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no-more-sad-songs · 7 months ago

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What parts of canon do you find the most frustrating/that you are dissatisfied with/wished that was handled better/explored more? Mine is the inconsistency of Voldemort as a character. How he is described as being perhaps the most talented student that Hogwarts has ever seen and so powerful and intelligent but regularly made such dumb decisions e.g. in the final battle where he still uses Avada Kedavra despite seeing it not work before. I like the explanation that Horcruxes rotted his brain

thank you very much for the ask, @sarafina-sincerity!

the parts of canon which i find the least satisfying all have the same thing in common: their morality is individualist.

the harry potter series has - at its core - a really profound and very black-and-white belief that good and evil not only exist but are rooted in the individual. and while i understand why this is the case - the later books in the series are governed by the genre conventions of folkloric epic and, especially, of christian folkloric epic, which means that the whole seven-book narrative arc ending in a battle between christ and satan after which all is well is only to be expected - i don't like it.

so here we are... ten things i hate about canon, for fanfic writers to win my heart by interrogating in their work...

i hate the series' insistence that everything is fine once voldemort is dead

the middle books in the series - especially goblet of fire - do a really interesting job at hinting at the endemic rot in the ministry of magic, and the ways that the state and its enforcers perpetuated harm during the first war that was indistinct from that perpetuated by the death eaters - above all the use of internment without trial for suspected death eaters [which is a reference to something the british state actually did in the 1970s!].

they show how widespread blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy is, even among people who don't openly support voldemort; how the wizarding population is kept deliberately ignorant by what appears to be state-controlled media; and how no serious efforts have been made to eradicated the conditions which enabled voldemort to attain such power.

this is then forgotten completely in deathly hallows, where the fact that almost the entire civil service keeps working for a government which is committing genocide is hand-waved away with "oh, people are scared", and both the epilogue and jkr's post-series writing take the view that kingsley manages, as minister, to preside over a government which easily sheds all its old prejudices and starts working properly.

i don't like this! i think it's just much more interesting for corruption to be impossible to fully eradicate from the government, for blood-supremacy to have long-standing causes which actually take a lot of very hard work to untangled [especially the fact that the wizarding world not appearing to have a welfare state means that those whose lives are poor or unstable are prime targets for radicalisation], and for kingsley to have the same capacity for leaning on the prophet and worrying about his polling numbers as any other politician...

i hate that the series changes how the death eaters are written between half-blood prince and deathly hallows

connected to this shift from the series hinting at the broader issues in the wizarding world to a flat battle between good and evil is that the death eaters, their aims, and their modus operandi are written very different between half-blood prince and deathly hallows. in the former, the death eaters can be situated very easily as anti-state sectarian terrorists who have all sorts of complex analogies within british history and politics. in the latter, they're just caricatures of pure evil - which is why the death eaters introduced from the latter stages of half-blood prince onwards, especially the carrows, are considerably less interesting as characters than those, such as lucius malfoy, barty crouch jr. and bellatrix lestrange, who are introduced earlier.

it's also why the voldemort of deathly hallows feels so uninteresting. i don't like the fanon that the horcruxes render him insane at all - when he's shown outside of the epic battle between good and evil in that book, he's shown to be as lucid and cunning as always - but he ends up having to flop because his only purpose in the overarching narrative is to be killed. in the earlier books, in which he's a paramilitary kingpin poisoning and corrupting a society which was designed to exclude him because of the fact of his birth in revenge for its treatment of him, rather than satan and hitler's lovechild, he is so much more interesting.

i hate the series' belief that slavery is fine

obviously, one of the biggest examples of state malevolence in the series is that wizards own slaves. like many readers, i loathe that the house elf plotline ends up being reduced from its potential for radicalism in chamber of secrets - in which dobby mentions whisper-networks of elves who decry their treatment at wizards' hands - to what we see from goblet of fire onwards - in which elves love being enslaved and think that any attempts to free them from their subjugation is cruel.

