#narnia ranting on main what else is new

[westernwoods]

slamming my fist on the table and yelling until y'all get it that when lewis says “battles are ugly when women fight” it does not mean that women aren't brave enough or smart enough or skilled enough to fight. lucy and susan are written throughout the series as being armed, skilled, and joining their people in battle. father christmas gives them weapons. they don't have to sneak around and steal weapons to defy some patriarchal mandate. the point is, when gentleness and valiance and beauty are needed to fight, required by circumstance to give themselves to the bloody mess of war, there is no chivalry or code of honor any more. war is a human inevitably, but when it devolves to the point of the enemy snatching the crown jewel of creation from its throne and putting her on the battlefield to fight, it is not longer a matter of honor or bravery but destructive, vile, gratuitous violence and ruin. in christian mythos, women do fight. women saints are armed, skilled, and standing side by side with their male companions in battle. mary steps on the neck of satan and crushes him. it highlights how evil the enemy is, because a woman in her beauty and glory must fight him. the flower grows teeth and thorns and claws, and she knows how to use them. it's not sexist to say that battles are ugly when women fight — when battles require even the most precious gem of peace, the highest glory and honor of all creation, to get blood on her hands, creation is at the mercy of something terrible and ugly. it does not mean that she doesn't know how to fight. it means she is symbolic of everything that is best and most wonderful and most cherished being called upon because the enemy is so great.

[meabh-mcinness]

Hello there! I just wanted to say that ive been a fan of yours for a bit and I really really love your work. I hope you keep up the amazing feels and are doing good in general!

I would like to ask for iruma with mom!reader.

WITH RECENT EVENTS! in the manga our boy needs some proper comfort.

I want the reader to hold iruma and tell him that everyone started caring about him because of him, I wanna see along the lies of the reader telling him " they will see the human in you and they will love you for it just like you love them as the demons they are"

( i also want mama reader just going full on quiet rage on kalegos brother to the point her aura consumes the ball room and he feels like his chest to going to cave in)

IRUMA IS SAD BUT ALL HIS ADOPTIVE PARENTS ARE WILLING TO HELP!

But thank you for taking the time to reade this i hope that this isn't too hard for you to do and please keep being awesome!

Thank you very much! I've been doing good, though I'm tired what with starting a new job and all, and I hope you are as well!

Sorry this took so long to get out, but it's finally here! Hopefully you're OK with it, since I did take a little bit of liberties with it.

Main Masterlist

Boss B*tch

When Narnia tries to put Iruma in his place, it ends up being him who is shot down instead. By you, Iruma's parent, who is none too pleased that an overconfident mutt hurt their baby's feelings. Luckily, if there is one thing humans are good at, it's mimicking that they are much more fearsome predators than they actually are.

TW! The only thing I can think of is the reader does draw a bit of blood and grabs Narnia's hair and threatens him. I don't think there's anything else?

One minute.

You had looked away for one minute, distracted by Alice and Razzbery fighting over Amaryllis, and when you looked back your son was no longer by your side. A frown flitted over your face as you swept your eyes over the ballroom. With so many colourful outfits, it was rather easy to find the blue-haired boy in his near black suit. He was still back where you had been originally, standing by Fenrir, or Fen-chan as he insisted on being called.

Iruma appeared to be sparkling as he chattered on about something. A fond smile appeared on your face as you excused yourself from the group to wander back over to him. Logically, you knew that you had to let him go off on his own, and yet you were incredibly anxious to leave him be when surrounded by so many high-ranking demons. And evidently, as you watched Iruma's face scrunch into confusion before falling into fear as Fenrir said something in return, you had been right to feel so.

Your eyes narrowed, your smile falling as Fenrir started to crowd in Iruma's space. You were close enough now that you could hear what it was that Fenrir was saying. He seemed to be going on a rant about the possibility of humans invading the Netherworld and, from the way he phrased it, made it obvious to you that he was more than aware of their existence and seemed to have a personal vendetta against them.  And more than likely he knew about you and Iruma being humans. As much as you had liked his quips, it was obvious.

Fenrir was a danger.

And you wouldn't allow danger near your son. Not after coming so close to losing him in the heartbreaker exam. Your nerves, which had been slowly loosening since then, tightened once more and your teeth were bared before you had even thought about it. Eyes narrowed, you watched as Amaryllis pounced on Iruma from behind out of nowhere, and vaguely wondered how she had got there first, before pushing the thought away. It was obvious from the way her body was tensed, one hand raised, that she was about to attack Fenrir too, but you had got there first.

