Typical argument goes as follows: it is bad and irresponsible for an author to create enslaved people who love their enslavement and love their masters because of all the real world parallels to real slavery. Similar arguments were actually made about American slavery and every other slavery before or since. In our world such rhetoric is always propaganda. But in Harry Potter it’s portrayed as genuine.
For a children’s book especially, it’s not a good look. As a children’s book, Harry Potter contains too many dark and difficult topics and without satisfying lessons or conclusions it’s tempting to say – don’t introduce slavery into your story. Don’t create willing slaves, for starters.
But the problem is in the lessons or conclusions part, not the introducing part. And even willing slaves can be explored in interesting ways and really done justice when in hands of a competent writer with good politics.
How so? Well, don’t create such creatures just because. Make them into a coherent metaphor for something. There are several possible options, starting from less fitting:
1. House elves are dogs. Or children.
You can frame dogs as voluntary slaves if you don’t know much about dogs. Unlike house elves, they are perfectly independent creatures that do not have an inborn desire to obey humans. They need to be trained and even then they can be very stubborn and do not appreciate or even tolerate abuse like house elves do. Dogs are more like children. You have the position of authority over them but that makes you responsible and it is your job to make them happy and occupied.
But if you are really committed, you can frame childhood as slavery too. Being a child or a pet is a vulnerable position to be in. Your labor is sometimes exploited and you don’t control your life much. You know how it is.
So, there are creatures who love their sometimes actually slavery-like situations because they love their "caretakers" and you cannot solve this problem by just separating the two groups. It would be doing everyone a disservice.
But in Harry Potter, Hermione decides to free elves purely on philosophical ground and in her zeal doesn’t consider the reality of their special psychology. Who would even make such a silly mistake?
2. House elves are house wives. And Hermione is a lesbian separatist.
This angle really comes into focus when we meet Winky in the fourth book. She is a female elf and a loyal supporter of her master Barty Crouch Snr. You can very easily read her as this conservative fearful simple-minded wife that just wants to keep peace and make her husband happy above all else*. The only thing that is above the “husband” is her “son", her perfect boy who can do no wrong – Barty Crouch Jnr, a death eater and the main villain for most of the book.
In the beginning of the book, Winky gets "divorced" against her will, by her “husband”, for a public transgression that made him look bad. It’s this situation that shocks Hermione to the core and makes her believe that all elves should be free. But then Winky ends up in the Hogwarts kitchens (where elves live among themselves like in a convent) and we see that she’s devastated, blames herself, becomes an addict and never fully recovers. Hermione never gets strong evidence in the opposite direction and eventually abandons her activism.
This does sound like a cautionary tale a conservative would write about marriage. How feminism is women’s main enemy and how we all are deeply unhappy without the authority of a husband. Again, actual arguments that people make about modern society TODAY.
Obviously, that’s not how the real world works. But even here separatism is a bad solution. Yes, there is a rare house elf that can handle freedom**. There are women (not quite so rare) who don’t want to engage in relations with men. But it would really be doing everyone a disservice to force apartheid between men and women. Most wives love their husbands. Even when they are abusive. Most women can stop loving a particular man, but not men in general. There’s no escape from the biological prison of heterosexuality.
Anyway, those are all bad metaphors that require a lot of stretching. House elves don't look like creatures that evolved to cooperate with humans like domesticated animals or humans themselves. They are too subservient. Such a thing wouldn't happen naturally. They seem to be created (or altered) artificially to accept humans unconditionally***.
3. House elves as perfectly aligned Artificial Intelligence.
House elves have stronger magic than wizards, they think differently from them but still are perfectly loyal and obedient to those they consider their masters.
This is the best metaphor, in my opinion. After all, science is similar to magic. They are both really powerful. And both can be used for better or worse. You don’t have to write sci-fi to talk about any futuristic concept. Those are just aesthetics, really****. And that’s a pretty cool question to ask – if people could create a house elf… would they? Not a far fetched idea at all.
So, when written well a house elf can be a perfectly good narrative device. Introduce them into your story as a metaphor for domestic servitude or AI, an enslaved god in a box. You can even mix those metaphors. Make your house elf a stand-in for a waifu simulator. Make them Joi from Blade Runner 2049. Make it real dark.
Tone it down for a YA audience, of course, but still, why not? There are real life implications here. You can even start with the SPEW plot as well. Show that brute force lesbian separatism or rewriting the code of a perfectly happy and aligned AI is stupid and, in the latter case especially, really dangerous. Don’t separate families on the basis of some abstract philosophical grievance you made up. Don’t kidnap people’s pets. Sure!
