So, that scene where Harry retrieves Ron from the bottom of the lake and Percy loses his mind? Let’s look at that.
“Percy, who looked very white and somehow much younger than usual, came splashing out to meet them.”
“Percy seized Ron and was dragging him back to the bank (’Geroff, Percy, I”m all right!’)”
And three pages later: “Madame Pomfrey had gone to rescue Ron from Percy’s clutches.”
But you know, as Ron’s always telling us, Percy only cares about his career.
There is a very popular reading of this character that holds that he really is defined by his ambition and self-importance, and that he never does anything to show that he values his family until DH. It’s a reading that most likely comes from taking Ron and the twins estimation of Percy as fact and it completely ignores scenes like this one.
What Rowling does here is a brilliant example of showing instead of telling. When not in crisis mode, Percy is very verbal; he’s always talking about his accomplishments or work business that no one finds interesting but him. Here, he’s all action. He completely fails to act the part of a cool, impartial judge because his little brother appears to be in distress, and his affectation disappears. What remains is a very Molly Weasley-esque kind of concern: You’re alright? Ha! I don’t believe you. Let me smother you with affection until I’m satisfied that you are correct.
As funny as the image of Percy checking over Ron like an agitated mother cat is, my favorite part of this scene is Harry’s amazement that Percy looks young. He’s eighteen, only four years older than Harry himself. He IS too young to be taking his boss’s place in this capacity, but Harry has bought into the affectation too. I think people sometimes forget how unreliable Harry’s point of view is.
There is no lack of evidence showing that Percy is quite different from what he pretends to be and how his siblings see him; you just have to tune out all the noise they all make about him to see it.
Percy Weasley’s personality is at least 40% ‘served as caretaker to younger siblings near-constantly until age 11′ and no one is ever going to convince me otherwise.
Because Molly wrangling toddler twins by herself with two infants in the house is just plausible with magic, but two toddlers and five-year-old Fred and George? No. Nope. Very few people have those multitasking skills and Molly is manifestly not one of them. (She’s under the impression Ron’s least favorite color is the one he should wear constantly forever okay. Points for remembering there’s a connection?)
Bill and Charlie may have helped out some, but they were clearly off doing their own things as soon and as often as could be managed, even before Hogwarts. Percy was the one whose entire identity grew up around ‘keep the twins out of trouble for an hour’ and ‘feed Ron his mashed peas’ and ‘oh good boy, you finished your sums all by yourself’ and ‘you’re such a help, dear, what would I do without you?’
The problem is that this isn’t an identity that carries one very successfully into adulthood, and it’s easy to not notice this because it’s an identity that comes with affectations of adulthood from a ludicrously young age.
Sometimes I get the feeling that ppl are going through my posts looking for something they can try to get me to respond to just bc I’m one of the few inclusionists who hasn’t blocked them already.
Bro, if your big thing is going through ancient posts and trying to get me to respond to your silly ass, like Stonewall was the work of cis gays or whatever, or like my ass didn’t live through the reclaiming of Queer, you’re going to be really disappointed.
So anyway here’s the Queer Power poster in its original, unedited form. Remember that ‘gay’ around the time of Stonewall meant “anything not straight and cis,” that Pride was founded by a disabled bi Jewish woman, that bisexuals especially women and trans folks weren’t a separate community then, and that Queer Nation was founded decades later by people with a wide range of identities ok bye Felicia here’s a quote for you
A 1970s newspaper titled Come Out stated, “Gay Liberation Front welcomes any gay person, regardless of sex, race, age or social behavior. Though some other gay organizations may be embarrassed by drags or transvestites, GLF believes that we should accept all of our brothers and sisters unconditionally".
Watch Star Trek in in-universe chronological order… Time travel included.
So you start by watching the 3ish minute scene of Voyager where a Q takes Voyager back to the big bang, then you move to the 4ish minute scene of Next Generation where Q takes Picard to the start of evolution on Earth, then to the DS9 episode where they go back to the 1930′s, then Star Trek 4 in the 1970′s.
Then you’re finally able to start watching Enterprise.
