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what did you mean when you said tom was "grooming" ginny during cos?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

"grooming" is when someone establishes a social relationship with a vulnerable person and then convinces this vulnerable person that they are their closest friend in the world, that they alone understand and support them, and that they alone can be trusted to act in their best interest - in order to isolate, manipulate, control, exploit, and abuse them.

[know the signs!]

the term is primarily used in a legal context, and it is primarily used in cases in which the vulnerable person is a child who has been sexually abused - but it can be used to describe relationships in which both people are adults, and which contain neither sexual nor physical violence [i.e. relationships which feature emotional abuse or coercive control]. it often refers to relationships established online over significant periods of time - although short-term and in-person grooming is also possible.

the difference between grooming and other forms of abusive behaviour is that grooming hinges on flattery, rather than threat. someone who is being groomed will not [at first] be afraid of their abuser - they will feel listened to, supported, and understood; they will enjoy the conversations they have with the person who is grooming them; they won't think that any of the conversations they've had or information they've disclosed have crossed a line into behaviour they should tell someone about.

and so many victims of grooming often don't realise what's happening to them until the abuser has isolated them from other support networks and primed them to rely on them alone - and has also made the victim like them and want to avoid upsetting them - at which point the groomer will start a more active campaign of abuse against the victim [for example, making them perform sexual acts, or making them work for them as a drug dealer], using the strength of their supposed "friendship" ["i thought you were my best friend, but i guess you're not if you won't do this for me..."] to secure not only the victim's compliance, but to manipulate the victim into thinking that they're behaving consensually and with agency ["other people don't understand that you want to do this... but i do... i understand you better than anyone in the world..."].

and this is exactly what tom riddle does to ginny in chamber of secrets.

he makes ginny believe that they're best friends - and that he's the only person who truly understands her - by initially chatting to her about [relatively] benign things:

“The diary,” said Riddle. “My diary. Little Ginny’s been writing in it for months and months, telling me all her pitiful worries and woes - how her brothers tease her, how she had to come to school with secondhand robes and books, how” - Riddle’s eyes glinted - “how she didn’t think famous, good, great Harry Potter would ever like her...” [...] “It’s very boring, having to listen to the silly little troubles of an eleven-year-old girl,” he went on. “But I was patient. I wrote back. I was sympathetic, I was kind. Ginny simply loved me. No one’s ever understood me like you, Tom... I’m so glad I’ve got this diary to confide in... It’s like having a friend I can carry around in my pocket...”

it's unlikely that ginny regarded any of these things as personal secrets which nobody else was aware of - she is embarrassed and annoyed that her whole family know she fancies harry [and tease her about this accordingly], rather than terrified that they'll find out that she does.

but riddle then clearly manipulates her - since he's her best friend! - into disclosing things which she hasn't told anyone else:

“If I say it myself, Harry, I’ve always been able to charm the people I needed. So Ginny poured out her soul to me, and her soul happened to be exactly what I wanted... I grew stronger and stronger on a diet of her deepest fears, her darkest secrets."

which she is clearly terrified of him revealing:

“Imagine how angry I was when the next time my diary was opened, it was Ginny who was writing to me, not you. She saw you with the diary, you see, and panicked. What if you found out how to work it, and I repeated all her secrets to you?"

which he then uses as a springboard into getting her to do things for him:

"I grew powerful, far more powerful than little Miss Weasley. Powerful enough to start feeding Miss Weasley a few of my secrets, to start pouring a little of my soul back into her...” “What d’you mean?” said Harry, whose mouth had gone very dry.  “Haven’t you guessed yet, Harry Potter?” said Riddle softly. “Ginny Weasley opened the Chamber of Secrets. She strangled the school roosters and daubed threatening messages on the walls. She set the Serpent of Slytherin on four Mudbloods, and the Squib’s cat.” “No,” Harry whispered. “Yes,” said Riddle, calmly. “Of course, she didn’t know what she was doing at first. It was very amusing. I wish you could have seen her new diary entries... far more interesting, they became... Dear Tom,” he recited, watching Harry’s horrified face, “I think I’m losing my memory. There are rooster feathers all over my robes and I don’t know how they got there. Dear Tom, I can’t remember what I did on the night of Halloween, but a cat was attacked and I’ve got paint all down my front. Dear Tom, Percy keeps telling me I’m pale and I’m not myself. I think he suspects me... There was another attack today and I don’t know where I was. Tom, what am I going to do? I think I’m going mad... I think I’m the one attacking everyone, Tom!”