What’s next, though? What do you do with a subservient creature you cannot just free?
In the real world we have laws surrounding all of these issues, protecting all spouses, children and pets from abuse. And when sentient waifus become a thing we will have to intervene as well.
How come this point never crosses Hermione’s mind? How come she gives up on SPEW and never finds a third alternative?
A better written Hermione would say: “Okay, Hagrid, I concede that house elves should not be taken from their homes. Fine. But are we really also fine with families like Malfoy’s treating their elves like dirt? Elves do become distressed when it happens, we can all clearly see that. Harry was right to free Dobby, we all agree on that. But do we agree that it was Harry’s responsibility to do that? No authority had taken Dobby away from his masters even though Dobby actively wanted to be taken. No authority had permanently taken the right to own house elves from Malfoys. They can just buy a new one and abuse them as well! I know you don’t have child protective services either, so we should probably start with that but can we at least agree that it's a goal for the future? There’s a pile of clothes for elves who want freedom in the kitchens now. That’s a good thing, right?”
But such a conversation can never happen in Harry Potter, about any issue*****. Because that would imply a systemic change. It would imply that the Ministry of Magic, portrayed as useless and incompetent most of the time, has to do something. And we can’t have that.
Instead we have a toothless morality that we should just all be better as individuals. We should help victims when some injustice really stares us in the face. And we should treat our own elves better. Be nice to your wife. Be kind to your children. Don’t hit your dog. Don’t inflict pain on your waifu simulator. What happens behind the closed doors of your neighbors is really none of your business. Family is the cornerstone of society and the government should not meddle in its affairs.
This is what makes Harry Potter's house elves irredeemable. Not their existence but all the lessons we expected to not learn from them. A competent writer with good politics wouldn’t stop the conversation on “well, they enjoy slavery so we must not intervene”. In a bad situation there’s always a less ridiculous alternative to doing nothing.
_____________________
* There are no sexual relations between wizards and elves anywhere in the books as far as I know. I’m only talking about the social dynamic of traditional marriage, nothing more. (Although in real world sexual abuse does happen in all of the situations discussed here)
** The only one we see is Dobby but even he was not free from his affection for wizards. He just switched from serving his family to serving the main character, not de jure but de facto. He risks his life and suffers abuse for Harry and in the end he dies saving Harry’s life.
*** As far as I know it was never confirmed how elves came to be in Harry Potter. Which is bizarre considering this author's love for writing extra worldbuilding. That suggests to me that she was uncomfortable with the topic herself and didn’t really want to make it into a coherent metaphor. Else she could have given them any origin story she deemed fit.
****I do mean that fully. A spell that reads minds and computer chips in brains can and should serve the same narrative purpose. You can go full Black Mirror in your fantasy novel. That one episode where people’s eyes film everything they see – literally a pensieve.
*****They ponder once that they sort children into houses a bit early and even though it would be a comparatively easy fix they still do nothing. They never do anything!
just as a general reminder
learn how to fact-check for yourself, cause soon enough, most online sources won't be reliable
a world without trans people has never existed and never will
prints
they don't make staying up until 3am fun and exciting like they used to
I'm not even a Sukuna simp, but GODDAMN.
And awwwh bby Yuji.
he thinks he's gonna eat him
"they were boyfriends! They were boyfriends your honour! boyfriends I tell ye!"
- i yell as they drag me away to the yaoi asylum.
the fact that languages change over time is so funny to me. we have thousands of language that work perfectly well, but no that's not good enough, we need to keep fiddling with them. no not making them better, just making them different. why? well, humans enjoy making up words and phrases. for fun. enrichment activity
Here are my thoughts on this.
I found that particular scene interesting because of how Geto shut Gojo out. We can compare how he interacted with Gojo to how he interacted with Ieri.
With her he was completely chill, he had no issue telling her about how he'd massacre all non-sorcerers, I feel like he'd have no problem telling anyone else that (if they weren't actively trying to arrest him). He willingly answers her questions.
But when Gojo confronts him? It's "you already heard about it". Geto loves talking about his vision. Why not with Gojo?
I would argue Gojo isn't that good of a person, well yes, that scene about him is understandable, but he also did mention how he's frustrated of protecting the weak. And in Shibuya, he opens his domain while knowing it'd endanger everyone. Plus, Gojo's reasoning for not approving of Geto's goal is not because it's bad. In that scene, Gojo reasoned that "it's impossible". Not "it's wrong", "it's bad" or "it's evil", no, "it's impossible."
