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Agatha and the Humdrum: Unlikely Allies?

If, somehow, the Humdrum pasted “Help Wanted!” posters all over Watford, I am not sure Agatha wouldn’t have responded.

Okay, that is not entirely true—I don’t think she would have joined forces with the antithesis “force” of her ex-boyfriend, Simon (how intriguing of a turn that would have been, though). However, I also do not think she would have been as grieved as her magical kin and cronies to be “defeated” by its power.

In my mind, she would have sat silently at “What do we do now?” pow-wows. While those around her mourned their loss of magic, she might have remained quiet, distantly surprised at her own indifference (or even relief). As I mentioned in class, Agatha reveals her own bitterness toward magic in a few key places throughout the book, one of them being chapter 68. When she asks her mother if Lucy disappeared, the woman responds in a scandalized tone:

“[‘Worse.’] ‘She ran away. From magic. Can you imagine?’ ‘Yes,’ [Agatha admits], then, ‘no.’”

In Agatha’s own mind, the Humdrum was not a threat to her peace of mind; with this being said, the novel’s “villain,” to Agatha, really was not that much of a villain at all (at least to her individually—the Mage was the only one who truly ever threatened her life), and I find the implied grayness of morality here (of “good” and “evil”) interesting. As I said in class, it reminds me again that one person’s nightmare truly is another’s paradise. For Agatha, life’s true magic was found in the blandly unmagical.

Again in chapter 68, speaking in a back-and-forth rush with Penny, she asks the blond-haired, reluctant magician, “[What], Agatha? What do you want?” She responds abruptly: “I want to be friends…but I don’t want to be, like, comrades-in-arms. I don’t want to have secret meetings! I just want to hang out! Like, make biscuits and watch telly. Do normal friend stuff!”

If the Humdrum did take everything, everyone could, just… spend time together? They would not be the constantly-in-fear kind of together, or the “let’s stick close because our lives are in danger” kind of together—rather, just, together. They could watch movies. Buy greasy fast food and regret it. Be so dreadfully, beautifully human. This secure, “boring” existence is what Agatha is after. And in sunny California, having taken Ebb’s advice to “run,” she does not seem too keen on looking back.

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Harry/Giant Squid

Is it strange how deeply impressed, almost envious, I am of young fan fiction writers?

I absolutely grew up with Wattpad as a bookmark on my computer. With each chapter and new storyline I read (many times into the wee hours of the morning, I must admit), I could not help but ache, even then, in my heart for that kind of bravery. Beginning to write a fiction story has always been a big “to do” in my head; nonetheless, thousands of teens and pre-teens sit at their laptops, smacking chewing gum and cracking their knuckles, and write them every day. 

How bold.

This network of young writers is more widespread and full of literary “richness” than I first imagined. This idea of a “collective” of young people typing away to please to their own narratival whims, bending the rules of their favorite stories without a second glance to cannon, is so creative and subversive—and I love it.

This is not a very “academic” blog post, necessarily, seeing as it is just my genuine state of shock and amazement at the fan fiction writing community. I hope this is okay. For fun, though, I did scroll through Reddit to find people’s favorite (or most bizarre) character-character fanfiction pairings (not necessarily slash) from Harry Potter, and I have included a few below:

Snape/Adult Hermione: according to Redditors, this pairing makes for quite the intriguing dynamic, seeing as he was her professor, and she has always been a “star student” who is not accustomed to being on an equal playing field with an authority figure as a potential partner. I personally am unsure of how I feel about this pairing, and it is not slash, of course, but I definitely find it intriguing enough to analyze.

Harry/Harry: I found writing about… a time travel pairing between Harry and himself at different “times”? A few Redditors typed the “O.o” face when describing this “self-love” narrative, and I can definitely see where their hesitation is coming from.

