you left me in the dark
Got my period this morning, which explains why I was unfortunately awake between 3 am and 5 am. Sigh.
Yesterday, because I am a Competent Adult™, I went grocery shopping and discovered, upon returning home and unpacking, that I'd left the bag with the loaf of bread and the 1/2 lb of ham in the store. So back out into the heat I went and the cashier was like, "I have it right here!" so it all worked out fine, but imagine, if you will, me standing in the kitchen, shaking out the empty bags as if my missing food was going to somehow materialize from them. *hands* I don't even know.
In other news, in the wake of reading The Cursed Child, I've been thinking a lot about next-generation stories and legacies (and really, one day I will write that essay about why I love legacy heroes and I don't just mean Robins), because HP is the third major franchise to have done the thing now, and three times is enemy action a pattern.
I find it really interesting how much of these new entries into old properties are about legacy and parents/parenting/failures of parenting etc. I mean, AtLA and HP are heavily influenced by Star Wars, and they also fit in a similar cultural category for younger generations, and each of the newer sequels has been about how not only have the original golden trios/groups not had a peaceful and worry-free happily ever after, since life isn't actually like that, but that things are still fucked up in the aftermath of their adventures. You can win the war but lose the peace, and you'll have to deal with decades of fallout, both societally and individually, regardless.
Like, being a great hero as a teenager/young twentysomething is great, but if you 1. don't treat your fucking PTSD, 2. have the weight of rebuilding your world/repopulating your people on your shoulders, 3. don't necessarily have parents to model yourself after (or in defiance of, like Draco or Zuko; I don't include Luke and Leia here because they were both raised by loving families even if Luke was very clear that Owen and Beru weren't his parents, and also Vader's abuses of them weren't in a parental capacity, necessarily - like, you don't have to be Darth Vader's kid to look at him and say, "I don't want to be like that guy" in terms of either politics or family relationships {unless, of course, you're delivered a somewhat warped view of what happened to him in the end, but I still feel like I don't have enough information to care about Kylo Ren qua Kylo Ren rather than as another undeserved punishment visited upon his mother}), and 4. aren't conscious of how your name/position/legacy/family history/whatever will affect your kids, you've got a lot more than just the usual burdens of new parents. And you'd think that kids who grew up with famous parents (or families) would be more aware of what that can do to a kid, but it doesn't appear to have helped (at least not from the POV of their kids).
Like, it absolutely makes sense to me that Harry wouldn't talk to his kids about the war or his bad experiences, or that Leia wouldn't tell Ben about Darth Vader (otoh, I would have expected that Luke would, since from his POV, it's a tragedy that ended in redemption, and even that he'd do so in defiance of Leia's wishes), or that Aang would favor the airbending child over the non-airbenders and never even realize he was doing it (or intended to do it, or didn't actually do it but was perceived as doing it by Kya and Bumi, not to mention Tenzin being the youngest probably didn't help with that perception), or that Toph became the most hands-off parent ever, while Zuko and Draco become the more conscientious or more functional parents (I mean, I'm guessing about Zuko, since we don't see much of Fire Lord Izumi, but she doesn't seem fucked up in the way the others are; I still wish we knew SOMETHING about Sokka's (and Suki's?) kids - I like
lizbee's theory that Varrick is Sokka's son, but I can't quite adopt it as canon for this purpose; but even there, that guy starts out as an amoral war profiteer, so.) because Zuko's rebelling against both a family history of genocide and personal history with a parental abuser (and a mother who loved him but disappeared and an uncle who reformed and taught him; without Iroh, does Zuko climb out of that hole, or does he go down the same path as Azula? What do you do with a problem like Azula? I mean, at least Kylo Ren has a conscience he ignores. Does Azula even have that small voice she quiets before she acts abominably or did she smother it years ago?) and Draco wants his son not to have a racist coward as a father (I mean, I think Draco's parents loved him? But they were still Death Eaters.). (We don't really get to see Ron and Hermione as parents in The Cursed Child - the focus is on their romantic relationship, and though Ginny was also raised in a loving home environment, she still has her own Voldemort-induced PTSD to deal with. And that doesn't even get into what Hermione did to protect her parents and whatever effect it had on her and her relationship with them later on.)
