthusiastic about bringing my world [to the screen], it’s ridiculous. I made that world up in my head, in my room, super sweaty, my hair looked like crazy, I was in my pajamas. I’m like, this is going to be that? It’s really wild.

Do you have a dream cast in mind?

I used to have a dream cast and then Black Panther came out. I was so in love with Letitia Wright and Winston Duke. How cool is it going to be to put more incredible black actors and actresses on the scene? To make roles this epic, this powerful—like Jennifer Lawrence, obviously she had Winter’s Bone, but we got her from The Hunger Games. It’s very cool that I mic-dropped this as my calling card and now this is going to be so many other people’s calling cards. The only person—and I’m comfortable doing this because he was on my Pinterest Board from the jump and I’ve mentioned this enough that at this point if it doesn’t happen, you do what you can—for King Saran in Book One, I had pictures of Idris Elba. And every time I was writing a scene with him, I pictured Idris Elba to really get my head into how scary it was to be near him.

[kummarsarvan]

10 Best Dystopian Novels of All Time

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Australia Unwrapped - List of all Dystopian Literature up to 2020!

Top 10 Greatest Dystopian Novels of All Time

Dystopian literature and the novels are loved by almost all the people who read books. They have got a lot of fame which author have started to bring Dystopian novel to the public. If you check the best or top selling novel than these are mostly Dystopian or Utopian (A type of Dystopian novel). Fore example the Hunger games, Game of Throne, Harry Potter and many other also. So, here is a list of top greatest dystopian novel of all time.

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir (2015)

Youthful Adult dream and sci-fi books have been slaughtering on the complex tragic front for a considerable length of time. Sabaa Tahir's An Ember in the Ashes, which pursues three characters in a fierce tragic culture taking after old Rome, is one of the ongoing champions. The passionate multifaceted nature in Laia, Elias and Helene's obviously various universes is shocking, and keeping in mind that their tribulations proceed all through Tahir's arrangement, the preliminaries they face in the primary volume are ethically convincing and profoundly captivating as an independent read—regardless of whether the consummation will leave you on edge for additional.

The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993)

Odds are, you originally read The Giver in school. Lois Lowry's Newbery Award-winning novel much of the time advances into study halls, and in light of current circumstances. Set in what gives off an impression of being a perfect world, the novel presents a little youngster named Jonas who lives in a torment free society. The world sudden spikes in demand for congruity and happiness—at the cost of feeling. So when Jonas is chosen to be the following Receiver of Memory and is acquainted with past privileged insights, he ends up scrutinizing his general surroundings. The Giver poses huge inquiries about what individuals are happy to forfeit so as to have a sense of security.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown (2014)

Red Rising, the main book in Pierce Brown's science fiction arrangement of a similar name, acquaints readers with an interstellar standing framework made of bad dreams. From God to the modest reds everyone is introduced to some kind of job in a public eye. At the point when Darrow finds the alarming realities behind his reality as a Red, he joins a plot to tear down the Golds' standard. Dark-coloured conveys a story that is as savage as it is spellbinding, progressively uncovering the Golds' wound manoeuvres to sustain a tragic culture.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

Nineteen Eighty-Four is written by the ruling writers of the 19th Century named as the Big Brother (George Orwell). The story of this novel mostly includes the barn hill in the Scottish island. In this novel he tells that he was suffered by the tuberculosis in the future (1984) which was caused by some actions of the taken by the government against Orwell. It was a masterpiece and is one of the best book you can find.