i also hate that elves' freedom is then hand-waved away as part of the general race towards "all was well" with the implication that hermione found it easy to undo what appears to be centuries of state-sanctioned oppression without any pushback at all.

the house elf plotline is one of the clearest distillations of the series' individualistic morality. harry abhors the treatment of dobby at the malfoys' hands entirely and only because he doesn't like the malfoys. he abhors voldemort's treatment of kreacher, but sees absolutely no issue with sirius' because he likes sirius - and he clearly sees no issue at all with his own legal mastery of kreacher, seeing as, literally minutes after the end of a war in which the good guys fought for the rights of muggles and muggleborns to be seen as fully human... he is considering ordering his slave to make him a sandwich.

i hate that the series doesn't show the realities of resistance

the reason i think the whole "why does voldemort keep using avada kedavra, isn't he supposed to be clever?" question arises is because the series is incredibly resistant to the idea that the good guys must have to kill as well, which makes it look like it's only the death eaters using it while the order use lots of clever magic that the stupid terrorists are too thick to think of.

this is idiotic - not only because the killing curse is canonically flawless unless the thing you're blasting is your own horcrux and so the order would use it for efficiency's sake alone, but because the reality of being a resistance fighter is that, even if you're on the "right" side, you are going to have kill people or they will kill you.

lupin is completely right in deathly hallows that harry is breathtakingly naive to avoid shooting to kill and that - without the protection of genre conventions allowing him to be preternaturally merciful - his resistance to killing is going to result in him being destroyed by the enemy. it is inconceivable that the rest of the order don't using the killing curse - and the question of what this does to their souls [is it murder if you believe yourself to be justified in your actions?] and their senses of self post-war is so interesting to think about - and i wish we were shown this in the text.

especially because molly absolutely blasted bellatrix with it.

but i also hate that the series thinks that violence is fine when the good guys do it

this is primarily another example of the black-and-white "this is fine because harry's good" theme which runs through the series, which we see in things like harry using sectumsempra on draco malfoy in half-blood prince or the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow in deathly hallows. harry's overarching response to committing attempted murder is to sulk that the incredibly minor punishment he receives is reducing the time he could spend hitting on ginny, and his response to torturing amycus is "lol. lmao."

the series thinks - again and again - that cruelty and violence are completely fine when the person they are perpetuated against "deserves" it, and it does not bang.

and that the series allows the good guys more complexity in characterisation

the role played by the house system in the story - and, above all, the fact that our heroes are all connected to one particular house with straightforwardly admirable associated characteristics - means that the villains receive less opportunity to also have positive traits intermingled with their negative ones - and, therefore, complex and interesting personalities.

i also dislike that when non-gryffindor characters - especially slytherins - do reveal themselves to be brave and loyal etc., instead of recognising that this is because bravery can be multi-faceted the series suggests that they should be recategorised as "belonging" to a "good" house.

or, in other words, me and dumbledore's "i think we sort too soon" line in deathly hallows are enemies for life.

i hate that the series blames merope gaunt for dying

and - of course - the main way a villain isn't allowed as much complexity as a hero is that the series never examines the impact of voldemort's childhood on his adult self. while we see hints throughout canon of just how profoundly affected he is by his institutionalised childhood and the weight of his grief over his parents [his mother especially] - such as him learning as a baby never to cry for attention because it's futile - this is hand-waved away throughout the series by dumbledore-as-the-voice-of-god as irrelevant. the eleven-year-old tom riddle is straightforwardly evil, that he grows up in an orphanage is used as nothing more than narrative colour to underline how creepy he is, and dumbledore's spectacular mishandling of their relationship is viewed by the series as undeniably correct right up to the very last moment [when harry imitates dumbledore by - and we should call it what it is - deadnaming voldemort in their final confrontation].

