#im just trying to figure out how tf im going to organize this blog ;-;

[yesitsalivealiiiiiiiive]

to the neglected child of the hour

[critical-reading-of-harry-potter]

The Project

thanks for checking out a critical reading of harry potter by someone who for all y'all know is Just Some Guy (unless you know me irl, in which case, hi! y'all already know im a fuckin nerd)

for those of you who don't know, a critical reading doesn't mean criticizing a book; it means digging into the book's main ideas, themes, influences -- everything that makes the book tick -- and figuring out what it's trying to do, how it's trying to do it, and if it's succeeding or failing. it can also involve critiquing the author's biases (which I certainly expect to do in this reading) and examining implicit assumptions they make in the text

i'm particularly interested in Rowling's implicit themes, especially how she engages with conformity/nonconformity to social standards (more on this below), and in examining what I think the books' primary message is and whether i think Rowling succeed in imparting that message

-----------------------

blog organization

to avoid spamming the main hp tags with my essays, here are the tags i'll use to organize this blog

#the stone - Sorceror's Stone

#liveblog - chapter-by-chapter live reactions and proto-analyses

Tables of Contents

Liveblogs:

Sorceror's stone

_______________

detailed project description and motivations under the cut

so patches, why tf are you doing this?

i used to love harry potter. as a kid, i built a lot of my identity around being A Reader, and not to date myself but i fell in love with reading when i read harry potter

so of course i was devastated when i grew up to be trans and Rowling grew up to be one of the worst and most influential transphobes in the world

i used to reread harry potter every year-- i've read the entire series at least 10 times, probably more. it was my go-to comfort series for basically my entire childhood. but after Rowling went off the deep end, i couldn't bring myself to read it anymore-- it just hurt too much

but I recently (edit: 2023-- no longer that recently) took a class on children's literature, and one of the books we studied was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. And while I had some problems with the unit (mainly that we didn't discuss Rowling's current transphobia, and as the only trans person in the class it fell to me to raise the topic, which i wasn't really comfortable doing for obvious reasons), i did think our discussions very interesting

among other things, we talked about how Rowling was in conversation with the well-established tradition of the British boarding school novel; about how Rowling both enforces and subverts conformity to social norms (both in-universe and real-world); and wizards' treatment of muggles and nonhuman sapient species

and it got me thinking.

i know how to do literary analysis. i've been doing it for years. i hate writing proper essays (not the perfectionism), but i can put together a bullet-point list of analyses like nobody's business. and i know there was so much we weren't able to cover in class that I would be interested in thinking about more-- including the other 6 books in the series, and how Rowling develops the themes, both explicit and the implicit ones i listed above-- over the entire series

so here I am. doing a critical analysis of harry potter (books 2-7 since I've already done book 1) edit: jk im doing book 1 too bc its been like 2 years

i'll post a summary of my class's discussion and the essay I wrote about it at some point as well bc i think it's interesting and also it'll be a good refresher for me (see again: 2 year gap)

expectations

tl;dr: keep them low

idk when/how regularly i'll want to read and write up my analysis (it all really depends on my brain grabbing onto the idea, which is. always a bit of a toss-up)

i might liveblog readings and then do a roundup at the end, i might just post analysis. who knows.

point is, don't expect me to post regularly

not me taking 2 years to just get started

guidelines

please engage with my analyses!!

whether you want to expand on one of my points, disagree with something i've said, or add something entirely new-- anything you want to say is worth saying!

i find that literary analysis is much more interesting when there are multiple people challenging each other's ideas and pushing them farther

HOWEVER

if/when you engage, please try to do so thoughtfully and take other people's viewpoints (including my own) in good faith. The best rule of thumb is to always assume good intentions

If something makes you angry or uncomfortable, sit with it for a while. Interrogate why you're reacting the way you are, and if you agree with your visceral reaction. Then reply

i'm leaving anonymous asks and submissions on for now because i get that engaging with this kind of thing can be easier anonymously, and I think submitted media could be neat. But if those functions get misused, I'll be turning them off

in conclusion

thanks so much for engaging with my weird little hyperfocus passion project! i hope you enjoy

[cxldblxxded]

get to know the author!

name: carmen / moop

pronouns: she / they

preference of communication: discord ! tumblr ims are fucked and discord is the next best option lol. (if u want my discord hmu..... 👀)

most active muse: lowkey my boy nicky (@yxkanna). i haven't been active on his blog in like three years i think for a variety of reasons but i still write him a lot over discord and i love him and miss his dash presence (especially now that there's a lot of 911 muses he'd love to interact with ugh). otherwise, these two obviously are pretty active, i have a hankering for writing jhin from lol, i have so many other little wretched muses i'd like to write although they're a bit quieter. lots of muses and not enough time lmao

experience / how many years: i've been rping since 2010 LMAO what the hell. my writing experience is in the weird middle school phase of its life now tf

best experience: i like making friends and sending stupid muse related stuff back and forth ! there's something kinda fun about seeing a meme or whatever and thinking of someone else :)

rp pet peeves: untrimmed threads, huge gifs, people who make a big deal of being suuuuuuper selective. like it's fine if u only wanna write with people u already know, nothing wrong with that, but constantly bragging about it feels like watching a weird high school clique unfold.

fluff, angst, or smut: more or less all.....? in order i'd say fluff, angst, and smut LMAO smut is def my weakest genre bc i'm like :| idk what to do to make this sexy....... fluff and angst are more interesting to me generally speaking !

plots or memes: i'm soooooo bad at plotting LMAO i get the worst brainlock when i'm trying to figure stuff out with folks. like i might as well just write it in the moment and have things happen organically, which memes are great for !

