[AccioSilver]

“There’s no such thing as fairies.”

after reading this article i am even more ready to square up

Dani’s family doesn’t die because she’s caught Pelle’s eye; she catches Pelle’s eye because her family has died. Like, this might sound harsh, but there’s nothing special about Dani before that tragedy. There’s no indication that Pelle was particularly interested in her or felt any connection with her before that. Maybe he liked her well enough, but like, what, that was enough to make him be like, “Ah yes, we should go through a ton of effort just to lure in this random girl specifically”? I don’t buy it! Nor do I buy the fan theory that the other girls dancing around the maypole deliberately threw the competition so that Dani would win! People griped that it looked as though the other girls fell too easily and must have been falling on purpose, but I guess those people have better balance and endurance than I do, because personally I don’t find it hard to imagine how easy it would be for a drugged, dizzied, exhausted girl to fall from even a minor collision after drinking entheogenic tea and dancing around in circles for a long time.

Both these theories seem to presuppose the idea that Harga wants an outsider to be May Queen and targets Dani for that purpose. But as far as I know, there’s no reason to think that’s the case? And while there is no doubt that Dani’s induction to the community — once she’s actually there — involves appealing to her emotions, I think the idea that Harga manipulated every aspect of her character arc undermines her own agency and the impact of watching her discover how at home she feels at Harga, how well she fits in there, how held she feels. If she hadn’t been crowned May Queen, would she still have wanted to be part of the community? …Yeah, I think she probably still would have, by the end. I think that Christian’s perceived infidelity would still have gutted her; that the other women would still have flocked to give her emotional support; and that the girl who, with no prompting whatsoever, joined the other young women in picking flowers while walking backward — a practice the guys she came with mocked — did not need to be manipulated or flattered in order to see Harga’s appeal. I also think that these theories are out of character for the people of Harga; in a society that is focused so much more on the community than on the individual, it feels unlikely that they would go through so much trouble just to acquire one specific unremarkable outsider girl.

Of course Harga treated Dani differently right from her arrival. Of course they have clearly already decided to bring her into her community, of course Pelle has feelings for her, of course he’s clearly already told his community about her, and of course the immense grief and isolation she’s suffering as a result of losing her family is what leaves her so vulnerable to Harga’s appeal. But that tragedy wasn’t Harga targeting her; it’s why Pelle and his community feel such interest in and compassion for her in the first place! Even afterward, Christian inviting Dani on the trip is simply an opportunity that falls into Pelle’s lap. Pelle and Harga are glad of this opportunity because they do, I think, genuinely empathize with Dani and genuinely feel that her joining their community would be good and right. But it was just opportunism; just chance. The stars aligning to bring them into contact with someone who desperately needed a place to belong.