but the most egregious thing that dumbledore does when discussing the course voldemort's life takes is blame merope gaunt for her own death in childbirth, by implying that witches are immune to one of the most common causes of death throughout human history if they just try hard enough and then saying that a nineteen-year-old girl whose life appears to have been nothing more than unrelenting abuse and misery [perpetuated both against her and by her] lacked the moral fibre to try hard enough.

and this infuriates me.

i hate how the series treats female characters who don't fit its narrow spectrum of "correct" womanhood

merope is but one victim of the series' general issues with treating women who aren't its heroes - all of whom are exactly feminine and beautiful and clever and talented enough that we know they're good people, but not any of these things in an extreme which could make them vapid or arrogant or defiant of social norms or so on.

the series takes a very low view of women who exist outside of narrow boxes - whether they are interested in a hyper-feminine aesthetic [lavender brown, rita skeeter] or a more masculine one [marge dursley]; conform to stereotypes about being bitchy, flighty, or vapid [pansy parkinson, romilda vane] or refuse to adhere to social expectations to be polite, meek, and demure [fleur delacour]; are unmarried, are not inherently maternal, and/or are cruel to children [bellatrix lestrange; petunia dursley; dolores umbridge]; are unrestrained emotionally [cho chang; moaning myrtle] and so on. and i don't like it.

and i also hate that - connected to this - the series uses physical appearance - especially weight - as a shorthand for [female] characters we're supposed to dislike.

what it says on the tin, really - if the series doesn't like a character, especially if the character is a woman, you can almost guarantee that they will either be fat or be unusually thin.

and finally...

i hate that the series prioritises one form of love - love as suffering and as sacrifice - over all others

part of the series' march towards the epic two-person showdown between good and evil is that harry is made to endure trial after trial - including his death for the salvation of mankind - in the name of love. obviously this is because he becomes, by the end of deathly hallows an allegory for christ, but it also fits into the series' view - articulated most frequently by dumbledore - that love, suffering, and sacrifice are all synonyms.

the acts of love the series foregrounds - snape's willingness to endure anything because of his love for lily; sirius' willingness to rot in azkaban and caves and grimmauld place because of his love for james and harry; harry giving up a love that's like "someone else's life" with ginny so he can go die - are all sacrificial, and the series generally takes a dull view of love that is fluffy, silly, carnal, selfish, soothing, transformational and so on. lavender and bellatrix's open adoration of their lovers is mocked; dumbledore's sexual desire for grindelwald is punished by his sister's death; tonks and lupin's uncomplicated happiness in the birth of their son is not to last.

but happy endings and silly jokes and forehead kisses are love too. and the hill i will die on is that they have even more potential to bring about the salvation of the world than constant suffering and abiding.

#to read

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no-more-sad-songs · 10 months ago

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YES, that is him! I don’t even have a mental image of anyone or anything, but that is grown up Draco

established drarry in their 40s but Draco is a blonde version of meme Cillian Murphy whenever paparazzi or journalists or interviews are involved

#draco malfoy

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no-more-sad-songs · 11 months ago

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Do you have any fics u read where the tension all culminates in one quote that just sticks in your mind forever? And it hits you like a fucking punch to the solar plexus? For me it’s “You’ve been making love to me,” he said, “all night.” from Grounds for Divorce by Tepre. I will never forget that quote. Every time I think about it it’s like I’m reliving the sensation of the way it really made me feel heartache.

OH ANON you beautiful beautiful creature, this ask is just phenomenal. I love this sort of thing. And I know exactly what you mean, you put it so well.

Ok so the short answer is that I have a terrible memory for details so I don’t ever manage to memorise actual quotes (though from some reason “I will have Cocoa Glaciers or I will have nothing” from WWPWCS is burned into my memory, which probably says more about me and biscuits than it does about anything else). However I do have FEELINGS (I’m an habitual skimreader so I absorb fics via how they make me feel, and when I think of the ones I love most I can always be transported back to That Moment of reading, and the sort of visceral physical reaction which my friends and I call the heartkick factor - which is exactly what it sounds like).

