#nancy (ehad)

[thelivingmemegod]

Wayward Children characters as the Major Arcana go

I don’t know shit about Tarot, this ask is a ploy to get to draw a tarot card series and therefore I referenced this video and this site

Long ass post ahead!

The Fool: Nancy

While it could be literally everyone by the nature of how Doors work, Nancy is the beginning. She’s the first POV character and who we initially learn everything through. Our darling fool who goes home first.

The High Priestess: Lundy

Intuition, trusting yourself and your inner voice to guide you. That’s how fair value operates right? It’s a trading of thoughts and ideas along with the object. The involved parties decide what the things they offer are worth and if those ideas match, they swap! It’s a gut feeling to be developed and sharpened into a skill, no?

The Emperor: Kade-

The boy has always been a leader of some kind. He was declared the Goblin Prince in-waiting. Given the situation, with the king dying as his feet, Kade was definitely supposed to become the king of the goblins. Probably barred by age. Then he was tossed out and became the heir to the school, the next headmaster. Then there’s EHAD where he leads half the damn investigation, and then BTSS, and then and then and then. Kade is always a leader, even when he’s not the one leading. The only time this really snaps is when Kade snaps during Come tumbling down.

The Hierophant: Antsy

Direct quote “speaking mentorship from someone who has more knowledge than they do.” But she’ll most likely be upside down, since she does seek that guidance in Vineta, it just goes horribly for her. She’s was a vulnerable child looking for safety and was lead to believe she’d found it, I’m so sorry Antsy.

The Lovers: Jack and Alexis

The Lovers is a contextual card. It can mean a relationship, but it can also mean obsession and passion. Jack is just as married to the windmill and the science as she will one day be to Alexis. She’s obsessed with her work, and by its nature, also obsessed with life and death. She is a monster molded so completely by the Moors. Alexis’ monster.

The Wheel of Fortune would be everyone by nature so I’ll skip it.

Justice: Regannnn hi girl!

Ironically, I think Regan would hate this. It’s all finding your true path, the inevitability of, all of that Destiny type stuff she doesn’t believe in. I do think her card would be right side up, though. Showing that inevitably can be positive and that maybe destiny isn’t as solid and predetermined as everyone, Reagan included, thinks it is.

The Hanged man: Sumi!

There is a delay, there is a reason for this delay. Does she know what that reason is? Nope, not at all. But she’ll accept it whole heartedly and wait. Unlike Regan just above her, she’ll let Destiny steer her back home. She knows she’s going back after all, why waist the present trying to uselessly run for the future? So she wholeheartedly enjoys her present while it’s here, she wants stories to tell Rini!

Death: Everyone.

The children who walk through those Doors are not the same ones that came out again. They are fundamentally changed. Perfection has come and kissed their cheek and then left them to flounder in the imperfection of their birth world. They may look a bit different, sound a bit different, hear or see different. But they all think differently, it’s one of the few commonalities all children of the doors share.

Patience: Christopher.

He waits. He is so impatiently patient. He won’t die unless it’s at the hands of his skeleton girl. He doesn’t give up going home, but he only gets one day of hope a year. The other 364 are just spent…waiting. Being present as he can be until he can finally go home. This I feel like, is part of why we actually read about him waiting during Mislaid in parts half known. It could’ve been skipped over entirely, but it wasn’t. We saw him waiting there. And he actively chose to wait more at the school instead of staying with Antsy and possibly finding his Door early. Christopher waits.

The Devil: Cora

Despite the Christian Devil imagery, the card is about temptation, distraction; it tells you not to waver from the path you’re on.

Cora literally takes off from her group to run for the sea of the Moors. The drowned gods know her name and the ache in her heart and they sing to her so sweetly that she had little choice but to fall to their temptation. To be taken by them was inevitable for her. The others had hooks the Drowned Gods could’ve dug into but they didn’t want them, plain as that. She’s distracted and she’s taken. I don’t think of the oil that stains her after as a punishment but something she must work through like she does.