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971)

The Lathe of Heaven starts in the future and take us into more terrible. Ursula K. Le Guin utilizes a forlorn hero, George Orr, to strip back the skin of the real world and question exactly how profoundly we can decide the course of our lives. Tormented by the idea that his fantasies change reality, Orr mishandles drugs, which has him consigned to important medication programs in a controlled society. Orr is unavoidably alluded to a specialist, who happens to be a renowned rest scientist with a machine that can all the more likely show Orr's fantasy control, enabling Orr to permanently modify the effectively tragic powers of history.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (1992)

In Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson envisions innovation driving us forward as an element of unearthing the past, wherein keys to reshaping the future lay covered at the underlying foundations of language—think the Tower of Babel. The future of the stepson includes an anarcho-entrepreneur and they are bound together with some sort if internet 2.0, which no poor person has access to. Stephenson heaps his plot with vehicle pursues and sword battling and other high-oceans experience, however at its heart Snow Crash is an expansive investigation of class and innovation—all the more explicitly, how innovation will neglect to offer capacity to the individuals who need it most.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003)

An increasingly conventional tragic world turns out in the accompanying two MaddAddam spin-offs, however, Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood's post-millennial contemplation on religion and science, had six years to shake around perusers' minds before the following book hit racks. That is six years of mulling over the puzzle of creation, six years of contending strict polemics, six years of bouncing uneasily at the updates on each logical advancement in the field of hereditary alteration or cloning or bioengineering. Increasingly an assessment of our genuine tragic social request than a bit of theoretical fiction, Oryx and Crake features Atwood's doubt of society's capacity to settle on humane aggregate choices.

 We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (completed in 1921)

We were at first written in Russian, yet its lamentable vision of human nature under the standard of cold method of reasoning shows as full to an English-examining gathering of observers in 2018 as it was to perusers in the Soviet Union right around 100 years back. We seek after D-503, a standard withstanding man whose life is changed when he meets an enthusiastic woman—a woman who has not yet been dispensed to a Society-instructed procreative mixing.She presents a more liberated method for living that incorporates enthusiasm and an anarchic underground gathering intending to irritate the Society, however, D-503 miracles if love is a human shortcoming too erratic to be in any way left untamed. As an antique of expectation that social orders wavering on the edge of the oppressed world may figure out how to dismantle themselves back to wellbeing, We (and its skeptical closure) is a distinct disappointment.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick (1977)

Composed as a hyper-anecdotal record of the decrease Philip K. Dick saw of the '60s and '70s medication culture in L.A., A Scanner Darkly exhibits a look at the mid-'90s were the War on Drugs left to adjust to its very own expanding illogic. Wearing tech suits that "scramble" their characters when not claiming to be low-level street pharmacists or addicts, covert officials lose grasp of what their identity is and what they should do, devoured by the life and enslavement they were obviously battling helpless before Substance D. As is generally the situation in Dick's books, Substance D misuse makes it increasingly hard for our hero, covert official Bob Arctor, to recognize which of his double lives is really the correct one.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)

The tragic novel that propelled a top-rated set of three and an epic film establishment, The Hunger Games is an activity stuffed ride set in a merciless, authoritarian future. Suzanne Collins' epic carries perusers to Panem, another country established among the vestiges of North America and flaunting a well off Capitol administered by the one percent. In a savage type of populace control, the Capitol live-communicates a reality rivalry wherein youngsters battle to the passing for the excitement of the tip-top and the ghastliness of the residents consistently. Furthermore, when a 16-year-old named Katniss watches her sister get chose for the occasion, she volunteers to have her spot.

All These Things I’ve Done by Gabrielle Zevin (2011)

Gabrielle Zevin is magnificent at taking everyday psychological studies—What if a teenager who had everything got amnesia? Imagine a scenario in which passing implied living your years in reverse until you came back to the world as a child?— and transforming them into something extraordinary. In any case, her "Consider the possibility that our not so distant future world condemned chocolate and espresso?" Young Adult set of three, starting with All These Things I've Done, is a tragic champion. It shows how destroying even the most commonplace changes to a culture can be. What's more, in recounting to the story from the point of view of a resigned lady entertaining perusers with her teenager adventures, it exhibits how everything back and forth movement, even misinformed authoritarian approaches.

