What if, when Petunia Dursley found a little boy on her front doorstep, she took him in? Not into the cupboard under the stairs, not into a twisted childhood of tarnished worth and neglect–what if she took him in?
Petunia was jealous, selfish and vicious. We will not pretend she wasn’t. She looked at that boy on her doorstep and thought about her Dudders, barely a month older than this boy. She looked at his eyes and her stomach turned over and over. (Severus Snape saved Harry’s life for his eyes. Let’s have Petunia save it despite them).
Let’s tell a story where Petunia Dursley found a baby boy on her doorstep and hated his eyes–she hated them. She took him in and fed him and changed him and got him his shots, and she hated his eyes up until the day she looked at the boy and saw her nephew, not her sister’s shadow. When Harry was two and Vernon Dursley bought Dudley a toy car and Harry a fast food meal with a toy with parts he could choke on Petunia packed her things and got a divorce.
Harry grew up small and skinny, with knobbly knees and the unruly hair he got from his father. He got cornered behind the dumpsters and in the restrooms, got blood on the jumpers Petunia had found, half-price, at the hand-me-down store. He was still chosen last for sports. But Dudley got blood on his sweaters, too, the ones Petunia had found at the hand-me-down store, half price, because that was all a single mother working two secretary jobs could afford for her two boys, even with Vernon’s grudging child support.
They beat Harry for being small and they laughed at Dudley for being big, and slow, and dumb. Students jeered at him and teachers called Dudley out in class, smirked over his backwards letters.
Harry helped him with his homework, snapped out razored wit in classrooms when bullies decided to make Dudley the butt of anything; Harry cornered Dudley in their tiny cramped kitchen and called him smart, and clever, and ‘better ‘n all those jerks anyway’ on the days Dudley believed it least.
Dudley walked Harry to school and back, to his advanced classes and past the dumpsters, and grinned, big and slow and not dumb at all, at anyone who tried to mess with them.
But was that how Petunia got the news? Her husband complained about owls and staring cats all day long and in the morning Petunia found a little tyke on her doorsep. This was how the wizarding world chose to give the awful news to Lily Potter’s big sister: a letter, tucked in beside a baby boy with her sister’s eyes.
There were no Potters left. Petunia was the one who had to arrange the funeral. She had them both buried in Godric’s Hollow. Lily had chosen her world and Petunia wouldn’t steal her from it, not even in death. The wizarding world had gotten her sister killed; they could stand in that cold little wizard town and mourn by the old stone.
(Petunia would curl up with a big mug of hot tea and a little bit of vodka, when her boys were safely asleep, and toast her sister’s vanished ghost. Her nephew called her ‘Tune’ not ‘Tuney,’ and it only broke her heart some days.
Before Harry was even three, she would look at his green eyes tracking a flight of geese or blinking mischieviously back at her and she would not think ‘you have your mother’s eyes.’
A wise old man had left a little boy on her doorstep with her sister’s eyes. Petunia raised a young man who had eyes of his very own).
Petunia snapped and burnt the eggs at breakfast. She worked too hard and knew all the neighbors’ worst secrets. Her bedtime stories didn’t quite teach the morals growing boys ought to learn: be suspicious, be wary; someone is probably out to get you. You owe no one your kindness. Knowledge is power and let no one know you have it. If you get can get away with it, then the rule is probably meant for breaking.
Harry grew up loved. Petunia still ran when the letters came. This was her nephew, and this world, this letter, these eyes, had killed her sister. When Hagrid came and knocked down the door of some poor roadside motel, Petunia stood in front of both her boys, shaking. When Hagrid offered Harry a squashed birthday cake with big, kind, clumsy hands, he reminded Harry more than anything of his cousin.
His aunt was still shaking but Harry, eleven years and eight minutes old, decided that any world that had people like his big cousin in it couldn’t be all bad. “I want to go,” Harry told his aunt and he promised to come home.
i am so Tired of ”””progressive””” men in liberal academic circles ‘embracing’ gender non conformity through the medium of flower crown filters, nail polish and blue eyeliner while being very much gender conforming when it comes to keeping the faculty kitchen clean, taking a turn organising birthday/retirement/congratulation cards and cakes for colleagues, respectfully listening to women in seminars, refusing to participate in all-male panels/workshops, and all the other ways they could refuse to conform to masculinity that are less pleasant than posting a pastel selfie and getting validation for being So Gosh Darn Woke
Wild part about Dr. Ford was I assuming something happened but when I heard her tell what happened I was like holy fuck. That happened to me when i was 15.
