#like self-actualization and constantly being a turncloak

[lothkit]

☆ Fear

I haven’t written in so long, I’m so sorry, this is awful,

Gemma | mentioned: Gillian | @pleasantprefects

1495 words

Summary: This summer - There’s something under Gemma Watts’ kitchen sink. What she finds might surprise you!

12 July, 2006

Gillybean!! I found out the most interesting bit of news at the last family dinner. My stepmum heard from my grandmother that she heard from one of her friends on the Board of Governors that Trelawney really IS retiring this year. I wonder who they got to replace the old bat? Maybe they’ll just do away with the subject all together?? I know everyone thinks it’s “soft” but it’s a really good class to take a nap. My grandmother says they’ll find someone though--she was saying that her family back in India is descended from a famous Seer, so she KNOWS it’s a real subject, and she’ll make them keep teaching it, McGonagall be damned, so help her. That’s what she said, anyway.

I know it’s only been two weeks, but if you wanted to come visit, Shivani says you should do it this month and not next. Apparently she’s getting a new bird next month, and she said it’s not a fwooper so I can only imagine what she’s bringing home now.

I really do hope you come, because it’s so BORING, and I just wanna go for a flight around the Tor but my father says not to unless I’m going with someone else, to never fly alone, just in case something happens. I don’t think it would--and anyway, I have to be the BEST at flying, so I can be the best Keeper. I can’t be afraid of anything! (And DON’T laugh either! You laughed in Defense Against the Dark Arts when we did that lesson on Boggarts and mine was a VAMPIRE. They’re SCARY, Gillian! They have scary sharp fangs and they eat people!!)

Anyway, if you CAN’T come we’re planning on visiting London the last week of August...

The summer holidays are always the worst time of the year for Gemma. It’s not that she doesn’t love her family, when they’re around (because she does, she adores her father, when he’s around; and Shivani really isn’t too terrible, when she’s not asking Gemma to clean the fwoopers’ cages). It’s that she loves Gillian just so much. They’re practically sisters now—they’ve been inseparable since meeting on the Hogwarts Express. Almost every moment of their lives during the school year is spent together. The only exceptions are the winter holidays, and they barely count. The two months separated from each other seem so unbearable to Gemma most days, like she’s missing an arm. Sending an owl isn’t the same as waking up in the middle of the night to share a thought—it’s not the same as turning over and just being able to look at her face as Gillian shares the latest piece of gossip, like what Griffin thinks about that snooty Ravenclaw boy in the year above them, or the predication Trelawney’s going to make about Gillian’s love life this week. Sure, they can visit, but it’s not the same. Gillian has a way of making herself seem like the only person in the room that matters, so Gemma feels her absence everywhere she goes.

This is what she’s thinking about as she chews her quill and ponders over what else to include in today’s letter, when the cabinet below the sink starts to rattle. Her father’s great grey owl, Astolat, hoots in fear and flies off. “Shivani!” Gemma shouts into the next room, but that just makes Astolat hoot again and the cabinet shake harder. Heaving a great and dramatic sigh, Gemma puts her quill down on the kitchen table and pushes her chair back. “ShivaNI, something’s under the sink!”

Her stepmother calls back, “In just a second, Gemma, I’m Silencing the fwoopers!” At that, Gemma wrinkles her nose. She hated the stupid fwoopers and their stupid fluorescent feathers, even if they did make for good quills (Gillian really liked the bright yellow one Gemma gave her).

She stands in the kitchen, unsure of what else to do. The cabinet is rattling harder now, insistent on being opened; elsewhere in the house, she can hear the brief squawk of a fwooper trying to resist its monthly Silencing charm. Shivani seems far too busy with her stupid birds to do anything about it, but before there was a Shivani, Gemma was the lady of the House. Her father often let her take care of important tasks, and wasn’t checking out strange things one of those? Besides, Gemma was a Gryffindor. She could handle whatever was under the sink. It was probably just a puffskein anyway and everyone knew they were harmless.

Annoyed, she opens up the cabinet, and out crawls a perfectly well and fine Gillian Chow.

“Hey, babe,” Gillian says, her eyes bright and shining.