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[eyesaremosaics]

Rant: Beauty and the Beast remake

Okay I am going to express an unpopular opinion but I am bursting to say this:

I am NOT at all pleased with Emma Watson as Belle. Emma Watson is cute, and in the first two Harry Potter movies she was on point as Hermione (afterwards not so much), but her acting abilities are seriously overrated. She plays the same, haughty, Ill tempered emotionally underdeveloped aries that she is in every single film that she does. Her performances are tiring. I tolerated her in the Harry Potter films but I can’t with beauty and the beast.

I won’t say I refuse to see it, I probably will end up seeing it with one of my kids, but I have no burning desire. Not impressed with CGI and horrible casting tugging on nostalgia from my childhood. Beauty and the Beast was a masterpiece. Of storytelling (book) and film (including Jean Cocteau’s version of course). Personally, I think the Disney version is one of the Disney classics. It is a really significant film, and I think the most powerful hand drawn animation ever made. The only one to be nominated for best picture, losing to silence of the lambs.

The voice actors chosen were perfect, the characters had dimension to their personalities, the animation was stunning, the score amazing–and the depth of the beast’s character was due to Howard Ashman. Howard wrote most of the songs for the little mermaid, and collaborated with Alan Menken on Beauty and the Beast. Howard fought for the beast to have a more central role, which they relented and finally incorporated after much lobbying.

Howard was secretly dying of AIDS during production, eventually he had to come forward about his illness (unable to hide it any longer). Most of the songs were written by him as he lay dying in bed. He never lived to see the films success. After the preview, they told Howard that everyone loved the film, and he passed away soon after. It was eight months later when the film hit screens with a touching tribute added to the end credits.

Reading: “To our friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful.”

I cry every time I think about it. This film was about so much more than it appears. It was not only about seeing the true beauty inside, looking past physical exterior and loving someone unconditionally for who they are in the heart of their being, but about people who have been shunned, feared, and misunderstood all their lives by society at large–so much so that they were hunted and condemned. They were forced to hide away in shame. This movie is about embracing the truth of who we are and not being ashamed of it. Realizing, we can be our authentic selves and still be loved. It means so much to all of us for so many different reasons. Deep core concepts of acceptance and love that we all strive for.

Disney was my childhood, and I am not ashamed to say that. I don’t agree that Disney created unrealistic expectations in relationship, or sugar coated reality. Disney showed us idealism, and as an idealist–it resonated with me. I see the world as “it should be”. This movie was a huge part of who I developed to be. A strong, independent, intelligent, kind woman who looks for the good in everyone.

There is no way to touch genius, or to reinvent what was already immortalized. Just like any classic film, you can remake it–but it will never touch the original. I tire of the cheap thrills and regurgitations in Hollywood. Yes I know they have been doing remakes since they started making movies, every ten years the revamp the same old shit. Scarface, last of the Mohicans, little women, wuthering heights… Fine fine fine. I just hate CGI. I feel like movies now… Try to tell a story with aesthetics instead of telling an actual story.

I miss the old special effects techniques. There was so much more creativity and skill that was involved for the artists assigned to the task, and also for the actors playing that character. How much emotional involvement did the beast have when his entire character is a computer simulation? I just don’t see the true artistry in that. One can argue that the animation was essentially that, but that is because the platform was voice acting and hand drawn animation. Live action with CGI is a different thing entirely. Yes I know the animated film was the first time they used computer animation to enhance hand drawn animation--why don't they continue to do that? Then true artists are not out of work on either end of the spectrum.

Most importantly: EMMA WATSON?? No,no, no. Not Belle. Not now, not ever. God I can just picture her annoying whiny voice complaining throughout the whole movie, ruining my childhood role model. Destroying the character entirely with her lack of instincts or variety of action. I just can’t take it. So bad. It kind of hurts to be honest. Anyway, just had to get that off my chest. Go about your business.

[gyrlversion]

EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Esther Freud and David Morrissey split

Actor David Morrissey and novelist wife Esther Freud has announced their separation after 13 year together

With his brooding good looks and her fascinating family history, actor David Morrissey and novelist Esther Freud were one of society’s most celebrated showbusiness couples.

So I am sad to report that the couple, who met at drama school 26 years ago, have separated. They had been married 13 years.