I am having to learn exactly what sexual assault means.
And I am realizing that yes, this has happened to ALOT of people. ALOT
Please tell me why, other than an attraction, you would care about her. I don’t get it.
Hi, @oddood12! I hope OP doesn’t mind, but I love answering this question (although I usually prefer the asker to show a bit more respect. Good behavior in a public space, and all that).
So let me tell you, @oddood12, why I care about Jyn Erso.
And look, I’ll even put it under a read more, because hey, I really want to give your question the attention it deserves! So if you’re really interested, @oddood12, and not just running around tumblr posting vaguely insulting comments on random people’s blogs about the stuff they like, then I invite you to:
yay! Thank you so so much for sending me a pdf of that fic I lost~ this is the best thank you I can give!
Nar Shaddaa, 6 ABY
“If you stop to shop one more time, I’m taking off without you,” Jyn says into her comm, heels up on the Falcon’s dash because she knows Han hates that.
Han snorts. “Like she’d allow you to fly her.”
“Really, Solo? She?”
“Hey, I know the heart of my ship. And so would you if you were worthy to fly her.”
“I appreciate your faith– Oh come on, not another clothing store. Don’t you have enough vests?”
“Quit stalking me, Erso.” Han glares at the security cam he knows she’s tapped into and goes back to picking through the sale rack.
Jyn shrugs and zooms in on a zit on Solo’s temple on the datapad propped on her knees. “I’m on a timeline here, and you’re easily distracted.”
“I’m trying to act casual. You know, so the thousand bounty hunters here don’t get suspicious.” He steps out of the camera’s range.
Jyn switches feeds. “Nice try.”
“Karking hell are you tapped into every feed on the planet?”
“Security in this sector is a joke. Which is how I managed to finish my half of this quickly and you’re somehow still 2 klicks from the hangar.”
Apparently finished, Han leaves the shop without buying anything and steps onto the narrow street. “Hey, you had it easier,” he mutters. “Hutts don’t move as fast.”
“And yet I still managed to frame one for murder in less time than it took you to steal three datachips.”
He huffs. “What’s the blazing hurry anyway? You’d better not be bleeding out in my cockpit.”
“Don’t be stupid, you know I have a flight to catch.”
He grits his teeth and she smiles. “It’s my flight. I’m taking you and Andor to Takodana.”
“At this point I think it’d be faster to get a public transport.”
“Public transport? Geez Erso, are you that thirsty after 2 weeks you can’t wait another hour or two?”
The reason you’re great at one-off compositions but can’t put a long-form comic or animation together to save your life isn’t because you’re a lousy artist, it’s because you’re a lousy project manager.
I know that doesn’t sound particularly positive, but you’d be astounded how many artists I’ve run into who are literally unaware that project management is a) a totally separate skill set from being Good At Art, and b) something you actually have to learn – they think that people are just intrinsically good or bad at doing long-form projects and that’s all there is to it.
Correctly identifying what it is that you suck at is the first step to improving!
Oh yeah def. is there a book or anything you can suggest for learning how to do project management?
From my POV, project management for big creative projects comes down to four things:
Have a plan. Plan from start to finish. That means as complete an outline as you can create. Knowing your ending helps you finish.
Have infrastructure that helps you create. This goes back to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Space, tools, time, childcare/eldercare, quiet.
Ass. In. Chair. Sit down and work whether you feel super-inspired or not.
Have goals around the project. “Get this done by Thanksgiving so I can enjoy the holidays,” “Have this out there by July 10th for the summer reading audience,” “Complete this…for VENGEANCE.” Those sorts of goals.
These four things aren’t specific to any creative area.
Whichever one of these makes you go “But, but, but…” is a good one to work on!
Rebellions are built on hope 