But both Harry and Leia would be aware of the legacy they themselves are trying to uphold - Harry's not only famous because he was the Boy Who Lived (I'm avoiding calling him the Chosen One to avoid confusion with Anakin), but because James and Lily defied Voldemort three times and died as heroes fighting him. Leia might never willingly claim the name Skywalker, but she's already the last of the Organa line/last princess of Alderaan, and has to uphold the memories of Bail and Breha (and, privately maybe if not publicly, Padme) as senator and queen, while trying to find a way forward for what's left of her people, so they don't lose their traditions etc. Luke is trying to rebuild the Jedi (though hopefully without replicating a lot of their mistakes; we just don't know at this point) and he does carry the name of the Hero With No Fear even before the rest of the galaxy finds out who was behind Darth Vader's mask. (seriously, I have always wondered what the older people in the rebellion thought when they heard a kid named Skywalker showed up with Obi-Wan Kenobi and blew up the Death Star.) And though he doesn't have famous parents, Aang is also trying to rebuild the Air Nomads, and like Luke's new Jedi, the new Air Nation that emerges is going to be different because it has to be different to survive in the world 170 years later.
Harry, otoh, is more upholding a status quo (though I did love Hermione's insistence that she wasn't going to be another Cornelius Fudge) - we don't see huge changes in the wizarding world, but there are some - ongoing talks with magical creatures, reaching out to Muggle authorities to help find the missing boys, etc. There's no real mention of the Black family at all in The Cursed Child - Draco never mentions his mother's family, nor do we really get his reaction to the fact that Delphi is his cousin, but she's the HP twin of Kylo Ren and Azula here, raised by Death Eaters to believe that power is her legacy.
Anyway, after all that chatter, it's not really the specifics that matter so much as that I find the trend in storytelling interesting. It's a good way to continue an old property but give it new relevance, I guess, though hopefully going forward we can have less of it being about daddy issues. Maybe we'll start to see some focus on the daughters (maybe Rey is the beginning of that *cough*) or even *gasp* mothers, both living and dead.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/861525.html.
people have commented there.
Yesterday, because I am a Competent Adult™, I went grocery shopping and discovered, upon returning home and unpacking, that I'd left the bag with the loaf of bread and the 1/2 lb of ham in the store. So back out into the heat I went and the cashier was like, "I have it right here!" so it all worked out fine, but imagine, if you will, me standing in the kitchen, shaking out the empty bags as if my missing food was going to somehow materialize from them. *hands* I don't even know.
In other news, in the wake of reading The Cursed Child, I've been thinking a lot about next-generation stories and legacies (and really, one day I will write that essay about why I love legacy heroes and I don't just mean Robins), because HP is the third major franchise to have done the thing now, and three times is enemy action a pattern.
I find it really interesting how much of these new entries into old properties are about legacy and parents/parenting/failures of parenting etc. I mean, AtLA and HP are heavily influenced by Star Wars, and they also fit in a similar cultural category for younger generations, and each of the newer sequels has been about how not only have the original golden trios/groups not had a peaceful and worry-free happily ever after, since life isn't actually like that, but that things are still fucked up in the aftermath of their adventures. You can win the war but lose the peace, and you'll have to deal with decades of fallout, both societally and individually, regardless.
Like, being a great hero as a teenager/young twentysomething is great, but if you 1. don't treat your fucking PTSD, 2. have the weight of rebuilding your world/repopulating your people on your shoulders, 3. don't necessarily have parents to model yourself after (or in defiance of, like Draco or Zuko; I don't include Luke and Leia here because they were both raised by loving families even if Luke was very clear that Owen and Beru weren't his parents, and also Vader's abuses of them weren't in a parental capacity, necessarily - like, you don't have to be Darth Vader's kid to look at him and say, "I don't want to be like that guy" in terms of either politics or family relationships {unless, of course, you're delivered a somewhat warped view of what happened to him in the end, but I still feel like I don't have enough information to care about Kylo Ren qua Kylo Ren rather than as another undeserved punishment visited upon his mother}), and 4. aren't conscious of how your name/position/legacy/family history/whatever will affect your kids, you've got a lot more than just the usual burdens of new parents. And you'd think that kids who grew up with famous parents (or families) would be more aware of what that can do to a kid, but it doesn't appear to have helped (at least not from the POV of their kids).