‘It’s a great shame, but they just couldn’t make it work any longer,’ one of their many friends tells me. ‘They are making sure that the interests of their three children come first.’

The couple, who shared a house in Hampstead, are now living separately in North London.

As recently as last year, Esther, who is the 55-year-old daughter of late artist Lucian Freud, was talking affectionately in interviews about Morrissey, 54, the star of television dramas including The Walking Dead and The Deal, in which he played Gordon Brown.

Morrissey, who has been hailed as one of the most talented actors of his generation, did, though, highlight the great differences in their backgrounds. While he is the son of a Liverpudlian cobbler and a mother who worked for Littlewoods, Esther’s bohemian childhood formed the basis of her acclaimed novel Hideous Kinky, which was turned into a 1998 film starring Kate Winslet.

David Morrissey and Esther Freud at the start of their relationship attending the premiere of Basic Instinct 2 in 2006

The great-granddaughter of the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Esther is one of Lucian Freud’s 14 children. Her mother is the writer and gardener Bernardine Coverley.

Morrissey has credited Esther with helping to teach him self-discipline.

‘Suddenly,’ he said, ‘I was with someone who imposed a work structure upon themselves.

‘There we were, we’d just met and fallen in love and suddenly, even in my own flat, I was outside my bedroom waiting for two o’clock so I could go in and kiss her.’

Freud and Morrissey declined to comment.

The smart set’s talking about… The Sultan of Brunei’s party-loving prince

As the international outcry intensifies against the Sultan of Brunei after his decree that gay men in his country are to be stoned to death, spare a thought for his exuberant son, Prince Azim.

The party-loving prince — one of the Sultan’s four children by his second wife, former air hostess Hajah Mariam — would be heartbroken if Brunei became a pariah state.

Blessed with a playful spirit, Prince Azim, 36, is pictured here in characteristic pose at a London party, enjoying the company of Pamela Anderson.

Party-loving Prince Azim, son the highly controversial Sultan of Brunei, is spotted enjoying a night out in London with actress and campaigner Pamela Anderson

While the evergreen Baywatch babe favoured a mask and little black dress crafted from PVC, he opted for snakeskin-effect sheer T-shirt. It was offset by powder-blue feather boas, ripped jeans and a pert top hat with a fan-veil of the sort that milliner Philip Treacy might design for Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot — plus a key, dangling from his neck.

Azim, who followed his father to Sandhurst but lasted only a week, has a serious side, of course, once designing a unisex suitcase for luxury goods brand MCM.

Described as a chic travel bag, it was, said one report, ‘destined to bring out the princess within’.

The Queen cancelled her visit to Newbury, where she had a runner in the 3.40 yesterday, after the death of one of her best friends, Jeannie, the Dowager Countess of Carnarvon, at the age of 83.

Her Majesty had been due to stay for the weekend with the American-born Countess’s family, who live near Newbury racecourse. Jeannie’s late husband, Porchy, was Her Majesty’s close confidant and racing manager. A lively character, she was played by actress Andrea Deck in TV’s The Crown.

Even last year, she was still doing Pilates at her dower house on her family’s Highclere Castle estate, where Downton Abbey is filmed.

Fleabag’s naughty priest breaks up with boyfriend

As the ‘hot priest’ in BBC hit comedy Fleabag (right), Andrew Scott leaves Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character desolate at a bus stop.

In real life, he’s nursing his own broken heart. I hear Scott, 42, has split up with his partner of ten years, the actor and writer Stephen Beresford, 47, inset.

They had shared a London home. ‘I live alone now,’ Scott has confirmed. Asked if he had a new companion, he replied: ‘I have a lot of love in my life, but I prefer not to talk about that.’

Previously best known as Benedict Cumberbatch’s antagonist Moriarty in BBC hit Sherlock, Scott has been hailed as the ‘sexiest man on TV’ after his charismatic turn as a Catholic priest who breaks his vows in a fling with Fleabag’s dysfunctional heroine.