long or short replies: i usually do longer replies bc i get carried away, but shorter ones are nice too !

time to write: i usually end up writing at night which is fine until i've taken my melatonin and suddenly have the inspiration of the gods at my fingertips >:|

are you like your muses: a lil bit ?? more like cad imo, given the Everything. but there's a part of me that wishes i was a bit more like k so ! here we are lol

tagged by: @fcllederage <3

tagging: cannae be bothered to tag people in stuff tonight so !! if u wanna do it go for it, happy munday 👍

[cliveboney]

hhhhhh

im tryin to get over this & move on w/ my life so maybe making a post abt it will help

so i applied for a zine a while ago (well like. 2 weeks ago) bc i’ve never been part of one & i thought it might be cool (also free copy + $$ right yell heah yeehaw). from the beginning i wasn’t really expecting too much like im just basically like “it won’t hurt to just apply & see what happens”

so i spent a bit of time gathering up some recent pieces to put in my “”portfolio”” so i could send it over because like. applications were open but there was like a week until the deadline to send yours so i took advantage of that to finish up some drawings i’d been working on etc (that’s why i was suddenly super active on my art blog for like a week lmaoo)

Anyway i did all that & put it in my portfolio & then submitted it the day before the deadline & it was all taken care of, time to wait. the next step was for the organizers to post the list of accepted artists, so they did that & i checked & unfortunately i didnt make the cut which is like. cool, fine, i wasn’t expecting much anyway, right? they had a ton of applicants so chances were slim, etc etc

not gonna fuckin lie to myself tho ok i rly did want to be a part of the project & i was pretty proud of the things i had worked on in preparation for the application & yea i did think i had a p decent chance li ke i obvs didn’t know who i was up against & it could’ve totally been a bunch of amazing artists who blew me out of the water but i felt like my stuff was at least. u know. nice to look at 

anyway i didnt get in & i was like rip & the organizers were like “we’re gonna send out emails to everyone including those who weren’t accepted” & i was like ok cool at least this way i’ll know for sure they got my entry

except. i never got an email?? they were like “we’ll send them out today/tomorrow” & it’s been almost a week now & i haven’t gotten anything so now instead of moving on like i’m supposed to be doing i keep thinking about what if my entry didn’t go through, does this mean i actually did have a chance but some random error prevented it from happening? they had so many entries & there was so little time between the deadline for submissions & the announcement of the artist list, did they really look at all the entries, or did they stop before they got to mine? did i fuck this up by waiting too close to the deadline, ensuring that my work never even got considered? but if i had submitted early i wouldn’t have had any examples of my current work to show, and my art has definitely changed since the last time i posted smth i was actually proud of so it wouldn’t have been good to submit at that point anyway

im just fucking overthinking everything & it’s so. ugh. and im literally /literally/ the worst person for doing this, but i did look at some of the accepted artists & i did compare my work to theirs & i absolutely did feel like mine could have easily been accepted over theirs but then again i have the creator’s point of view i dont know what my art actually looks like, maybe it looks like shit maybe it looks dumb as hell with weird proportions & unintentional warping that just makes it so goddamn ugly no one wants to look at it & that’s why all the things im proud of never get reblogged, who knows!! 

i don’t know what the organizers’ criteria for judgement was & i dont know what precisely they were looking for all i know is i didn’t get into the thing i rly wanted to get into & im upset abt it despite my best efforts not to be & i wish i could just move on and try again next time but that was literally the only time i’ve ever seen a call for applications to a zine, i have no idea how tf people actually find these things because the only way i ever find out about them is when they’re done and being advertised to sell so even though i know it’s not the case this felt like a special one-time opportunity which is making the rejection feel even worse & im just overall rly mad abt this bc i went into this so casually & somehow came out so unhappy

i just wish i could forget about it & get on with more important things in my life like hmm maybe the one month i have left to catch up in my classes & not fail them both like uhhh this shitty 90 second animation for this shitty piece of shit class that someone somehow tricked whoever’s in charge into labeling an “animation class” for which neither of those words apply as there is teaching of neither animation nor any other fucking thing in the entire universe going on during what i like to call the Three Hell Hours, each referred to respectively as “i woke up this early and walked this far and climbed this many stairs for This”, “holy shit it’s only 9 am how”, and “just 55 more minutes until i can get the fuck out of this time trap and spend the rest of the day trying to figure out if this moment right now even happened or if it was all a terrible fever dream that i had while really spending the morning actually asleep”

this got away from me, it’s well past midnight, im tired and not happy ok, today was a bad day for no reason, just generally a shit day, i gave a presentation on my half-assed painting project today which was about aromanticism & ended up telling my class im aro which didn’t seem like a big deal at the time & probably isn’t in the long run but for some reason i’m regretting it big time now like i feel like i shouldn’t have been so casual like that with a bunch of strangers & i was trying to explain the project but people were confused bc i forgot that most people don’t even distinguish between romantic/sexual orientation & people know basically nothing abt aromanticism bc nobody ever talks about it except sometimes on the internet and hhhhhh it went fine and all but i feel retroactively uncomfortable at having been so open about myself in front of a bunch of people who Don’t Get It man what a wakeup call after having been online w/ people who do get it for so long

my only consolation is that i have a friend in that class who Gets It & she’s like. my one support in that class, she said i handled it well so that was reassuring at least. but god. i can’t wait for the semester to be over so i never have to go back & face those people again lolllool godddddddd

anyway that’s all the venting i want to do for now lmfao sorry about this i just. hohjhj