And even in that scene, Gojo asked Geto if he should massacre everyone, had Geto said yes, Gojo would've wiped out everything. He trusted Geto to the point he'd allow himself to become a mass murderer because of his judgement.
If Geto had persuaded Gojo, then they could've succeeded.
But Geto made zero effort to even recruit Gojo, with his power Geto's vision for a sorcerer-only world would easily succeed. He just pushed Gojo away.
I think that's because Gojo would be doing most of the killing, so all crimes would mainly target him. And we know Geto really loved Gojo, his vision is something he'd willingly sacrifice his life for, but not Gojo's.
You know what is FOUL?!
The fact that Geto told Gojo, "Well, you know, you could do it!" Excuse me??? No the fuck he couldn't!!! Gojo could never do that. Would never do that. Sure, there was that one time that Gojo asked him "Should we kill everyone here?" BUT (important to fucking note) Gojo said "with the way I'm feeling RIGHT NOW I wouldn't even feel it" bc Gojo had literally just brought himself (practically) back from the dead. He was the least human he had ever felt with all the trauma caused by Toji, BUT THAT WAS AN EXCEPTION, THAT IS NOT GOJO ON THE REGULAR.
To tell your bestie, who YOU KNOW is inherently GOOD, a guy who kept his infinity on 24/7 even when it was frying his brain just to protect Riko, who didn't sleep, who made sure her last moments were filled with happiness before she merged with tengen, THAT is who you're saying could wipe out the world?? Then, he has the nerve to ask him if he's the strongest because he's Satoru Gojo or is he Satoru Gojo because he is the strongest? When Geto is the only one who Satoru has ever let himself just be Satoru with. Satoru pushes against Geto's ideals but ultimately acts with the same conviction, fights by his side, made pacts with him to save Rikos life against the power of tengen who is the balance of everything BECAUSE THAT IS HOW MUCH SATORU VAULES PEOPLE'S LIVES,
and Geto has the audacity to look at Gojo and say to his face: "You could do it. You're telling me I can't do something that is possible for you."
Like, Geto, baby, it's not possible for Satoru Gojo. ABSOLUTELY NOT. But, it is possible to do it with his abilities and for the first time, that's how Geto was addressing him. As someone with the Six Eyes and Limitless technique.
That's tragic! That's heartbreaking. And I think Gojo realized that that is how Geto was looking at him too when he had never looked at him like that before.
Geto really said, "You think your Hollow Purple is devastating? Let me break your heart, Gojo."
As we should. I was so mad this bitch got #5 in the popularity poll. Hell, I’d rather MAHITO be #5 than him.
Ngl, seeing Maki haters/Toji stans bitch how Maki is a bad character or that she's only a "Toji copy" is the funniest shit ever. Y'know why? Because they literally got slandered by Gege as a character.
That's right. This motherfucker. He quite literally is what those Maki haters are- or what he symbolizes. And it's funny how they always bitch about Maki or that she's just a "copy" when...look at Naoya. Look how he ended up. Look at how stupid he was portrayed. Look how she DOMINATED him. Look how dumb he looked narrative wise.
Also...when do parallels mean a bad character or a "copy?" What cause Maki's a girl? That's stupid. If she were a copy she wouldn't have been created by Gege before Toji in JJK 0. Or have her dynamic with Yuta, or those moments of her struggling to accept affection, or have all that development, or her dynamic with Mai, or her symbolism.
Conclusion: Naoya and toxic Toji stans are mainly wannabe sigma toxic male 14 year old boys who can't even get a snickers from their mommy lmao. They're also the fans who were LITERALLY slandered by Gege in the form of a character.
(aka, how to write when you're hella ADHD lol)
A reader commented on my current long fic asking how I write so well. I replied with an essay of my honestly pretty non-standard writing advice (that they probably didn't actually want lol) Now I'm gonna share it with you guys and hopefully there's a few of you out there who will benefit from my past mistakes and find some useful advice in here. XD Since I started doing this stuff, which are all pretty easy changes to absorb into your process if you want to try them, I now almost never get writer's block.
The text of the original reply is indented, and I've added some additional commentary to expand upon and clarify some of the concepts.