Fleabag’s ‘hot priest’ Andrew Scott (left) has revealed he has split his partner of 10 year Stephen Beresford (right)

If you bump into Dame Vivienne Westwood, who turned 78 this week, best not wish her a happy birthday.

‘I didn’t celebrate,’ the queen of punk-turned-eco-campaigner tells me at a private viewing of Demelza Kids, a show of works by fashion photographer Juergen Teller at Bonhams in Mayfair.

Dame Vivienne Westwood by cartoonist Gary Smith

‘I just stayed at home with my secretary and worked on saving the world. There’s so much to do.

‘I did think it would be nice to go to work — people would like it — but then I don’t like cake or champagne much.’

The eccentric designer, whose clothes are worn by everyone from Theresa May to Angelina Jolie, even banned her husband, Andreas Kronthaler, 67, who now runs her fashion label, from giving her a gift.

‘I don’t need any presents. He gave me a lovely card.’

Now two’s company for Prue

Cookery queen Prue Leith is changing her recipe for a happy marriage.

Until now, twice-married Prue, 79, has extolled the joys of keeping apart.

But the genial Bake Off judge has decided she wants to live with her husband of three years, the retired clothes designer John Playfair, after all.

And she plans to build a new home on her farm in the Cotswolds so he can move in.

Prue Leith plans on converting farm buildings on her Cotswold property so that husband John Playfair can move in

‘The time has come when she and John want to live together, but in a place where they can each have their own quarters,’ one of her friends tells me. ‘They have designed a place themselves, which they are making out of a big old farm building on the land she owns.’

Her agent confirms: ‘Prue and her husband do have plans to convert some redundant farm buildings on her land into a single property.’

‘He lives a mile away from me,’ Prue said, after marrying John, 71.

‘He’s got a lot of stuff and I’m rather anally neat and tidy and I don’t want all that stuff in my house. And he doesn’t want me tidying it up.’

London is to be the scene of a reunion between former U.S. presidents this weekend. I hear that Barack Obama, who is over for his wife Michelle’s talk at the huge 02 Arena tomorrow, is planning to meet up with Bill Clinton, also in the capital with his wife, Hillary.

I wonder if the Obamas will pop into Frogmore Cottage to see their friends Prince Harry and Meghan while they’re here?

Princess Diana would be touched to see how close Prince William has stayed to her old friend Julia Samuel. I hear the Duke of Cambridge asked Julia, a grief counsellor, to be his official representative at the Chelsea memorial service on Thursday for cancer expert Professor Martin Gore, whom William described as an ‘inspiration’. In 2013, William asked Julia to be a godmother to Prince George.

Duchess gives her blessing to Missy’s new man

When Lady Melissa Percy married Thomas van Straubenzee, the ceremony was attended by Princes William and Harry.

Could wedding bells soon be heard again at her family seat, Alnwick Castle, which doubled as Hogwarts in Harry Potter films?

‘Missy’, as the 31-year-old is known to chums, divorced Tom in 2016. And her new romance with American hedge fund boss Remy Trafelet, 48, is going so well that he has already met her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. ‘We really love Remy,’ her mother, Jane, tells me at the launch of Tim Bouverie’s book, Appeasing Hitler, at China Exchange in Soho.

‘We’re just happy for them because they both had marriages that didn’t work and they now have a second chance at being happy. I would be happy for them to get married when the time’s right.’

Macca’s boy brings the church down!

With his cherubic cheeks and twinkly smile, James McCartney was the image of his father as he performed a secret gig on Thursday night.

Sir Paul’s 41-year-old son received a standing ovation at Heath Street Baptist Church in London’s Hampstead, where he sang and played guitar and piano at an exhibition by photographer Danny Clifford called Rock Stars Don’t Smile.

One of his most moving songs, Angel, was written around the time of his mother Linda’s death from breast cancer in 1998.

At one point, James joked that he sounded less like his father and more like his fellow Beatle John Lennon.