Before she could strike out, you were there, palm hitting his face, nails digging into his skin as your hand flew out. You watched as he fell to the ground, his eyes widened in shock at the force and his blood splattering out against the ground next to him. You were suddenly very happy that you had grown your nails out to try and blend in with the demons here, as he tentatively raised one of his hands to the shallow claw marks on his cheek, blood still rising to the surface.

It was rather obvious from his dropped mouth and empty eyes that he was in a state of shock, as if he really couldn't comprehend that someone, much less you, had actually struck him. From the corner of your eyes, you could also see everyone else staring at the two of you as well. Amaryllis seemed to be stuck somewhere between surprise and pride, and Iruma had forgone all composure as he stared with eyes wide and mouth open, and all the varying demons around seemed to be imitating him.

To be fair, you could kind of understand why. This was a ball where they were supposed to be celebrating the future, and now there appeared to be two individuals fighting.  One of which was a self-proclaimed third most important member of the Border Patrol, a force that most did their best not to make an enemy of. And you had sent one sprawling to the floor with one hit.

There would most likely be consequences, you knew, as more of your anger seeped out of you. Amaryllis could have got away with it easily, being a member of the 13 Crowns. But you? You were just an unknown, unranked, being. Even if you are a child of one of the three greats, you, yourself, held no real power. And you had picked a fight with a demon who was leaps and bounds more powerful than you.

A fight you were determined to win through sheer willpower alone if necessary. Losing was not an option when Iruma was involved as collateral.

"You talk of beings that don't belong so well, and yet don't seem to recognize that the only one here who is out of place is you. You are nothing more than an overconfident mutt at my feet who needs to be retaught manners," He stared up at you, eyes wide at the seeping aura of anger and danger that poured out of your every cell.

Suddenly a giant black wolf materialized above him, with three eyes, and multiple tails raised in anger. All snarling fangs and posture, and while you felt fear tear through your body, you stared up at it as if you were unimpressed, before pulling your lips back and giving a loud snarl of your own at it. You watched it pause for a second, ears flickering in its hesitancy at this tiny being in front of it, before the canine abruptly vanished again. Leaving behind Fenrir, still at your feet.

He appeared to be out of his shock and was kneeling now, likely trying to stand up while you were distracted. Well, you couldn't have that just yet. You quickly grabbed a fistful of his hair and leaned down while dragging him up so your faces were inches apart. A hiss left his mouth at the abrupt action, but he quickly shuts his mouth again at the look on your face.

His mind was racing as he tried to comprehend what exactly was happening. He knew you were a human, and humans were supposed to be weak little creatures. Easy prey that even an infant could catch, so logically you were supposed to be as well. And yet here you stood with all power reeking off of you like you were the Demon King himself. In the face of your fury, he felt a lot like some pup before the raging alpha of an enemy pack.

He could practically see it, instead of your human form, a large wolf with long flowing fur the colour of your hair, that would put his Cerberia to shame. Felt the large clawed paw on his chest with the way he struggled to breathe under the pressure, could hear the low furious growl that rumbled out of your chest, past the large fangs poised to rip him to shreds.

He felt more like he was looking at a deity of wrath than a human. He was as awed at your presence as he was fearful, as he stared up at you. 

"If I ever find you talking such drivel to my child again, I will skin you alive before ripping out your eyes, shoving them down your throat, so you can see my claws rip your carcass open while wearing your skin as a dress. Do you understand me?" you growled out at him. He nodded as best he could with your hand still clutching his hair. You leaned in more till you were right next to his ear, and whispered, "I know you know what I am, but you will cease and desist any attempts against me and mine before I show why our two worlds were really separated. After all, it was never for the benefit of human lives that demons vanished off to someplace new," before you abruptly let him go while standing up straight. He collapsed slightly, almost falling to the floor again before he caught himself with his knees. His head stayed bowed, showing his back, suitably cowed before you.

"Good boy, now go on, apologize."

Fenrir staggered to his feet before you, head still bowed. "Please forgive my rudeness, my lady. It will never happen again." He slowly turned towards where Iruma was standing, still flabbergasted at your display, before straightening up when he noticed the demon's gaze on him.  Fenrir bowed again at Iruma, "And to you too, milord. I got too carried away, and it was wrong of me. I am sorry for scaring you."

Iruma started to move his hands slightly, to wave away the apology, but one quick shake of your head had him lowering them again. "It's - It's alright..." Iruma said, still startled and somewhat lost at what was going on. 

