Look, I Know We In The Snapedom Always Talked About Severus As This Genius Prodigy And All That. We Take

Encanto is on Disney+ for Christmas, so here’s another piece of meta that no one asked for but 

As much as I like Bruno, I don’t think he’s actually immune to the whole “trying to do the right thing but causes harm instead” itis that plagues the rest of the family 

Like, to start with, his disappearance after Mirabel’s gift ceremony. He thought he was trying to do the right thing, but he didn’t really stop to think about the emotional and psychological harm that would cause his family. (Even Alma was probably retraumatized IMO, given that her darkest moment was someone she loved disappearing from her.) 

And yes, Pepa has her whole “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” song, but she’s also the first person to run and hug him when he returns and I bet 100% that it’s easier to be pettily mad at Bruno then to be sad all the time (and potentially flood the Encanto.) 

BUT that’s not even the main thing I want to talk about: Instead I’m talking about him fixing the cracks. 

“Wait, why is that a bad thing?” You might be asking. 

Simple: He’s only fixing the symptom, and he’s hiding from the rest of the family the fact that there’s even a problem in the first place. He’s spackling up the cracks so that everyone only sees smooth “perfect”/”strong” walls. No one is aware of the faults, so they operate under the assumption that everything is fine, until the cracks get so big that they can’t be ignored any longer.    

tl;dr A Madrigal takes a course of action that they think is for the best based on their own history of trauma without really acknowledging how it would hurt their family emotionally/psychologically. They then spends their time focusing on covering up the cracks/issues in the Casita/Familia Madrigal allowing it/them to project a facade of strength and perfection without actually unpacking the underlying cause of damage. 

Am I talking about Bruno or Alma? 

tl;tl;dr Bruno takes after his mother 

(editing to add: this is not an Anti-Bruno post or an Anti-Alma post. I left the theater caring for all the members of the family.) 

I was part of secretsamol for the first time this year, and got to draw Es and Lye hanging out for mr_marielda on twitter!

(if you're a collector of magic stuff and your friend has SO MANY of her weird eyelashes anyway...cant you have just one..?)

Wholesome content from Teacher Appreciation Celebration in Hogwarts Mystery!

it feels very star wars, in the best sense, for dooku to fall deeper into the dark side after qui-gon's death because he becomes fixated on blaming the jedi council so that he doesn't have to reckon with the fact his conspiring with sidious played a far more direct role in what happened than whatever mistakes the council made. sidious calls qui-gon a necessary sacrifice for their cause, which upsets dooku, but not as much as the idea that his death was an entirely preventable tragedy that dooku failed to stop... which is why yaddle telling him qui-gon didn't need to die made him snap. because if that's true then dooku is as guilty and corrupt as the senators he despised for ignoring suffering. and he can't bring himself to face that reckoning, not when it's so much easier to just make it another reason the jedi are at fault.

Agustín tells Bruno His Secrets

Do you think Snape hate has increased since we found out he was poor?

I think there’s a number of reasons, but yes, I think it’s a possibility.  We can quickly compare and contrast how Draco and Snape are perceived by fandom, or even Regulus and Snape.  I suspect that the poverty that the Snape family were steeped in is too difficult for some readers to wholly grasp, whereas perhaps it is far easier to admire and aspire towards the riches and decadence of the Blacks and the Malfoys.  

Maybe it’s also easier for some modern readers to imagine the psychological impact of not agreeing with the politics of your parents than it is to imagine the undercurrent of domestic violence and living in a destitute environment in a dilapidated house.  Additionally, there are uncomfortable messages for some from Snape - this dirty, unloved, dishevelled child is as powerful and as capable as any other wizard, and given the opportunity, he flourishes.  Depending on your class, you may read Snape’s success as a powerful message of triumph over adversity - or perhaps, a dangerous message about competition from the underclass.  

Still, I suspect the real issue is generational - and not necessarily generational from Harry starting at Hogwarts in 1991 and us discussing this almost 30 years later, but generational from JK.  I’ve spoken a lot previously about how her depiction is of teachers from the mid 70s put into a book set in the early 90s and how that doesn’t wholly translate to the kid of the late 10s.  

With that in mind, I think her notion of a love story is also mired in history.  For someone of JK’s age when she started writing, unrequited love was seen in positive terms - it wasn’t meant to be creepy.  Love is a huge theme throughout the series, and the idea that Snape - who had walked down this horribly dark path and was outwardly a mean and nasty and spiteful man - would completely change his ideology and allegiance due to his unrequited love for Lily was supposed to have been indicative of the power of love.

But we read Potter now with modern eyes, and unrequited love has not aged particularly well.  It seems rare that people genuinely ‘quietly love from afar’ - and instead, fandom insists on applying traits to the character which don’t exist in the text.  For instance, there’s no indication of Snape being a stalker or a creep, there’s no indication that he wanted a sexual relationship with Lily, there’s no indication that he bothered her or harassed her.  He isn’t a ‘nice guy’ or an ‘incel’ - but some readers can’t find the trope that they’re expecting, so they apply others to the series, even if they don’t quite fit.

So, I think the author and the readership are in conflict.  The author wrote a tale of genuine unrequited love, and the readers are trying to view it through modern frameworks, and they draw incorrect conclusions about the character’s motives.