Like father, like son: James McCartney (left) received a standing ovation for a performance at Heath Street Baptist Church in London’s Hampstead, taking after father Sir Paul (right)

Has Prince Charles secured a powerful ally in his crusade for alternative medicine?

I ask because the Health Secretary and prime ministerial wannabe, Matt Hancock, made an 800-mile round trip to hold private talks with the heir to the throne on Wednesday at one of his Scottish residences, Dumfries House.

Officials decline to comment on what the two men discussed. But their meeting took place a week after Hancock, 40, spoke at a reception in support of ‘social prescription’ therapies hosted by Charles at Clarence House.

On that occasion, Hancock — whose wife, Martha, is an osteopath — lamented that doctors were ‘dishing out’ too many pills. Music to Charles’s princely ears.

(Very) modern manners

Brexit is a no-go subject at most dinner parties, but imagine what it’s like at Boris Johnson’s family get-togethers.

The Brexiteer MP’s sister, Rachel, is an ardent Remainer. And she tells me: ‘Our house rules are don’t talk about Brexit at meals. If it does [come up], it all goes wrong and my mother sits there crying gently.’

Speaking at an Amnesty International bash at L’Escargot in London’s Soho, Rachel adds: ‘There is a liberal side of the family that is overlooked in the narrative of the Johnsons being this ambitious, power-hungry, blond tribe.’

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[theslothwomanblog]

Feminism: There’s Something for Everyone

I have two disclaimers for this article.

1.)    This is an article about feminism – but please, before you stop reading, hear me out if you’re at least one of the following: female; a gay man; a lesbian; religious; physically disabled; mentally disabled; black; Asian; Hispanic; any another ethnicity which is underrepresented in culture (unfortunately there are too many to list here); heck, another minority of any kind which is underrepresented in culture (again, if I listed them, we’d be here all day); rich; poor; or male. Okay, so pretty much everybody. The reason you’re on this list? Because feminism affects you.

2.)    When I use the term ‘feminism’, I do not mean that I hate men, burn bras, or believe in female supremacy. I mean equality of the sexes. Nothing more, nothing less.

Right, on with the article.

Dames and drug dealers – a feminist approach to culture

Back in my university days, one of my lecturers showed us a PowerPoint slide with only two things on it. The first thing was the question, “What is gender?” The second was this table:

When considering the characters presented to me in film, TV, books, and so on, I’d say that table is pretty accurate. From Mad Max and Mamma Mia, to Breakfast Club and Back to the Future, this list describes each and every character perfectly according to their gender.

But what I found fascinating is that this list applies to more than male and female characters. Take gay men, for example. Even as an avid Will and Grace fan, I can’t think of a single TV programme where gay men aren’t depicted as the stereotypically flamboyant, squeaky, Cher-loving ‘queens’ we’ve all grown to know. All of the key features of this camp character can be found in the ‘female’ column of the table above. Weak? Check. Irrational? Check. Impulsive? Check.

Except for Job. Job is a badass.

Similarly, your archetypal TV lesbian can be found in the ‘male’ column. After all, the only lesbians that exist are strong, aggressive, and competitive – right?

Even black characters can be described solely using words from the ‘male’ section. The first three black stereotypes that spring to mind are the sassy black woman, the drug dealer, and the dancer – all of whom are aggressive, active, and dominant. I can think of very few black characters (particularly women) who are calm, collected, and intellectual.

I could do this for every minority I listed at the beginning of this article. Instead, I’m going to answer the question that’s on your mind right now.

Why does stereotyping matter?

Good question.

I’d argue that these stereotypes matter because they present two-dimensional depictions of various types of people which, in short, limits the opportunities available to those types of people. After all, who wants some feminine gay guy on a professional sports team? Who would hire a sassy black woman as a therapist? Who would recruit a romantic, emotional woman to the armed forces?

I believe that, if we don’t have much real-life contact with certain groups of people, we rely heavily on what we gain from culture. I also believe that, if we’re being supplied inaccurate information by our Hollywood hits, then we might misunderstand those groups – and that’s the perfect environment in which the discrimination disease can be cultured.