I’m going to put these under a cut but fair warning most of them will probably have spoilers for the fics involved. Here’s a small selection of my most favourite bits in Drarry! I am leaving LOADS out as it’s taken me ages but I may revisit this with some further additions, because it was so much fun.

And can I just say - I would love other people to do this one? There’s nothing I like more than seeing the bits of fics that have stayed with them. If you’re reading this and also want to answer this ask, consider yourself tagged!

First up is Transfigurations by Resonant. I read this fic at least twice a year. It’s the first fic I ever bookmarked on AO3 - it was written before the books were finished, so it is an AU, but the writing is exquisite, the characterisation is exceptional, and the “spoils of war” scene kills me every single time:

"God," he breathed, putting a possessive hand on Malfoy's hip, "what a prize you are."

"Spoils of war?" Malfoy said breathlessly.

I could quote this whole scene but I don’t want to ruin it if you haven’t read it yet. And if you haven’t, run and do so as a matter of deep urgency!

Next has to be And Save Me From Bloody Men by @blamebrampton. This whole fic gives me the heartkick, but this particular scene just hits especially hard. I cried the first time I read it, and I still get choked up each time. (This really is a spoiler as it comes near the end):

Ernie has just walked past, says he's feeling fine now, no idea what all the fuss was about. 'Chin up, Malfoy,' he says. 'Potter won't let you die in a ditch.'

I smile back at him, he's right. If Potter knew, he would be here in an instant, and he would save us. But he is busy winning a war.

I’m fine. I’M FINE.

Next up! What We Pretend We Can’t See by gyzym. Honestly, SO many bits of this just kill me. I would be here all day if I had to mention all the scenes that mean so much to me. But I’ll use this bit as it’s an actual quote and it’s quite unusual for me to remember exact wording, and that is “high pressure but low stakes”. This whole scene is the most emotionally satisfying resolution to the slowburn romance of the fic and I urge you to read the whole thing and see why that quote is so moving.

Aideomai has to be featured here. I think of all the fics I’ve read, aideomai’s are the ones I have the most visceral reaction to, so much so that I don’t actually read them very often as I find them very emotionally taxing (in the best possible way!). Dwelling makes me feel physical pain, especially this scene - though the devastating emotional impact really only makes sense if you’ve read the fic:

Harry felt as though he carried the dull exhaustion and pain with him down to breakfast, like it was a heavy pack he was lugging around for no real reason. The light in the Great Hall seemed grey, uninteresting. Harry poked at his breakfast without much interest.

Then Draco dropped onto the bench beside him, sitting sideways and dropping his forehead against Harry’s shoulder.

“Merlin,” he moaned, steadying himself with a hand on Harry’s leg. Harry’s hand went up automatically, caught the back of Draco’s neck, keeping him there. “I’m so tired. I can’t even think anymore--”

I also want to mention the entirety of In the Hand but I can’t pick a favourite bit (maybe “I suppose we’d better give it a go, seeing as everyone else has”?) and the bit in Far From the Tree where Harry says, “ “You can, rougher, if you like,”)

Aaaaand I’ll wrap up with this one, from I, Ferret by curiouslyfic: “ And he's right back that first night at the Ministry…” because it makes me cry every time.

#drarry #quotes #(posting from my alternative account)

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no-more-sad-songs · 1 year ago

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Harry Potter Rec Fest 2023 ❄️

1 December: a favourite fic under 5k

I don’t read a huge number of fics under 5k, but I do love (love, love) Sports Star by Moonflower_rose: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34707649 I didn’t actually mean for this rec list to dive straight into my deepest, darkest kinks quite so quickly, but here we are! This is absolutely delicious. Read the tags, just in case this one isn’t for you. It is for me, 100%

2 December : A comfort fic

It’s going to be a struggle for me not to rec Turn by Sara’s-Girl in response to pretty much every single one of these prompts, but let’s at least try to save that for a later date…

So I’m going to opt here for Nice Things by Aideomai: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23243857 This is one of the softest, sweetest things ever, and although I haven’t read it in a while (I must be due a re-read, in fact), it totally sticks in my mind as a classic of the 8th year genre!

