tbh people mock harry for going back to rescue fleurs sister in the second triwizard task but harry knows dumbledore better than anyone else. he probably looked at the situation and thought “would dumbledore let an eight year old drown just because fleur couldnt do this bit? yes. yes he would.”
it’s also possible he was acting off of the lessons he learned in the abusive dursley household. that’s why he does a lot of his so-called “hero complex” shit. he takes a lot of personal responsibility for other people bc he learned growing up that “no one’s here for you, no one will help you, you will not catch any breaks”. he helps bc if he didn’t, who would? certainly not the dursleys, and that’s what he grew up with.
he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts, bc he’s learned that authority figures are no help and will only make things worse. he takes situations at face value bc he’s never seen other options in his life, he’s never HAD other options in his life. speaking very personally, that was a serious marker of abuse that i saw in myself - i never thought abt escape, or what i could do to improve my situation, bc i didn’t even see that as an option. the options were survive or don’t, deal w it or don’t, acclimate or implode.
maybe he wasn’t thinking abt what DUMBLEDORE would do, what anyone at hogwarts would do. maybe he was acting off what he knew the dursleys (his main authority figures) would do. the dursleys would let the girl drown. and harry was there, and harry could do something, and so harry did. he took personal responsibility for fleur’s sister’s safety bc all his life he’s learned that authority figures cannot be trusted to do so.
people characterize these aspects of harry as a “hero complex” or a “stupid nobility” or a “lack of common sense”, but i don’t agree with that. i can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.
it’s called “complex ptsd” and if you get out of the abusive situation before you’re old enough to understand how fucked up it was, like Harry did, you don’t end up with the classic flashbacks so much, just atypical behavior patterns and a high risk of other shit. That’s why Harry is so fucked up by everything that Umbridge does, it’s because he’s being retraumatized in his safe space.
That was always how I interpreted Harry’s behavior, because I’m also prone to the same sort of reactions. It’s not about mistrusting a specific person or a specific group of people, it’s about the automatic bone-deep assumption that no one will help. Personal example: I don’t trust authority figures, even the ones I know and like on a personal level–I reported a sexual assault to a teacher a year and a half ago and I had a worse panic attack about that than I did about the assault, ever. The assault was business as usual. Telling an authority figure about it, giving someone that kind of weapon to use against me, was fucking traumatic, my roommate had to come with me and I had to sit down on the ground outside the building before I could walk. Harry Potter example: he doesn’t tell anyone about Umbrige because he assumes that not only will they do nothing, they might use it against him–if I hear literally one more person bring up the fact that he didn’t tell McGonagall, I will have an aneurysm. It’s not that he doesn’t think McGonagall cares about him, nor that, in the Triwizard Tournament, he thinks Dumbledore would let a kid die. It just doesn’t even occur to him that someone else might help. When someone suggests that he go to McGonagall about Umbrige, his response is basically “wait, what?” Once he’s out of the second task in the Triwizard Tournament, and the adrenaline’s clearing, he does sit back and go “why did I do that, Dumbledore would never have let her get hurt.” He doesn’t even realize what he’s doing in the moment, he just sees a threat and resolves it because no one else will help.
It’s not…personal, okay? It’s just the learned knowledge that no one is going to get you or anyone else out of a situation, so you have to do it. Every time.
And as long as we’re on the subject, this is part of the reason I dislike Snape pretty hardcore. I mean, I have a litany of sins for Severus Snape, which ends with ‘you can die like a hero but that doesn’t make you a good man’, but this is one of them. He treats this impulse of Harry’s as an attention-seeking behavior, not just a ‘saving-people-thing’ but something entirely motivated by some perverse desire to be in the spotlight. And he punishes him for it. He repeatedly penalizes Harry for trying to save people. And let me tell you something, from personal experience, the more people punish you for this, the stronger the impulse becomes. It’s a self-feeding cycle. Because, says the little voice in your brain, if they’re punishing me for helping, that means they wouldn’t have helped, so that means that it had to be me. Because better they punish you, right? Better you pay for helping someone because you would have paid for something anyway, right?
I’m not saying it’s a healthy mentality, but I’m also not going to condemn it as an unhealthy one, because sooner or later you might actually be the only person who will help. You might be the only person available. And if nothing else, this mentality does teach you to keep a cool head in a crisis.
NEVER FORGET THAT IF PRESIDENT OBAMA HADN’T PUT JUSTICES ELENA KAGAN AND SONIA SOTOMAYOR ON THE BENCH, WE WOULD NOT BE CELEBRATING LEGAL GAY MARRIAGE TODAY. THE SPLIT OF THE VOTE WAS 5/4.
3. U.S. READERS REGISTER TO VOTE HERE AND PLEASE SHARE!
As a long-time Indiana resident, it should say something that so many other people that live in Indiana are happy about Pence becoming Trump’s running candidate only because that means he can no longer be our governor.
He’s had so much of a negative impact on Indiana’s education, culture, and how we all work together.
Pence has already tried to ruin our state. Don’t let him ruin the entire country.
my friend just texted me “it’s not acceptable that trump feels good about himself and you don’t” and i think it’s the most motivational thing i’ve ever read
Vote now for Ship of the Year by liking and reblogging your OTP here on Tumblr! Remember, notes = votes, so be sure to show your favorite ship some love and tune into the 2016 @mtvfandom Awards on July 24th at 8/7c to see who wins!
W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?
As I believe we’ve established, my writing operates on a very strict rule: the less specific a prompt is, the faster it gets out of hand. Do I like general prompts like “Hamilton Star Wars AU” that I can write about at length? Absolutely. But I also really don’t have time to do a lot of them, so perforce I’m going to say ‘specific’.
X: A character you enjoy making suffer.
…all of them. Ever. Specifically? Um…nah, I’m going to stand by that. The more I like a character, the more I want to see them cry over the bodies of everyone they’ve ever loved. One of my most beloved original characters actually has that exact experience in the canon plot of her novel, and everyone I killed for it were characters I adore. No one is safe.
Y: A character you want to protect.
I’m going to assume that it’s perfectly feasible to both like making a character suffer and want to protect them, so…yeah. Wanda Maximoff is the first one to come to mind, also Kurt Wagner, Jean Grey, and Warren Worthington III, John Laurens (I can include historical characters, I do what I want), Grantaire, Enjolras, Cosette, Eponine, Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff…Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls…the Animorphs if anyone gets THAT reference…Aerin Dragon-Killer, which is even MORE obscure…Rogue, Gambit, Kitty Pryde, Colossus…this list could go on.
like imagine him sliding across the bed and into his office
Impress them with your love-making then impress them with your law-making.
#what the fuck was wrong with thomas jefferson honestly
Wait for real I’ve been to Monticello and he didn’t sleep laying down, HE SLEPT SITTING UP and would just casually sit on his ass with his legs out in front of him and fall asleep. He purposely custom made his bed too short for his body to fully lie down. Oh and the second he woke up he would jump out of bed and write down the temperature because he was fucking insane.
also the reasons there are dark stains on the floor is because he submerged his feet in ice water every morning since he thought it would prevent illness (and there’s a real reason for sleeping upright: due to the sorts of foods people ate he slept upright to help with indigestion!)