Fenrir raised up from his bow to Iruma, and turned back towards you, lowering his head towards you once again, "If you'll excuse me, my lady, I think I'll go wash my face." He stayed still until you nodded your head, before he turned away and walked off, presumably towards where the washrooms were. Your eyes stayed narrowed on his form until he disappeared from your view by the surrounding crowd. And really, when had it gotten that big? 

Shaking your head mentally, you did your best to ignore the crowd as you turned your attention to Iruma. He still looked as shocked as before as you made your way over to him. He straightened once more, though he fidgeted a little bit under the intensity of your look. Likely misreading your determination as anger at him. 

Squishing his cheeks in between your hands as you finally made your way to him, you turned his head this way and that, before looking him up and down. Satisfied with your inspection but not still high on nerves, you asked him if he was OK. He gave the best nod he could with his head still stuck in your hands, and you quickly let him go. Seeing a look in his eyes though kept you from fully believing him. 

Had you scared him? You generally presented a very calm parental relationship with him. Trying your hardest to never give in to a temper and always think things through calmly when dealing with anything with or near him. You would hate to find out that the one time you let anger consume you had changed his perception of you. 

Hearing two shouts of Iruma’s name, you turned towards where two individuals were forcing their way through the dispersing crowd, dragging you out of your thoughts. Now that the show was clearly over, the other occupants were going back to their original groupings, still chattering about what had happened but no longer as interested in watching you. 

Focusing back in, you found the two individuals were Amerie and Alice. Both talked over the other as they tried to find out what happened and if everyone was OK. Waving off their concerns, you simply commented that a dog had to be retrained and that it had been handled before grinning at their flabbergasted looks. 

Glancing over towards Iruma you noticed he seemed to slowly withdraw into himself. His eyes clouded over as whatever he was thinking slowly consumed his mind. Thinking quickly, you gestured over to where a few tables were and suggested that you took a quick break after all the excitement. Amerie and Alice had clearly come to the same conclusion as you, as they quickly nodded and surrounded Iruma as if trying to hide him from view as you led the small group over. Amaryllis declined the offer, saying she still had some socializing of her own to do, before veering off away from. Judging from her determined walk, she was likely on her way to visit the misbehaving dog from earlier.

With Iruma and you settled at a table hidden to the sidelines, you couldn't help the fond smile that crosses your face as both Amerie and Alice fawned over Iruma. Both clearly expressed worry over how he felt about what had just happened, but were not certain about what to do to make it better. When Iruma shooed them away to have fun and that he simply wanted to have a moment alone, your smile dipped into a frown. Due to the way he was raised, Iruma always jumped at the chance to have others around him. Constantly craving their affection and company. To push others away after something like that clearly said something was wrong. And you had a good feeling what it was.

You were going to kill Fenrir the next chance you got.

You gave the two demons across from you a nod and put a hand on Iruma's shoulder gently. "Don't worry, I have him. Go have fun and make connections. We'll join in again later."

They both hesitated, clearly still uncertain about leaving him, before nodding in acquisition. With a few last words, they left to socialize with the others, and you watched them go before turning back to Iruma.

"How about we get out of here briefly," you suggested with a wink at him.

His eyes widened at your words, staring at you with a dropped jaw, "But we promised Opera-"

"We promised not to leave the Deviculum, and we're not." You nodded to the large curtains strewn along the walls. "I noticed them earlier, but didn't think we would need them. Every one of the curtains leads to a balcony. We'll be out of prying eyes, and you get a space to breathe, while still technically staying within bounds."

He blinked owlishly at you before tilting his head in thought. It was quite obvious there were two sides warring in him, but yours must have won out when he nodded and moved to get up. He followed obediently behind you as you led him to the closest window. Giving a quick look around to make sure no one was looking your way, you lifted the curtain a bit and gestured to him to go through. Technically speaking, you didn't actually know if you were allowed out here.

Iruma didn't need to know that. 

Moving to go behind the curtain yourself, you gave one more cursory glance before following him outside. The second you were outside, you couldn't help but take a deep breath of the cool air. You hadn't even realized how stuffy the room was until you made it out into an open area and were enjoying the light breeze blowing through. Opening the eyes you hadn't even realized you had closed, you made your way to where Iruma was leaning against the railing, still looking as downcast as before.

"Will you tell me what's on your mind?"

"I'm just thinking. About what Fenrir-san said. That humans didn't belong here. It made me wonder if I don't belong and-"

At Iruma's clearly lost face, as he suddenly stopped talking, you amended what you thought earlier. You weren't going to kill Fenrir. You were going to absolutely slaughter him.

"Iruma, honey, you, if anyone, belong here the most." He gave you a look, which you returned, before breaking into a small smile. "I'm being serious here. Yes, we're humans, but so what? We might be an invasive species by many people's standards, and it's true they can do a lot of harm."