Gemma’s jaw drops. How did Gillian get under her sink? She shouldn’t even fit under there. But Gillian doesn’t offer any explanation, just looks at her curiously. Intently, even. And Gemma can feel her heart just about burst in excitement. She rushes forward, going to envelop her in a giant hug—she must have done it as a prank, and what a great one! This is why Gemma loves her so much, she thinks; because Gillian always keeps her guessing.

Gillian doesn’t move at first, doesn’t wrap her arms around Gemma in return. She can feel her relax though, as she murmurs something in the crook of Gemma’s neck. “I’m so happy to see you! That was a good one!” she says, grinning as she hugs Gillian tightly. She feels her best friend’s smile against her shoulder, and a shiver runs down Gemma’s spine.

“Me too,” Gillian whispers, her teeth grazing Gemma’s neck. “I’m starved.”

“Huh?” Gemma tries to look up, just in time to see Gillian’s incisors lengthen—

And she’s wrenched away from Gillian’s grasp by her stepmother’s soft hands. Gillian snarls for a moment; then there is a loud CRACK! and she is replaced by a giant snake slithering like mad.

“Riddikulus!” Shivani says, swishing her wand in the air. The snake quickly turns into rubber, and bounces harmlessly, causing her to chuckle. In an instant, the boggart vanishes.

Gemma stands blinking in the middle of the kitchen. Shivani stows her wand behind her right ear and turns to her. “I told you to wait, Gemma,” she says. Her voice is stern, but her eyes are concerned as they roam over her face. She flushes under the scrutiny, looking down at her feet. She feels guilty, though she can’t explain why, exactly.

“I—but Gillian—” Gemma stutters, looking frantically from her stepmother to the spot where the Not-Gillian had just stood. “But—”

“Surely Professor Burnsides covered boggarts with you.”

“Well, he d-did, but…” But it wasn’t like that before. Gemma bites her lip and looks back down at the ground. Gillian definitely wasn’t her Boggart before--it was a vampire, she had just written that down! She mumbles something about that, but Shivani waves her hand and steers her to sit back down at the kitchen table. Gemma numbly obeys.

Another wave of her wand, and the teapot is already whistling and pouring two steaming cups, one of which Shivani pushes towards Gemma before taking her own seat. “I know what you’re going through, love,” she says. She takes a long sip of her tea. “It’s perfectly natural.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gemma replies, crossing her arms across her chest.

Shivani gives her a hard look, and she resists the urge to flinch. Instead she raises her chin in defiance. Her stepmother’s eyes soften as she busies herself with her own mug. “I absolutely do, darling, but you have to know, it’s not exactly… let’s say, proper, for a young woman of your name, and social standing to… hmm.” She frowns into her tea, and clears her throat. “There are certain things we—your father and I, and your grandparents—well, that we expect from you, down the line. It’s perfectly fine, especially while you’re still in school to experiment—”

“Experiment?! What do you mean experiment?”

“—but you must remember who you are, Gemma darling,” Shivani continues, as if Gemma hadn’t spoken at all. “You are a Joshi like your father, somewhere in there, and well, your grandmother especially expects certain things. You mustn’t allow a simple dalliance—”

“I don’t know what that word even means,” Gemma frowns and sinks back in her chair. “Gillian’s m-my friend,” she lies miserably. “We wouldn’t, ever, not really.”

Shivani reaches a hand across the table, palm up. “Just take care that whatever you do in school doesn’t cut you off from—well, you don’t want people to think you’re unmarriageable, darling. A good marriage, a Pureblood boy, that’s all we want for you in the end. As long as you’re careful… well, I suppose we’ll just keep this between us, yes?”

Gemma stares down at the extended hand in the middle of the table. Oh, she thinks, soft and small even in her own mind. She gingerly clasps her stepmother’s hand with her own. “I understand.”

#pleasant prefects #harry potter oc #fanfiction #original character #writing #oc: gemma #i cannot explain how nervous i am to post any sort of writing online so idk s/o to my frands #check out Pleasant Prefects for more Cool Gemma Content #like self-actualization and constantly being a turncloak #kit writes badly

[secretlyatargaryen]

Tyrion and Zuko: Never Forget Who You Are

This is part three of a meta comparing these two characters. Read part one here and part two here.