As for writing well, I usually attribute it to the fact that I spent roughly four years in my late teens/early 20s writing text roleplay with a friend for hours every single day. Aside from the constant practice that provided, having a live audience immediately reacting to everything I wrote made me think a lot about how to make as many sentences as possible have maximum impact so that I could get that kind of fun reaction. (Which is another reason why comments like yours are so valuable to fanfic writers! <3) The other factors that have improved my writing are thus: 1. Writing nonlinearly. I used to write a whole story in order, from the first sentence onward. If there was a part I was excited to write, I slogged through everything to get there, thinking that it would be my reward once I finished everything that led up to that. It never worked. XD It was miserable. By the time I got to the part I wanted to write, I had beaten the scene to death in my head imagining all the ways I could write it, and it a) no longer interested me and b) could not live up to my expectations because I couldn't remember all my ideas I'd had for writing it. The scene came out mediocre and so did everything leading up to it. Since then, I learned through working on VN writing (I co-own a game studio and we have some visual novels that I write for) that I don't have to write linearly. If I'm inspired to write a scene, I just write it immediately. It usually comes out pretty good even in a first draft! But then I also have it for if I get more ideas for that scene later, and I can just edit them in. The scenes come out MUCH stronger because of this. And you know what else I discovered? Those scenes I slogged through before weren't scenes I had no inspiration for, I just didn't have any inspiration for them in that moment! I can't tell you how many times there was a scene I had no interest in writing, and then a week later I'd get struck by the perfect inspiration for it! Those are scenes I would have done a very mediocre job on, and now they can be some of the most powerful scenes because I gave them time to marinate. Inspiration isn't always linear, so writing doesn't have to be either!
Some people are the type that joyfully write linearly. I have a friend like this--she picks up the characters and just continues playing out the next scene. Her story progresses through the entire day-by-day lives of the characters; it never timeskips more than a few hours. She started writing and posting just eight months ago, she's about an eighth of the way through her planned fic timeline, and the content she has so far posted to AO3 for it is already 450,000 words long. But most of us are normal humans. We're not, for the most part, wired to create linearly. We consume linearly, we experience linearly, so we assume we must also create linearly. But actually, a lot of us really suffer from trying to force ourselves to create this way, and we might not even realize it. If you're the kind of person who thinks you need to carrot-on-a-stick yourself into writing by saving the fun part for when you finally write everything that happens before it: Stop. You're probably not a linear writer. You're making yourself suffer for no reason and your writing is probably suffering for it. At least give nonlinear writing a try before you assume you can't write if you're not baiting or forcing yourself into it!! Remember: Writing is fun. You do this because it's fun, because it's your hobby. If you're miserable 80% of the time you're doing it, you're probably doing it wrong!
2. Rereading my own work. I used to hate reading my own work. I wouldn't even edit it usually. I would write it and slap it online and try not to look at it again. XD Writing nonlinearly forced me to start rereading because I needed to make sure scenes connected together naturally and it also made it easier to get into the headspace of the story to keep writing and fill in the blanks and get new inspiration. Doing this built the editing process into my writing process--I would read a scene to get back in the headspace, dislike what I had written, and just clean it up on the fly. I still never ever sit down to 'edit' my work. I just reread it to prep for writing and it ends up editing itself. Many many scenes in this fic I have read probably a dozen times or more! (And now, I can actually reread my own work for enjoyment!) Another thing I found from doing this that it became easy to see patterns and themes in my work and strengthen them. Foreshadowing became easy. Setting up for jokes or plot points became easy. I didn't have to plan out my story in advance or write an outline, because the scenes themselves because a sort of living outline on their own. (Yes, despite all the foreshadowing and recurring thematic elements and secret hidden meanings sprinkled throughout this story, it actually never had an outline or a plan for any of that. It's all a natural byproduct of writing nonlinearly and rereading.)
Unpopular writing opinion time: You don't need to make a detailed outline.
Some people thrive on having an outline and planning out every detail before they sit down to write. But I know for a lot of us, we don't know how to write an outline or how to use it once we've written it. The idea of making one is daunting, and the advice that it's the only way to write or beat writer's block is demoralizing. So let me explain how I approach "outlining" which isn't really outlining at all.
I write in a Notion table, where every scene is a separate table entry and the scene is written in the page inside that entry. I do this because it makes writing nonlinearly VASTLY more intuitive and straightforward than writing in a single document. (If you're familiar with Notion, this probably makes perfect sense to you. If you're not, imagine something a little like a more contained Google Sheets, but every row has a title cell that opens into a unique Google Doc when you click on it. And it's not as slow and clunky as the Google suite lol) (Edit from the future: I answered an ask with more explanation on how I use Notion for non-linear writing here.) When I sit down to begin a new fic idea, I make a quick entry in the table for every scene I already know I'll want or need, with the entries titled with a couple words or a sentence that describes what will be in that scene so I'll remember it later. Basically, it's the most absolute bare-bones skeleton of what I vaguely know will probably happen in the story.