Harry/Giant Squid: Also potentially deserving of an “approach with caution” sign is the bestiality fanfiction regarding “The Chosen One” and the gigantic cephalopod that lives in Great Lake. I suppose I can understand how the squid has demonstrated desirable (???) characteristics of goodness, gentleness, and kindness throughout the series (?); Fandom (the website) points out that “it failed to attack Viktor Krum when he swam in the lake, allowed students to feed it bread, and rescued Dennis Creevey after he fell into the lake.” At least he is a nice squid? I am not sure I am on board with a relationship pairing here, though.

https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Giant_Squid#cite_note-GOF24-6

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A Study in Landscape: The “Hood”

Years of literature classes and late-night readings have forever connected “landscape” and “mood” in my mind: a sand-dune desert may signify scarcity and even punishment, as in Holes by Louis Sachar, while a land bursting with crops and damp soil might easily signify the opposite (these, of course, are very broad examples). On another note, moors, dilapidated houses, and inclement weather scream “gothic” and elements of Victorian British literature.

Jay Coles sets Tyler Johnson Was Here or, more specifically, “the hood” in a landscape of violence and foreboding: white policemen roam the streets with hateful eyes and loaded guns, looping audios of bullets and screams ricochet off roadsigns, and schools regularly hold drug-dealing students on their rosters in Marvin’s corner of Sterling Point, Alabama.

Having just watched all of The Hunger Games movies, this topography is an uncanny reminder of the dystopian “dome” filmed by the Capitol, in which “safe places” are intentionally left out of the design—Tyler cannot find such a place in his home, where his mother is broken down in heart-wrenching sobs after Tyler’s death, nor in his school, where Johntae stalks the halls, and certainly not in the streets in between, where policemen with bent biases wait to fire from the hip. In a twisted way, this setup reminds me of a simplified video game from the 80s, in which a character navigates its way through a pixelated maze and each twist and turn reveals a new “enemy” programmed to “end the game.”

As an afterthought, here are some quotes that “drive home” the landscape and mood of this novel:

“…taking in the hideous sight that is my origin story. The cracked sidewalks are like ripped paper bags. And everything, to me, just looks like a mound of trash” (p. 94).

“We ride past a series of abandoned buildings, all rusted and covered in vines and weeds—graffitied up and sad, leaning back a little, like the construction of the hood wants to take a step away from itself, travel back a couple of decades in history. Everything about this place looks uglier up close, when you really see it for what it is and not what it used to be. Especially at night, when everything is just washed in darkness and violence—so brutal and so shallow. Groups of boys wearing all black huddle around fire hydrants—not because they are curious as to what would happen in they were to open it, but because the tip of the hydrant is a great place to set a dime bag and lethal weapons for intimidation” (p. 194).

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Katniss as... underdeveloped?

I feel almost guilty for asking this: Was I the only one that felt Katniss seemed underdeveloped in the first film of The Hunger Games movie franchise?

I cringe to type this, as I am very aware of the droning misogynistic phrases that scrutinize a woman’s lack of energy or expressiveness: “Why don’t you give us a smile? Why do you look so “pissed off”? You’d be a lot prettier if you just looked happier.”

That is not what I am touching on here. With this being said, while I am not claiming “openness” or “expressiveness” constitutes a “fleshed out” or “interesting” female character (or person, for that matter), I am not convinced Katniss Everdeen was done complete justice in the first movie. 

Even by the second movie, Katniss, with knees folded into herself as she sat on the last train car headed to the Capitol, listened as Peeta gently approached a “get to know you” conversation: “I hardly know anything about you except you’re stubborn and good with a bow.” Her quick response was simple: “That about sums me up.” Is this some sort of internalized misogyny talking within me that claims a woman’s “expressiveness” equals “wholeness,” or is my dissatisfied reaction partially valid? As a disclaimer, I want to amend that, of course, I understand reading the first-person perspective books and being privy to Katniss’ intimate thoughts is quite a different experience from watching the movies and being barred from this access. In the written series, Katniss is a bit “closed-off” and “hard to like” to those around her, but readers develop an in-depth knowledge of her by virtue of reading first-hand thoughts and reactions. So, in the books, even if she claims hunting and stubbornness “about sums [her] up,” we know much better (the movies do, however, work to demonstrate her “layers,” such as her personal loyalties to friends and family, like Prim, Peeta, and Gale, which I greatly appreciate).