One of the defining moments for both of these characters is when they are talking to a younger character that they relate to who is on the opposite side as them, but who will later become a friend.

Tyrion to Jon:

"Fourteen, and you're taller than I will ever be. [...] I will never make a swordsman. Had I been born a peasant, they might have left me out to die, or sold me to some slaver's grotesquerie. Alas, I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and the grotesqueries are all the poorer. Things are expected of me. [...] I must do my part for the honor of my House, wouldn't you agree? Yet how? [...] I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind … “

and Zuko to Aang:

You're like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She's a firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky; he says I was lucky to be born. I need don't need luck, though. I don't want it. I've always had to struggle and fight, and that's made me strong. That's made me who I am.

Even at this early stage in these characters’ stories, where they are still very much indoctrinated into their family’s BS, both of them recognize this inner conflict between who they are and who their families want them to be. And both of them draw inner strength from things that set them apart from the ideology that they’ve been indoctrinated into.

Both are forced to adopt new identities as refugees, and it’s here that they are forced to rely on the things that were not valued by their families. Zuko relies more on his sword-fighting abilities than his bending, and Tyrion reclaims things about himself that his father hated, such as his tumbling, and takes on the role as dwarf jester to survive. It’s because of these characters’ ability to develop an inner strength independent from their families that they are able to do this, even though they had previously been taught to devalue those parts of themselves.

They both draw on that inner strength that comes from the things that set them apart.

Ursa: Remember this, Zuko. No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are.

Zuko remembering his mother’s words when he is a refugee can be compared to Tyrion’s words to Jon when he is empathizing over the latter over them both being “bastards.”

"Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you."

I think we can say that Zuko’s mother’s words are part of where he gets that inner strength that he mentions above (”That’s made me who I am”), and Zuko’s love for his mother was something that was treated like a weakness. Both Tyrion and Zuko have to struggle with this concept of owning who you are and making your weakness your strength. And although Tyrion imparts this advice onto Jon, he struggles just as much as Zuko does with owning it.

Both characters also go through journeys that involve a great loss of privilege and being forced to experience life from the perspective of those who are most oppressed. Both characters use false identities while in exile, as fugitives from both their own families and people who hate their families. Both also are forced to adopt identities that they had previously disdained are forced to let go of their classism. But as I said in part one, the narrative here is not a straight line, and both characters experience at times growth in compassion and times where they take advantage of others. One example of this for Zuko is his interactions with Song, who invites him to eat with her family and empathizes with him over his burn scar, which forces Zuko to relate to someone who can relate to him on a similar level. Yet he also ends up stealing her ostritch horse. This is similar to Tyrion’s interaction with Penny, who he can relate to because she is also a dwarf, and who represents the first time he is confronted with someone who can truly empathize with his disability, but who he also sometimes treats with disdain and cruelty. Although it should be noted that in both cases these characters cannot totally relate to each other. Penny and Tyrion experience their dwarfism in different ways and while Penny lacks Tyrion's class privilege, she comes from a loving home where she was taught not to be ashamed of her body, and she tries to kiss Tyrion on the assumption that they have a connection because of their shared disability, but it doesn't work. Similarly, Song tries to force a connection with Zuko on the assumption that she understands him because of his scar, however she does not know the story of how Zuko got that scar and has the privilege of hiding her scars that Zuko does not because his scar is literally on his face.

Jin and Penny also have similarities as Jin is someone who is attracted to Zuko who he is kind to but ultimately rejects romantically because of his own insecurities and his preoccupation with his current goals, and Tyrion does the same with Penny.

Both characters meet people throughout their journeys who make assumptions about them based on their appearance. Both also experience hatred from people for the crimes of their families, even while they themselves are forced to go into hiding from their families.

Katara: You’re the Fire Lord’s son. Spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood.

and Tyrion in ADWD:

"—I know who the dwarf is, and what he is." Her black eyes turned to Tyrion, hard as stone. "Kinslayer, kingslayer, murderer, turncloak. Lannister."