it's up to interpretation whether riddle convinces ginny that she's responsible for the attacks or not, but it's certainly clear that he promises her that he won't breathe a word of her fears that she is - and that this keeps her in thrall of him for months after the attacks begin:

“It took a very long time for stupid little Ginny to stop trusting her diary,” said Riddle.

this entire arc of chamber of secrets really is textbook grooming [which i am sure was intentional, given the fact that so much children's literature is didactic]

while the doylist text immediately ceases to care about what happens to ginny at the end of the book because of standard genre reasons [both children's stories and mystery stories - which chamber of secrets is - always wrap up with that sort of "everything's fine now, no long-term problems here" vibe], the watsonian explanations are interesting to grapple with.

especially given the... lax approach the wizarding world takes towards the safety of children.

#exactly!! #ive word vomited a little about this in 'ginny 2' but im so intrigued by what her second year must have been like to her #how many things she's carried with her from that experience whether harmful or benign #and how she looks at herself #how she mourns herself #asenora meta #hp #ginny weasley #tom riddle #cos

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LMAOOOOOOOOOO

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I know I'm a bit late to saying this but frankly if I found out a secret society of magic-users were just playing nonsense sports and making up slurs for the rest of us instead of helping us out with famines or leukemia I think I'd apply for a job with my local witch hunters

#LMAO #hp

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have i mentioned that ive been working on a tomarry haikyuu AU in between "with eyes like these" 👀

#this au is literally for me myself and i but im too obsessed with it #eve.txt #writing updates

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Source

#god i wish that were me

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Nightwing unmasked and masked version live sketch by Dexter Soy

#dick grayson #dc

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what's the funniest reason you've ever seen a ship called Problematic TM?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

my favourite objections to ships are always either the skill issue ones [noooo, you can't ship this because it doesn't make sense!], or the "did you know I'm a grad student?" ones [fifteen thousand words - thirteen thousand of them wrong - on why my ship is really canon because i think i'm too good to say "lmao, i ship it because it's fun"].

the funniest recent examples of each i've seen?

1. "i don't like this slash pairing because i can't understand why people interpret one of the characters as queer. it's not there in the text - especially if i ignore all the places where he's banging on about how hot other men are."

2. "why would people be interested in their own narrative mirrors? that doesn't sound like a literary device which has been used for centuries?"

3. "it's historically inaccurate to suggest this character would bottom."

4. "i don't like this canon couple. here's proof that i've just pulled out of my arse the text that she abused him."

5. "urgh, so much slash is misogynistic. excuse me? did you just suggest the man in my preferred het pairing might enjoy being submissive? no thank you, i like real men."

couldn't be me!

#oh i know that second one lmao #3 is also always a riot #hp #asenora meta

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i dunno something about this hellsite is just very... white. like, when i think of tumblr collectively it's very white people

Like the music taste. Collectively, a lot of distaste for rap and blues and jazz. Lotta fandom racism. There's not a lot about making queer poc visible compared to all the stuff about white queers. Black have literally gotten banned for being black and being against oppressing black people.

and i know a lot of poc on here. i follow them. we interact. but that's not what im talking about. i dont know how to explain further. cope.

#ive only vaguely heard of this discourse over music genres but im genuinely ???? #wdym 'rap is so violent!!!' is a thing being said seriously in the year of our lord 2024 are you fr #jesus christ #tumblr #racism #anti blackness

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yall don't look over to twitter, some idiots found one of my tweets & it's been a doozy today

#laughing bc i muted the tweet & they're mostly whining at the air but yeah #eve.txt

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me, the motherfucker with over 50 abandoned works in progress: i have an idea

#me

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Hot fandom discourse take but framing dark content as only being acceptable if its a vehicle for exploring personal trauma is just giving ground to the puritan segments of fandom.

Simply liking dark content for its own sake is perfectly fine.

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this is for those who despair over seeing ships or tropes that make them uncomfortable while they do their little scrolly-scroll on ao3, acting like they aren’t responsible for their own internet experience

(alternatively, the back button also works)

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inspired by this post

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occasional posts from users

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