Further, in the films, Katniss is (of course) very clever and, knowing her way around a forest and bow, lethal—but was it necessary for her to have only two different kinds of facial expressions in almost the entire first film, just to showcase how “closed off” and “enigmatic” she is? I feel like I’ve seen the same result when men are portrayed on-screen as mysterious and quiet; what results is not an enigmatic energy, but a potential emptiness, and an underdevelopment of character. I feel Katniss may have fallen prey to the same trap here. In other words, I feel there is a difference between “silent female strength” and simply a lack of demonstrated character depth.

I am still not entirely sure how I feel about this. Am I being overly critical? A little short-sighted? I would be interested to know what the rest of the class thinks.

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“...it’s just...void”

Not to be dramatic, but watching Sixteen Candles felt like walking through an 80s fun house of toxicity.

Every three minutes was a “jump scare” of misogyny, general objectification, racism (also tied into language barriers—those gong noises, I will not even get into), homophobia, etc. I never want to enjoy another “haunted house” ever again. I have seen it all.  

Combined with this general terror was one of the single most uninteresting, one-dimensional leading male love interests I have ever come into cinematic contact with. The “superficiality” of Jake Ryan’s personality reminds me of the research paper I wrote in your British Literature class about the evolution of male friendships in British and American (YA) literature. In that respect, speaking to the differences between my general findings from books like Divergent and those from this movie, Jake’s personality is not even necessarily “tied up” in or “dependent” on Samantha (in other words, this is not where his superficiality stems from). In fact, it is not really tied up in anything. I am not certain I can think of a single personality trait ascribed to him at all. Flashes of performing pull-ups at the gym, allowing a license-less minor to drive his inebriated girlfriend home late at night, and tidy-looking hair come to mind—but I am not sure I would label any of those as personality traits. 

To borrow words from Jake’s friend from the gym (originally talking about Samantha, of course), “There’s nothing there…it’s just...void, you know what I mean?”

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(This picture is attached to my “Teenage ‘Lingo’ in The Outsiders” Post)

[ya-rigmaroles]

Teenage “Lingo” in The Outsiders

One of the many “jabs” leveled at Young Adult dystopian fiction around 2010 was its authors’ tendency to capitalize relatively commonplace words like “the Choice,” “the Elder,” “the Colony,” etc. and grant each some mysterious but “everyday” meaning (“everyday” for the characters, at least). Here, I am thinking particularly of a Twitter account, “Dystopian YA Novel,” which satirized this pattern around 2015 - https://mobile.twitter.com/dystopianya?lang=en).

Of course, The Outsiders is not dystopian, nor does it capitalize any words to grant them specialized definitions. However, Hinton does manage to create a uniquely “youthful” fictional space in which specific colloquial words constitute Ponyboy’s and the gang’s everyday vocabulary. Some examples scattered throughout the book include “the fuzz” as “the police,” “kid brother” as “younger brother,” “broad” as “girl,” and “You dig?” as “You understand?” This play with the diction of “teen talk” invites readers’ into a characteristically “YA” space of what Ponyboy may have referred to as “not good formal English,” but his and his friends’ own lingo. Hinton, perhaps, had heard these words in casual settings among her friends, but surely not in formalized school contexts (she was naturally immersed in a “teenage” sphere, which an adult author attempting to write for young readers may have never had access to, of course).

I am particularly fond of this idea: this novel, a milestone of the incipient YA genre, utilizes a “youthful code” as a vehicle for the plot surrounding these teenage boys. Of course, the sixteen-year-old author herself was (likely) not intentionally creating a “linguistically youthful” world but, instead, only using those words she naturally favored at the time. Her fictional world, therefore, intrinsically conveys the "young” mind.

[ya-rigmaroles]

Blanca & Roja and the Curse of Unequal Parental Love

The well-worn path of traditional fairy tale endings is typically a marital one. “And they lived happily ever after” speaks of intertwined hands, exchanged rings, and probably a walk into some artificially-pink sunset. Blanca & Roja did, in fact, have a “happy ever after” ending—but I am not referring here to Page and Yearling.