What I think is particularly interesting about these two scenes is that both of them are prisoners, at low points in their narrative, when this dialogue happens. And both are actually empathizing with the people who are responding to them with hatred. Zuko trying to connect with Katara through the loss of his mother, and Tyrion understanding what the Widow of the Waterfront actually wants to hear and being on his way to join Daenerys.

Both characters also experience their inner conflict through an anger at the world. This is shown in Zuko’s “lucky to be born” speech about himself vs his sister and in the episode “Bitter Work,” in which he seeks out his own lightning after Iroh refuses to use lightning against him.

Zuko: You've always thrown everything you could at me! Well, I can take it, and now I can give it back! Come on, strike me! You've never held back before!

Tyrion also has moments where he rails against the world and at the gods because of the cruelty he’s faced in his life.

And when I die, please let them bury with me a crossbow, so I can thank the Father Above for his gifts the same way I thanked the father below. 

This is also a nice connection between the two scenes where both characters confront their fathers (discussed in more depth below), as Tyrion uses a crossbow on his father and Zuko is able to redirect his father’s lightning.

There's a lot of discussion in fandom about what makes a good redemption arc, and the thing is that I think most of these discussions overlook something that is key in both Zuko and Tyrion's narrative, and that is how hard it actually is to do the right thing when you're constantly told that everything you do is wrong, and how hard it is to distinguish between the things you need to apologize for and the things that aren't your responsibility or things you never should have been blamed for. And because they are traumatized characters - both with significant physical disfigurements - both Tyrion and Zuko have times when they assume that people are judging them for the wrong reasons.

Katara: It's just that for so long now, whenever I would imagine the face of the enemy, it was your face.

Zuko: My face? I see.

Obviously there’s a lot of discussion of Zuko’s redemption arc and what makes it work and in contrast, Tyrion’s narrative isn’t finished, and is currently left in a pretty dark place, but one thing I love about both of these stories is the acknowledgement of how hard it is to trust other people when you’ve been hurt, and how hard it is to trust even your own perceptions and judgments. And to be honest, I think that much of discussion of Zuko’s heroism overlooks that because everything turned out alright in the end, even though I wouldn’t even say that he’s fully recovered from his trauma by the end of the story. Even when he’s fully become one of the “good guys” he has times when he’s angry, insecure, overly apologetic or self-righteous, and negatively impacts his relationships with others. The reason why this story works is not so much because of its ability to give the character redemption, but because of the acknowledgement that redemption, or recovery, is hard.

Both also have scenes where they remain loyal to their families but experience conflict with their family’s worldview after being exposed to the wider world and empathizing with others who have been hurt by their families.

It is high summer for House Lannister, so why am I so bloody cold?

And again, although these narratives are different because these points happen at different times in the narrative, both characters have instances where they are responsible in some way for an imprisoned character who they empathize with (Iroh for Zuko and Sansa for Tyrion) which causes them to question the rightness of their family.

Zuko: I have everything I always wanted, but it's not at all how I thought it would be.

And both have parts of their stories where they are welcomed back into the fold of their family only to be nearly killed. Tyrion in ACOK during his tenure as hand of the king in which he appears to be on top but is brutally reminded of how conditional the power and acceptance he has is when he loses it again after the Battle of the Blackwater and the slow ebbing away of agency he experiences throughout ASOS which ends in him being falsely imprisoned and nearly executed for regicide; Zuko early in his story when his sister almost successfully tricks him into walking into being imprisoned with the promise of going back home, and later when he is accepted back home but with the truth of Aang’s survival hanging over his head, and his confrontation with Ozai in which Ozai tries to kill him with lightning.

And of course any comparison of Tyrion and Zuko would be incomplete without comparing their respective scenes of facing down their fathers and primary abusers. These two scenes have different narrative impacts because of the ways they are different and because they appear at different times in the characters’ arcs, but they also have some striking similarities. Both Tyrion and Zuko confront their abusers in scenes that suggests that they’ve finally reached the breaking point where they are no longer able to overlook the intolerable situation they are in.