You gave him an encouraging smile before continuing, "Sometimes those invasive species can do a lot of good too. You've already taken Babyls by storm. Done things that others thought were impossible, and they were good things. You brought together the misfit class, took back the Royal One classroom, and created things no one else has seen here. It was all you that did that." Seeing him open his mouth, likely in protest, you ploughed right on. "And before you argue, yes, I know you had help. But do you think Rome was built by a single person? Or that it was the Emperor alone who ruled Japan? They all had help, and they did great things with that help, as you will do too." You paused for a moment to take a breath before you went on a rant. "Look, what I'm getting at is that both here, and in the human world, there will always be people who hate you for things out of your control. You know what we do to those people, though?"

He shook his head, confusion clearly written on his face. You gave him a sharp tooth grin in response to his look, "We steam roll right over them and prove them wrong. Fenrir said humans don't belong. Prove him wrong by not just surviving, but thriving here. Keep working your way through those ranks until you feel good enough to look him in his face, smile and say 'You're wrong, I do belong here' before walking away from him. Some call it spite, I call it a purpose. Either way, it works." You carefully grabbed his shoulders and looked him in the eyes through his mask, "I know it's harder to do than say, but always remember that I along with Sullivan, Opera and all the others will always be here for you. Whenever you stumble or fall, we will pick you back up till you can walk on your own again. OK?"

He gave you a bright but watery smile and nodded.

"OK. Now let's get back in there and show them just how much we belong here." Iruma nodded again before rushing to give you a tight hug, burrowing his face into your chest. You wrapped your arms around him and squeezed tightly before letting him go and gently ushering him towards the door again.

"Alright, let's do this."

Unbeknown to you, there was a new faction formed that day. Demons naturally flocked to those that held power, and someone who could take down another demon so effortlessly and without magic meant they were extremely powerful.

‘If Sullivan was still insistent on not taking the throne, then perhaps his child could take it in his place,’ they thought.

You had quite a few words for them when you found out. Especially when you found out it was Fenrir who was spearheading it. 

[christ-with-a-why]

Not to be all nostalgic on main, but the narnia films went fucking hard. 

The scene where Aslan gets sacrificed at the stone table??? Or where Caspian and Peter almost bring back the white witch????  Like the ability to create scenes with such dark tones while not making them really gritty or putting in jump scares to induce terror and still have them fill you with horror is like...phenomenal. I mean I love game of thrones and the witcher, but they could never. 

like i get it that some stuff is adult oriented and therefore won’t shirk from showing stuff they can’t sell to kids, but I have more respect for media that says, “you know what we can’t show excessive gore or nudity to kids, but we still want to include them on darker themes, so we’ll just work around that.” because you know what? it’s harder, but kids aren’t fucking stupid. they know bad shit happens. 

Also, tbh, a lot of grimdark shows have the message that bad shit happens all the time and no matter what you do, there’s nothing you can do that will make a meaningful enough impact, and it’s exhausting. But narnia? No. The white witch has her little speech about how Aslan sacrificing himself instead of Edmund is all for naught, and you know what??? She’s proven fucking wrong. 

The Pevensies get thrown into a whole new world that they know nothing about, and while it basically starts that they stay because they want to save Edmund, it evolves to them understanding that there are things that they can do that no one else can. 

And that’s huge to them!!! Back in England they can’t do fuck all!!!! They’re stuck in a stranger’s house away from their parents and home, and they aren’t allowed to do anything!!! Meanwhile, they step into Narnia and all the sudden people expect them to save everyone, despite the fact that literally nothing about them has changed- they’re still children, and they don’t know jack shit about this world or how to lead an army, but they get the chance to anyway!!! Even after Aslan dies they stay to fight! And it’s not some easy victory for them either- like i’m sorry, but the trope where the good guys are heavily outnumbered but are resigned to fight to the very last is a great one, and that is the hill I will die on.

And let’s talk about character development!!! Congratulations, the lion, the witch and the wardrobe proves that you can give a character a believable redemption arc in the span of ONE movie. Outstanding. Edmund takes one look at Jadis, sees her heading towards his brother- that he has struggled so hard to get along with- wearing Aslan’s mane as a trophy, and homeboy does not hesitate for a second to try and stop her. It’s not Peter, the golden boy, the future high king of narnia that plays any real part in defeating the white witch. Aslan makes the final killing blow, but it’s Edmund, the betrayer, that puts an end to her reign. 

There’s so much that can be said for all of them, but I’m not going to get into that rn lol. This is already so much longer than I intended.