Where I’m from in Kent, the LGBT community isn’t very visible. So when I was spending one afternoon in the beer garden of the local pub chatting to a few villagers, I wasn’t surprised when one of them said, “I don’t think gay people should be allowed to have kids – I don’t trust those queers to step away from the mirror long enough to check their baby is still breathing.” I asked him if he thought the same applied to lesbians. “Absolutely. It ain’t right, a kid being raised by a woman who’s trying to act like a man.” Interestingly, this villager had seen me numerous times looking after a few of the local toddlers, once remarking that I’ll make an excellent mother someday.

I’m bisexual.

Moral of the story? Don’t judge people based on stereotypes. Just because I like women doesn’t mean that I’ll be a bad mother.

I’ll be a bad mother because I drink more beer than water. Don’t try and blame it on my sexuality.

What about the men? The Big Bang effect

I put men on my list at the beginning of the article, but why?

In short, I think they’re incorrectly represented too. Of course, there are men who are objective and logical and prude, but I feel like the overrepresentation of the James Bonds of the world has caused some men to develop a masculinity complex. What about the ‘female’ traits men possess, such as emotion and romance? A guy doesn’t have to be gay to show emotion, but some men seem unable to express these qualities for fear of being accused of such. Perhaps this is why suicide is the biggest cause of death among men under 35.

Fortunately, I do think that this is one area which is slowly being addressed by screenwriters and novelists. The rise of ‘geek chic’ has led to shows such as The Big Bang Theory, which present romantic, caring, unconfident guys like Leonard Hofstadter as the star of the show. The fact that this programme is mainstream speaks volumes to me – people like a relatable character, and TBBT provides that for the men.

More relatable than Batman, but somehow just as cool.

Back to the women - growing up with gender politics

Of course, the whole feminist movement (although it now attempts to address a number of inequalities for a huge pool of communities) started with the women. It started with women being limited to the role of the housekeeper, the mother, and the wife, to the extent that they were unable to vote on the legislation that affected them. It’s a movement which has snowballed to make room for women in politics and business (areas which were previously considered male territory). Although we’re still working on ensuring adequate representation of women in these areas, we’ve come a heck of a long way – and in doing so, have provided a huge variety of role models for future generations.

Speaking as a woman, I’ve been so grateful to have a number of strong female role models in my life. Whether they’re celebrities like JK Rowling and Dawn French or wonderful people I know like my mother and my aunt, I’ve been encouraged to embrace my gender (regardless of what that personally means to me) and to ignore those who try to hold me back because of it.

In my lifetime, strong female characters have definitely been on the rise – you only need to look at cult followings like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games to see how popular these heroines are – but I feel like we’re not there yet. Although the strong ladies of John Green novels are certainly moving into the mainstream sphere, for now they’re still on the cusp of the niche and nerdy. For everybody to access this wealth of character, the mainstream needs to support these relatively small ventures into the world of equality.

By providing effective visibility of a number of communities rather than limiting them to the traits listed above, there will hopefully be a realistic selection of role models by whom young people can be inspired. Adventures in Gay wrote a brilliant comic outlining visibility, which can be found here – he explains it far better than I ever could.

Hopefully one day, we can reach a place in society where we can look past our gender/ethnic/sexual differences and just see the person for who they are. To me, that’s what feminism is all about.

[t-baba]

How Nostalgia in Web Design Captivates Users (with examples)

Nostalgia makes users feel warm inside. Suzanne Scacca explains the user psychology behind this, and how we can utilize the effects of nostalgia in web design on users for higher conversions and engagement (with examples).

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Right now, more than ever before, we're seeing all sorts of nostalgic throwbacks causing us to reminisce about the good ol' days! We're seeing an endless supply of remakes, reboots and long-awaited sequels like Spider-Man and Ghostbusters; Bruno Mars topping the music charts with songs that sound eerily similar to classic hits by Kool & the Gang; women wearing chokers and high-waisted pants.

And this isn't a new phenomenon either.