McLemore wove not only “eros” and “philia” love, but “storge” love, into this sunset-walk finale. The parents’ years of partiality to one daughter over another (which was, it is important to note, likely driven by a subconscious fear that one daughter would eventually be stolen away by los cisnes, leading an equally-expressed love for both daughters to end inevitably in traumatic heartbreak) was “broken,” much like the curse, after both daughters saved each other from their fate.

Soon, after Roja’s mother invited her to learn to cook in the kitchen, the red-haired daughter transformed into “a whole bright church, with stained-glass windows for walls” (I am unsure of the page number, as I am on my Kindle). Blanca, too, timidly stepped over the threshold of her father’s office. As she walked back toward the door with a borrowed book from his shelf in hand, just as Roja had done so many times before, they had the following exchange:

“‘That’s a good one,’ he said. I hadn’t realized he’d looked up enough to see which one I’d taken. I turned from the threshold. He met my eyes, his desk lamp showing one side of his face. ‘Let me know what you think.’”

Here, finally, he expresses curiosity about Blanca’s thoughts on a piece of literature, giving weight and value to her own suppositions before they were formed. This affirmation of her mind—maybe even with subtext that her own opinions, too, have “teeth,” just like Rosa’s—warms my whole heart.

Yes, it deeply bothered me that these parents showed such partiality up until that point, refusing to risk emotional vulnerability for each daughter earlier. However, in the end, they did so (and I can not begin to understand their position, knowing a precious daughter would be not only taken but transformed into a different creature, her human-ness forever replaced).

All in all, I believe this daughter-parent reconciliation is a familial-love twist on a traditional fairy tale ending and, in a way, it is its own walk-into-the-sunset moment.

[ya-rigmaroles]

Northanger Abbey and “Junk-Food Novels”

For the sake of a mental image, I would like to preface my meditation by saying I am currently cradling a chocolate lab puppy in my lap, smoothing the hairs on his little head as I ponder Northanger Abbey. We just brought him home and I am in love.

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My heart felt like it was wrapped in a 19th-century book-blanket reading Austen’s Northanger Abbey. From our recent class discussions and readings, my focus was trained on the “why” of novels as I read through the book. Are they really edifying? Are they the “Twinkies” of literature, only to be indulged in with great moderation? Are they even helpful?

As Catherine rode in her bumpy carriage to what she assumed was her gothic manor, I could not help but be sympathetic to her potentially “Twinkie-like” cravings for an abbey that held some great mystery. I, too, have watched, enthralled, as regicide plots and life-threatening escapes unfolded in the pages of a book. This is like visiting an aquarium to watch a shark in its tank—bringing us close enough to the danger to appreciate all its contours without ever having to directly endanger our skin. Catherine had visited the aquarium more than a few times, and she thought she wanted a dip in the water.

In a way, by the time she was riding in a carriage traveling the opposite direction after being sent away by Captain Tilney, a “dip in the water” is exactly what she procured. However, that swim with a shark did not involve highwaymen and secret passageways. She was, instead, aching from a very real wound from entering into relationships with personal emotional risk and vulnerability. She sunk in her carriage seat clinging desperately to her intimate friendships with Eleanor and Henry Tilney. Imaginative gothic plots could not overtake her mind when it was lost in her own very mysterious, very unfortunate reality.

All of the pain and fear she had read about in her novels was an imitative reflection of her current reality, contextualizing her real-life experience: my guess is she had seen many-a-character distraught and heartbroken, fighting similar emotional wounds (I know I am reaching here, but my mind is just running). In my view, Catherine’s previous readings had not been literature’s “Twinkies,” but (potentially) empathetic quests of not only physical, but emotional, risk. Novel-reading can, of course, be a great teacher of empathy. Readers see unfamiliar sights and listen to new words that have the power to shape their understanding and worldview. For instance, the novels I have read contextualize how I perceive my own concrete reality, but they are just that: novels. They are not junk food, but they also largely serve their purpose in shaping my mind and eyes to navigate the real world I can touch and see. They can contextualize my heart’s emotional wounds and allow me to navigate intimate friendships as I learn from the lessons of the characters I read about. 

I am not sharing any groundbreaking information here, but this was what I was pondering as I read the text.

 Also, I apologize for how lengthy this entry was. I will make sure those that follow are not so wordy!