Anyway, the point is that I want more high fantasy media that indulges in the idea that we can create a better world through our actions and convictions, regardless of how hard we stumble on the way, while also showcasing good and useful cgi, that I can watch in the presence of others without it being awkward, thanks for coming to my ted talk rant over

[bpellerin]

Kids who enjoy reading? Imagine that...

Great little rant in the Boston Globe magazine about summer reading programs libraries have.

"In June, my 6-year-old son got very excited about our town’s summer reading program, in which kids who read for a certain number of hours vote for a movie that gets screened at the library. For several days, he reminded me we had to track the time we spent reading and check boxes off his chart so he could participate. But then he spent time with a California friend whose library’s summer reading program offers passes to Disneyland. A free movie suddenly seemed lame by comparison. He lost interest in the program and, for a while, in books, too.

Across the Commonwealth, public libraries encouraged schoolchildren to read this summer by offering prizes, often related to the big screen or sports, for those who met the minimum number of hours or books. In Arlington, we had the free movie. In Boston, if you read three books, you were entered into a raffle for Red Sox tickets. Maynard’s raffle was for a new bicycle.

There’s nothing wrong with movies, or sports, or amusement parks — or with programs aimed at spurring children to read. What’s wrong is the underlying message that books are a chore and that kids who endure them deserve payback.

Why, I wonder, are civic programs framed around this assumption? Is it because most kids don’t like books? Because adults don’t like them, either? Or because parents and educators and even doctors talk so much about The Importance of Reading that we have forgotten it once was (and still could be) a widely enjoyed activity?

Couldn’t agree more. But also: What else did you expect? The entire North American educational culture has been slowly but surely moving in the direction of making everything related to learning a chore for many long years now, with the result that kids grow up not valuing playing with their imaginations because that won’t be on the test. It’s been so long now that many of those young kids’ parents and teachers were raised that way. Kids are surrounded by people who think learning and reading is a hassle to get over with so we can get back to sucking screen.

Children start pre-school programs earlier and earlier; it’s not uncommon for two- or three-year-olds to begin their pre-K education in school-like settings where parents very much expect they will learn skills that will give them a leg up when the time comes to start junior kindergarten. Once there, little kids are swallowed up by an educational machine that makes them sit in rows and pay attention to what the teacher is saying. Oh sure, there’s play involved. But the playing is relentlessly didactic, because the adults involved worry about educational achievements above just about everything else.

I’m all for educational achievements. But they don’t come from programs designed to measure and track children on flowcharts designed by a committee of educationators. Real learning happens when children themselves want to learn, in settings where their natural curiosity hasn’t been dulled by overly didactic programs.

In plain English: If you stick your toddlers and young children in a classroom and make them drill (with a song! and a dance! or a screen!) until they can regurgitate something measurable, you will kill their natural curiosity and make them think that everything you want them to do is a chore.

I have three daughters whom I’ve been homeschooling since birth. They are now 10, “almost 9” and 7. If they went to school they’d be entering grades 6, 4 and 2. But if you heard them speak or read out loud, you’d think the eldest was half-way through high school already. Both parents are writers, and we both put a lot of emphasis on reading, writing, and oral expression. This is not to boast (well, OK, but not much), but to illustrate my point.

My kids don’t have to sit around learning things for much longer than 60 or 90 minutes a day, which we tend to break up in chunks of 20-30 minutes, in between which they are allowed to stretch or play or read. They don’t have goals to meet, as far as their educational achievement goes. I do, but they don’t know what the goals are. They just keep learning stuff until I send them off. They’ve never had to take a formal test in their lives, and I believe it’s one of the main reasons why they are still excited to learn things, especially if it involves story-telling. (Math and piano practice, not so much.)

When they are not made to sit down and listen (i.e. the bulk of their average day), they are left to play by themselves. We don’t tell them what to do, we let them figure out their own games. They also read a lot. For fun, I mean. They have books we assign to them (we loosely follow a classical education curriculum and their assigned reading books tend to be classics of literature), but they are free to pick anything they like for their free reading. They have library cards and they use them like little fiends.

Our local library branch has one of those summer reading clubs where the kids earn stickers and small toys every time they finish a book – and then they get entered into a draw for a free book. I never pressured my kids to join it, but they’re all enrolled. And they love nothing better than to rush there to tell Kelly, the friendly and incredibly patient custodian of the kids’ section, about the books they’ve read.

They don’t do it to get the toys and stickers, although they enjoy those. Nobody would read three novels just to get stickers. If baseball tickets and Disney passes aren’t enough to entice non-reading kids to get lost in a book for fun, stickers certainly won’t do it. But my kids really do enjoy the reading, precisely because to them it’s not a chore.