Like, it absolutely makes sense to me that Harry wouldn't talk to his kids about the war or his bad experiences, or that Leia wouldn't tell Ben about Darth Vader (otoh, I would have expected that Luke would, since from his POV, it's a tragedy that ended in redemption, and even that he'd do so in defiance of Leia's wishes), or that Aang would favor the airbending child over the non-airbenders and never even realize he was doing it (or intended to do it, or didn't actually do it but was perceived as doing it by Kya and Bumi, not to mention Tenzin being the youngest probably didn't help with that perception), or that Toph became the most hands-off parent ever, while Zuko and Draco become the more conscientious or more functional parents (I mean, I'm guessing about Zuko, since we don't see much of Fire Lord Izumi, but she doesn't seem fucked up in the way the others are; I still wish we knew SOMETHING about Sokka's (and Suki's?) kids - I like
lizbee's theory that Varrick is Sokka's son, but I can't quite adopt it as canon for this purpose; but even there, that guy starts out as an amoral war profiteer, so.) because Zuko's rebelling against both a family history of genocide and personal history with a parental abuser (and a mother who loved him but disappeared and an uncle who reformed and taught him; without Iroh, does Zuko climb out of that hole, or does he go down the same path as Azula? What do you do with a problem like Azula? I mean, at least Kylo Ren has a conscience he ignores. Does Azula even have that small voice she quiets before she acts abominably or did she smother it years ago?) and Draco wants his son not to have a racist coward as a father (I mean, I think Draco's parents loved him? But they were still Death Eaters.). (We don't really get to see Ron and Hermione as parents in The Cursed Child - the focus is on their romantic relationship, and though Ginny was also raised in a loving home environment, she still has her own Voldemort-induced PTSD to deal with. And that doesn't even get into what Hermione did to protect her parents and whatever effect it had on her and her relationship with them later on.)
But both Harry and Leia would be aware of the legacy they themselves are trying to uphold - Harry's not only famous because he was the Boy Who Lived (I'm avoiding calling him the Chosen One to avoid confusion with Anakin), but because James and Lily defied Voldemort three times and died as heroes fighting him. Leia might never willingly claim the name Skywalker, but she's already the last of the Organa line/last princess of Alderaan, and has to uphold the memories of Bail and Breha (and, privately maybe if not publicly, Padme) as senator and queen, while trying to find a way forward for what's left of her people, so they don't lose their traditions etc. Luke is trying to rebuild the Jedi (though hopefully without replicating a lot of their mistakes; we just don't know at this point) and he does carry the name of the Hero With No Fear even before the rest of the galaxy finds out who was behind Darth Vader's mask. (seriously, I have always wondered what the older people in the rebellion thought when they heard a kid named Skywalker showed up with Obi-Wan Kenobi and blew up the Death Star.) And though he doesn't have famous parents, Aang is also trying to rebuild the Air Nomads, and like Luke's new Jedi, the new Air Nation that emerges is going to be different because it has to be different to survive in the world 170 years later.
Harry, otoh, is more upholding a status quo (though I did love Hermione's insistence that she wasn't going to be another Cornelius Fudge) - we don't see huge changes in the wizarding world, but there are some - ongoing talks with magical creatures, reaching out to Muggle authorities to help find the missing boys, etc. There's no real mention of the Black family at all in The Cursed Child - Draco never mentions his mother's family, nor do we really get his reaction to the fact that Delphi is his cousin, but she's the HP twin of Kylo Ren and Azula here, raised by Death Eaters to believe that power is her legacy.
Anyway, after all that chatter, it's not really the specifics that matter so much as that I find the trend in storytelling interesting. It's a good way to continue an old property but give it new relevance, I guess, though hopefully going forward we can have less of it being about daddy issues. Maybe we'll start to see some focus on the daughters (maybe Rey is the beginning of that *cough*) or even *gasp* mothers, both living and dead.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/861525.html.
people have commented there.