The Tower: Jill. And it’s most definitely upside down.

It’s a card about chaos, a card about shaky foundations, a card about uncertainty. What is Jill if not a girl desperately pinning for security? To br reassured in her place and her value? She is the Master’s Daughter. Loved and cared for and given anything she could ever want in exchange for her obedience and her blood. She is the Master’s daughter. Given power and dominion and status above others by the simple fact that he chose her and she chose him. And oh what a precarious perch it is, near the top. Feared and hated by those below and tenuously, insecurely “loved” by the single person above.

The Star: Eleanor.

She is there to provide these children a place of safety, a place to freely believe and express their homes. She offers hope and inspiration and hopes to herself that it is enough. It is difficult, but hope is something with mud on its face and blood on its hands and it will get back up again. She is and will be there until she can’t be anymore, at which point, she will go home. A new star will be needed then, but then and now are very different times.

Judgement: …The Doors themselves.

Judgment is about being brought to your full life. The life you were meant for, your true calling for this lifetime.

What’s bringing all these children, current and former, past and present, to the lives they mostly feel they were meant for? The Doors and their magic. It’s also the judgement of The Doors that decides what child gets them and when, everyone is kind of at their mercy in a way.

Quick list of the skipped major arcana

The Magician: Self reliance/belief, the ability to overcome adversity

The Chariot: Determination, Drive, Victory

Strength: Courage, inner strength, assurance you can handle adversity.

The Hermit: Isolation, processing alone, finding answers within yourself (I have a suspicion this could work for Nadya but her book isn’t out yet at time of posting)

The Empress: Creativity, Growth, birthing a new idea

The Moon: Hidden thoughts, fears, or doubts

The Sun: Happiness, health, and success

The World: Completion, freedom, “the world is at your feet”

[waestlandbaby]

Favourites of Media: Every Heart A Doorway

"For us, places we went were home. We didn't care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn't have to pretend to be something we weren't. We just got to be. That made all the difference in the world."

[rollaroundincompliments]

[twigstarpikachutroll22]

Craving fan songs for the Wayward Children series.

[asterdeer]

saw a post about literary kindred spirits and thought i didn't have any until i read some random 80s YA book from new zealand and now i do. ariadne "harry" hamilton you are my bosom friend and when we reach the place where people's characters and god's characters meet on the same ground we will burn our shitty manuscripts in a magical fire as one

[kaetor]

this has been your daily psa to go read the wayward children books by senan mcguire

[companionsofusall]

Pride Month Art Prompt - Make an LGBTQ positivity drawing!

I cheated a lil on this prompt idea

[id: image is artwork of Nancy from Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. This is a glimpse of one of the first scenes we read her in. Nancy is a pale white girl, with white hair that contains strands of black. She’s wearing black jeans and black ankle boots, as well as a pomegranate-seed colored ribbon tying her hair in a loose ponytail. Her right hand is held above her eyes, squinting at something in the distance with her pale blue eyes. Behind her she wheels a bright pink suitcase with pink hearts printed on them. It horrendously mismatches her. Behind Nancy is the asexual pride flag - four stripes of black, grey, white, and purple. End id]

I figure a good dose of LGBTQ positivity was including a canon ace character in my artwork! So not specifically ABOUT positivity - but symbolic?

....I just wanted to draw Nancy ok.

[demisexualnathanvuornos]

Canon Aces 34/?: Nancy Whitman Every Heart a Doorway (2016)

[braincoins]

I just finished @seananmcguire‘s Every Heart A Doorway and then I immediately bought the next book in the series (Down Among The Sticks And Bones) and I’m two chapters into that now. 

I wish I’d had Nancy when I was a kid. I wish I’d had this series. Nancy’s asexual, Kade’s a trans man, I love Jack probably more than I should, and I wish I’d had an Eleanor. Because even though I didn’t go through a door, even though my mom loved (and loves) me dearly, she just couldn’t be around as much as she needed to and she could never quite “get” me (and still doesn’t sometimes). 