One important point: with very rare exceptions we do not insist that they finish a book that doesn’t interest them. Instead we ask them to explain why they don’t like it. The explanation does not have to convince us but it must be coherent and grammatically correct. Some books are terribly dull, and often it’s a matter of taste whether we like a style or not. Sometimes a person isn’t ready for a particular title, for no obvious reason, and they’ll like it a lot a year later. Heck, it took me three tries and a dozen years finally to enjoy Les Misérables, who am I to push Little Women on kids who aren’t, at the moment, digging it?

Fortunately, for parents of children who are not so keen on reading, there is a remedy, and it involves getting your kids immersed in stories. Here’s how you do it: If they are young (it helps a lot to start this when they’re babies), read stories out loud to them. Not just bedtime stories either. Real stories that involve character development, heroes slaying beasts and people succeeding despite long odds. When our kids were little we read all the Dr. Seuss books to them, over and over again. We eventually graduated to the Narnia Chronicles, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Swallows and Amazons, that sort of thing. It didn’t matter that the kids were too little to understand the story. The point was for them to get used to hearing stories. To fill their little heads with sounds, poetry, rhythm, and images. We didn’t shy away from stories that featured bad people and tragedies. Real life is full of those and little ones need to know this, provided the stories make moral sense and preferably end well, because nightmares are no fun.

Nowadays we still read out loud to them. We also let them listen to audiobooks until their ears fall off. They now insist on doing some of the reading we do themselves, which is something we encourage because it lets them practice speaking properly and also because it gives us a chance to spot problematic words and correct their pronunciation where needed. We let them watch movies (not educational TV programs; those are banned around here), and every now and then we’ll pick up a screenplay and act it out together. Macbeth is a favorite; you should see the delight they take in impersonating those witches.

The result of all this is that my kids love being immersed in stories. When they play freely they often re-enact movies they’ve watched, and they have their own parallel Harry Potter universe. Their imaginations are engaged and they eagerly seek out new stories.

It’s never too late to engage your children in good storytelling. But you have to do it with them. Kids have a very annoying habit of ignoring what we say and paying attention to what we do. If they never see us excited about a story, they’ll just think we’re trying to get rid of them when we send them to read. Watch movies together and discuss them – play with alternate endings, ask them how they’d want certain characters to behave instead, and see where their imagination takes them. Don’t expect too much at first. Treat imagination like a muscle; if your kids have already spent a few years in a school system that privileges measurable achievements over free play, they’ll need some practice. But the payoff is amazingly worthwhile.

Plus you’ll save loads of money on Disney passes.

[csolarstorm]

Thoughts on The Owl House, S1

It’s really good.  So I finally got around to watching the second half right in time for the Season 2 premiere next week.  The second half has all the fun episodes with the rising action and the climax - Grom, the dance, Grudgby, and of course Agony of a Witch and the season finale.  Agony of a Witch was a little better than the finale in my opinion - it was just so effectively heartbreaking, and despite knowing exactly how the fight had to play out when it started, it was no less emotional for it - in fact it made it more suspenseful wondering exactly how and when they’d lose, especially when the animation budget was firing on all cylinders.

Luz’ rant about the Golden Snitch got a laugh out of me.  Clearly the show takes a lot of inspiration from other stories about magic, monsters and witches, from ancient myths to modern fiction.  For instance...

(Spoilers ahead.  Plus, this post is pretty long.)

...the plot of Wicked.  I mean, I’ve read people comparing The Owl House to Harry Potter, but there’s literally two witches who grew up wanting to rise up in status and serve the wizard/emperor, one who was stigmatized for a curse that altered their appearance and thus became a rebel against the control of the wizard/emperor, with the other somewhat inadvertently turning against her former friend in order to achieve her dream of working for the wizard/emperor.  Lilith doesn’t exactly embody Galinda’s aesthetic, and Eda’s curse is more interesting than just green skin, but a lot of the backstory is there.  And...I don’t mind that at all.  The show is pulling it off wonderfully.

(Okay, Lilith can make bubbles like Galinda in order to capture others, but she doesn’t seem to ride in them.)