Every generation daydreams about how things were way back when, and what's changed since.

It's true, nostalgia is a very powerful emotion. It can even make us feel happy and at the same time, and in design/marketing, we can use nostalgia to captivate users...then convert them.

What the Research Says About Nostalgia

Nostalgia stirs up very strong feelings, so there's something to be said about user psychology and why we continue to see retro throwbacks time and time again. After all, the goal in marketing is to create content that taps into our audience's emotional core and establishes a much deeper connection with them far beyond a superficial "Buy 1, Get 1 Free" offer.

Nostalgia achieves that well.

So. Jumping on the retro bandwagon: is it really worth it when "comebacks" tend to have such a short-term expiration?

Yes.

Studies suggest that not only are nostalgic marketing angles captivating to audiences, simply for the reminiscent feelings accosted with them, but retro visual aesthetics can boost these effects even further, and that's where design comes into it. Let's take a closer look at what exactly happens when we feel nostalgic.

Nostalgia in web design makes visitors feel more connected

Dr. Filippo Cordaro, a researcher of nostalgia from the University of Cologne, found similarities between an individual reminiscing about the past and the level of social connectivity they felt. He explains:

“On a basic level, recalling these positive memories simply puts us in a more positive mood. On a more complex level, recalling these experiences makes us feel a stronger sense of social connectedness with others.”

It’s the latter half of this conclusion that’s most important for marketers and web designers to understand; that feeling of "connectedness" is what we should be striving for, and we can do this by telling stories through visual design and using imagery that visitors can relate to. While a superficial offer/discount might grab the user's attention momentarily, digging deeper into the audience's emotional core and establishing a more genuine, heartfelt connection is more effective overall.

In short: nostalgic hooks are more memorable because they're based on experiences familiar to the visitor.

Real Examples (and what we can learn from them)

If you’re curious to see how you might use nostalgic hooks in visual design and communication, then check out what these brands have done and the effects they've had.

Danner

Overall, the vintage-style typography and classic insignia-style details compliment the (more modernized) minimal/flat approach to the layout, where the two styles come together to convey the vintage brand that is Danner's boots. Danner's was founded in 1932, so you could say that the visual aesthetic is a modern twist on a vintage brand that customers already know and love. You have to stay true to your roots (as they say), but you also have stay with the times. Danner's Boots does both.

Also, as you may have noticed, brown/beige colors are quite common in vintage visual aesthetics. Color can also play a huge role in influencing how users feel.

Desires Tram

Desires Tram is another web design example where mixing somewhat minimalistic layouts with vintage details has worked well. What we can take away from this is that serif fonts can still be bold, and bitmap images don't have to impact loading times too much if used sparingly. Overall, these design elements, the "mascot" character and the magical sounds strike a wonderful blend of creativity and nostalgia like something straight out of Harry Potter.

Robby Leonardi

Retro video games. Now we're getting to closer to the heart, because this is more likely to be "your era". I wouldn't be surprised if developer Robby Leonardi's interactive resume resonates with you more than the first two examples, because retro video games are more likely take you back to your childhood (well...it depends how old you are I suppose!).

Brown/beige/grunge/vintage styles are certainly captivating and may induce feelings of nostalgia from a visual perspective, but it's not something that's likely resonate with you from an emotional angle (not unless you're into vintage things, which you may very well be).

Even those that didn't play old-school Nintendo games will undoubtedly recognize the "game" as a Super Mario-style game, so this is a type of nostalgia that won't be lost on many users. It definitely takes me back and ultimately gets me to stick around his website a little longer.

St. Louis Browns Historical Society

St. Louis Browns Historical Society is a terrific example of a website that makes use of real life footage. The home video approach intentionally touches the heart, and the rest of the website continues with some of the visual details we've seen in the other examples: grungey visuals and serif fonts combined with flat elements and sans-serif fonts, a perfectly executed combination of vintage and modern that lets retro designs work on the web today.

Continue reading %How Nostalgia in Web Design Captivates Users (with examples)%

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