#i am referencing 'a softer world' in 2024 and i will probably do so forever

[apple-spider-vinegar]

I wish love were enough! I wish it counted for anything at all!

Something I feel goes often goes unrecognized in discussion of Harry's Osborn is the fact the he is the Only Child of a Single Parent.

In my experience/observation (both real and fictional) the only child/single parent bond is so inexorable it's hard to fully comprehend. Few other things will bind two people together in such a way.

Like many familial relationships, it's full of a thousand little hurts that will probably never get brought up again. Sometimes you let the relationship go by the wayside in pursuit of your own life goals because you take it for granted that family will always be around. But there's a unique flavor to it.

Deep down inside you there's an awareness that it's Just The Two Of You. For the child, it may have it may have been just the two of you from your very earliest memories. Sure, you know other people. There are extended family and friends and maybe the parent has a romatic partner or two. But at the end of the day, in your home, in your hearts (something you carry with no matter where you go) the two of you are all you have and all you feel you can really depend on.

A world in which the two of you aren't together is almost impossible to picture and you don't want to to try, even in the moments you wish you could just get away from each other.

Like all love, it'll make you behave selfishly and irrationally at times.

And it'll really make you DEFENSIVE. If you complain a bit about your dad being a dickhead while deep down wondering if he really even cares about you, that's one thing, but if anyone says a word against him in your presence you have to backtrakc. You have to argue in his defense because he's all you have and you're all he has.

Look, guys. It has been years since Harry and Norman Osborn have gotten along or been able to really enjoy each other's company, if they ever could. But if anything happened to the other they would kill everyone in this room and then themselves, do you understand what I'm saying?