The parallels with Wicked are what makes me think Emperor Belos is probably human, or at least used to be one before he achieved immortality through whatever means - maybe eating Palismans.  The Wizard of Oz is a conman and a snake oil salesman who accidentally landed in Oz, and tricked the actual witches of Oz into following him by showing them his inventions from Earth.  The emperor’s staff looks very mechanical, and his magic is completely different from any other character’s.  He also seems to want to talk to Luz about more than just opening the door to Earth.  There’s a weird attachment there that could be explained by Belos being the last human to come to the Boilng Isles before Luz, effectively connecting their characters.  Of course, the parallels with Wicked and the Wizard of Oz could be exactly why the writers would try to subvert these expectations and make Belos something else.  If he’s not a human, maybe he’s a demon.  He just doesn’t seem like a witch.

But, just to complete the parallels, Luz is Dorothy, and as of the end of the first season, she’s officially trapped in the other world.  Like Dorothy, she’ll probably be looking for a way home.

Anyway.

There’s also the Narnia allusions - probably more than I can identify right off the bat, but of course there’s the title of the first episode, and also petrification as punishment in the last episode comes to mind.

Oh -  I can’t wait for Luz to use more complicated transmutation circles.  Gotta love magic circles.

As some final notes - the last episode was really fun, and it was awesome to see Luz defy the emperor a lot more effectively, but somehow I feel like a step was missing in Lilith’s turn to Luz’s side.  And I don’t know what it is.  It seems complete - Lilith consistently cares about her sister, so when Belos refuses to cure her, she turns on him.  I don’t know, maybe it would help if there was a longer scene where we see her inner conflict from her point of view.  Lilith antagonizes Luz in such a personal way when she tells her to go back to her own world, so for them to work together in the very next episode, even when it seems perfectly justified why it happens - it just seems a little off somehow.

The same thing goes for Amity.  At the beginning of her arc, Lilith was training her, and it seemed like Amity would have a more central role in the main plot between Lilith and Eda.  Don’t get me wrong - Amity’s arc is charming as heck.  If I wasn’t spoiled by Tumblr and YouTube compilations carefully spelling out her transformation from aloof rival to nervous lovestruck ally, I probably would have appreciated Amity’s role as Luz’ classmate a lot more.  It was just weird to see her sit out the season finale, the two biggest episodes of the season because of a broken leg.  Can’t they heal that with magic?  Either way, Lilith has switched sides and instead we’re meeting Amity’s parents in Season 2, so she’s about to factor into the plot in an entirely new way, so that’s cool.

Looking forward to the season premiere next week!

[bpellerin]

Kids who enjoy reading? Imagine that…

Great little rant in the Boston Globe magazine about summer reading programs libraries have.

"In June, my 6-year-old son got very excited about our town’s summer reading program, in which kids who read for a certain number of hours vote for a movie that gets screened at the library. For several days, he reminded me we had to track the time we spent reading and check boxes off his chart so he could participate. But then he spent time with a California friend whose library’s summer reading program offers passes to Disneyland. A free movie suddenly seemed lame by comparison. He lost interest in the program and, for a while, in books, too.

Across the Commonwealth, public libraries encouraged schoolchildren to read this summer by offering prizes, often related to the big screen or sports, for those who met the minimum number of hours or books. In Arlington, we had the free movie. In Boston, if you read three books, you were entered into a raffle for Red Sox tickets. Maynard’s raffle was for a new bicycle.

There’s nothing wrong with movies, or sports, or amusement parks — or with programs aimed at spurring children to read. What’s wrong is the underlying message that books are a chore and that kids who endure them deserve payback.

Why, I wonder, are civic programs framed around this assumption? Is it because most kids don’t like books? Because adults don’t like them, either? Or because parents and educators and even doctors talk so much about The Importance of Reading that we have forgotten it once was (and still could be) a widely enjoyed activity?

Couldn’t agree more. But also: What else did you expect? The entire North American educational culture has been slowly but surely moving in the direction of making everything related to learning a chore for many long years now, with the result that kids grow up not valuing playing with their imaginations because that won’t be on the test. It’s been so long now that many of those young kids’ parents and teachers were raised that way. Kids are surrounded by people who think learning and reading is a hassle to get over with so we can get back to sucking screen.

Children start pre-school programs earlier and earlier; it’s not uncommon for two- or three-year-olds to begin their pre-K education in school-like settings where parents very much expect they will learn skills that will give them a leg up when the time comes to start junior kindergarten. Once there, little kids are swallowed up by an educational machine that makes them sit in rows and pay attention to what the teacher is saying. Oh sure, there’s play involved. But the playing is relentlessly didactic, because the adults involved worry about educational achievements above just about everything else.

I’m all for educational achievements. But they don’t come from programs designed to measure and track children on flowcharts designed by a committee of educationators. Real learning happens when children themselves want to learn, in settings where their natural curiosity hasn’t been dulled by overly didactic programs.