Then I start writing, wherever I want in the list. As I write, ideas for new scenes and new connections and themes will emerge over time, and I'll just slot them in between the original entries wherever they naturally fit, rearranging as necessary, so that I won't forget about them later when I'm ready to write them. As an example, my current long fic started with a list of roughly 35 scenes that I knew I wanted or needed, for a fic that will probably be around 100k words (which I didn't know at the time haha). As of this writing, it has expanded to 129 scenes. And since I write them directly in the page entries for the table, the fic is actually its own outline, without any additional effort on my part. As I said in the comment reply--a living outline!
This also made it easier to let go of the notion that I had to write something exactly right the first time. (People always say you should do this, but how many of us do? It's harder than it sounds! I didn't want to commit to editing later! I didn't want to reread my work! XD) I know I'm going to edit it naturally anyway, so I can feel okay giving myself permission to just write it approximately right and I can fix it later. And what I found from that was that sometimes what I believed was kind of meh when I wrote it was actually totally fine when I read it later! Sometimes the internal critic is actually wrong. 3. Marinating in the headspace of the story. For the first two months I worked on [fic], I did not consume any media other than [fandom the fic is in]. I didn't watch, read, or play anything else. Not even mobile games. (And there wasn't really much fan content for [fandom] to consume either. Still isn't, really. XD) This basically forced me to treat writing my story as my only source of entertainment, and kept me from getting distracted or inspired to write other ideas and abandon this one.
As an aside, I don't think this is a necessary step for writing, but if you really want to be productive in a short burst, I do highly recommend going on a media consumption hiatus. Not forever, obviously! Consuming media is a valuable tool for new inspiration, and reading other's work (both good and bad, as long as you think critically to identify the differences!) is an invaluable resource for improving your writing.
When I write, I usually lay down, close my eyes, and play the scene I'm interested in writing in my head. I even take a ten-minute nap now and then during this process. (I find being in a state of partial drowsiness, but not outright sleepiness, makes writing easier and better. Sleep helps the brain process and make connections!) Then I roll over to the laptop next to me and type up whatever I felt like worked for the scene. This may mean I write half a sentence at a time between intervals of closed-eye-time XD
People always say if you're stuck, you need to outline.
What they actually mean by that (whether they realize it or not) is that if you're stuck, you need to brainstorm. You need to marinate. You don't need to plan what you're doing, you just need to give yourself time to think about it!
What's another framing for brainstorming for your fic? Fantasizing about it! Planning is work, but fantasizing isn't.
You're already fantasizing about it, right? That's why you're writing it. Just direct that effort toward the scenes you're trying to write next! Close your eyes, lay back, and fantasize what the characters do and how they react.
And then quickly note down your inspirations so you don't forget, haha.
And if a scene is so boring to you that even fantasizing about it sucks--it's probably a bad scene.
If it's boring to write, it's going to be boring to read. Ask yourself why you wanted that scene. Is it even necessary? Can you cut it? Can you replace it with a different scene that serves the same purpose but approaches the problem from a different angle? If you can't remove the troublesome scene, what can you change about it that would make it interesting or exciting for you to write?
And I can't write sitting up to save my damn life. It's like my brain just stops working if I have to sit in a chair and stare at a computer screen. I need to be able to lie down, even if I don't use it! Talking walks and swinging in a hammock are also fantastic places to get scene ideas worked out, because the rhythmic motion also helps our brain process. It's just a little harder to work on a laptop in those scenarios. XD
In conclusion: Writing nonlinearly is an amazing tool for kicking writer's block to the curb. There's almost always some scene you'll want to write. If there isn't, you need to re-read or marinate.
Or you need to use the bathroom, eat something, or sleep. XD Seriously, if you're that stuck, assess your current physical condition. You might just be unable to focus because you're uncomfortable and you haven't realized it yet.
Anyway! I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting! XD Sorry again for the text wall. (I think this is the longest comment reply I've ever written!)
And same to you guys on tumblr--I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. XD Reblogs appreciated if so! (Maybe it'll help someone else!)
* 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。° 。* 。 • ˚ * 。 • ˚ ˚ ˛ ˚ ˛ • 。* 。°◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤ ════ ʚ KING AKUJI ɞ ════ 闇 Akuji | Atlas | Nero | Percy ₊˚.༄ 愛 He/Him or They/Them •₊ ❥︎ ❏ ❜ 冷 Artist, Writer, Violinist ꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷ 𓏲 ࣪₊♡𓂃 .*. Satoru Gojo . *. ⋆ ☆ ‧₊˚◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢◤◢
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