With all I’m going through right now, reading the words

“You're nobody's rainbow. You're nobody's princess. You're nobody's doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”

is incredibly comforting and affirming right now.

My only complaint about EHAD is that it’s TOO DAMN SHORT.  But then that’s what the rest of the series is for, I suppose.

[bertha-mason-discord-tag]

Every Heart A Doorway Response

I liked Every Heart a Doorway so much I wrote a song about it [UPDATE: now two??? wtf???], which is something I haven't done in like... a year. I love stories about genre fiction protagonists dealing with trauma in a realistic way, and I love the Gothic underworld aesthetic, so realistically there was no way I wasn't going to respond positively to this book. But it was McGuire's prose that sold the deal, for me: it's dense, gorgeous, and balances levity with poetry and horror in a way that mimics a traditional fairy tale, while staying modern and accessible.

One of my favorite parts about EHAD is the nuance with which McGuire handles the portal worlds, and the experiences children have inside them. They can be read as metaphors for trauma, queerness, neurodivergence, et cetera, but there isn't one "correct" reading. The experience of going through a portal, and the marginalized identities of the kids who encounter them, are thematically resonant but not directly analogous. This is a great choice: not only does this avoid the "fantastical racism" problem, but it allows us to examine where the portal worlds function as metaphors and where they break down as metaphors (a sort of "intersectional allegory"). This makes McGuire's treatment of themes like cultural difference, trauma, and queerness WAY more subtle than most texts'.

One example where this subtlety leads to an interesting reading is how the portal worlds relate trauma and identity. In many ways, the portal worlds are traumatizing; focusing on Nancy's in particular, her portal world leaves her with: an unhealthy relationship with food, an aversion to colorful clothing (because she's not "allowed" colors yet), and an uncomfortably dependent relationship with the Lord of the Dead. Nancy explicits rejects the idea that she has an eating disorder and that these apparent negatives are genuinely problematic. However, as is the case with Jack, Nancy's perspective on her experience isn't objective. There's a tension here. On the one hand, these portal worlds are emacipatory and empowering. On the other, they function a lot like an abusive relationship, or grooming, leaving the children warped and unable to survive in the "real" world.

EHAD refuses to resolve this tension, which I love. This refusal is especially powerful when exaimined in relationship to neurodivergence or queerness. For example, consider the anti-vaccine movement. Parents are afraid that vaccines might "make" their child austistic, so they avoid them. The usual response is to point out that vaccines don't actually cause austism. But, another interesting response I've seen is to play Devil's Advocate. Say vaccines do cause austism in some small percentage of people who are vaccinated as children. Then, the parent is deciding they'd rather risk their child dying from an easily preventible disease than risk their child becoming austistic. At some point, that position starts to look pretty ableist — would you really prefer a dead child to an austisic one? There's a similar point to made about queerness. I don't think that people have experiences that "turn them gay," or anything. But I've seen people make the point that, if some formative experience did somehow make me queer, so what? That's only a tragedy if you believe queer lives are somehow lesser than heteronormative ones.

EHAD's portals are really interesting when considered in this light. One could argue that, yes, these portals did affect the kids in ways that are usually considered negative. Yes, the portals did make them abnormal and unable to intergrate into society "properly". But that's only a tragedy because we live in a society, lol. The construction of certain behaviors as "healthy" or "unhealthy" is political act, one which has been used to justify some really awful things. That's not to say that the standard is completely subjective; I think Jill's whole murdering people thing is about as objectively unhealthy as anything can be. But, it does invite us to consider what sorts of lives and behaviors we think are unacceptable, and why. There's a tension (ugh, a dialetic...) between complete social anarchy and the whole "white supremacist patriachy" thing. It's complicated! EHAD explores the synthesis between different takes on the nature of self-identity, and that nuance makes for a dynamic, rewarding reading experience.