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.
important.
also, dumbledore would not have let an eight year old drown; harry even has a minute after he finished the task while talking with ron where he feels embarrassed and stupid over his performance during the task explicitly because he knows dumbledore would have never let that happen–and harry feels like he should have remembered that before/during the task
not to mention, dumbledore rewarded harry with high marks during the task for caring about the other hostages and for rescuing fleur’s sister. and this wasn’t the only time he’s rewarded students for demonstrating caring behavior towards other people
seriously the way some of you people talk about dumbledore you’d think he was voldemort or umbridge
I agree, and honestly I wasn’t agreeing with the OP as much as I was with the above comments that the Dursleys, not Dumbledore, are responsible for Harry’s behavioural patterns. And yeah, the idea of coping, and of not letting people come to harm if you can help it, aren’t actually bad things and yet people talk of them as if they’re actually moral failings on Harry’s part, something he should be actively punished for.
This–that Harry, in the heat of the moment, assumed that no one would help the girl if he failed to do so, because of the way the Dursleys treated him–seemed implicit to me when I read it for the first time. In the intervening years it’s come to my attention that my childhood was…atypical, shall we say, but even knowing that most people are more decent than my extended family, I still assume that, if I don’t help someone in trouble, no one will. It’s not a hero complex or a compulsion to play the savior, it’s a bone-shaking certainty that I would be left helpless in their situation and I honestly can’t live with leaving someone else in that position. I remember reading that, reading Harry acting like that, and thinking that it was such a relief to see someone who made “foolish” decisions for the same reasons I did.
im fuckign laUGHING imagining how used the first order members must be to kylo ren’s tantrums like if you’re in the same room as him when its happening its no fucking joke but if you’re like three rooms away or on the other side of the base its like everyone’s radioing each other going “yo ren just tore up another computer station” “duuuuude what happened” “someone told him his darth vader action figure is gonna arrive later than expected and he went fucking nuts” “did u see it happening???” “dave was on door duty and told me about it. he said there was screaming and stamping and everything………o shit bill’s gonna tell him there’s no mint choc chip ice cream left do u wanna come over here me n hux are gonna make popcorn and watch the show”
You know what, I totally love the setup in force awakens for any romantic subplot that could come out of it. The apparent options are:
1. Finn and Rey: an interracial straight couple where the man is black and the woman is white, a setup done almost always the other way around in movies
2. Finn and Poe: an interracial gay couple (with two people of color) that would be the first of its kind in a major motion picture like this
3. Finn and Rey and Poe: a potentially healthy polyamorous, interracial relationship. Unheard of ever.
4. No romantic subplot at all: A sci-fi film without a pointless romance that has no relevance to the plot??? Whaaaaaatttttt?????
I mean whichever way you swing it, it turns out pretty fantastic!
How is Poe a POC???
dude
Oscar Isaac is Latino (specifically Guatemalan/Cuban)
repeat after me: I am a fucking awesome person who has dealt with so much shit and I have made it through it all and am still cute af and smart and funny and nice and intelligent and I kick ass
everybody liveblogging clone wars stuff on my dash made me think
okay in the theoretical instance where eventually finn sparks off a revolution and all the stormtroopers rebel en masse…
you can’t fight with no helmet bc that’s impractical (even if seeing faces would be incredibly important and powerful) but how can you tell yourselves apart from the stormtroopers still killing for the first order?
easy. helmet decoration.
every freed/rebelling stormtrooper takes their helmet off and they make themselves bleed and they put the blood on it just like this, that same smeared handprint, with ONLY their own blood
because in a universe where so many weapons are lasers, you wind up getting a lot of carnage with no BLOOD, and it’s easy to forget people, especially stormtroopers, can even bleed at all
but what better way to say, we are men? what’s more personlike and human than bleeding?
and i picture finn somehow coming over a hill and i don’t know if it’s better if they recognize him or if they don’t but imagine the sun rising or setting just behind him, and for a moment he’s in silhouette, and they’re all faceless again
and finn just seeing the ARMY of them, the tens of hundreds (of thousands!?) of PEOPLE who’ve made themselves look like him, so they can BE like him, who’ve bled to do it, and each and every one of them have a name
DO STORMTROOPERS WHO REBEL TOGETHER–FRIENDS WHO COULDN’T BEAR TO LEAVE EACH OTHER, BROTHERS AND SISTERS AND SIBLINGS WHO COULDN’T STAND TO KILL EACH OTHER, LOVERS WHO COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT EACH OTHER–PAINT EACH OTHER’S HELMETS WITH THEIR BLOOD?
ARE THERE WHOLE SQUADRONS WHOSE HELMETS ARE MARKED WITH THE BLOOD OF THEIR CAPTAIN, WHO WILL FIGHT TO THE DEATH FOR THEM AND WANTS IT TO BE KNOWN?
DOES IT BECOME PART OF THE CULTURE? CAN YOU WALK UP TO A REBEL STORMTROOPER WHO’S OUT, WHO’S FREE, AND SAY “WHOSE BLOOD DID YOU WEAR?”
“MY HUSBAND,” SAYS ONE, FLASHING THEIR RING, AND THEY HAVE A HUSBAND, THEY ARE A PERSON WHO COULD MARRY, AND THEY ARE PROUD.
“MY BROTHER,” SAYS ANOTHER, AND IT DOESN’T MATTER IF THAT BLOOD WAS SHARED IN THEIR VEINS OR IF THEY WERE SIBLINGS OF CHOICE, BECAUSE THEY ARE FAMILY.
“MY BEST FRIEND,” SAYS A THIRD, AND THEY DIDN’T KNOW THE WORD ‘FRIEND’ BEFORE THEY FLED BUT IT WAS WORTH IT, SO WORTH ALL THE PAIN TO LEARN THAT WORD.
“MY COMMANDER,” ANOTHER SAYS, AND, NO, THEY ARE NOT A STORMTROOPER, NOT ANYMORE, BUT THEY ARE STILL A SOLDIER AND THEY STILL LOVE THEIR COMMANDER.
“IT WAS MINE,” ONE SAYS, PROUD AND FIERCE AND UNBROKEN, AND THEY REBELLED ALONE, ONE AGAINST MANY, AND THEY WILL NOT BE BROKEN NOW.