In plain English: If you stick your toddlers and young children in a classroom and make them drill (with a song! and a dance! or a screen!) until they can regurgitate something measurable, you will kill their natural curiosity and make them think that everything you want them to do is a chore.

I have three daughters whom I’ve been homeschooling since birth. They are now 10, “almost 9” and 7. If they went to school they’d be entering grades 6, 4 and 2. But if you heard them speak or read out loud, you’d think the eldest was half-way through high school already. Both parents are writers, and we both put a lot of emphasis on reading, writing, and oral expression. This is not to boast (well, OK, but not much), but to illustrate my point.

My kids don’t have to sit around learning things for much longer than 60 or 90 minutes a day, which we tend to break up in chunks of 20-30 minutes, in between which they are allowed to stretch or play or read. They don’t have goals to meet, as far as their educational achievement goes. I do, but they don’t know what the goals are. They just keep learning stuff until I send them off. They’ve never had to take a formal test in their lives, and I believe it’s one of the main reasons why they are still excited to learn things, especially if it involves story-telling. (Math and piano practice, not so much.)

When they are not made to sit down and listen (i.e. the bulk of their average day), they are left to play by themselves. We don’t tell them what to do, we let them figure out their own games. They also read a lot. For fun, I mean. They have books we assign to them (we loosely follow a classical education curriculum and their assigned reading books tend to be classics of literature), but they are free to pick anything they like for their free reading. They have library cards and they use them like little fiends.

Our local library branch has one of those summer reading clubs where the kids earn stickers and small toys every time they finish a book – and then they get entered into a draw for a free book. I never pressured my kids to join it, but they’re all enrolled. And they love nothing better than to rush there to tell Kelly, the friendly and incredibly patient custodian of the kids’ section, about the books they’ve read.

They don’t do it to get the toys and stickers, although they enjoy those. Nobody would read three novels just to get stickers. If baseball tickets and Disney passes aren’t enough to entice non-reading kids to get lost in a book for fun, stickers certainly won’t do it. But my kids really do enjoy the reading, precisely because to them it’s not a chore.

One important point: with very rare exceptions we do not insist that they finish a book that doesn’t interest them. Instead we ask them to explain why they don’t like it. The explanation does not have to convince us but it must be coherent and grammatically correct. Some books are terribly dull, and often it’s a matter of taste whether we like a style or not. Sometimes a person isn’t ready for a particular title, for no obvious reason, and they’ll like it a lot a year later. Heck, it took me three tries and a dozen years finally to enjoy Les Misérables, who am I to push Little Women on kids who aren’t, at the moment, digging it?

Fortunately, for parents of children who are not so keen on reading, there is a remedy, and it involves getting your kids immersed in stories. Here’s how you do it: If they are young (it helps a lot to start this when they’re babies), read stories out loud to them. Not just bedtime stories either. Real stories that involve character development, heroes slaying beasts and people succeeding despite long odds. When our kids were little we read all the Dr. Seuss books to them, over and over again. We eventually graduated to the Narnia Chronicles, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Swallows and Amazons, that sort of thing. It didn’t matter that the kids were too little to understand the story. The point was for them to get used to hearing stories. To fill their little heads with sounds, poetry, rhythm, and images. We didn’t shy away from stories that featured bad people and tragedies. Real life is full of those and little ones need to know this, provided the stories make moral sense and preferably end well, because nightmares are no fun.

Nowadays we still read out loud to them. We also let them listen to audiobooks until their ears fall off. They now insist on doing some of the reading we do themselves, which is something we encourage because it lets them practice speaking properly and also because it gives us a chance to spot problematic words and correct their pronunciation where needed. We let them watch movies (not educational TV programs; those are banned around here), and every now and then we’ll pick up a screenplay and act it out together. Macbeth is a favorite; you should see the delight they take in impersonating those witches.

The result of all this is that my kids love being immersed in stories. When they play freely they often re-enact movies they’ve watched, and they have their own parallel Harry Potter universe. Their imaginations are engaged and they eagerly seek out new stories.

It’s never too late to engage your children in good storytelling. But you have to do it with them. Kids have a very annoying habit of ignoring what we say and paying attention to what we do. If they never see us excited about a story, they’ll just think we’re trying to get rid of them when we send them to read. Watch movies together and discuss them – play with alternate endings, ask them how they’d want certain characters to behave instead, and see where their imagination takes them. Don’t expect too much at first. Treat imagination like a muscle; if your kids have already spent a few years in a school system that privileges measurable achievements over free play, they’ll need some practice. But the payoff is amazingly worthwhile.

Plus you’ll save loads of money on Disney passes.