I suspect this is exacerbated by the readership not ageing with the series.  Everyone who read Potter whilst it was being published had to wait for the next book to be written, but these days, they’re binge-read.  I think that lack of distance between each book (and the subsequent lack of maturity, because you’re reading the next one within a week, and not waiting three years, so you can’t have matured further) means that many struggle to separate Snape from being a cipher for their mean teacher at school to becoming the secret hero that he is.

I think that’s my real conclusion.  The problem is that this is an old text which is being read as if it is modern - and that leads to a clash between reader expectation and authorial intent.

holding back the instinct to explode with a screaming half coherent rant about sans

Look, I think it’s pretty clear that the border-crossing people secretly really like Héctor. Evidence for this includes:

• How happy the border guard looked when he finally got through. • The fact that when his Frida Kahlo disguise fails he admits that “actually I am Héctor”, not giving any last name. Clearly he’s gained enough of a reputation with these people that he knows they’re not going to confuse him with the  twelve thousand other  'Héctor’s that they’ve met doing this job. • The other border guard not locking him up, despite Héctor begging him and trying to bribe him and just generally pushing his luck (I remember sitting in the cinema thinking that I would have locked this guy up by now. But it makes sense if they’ve known him for ages and are all slightly amused by/sorry for the guy).

Probably they loved him for providing some much-needed entertainment every year. The border guarding gig on Dìa de los Muertos can’t be the best job in the world, since it mainly involves standing around, watching other people head off to their own families while counting down the hours until you can see yours.

The knowledge that, at some point during the night, Héctor will show up in some crazy disguise or with some convoluted plan to get through (I suspect that the year he met Miguel was the first time he dared to just make a dash for it, since that’s the only reason I can come up with for why he wasn’t better  prepared to stop himself from sinking into the bridge. Probably he was just desperate with the knowledge that this could very well be his last chance), which would then cause some excitement and give you and your coworkers something to talk about, was probably the one thing that kept them from dying (again) of boredom.

And of course, once he got through, this all stopped, since there was obviously no need for it anymore. Sure, Héctor still regularly got butterflies moments before the crossing, convinced that this was the year that they somehow forgot him again and he had to stay behind (one time he freaked out so badly  that Imelda had to physically push him in the way of the scanner), but even he never thinks of sneaking through.

And the border guards, weirdly, kind of miss it— the Dìa de los Muertos night shift is just so boring now— and somehow, word of this reaches the Riveras.

And that’s how The Game begins. The ‘try and get Héctor through border control without them realising it’s him’ game. Thought up to amuse the border guards and, though nobody mentions this to Héctor, to distract him and keep him from getting too nervous before a crossing.

Héctor absolutely loves it— though a large reason for this is  that it’s an excuse to spend more time with his family. Felipe and Òscar in particular get really into it and have been known to spend weeks before the crossing plotting their next attempt. Coco — who most definitely takes after her father in this respect— joins in.

Rosita helps out as well, but less with the inventive side and more with the practical side (where are they going to get the stuff for the disguises? Who’s going to play what part? When are they going to carry it out?), while Victoria makes it clear that she disapproves but then joins in anyway because somebody has to be there to point out the obvious flaws in their plans. Rosita and Coco together then persuade Julio to get involved, though he mainly just sits there offering only the occasional suggestion, and doesn’t have much to do with the overall planning.

Imelda, for her part, thinks that its stupid and childish and will have no part in it whatsoever, thank you very much. Oh, except for providing any materials that they need, and coming up with ideas, and helping them pull it off… other than that, she’s not going to have anything to do with it. (Wisely, her family avoid commenting on the fact that, for somebody who isn’t involved, it’s strange how often she ends up taking over the whole thing.)

Elena, when she dies, takes the same line as Imelda. “This is idiotic and I’m not going to do it— but here are some detailed instructions on how to do it and woe betide you if you do anything else without consulting me first!”  Miguel’s father is happy to help out and his mother, to everybody’s surprise, throws herself headlong into it and has great fun working on all the details and coming uo with zanier ideas each year.

When Miguel himself dies, he finds the whole thing hilarious (him being the only one of the younger Riveras who ever witnessed one of Héctor’s original, more madcap escapes) and insists on sneaking across the border with Héctor. He even manages to convince them to try Héctor’s old idea (apparently mentioned in the novelisation) of dividing himself up into baskets and getting carried across that way.

That’s the one year they call it a draw, since their skeletons start to reassemble at the point of crossing but, technically, both Miguel and Héctor had gotten through before that happened (or, rather, Miguel’s forearm and foot and Héctor’s hand, ribcage and straw hat got through in Imelda’s basket).

The border guards claim to find it a bit annoying— though, last time they brought him in for it, Héctor noticed a large scoreboard hanging on the wall (so far the border guards are winning, but the family’s help has finally allowed Héctor to score a few points of his own). A similar scoreboard hangs on one of the walls of the villa (oh yes, guess who ended up with Ernesto’s villa?) in the room where, once a year, the whole family gather to make their plans.

A glorious fuck-ton of perspective angle references (per request).

[From various sources.]