Both Ozai and Tywin use gaslighting to control their children and we see that a lot in Tyrion’s conversations with Tywin in which Tywin dismisses or belittles the things that Tyrion says even when Tyrion is right, and Ozai severely punishes Zuko for speaking out against him. Both Tyrion and Zuko have scenes of standing up to their fathers and speaking their minds.

Tyrion in ASOS to Tywin:

“Will you punish me if I refuse, father?”

Zuko to Ozai in “The Day of Black Sun, Pt 2″:

Zuko: I'm not taking orders from you anymore. I am going to speak my mind, and you are going to listen.

Tyrion in ASOS to Tywin:

“Perhaps I don't choose to go to the Wall, Father. It's bloody cold up there, and I believe I've had enough coldness from you. So just tell me something, and I'll be on my way. One simple question, you owe me that much."              

"I owe you nothing."

"You've given me less than that, all my life, but you'll give me this.”

Zuko in “The Day of Black Sun, Pt 2″ to Ozai:

Zuko: For so long, all I wanted was for you to love me, to accept me. I thought it was my honor I wanted, but really, I was just trying to please you. You, my father, who banished me just for talking out of turn. My father, who challenged me, a thirteen-year-old boy, to an Agni Kai. How could you possibly justify a duel with a child?

Ozai: It was to teach you respect!

Zuko: It was cruel! And it was wrong.

Ozai: Then you have learned nothing!

Zuko: No, I've learned everything! And I’ve had to learn it on my own.

Both characters also confront their abusers with their abuse of an important female character whose love and whose disappearance had a huge impact on their life. Tyrion asking Tywin what happened to Tysha can be seen as a parallel to Zuko’s final scene with Ozai where he demands to know where his mother is.

And just as this question is left open in the main series of ATLA (yes, I know about the comics, but I kind of like the ambiguity for thematic purposes), I don’t think Tyrion is ever going to find out what happened to Tysha.

One main difference in the two characters confronting their fathers is that Tyrion kills his father and Zuko doesn’t, and in addition to this being a result of a difference in tone and medium between the two stories, Zuko also is spared from having to make that choice because of his belief that it is Aang’s destiny to defeat Ozai. Tyrion suffers a mental breakdown after killing his father while Zuko is able to integrate himself successfully into a new social group (eventually). Tyrion starts to do this in ADWD but again, that story is not finished yet so it is hard to say how it will be resolved.

Both characters also frequently act like the victims of abuse that they are in their interpersonal relationships, and tend to expect that people will invalidate their feelings or be outright hostile to them. As I said above, this is also because of their experiences with people reacting to their physical differences, which both play a big role in their trauma.

Finally, both characters have a spiritual connection to dragons and this plays a big role in their journeys towards self-discovery.

Aang: All this time, I thought firebending was destruction. Since I hurt Katara, I've been too afraid and hesitant. But now I know what it really is ... it's energy, and life. 

Zuko and Aang discover the true meaning of fire from the firebending masters, the dragons themselves, legendary creatures who were thought to be dead. It’s also very thematically interesting that the dragons were thought to be wiped out by the Fire Nation, and Zuko, the prince of the Fire Nation, learns that fire doesn’t have to mean anger and pain, but that it also represents life and rebirth.

Dragons also have similar meaning for Tyrion, a meaning that increases the closer he gets to Daenerys and makes his way towards helping her cause of fighting for freedom and life. Tyrion and Dany’s connection to the dragons links them as marginalized characters and people for whom dragons represent fighting back against oppression.

“Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can look down over the world when he's seated on a dragon's back."

And thus, in both narratives, we see fire representing the potential for destruction and the desire for power, and we see disempowered and marginalized characters who seek to obtain this power but also have potential to hurt others because of the ways they have been hurt, but then the narrative flips that meaning on its head, showing that it’s possible to recover from trauma, that a person doesn’t have to be defined by anger and pain. And ultimately, that’s what’s compelling about these sorts of characters, regardless of how our struggles are similar or different than the characters we watch or read about or whether we get to see them fail or succeed.

#tyrion lannister #zuko #valyrianscrolls #asoiaf meta #avatar the last airbender #atla meta