(Apologies if the authors are on Tumblr and I have failed to tag them - I am very happy to edit my post to correct anything)

@hprecfest

#hprecfest2023 #drarry

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no-more-sad-songs · 1 year ago

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Reblogging so I can find this when I have a moment to go through and “mark for later” aaaaallll the fics!

hi! thank you so much for such amazing recs all the time. what a gift!!! this is a different kind of request than usual maybe so feel free to skip it or take your time or interpret in your own way: i’m looking for swoon-worthy fics, like sooo romantic. like off the charts oh my god this is so sweet so loving so huge kind of vibes. but that’s like a feeling you know, for the characters and for the readers, so. not sure if it makes sense! thank u :)

Hi anon, thank you so much for the kind words!! I don’t really read hardcore fluff tbh, but I love myself some tender romance! I’ve included different flavours here with a lil bit of angst (couldn’t resist 🤣) but nothing too intense. I hope this list works for you! You can also check the latest Fluff Fest collection here.

Say the words / then stay around by Teatrolley (NR, 5.7k)

They’ve been together for a while when Harry decides that he wants to try the Auror Office again. What he doesn’t consider is the effects the work might have on the two of them. But, then again, maybe those effects don’t have to be all bad?

Little Talks by Femme and noeon (E, 11k)

Draco's been shagging the Head Auror for months now, and he's sure it's just a fling. Until Harry asks him to a Quidditch match, that is, and things go horribly wrong.

Take the Moon by @tackytigerfic (M, 15k)

Harry Potter has always wanted a family of his own, and when a deadly blood curse forces him into a marriage bond with his best friend Draco Malfoy, it looks like he might just have found one.

Two Zinnias and the Scent of Lemon by @the-starryknight (M, 16k)

The Ministry didn’t turn bad overnight. Harry didn’t suddenly turn rogue either. Between covert Legilimency links and Polyjuice disguises and running and running and running, Draco has forgotten what it is like to have a safe harbor that isn’t a person. If there’s an art to fighting back, then they’ll find it hand in hand.

freely, as men strive for right by @bixgirl1 (E, 17k)

How can Harry love a man like Draco Malfoy? If only Draco would let him count the ways.

The Courting by the Pureblood Who Only Has Five Milligrams of Romantic Intelligence and Thinks He’s Real Smooth by Cibee (T, 19k)

Draco could grab Potter and shove him into a stall before proceeding to suck his soul out of his dick, but secretly, deep down, in the part of Draco that he will never admit to anyone, he is (everyone pauses to shudder) a romantic. Potter is not someone Draco wants a one-off with. Potter is — Draco’s beloved!

With Great Yawns and Stretchings by sugar_screw (T, 22k)

The coffee is very good. Really. And the cats are so cute. That's why Harry goes so often.

All Things Go by @sorrybutblog (E, 33k)

Draco’s back at Hogwarts by court order. Harry’s back for no particular reason at all. Some things change, some stay the same. Neither expects to spend eighth-year living in close quarters, playing rugby (poorly), staying up late, sneaking around, and finally figuring it all out.

Eager for the Sky by @oknowkiss (M, 35k)

It was announced, just as the Triwizard Tournament had been, at the start of term feast. A year-long, international Quidditch varsity match — the inaugural Wizarding Academy Cup.

Little Deaths and How to Avoid Them (or Draco Malfoy's Guide to Stop Dying and Start Living Instead) by nerakrose and dustmouth (T, 96k)

Malfoy is way too interested in coroner reports for somebody who's definitely not looking for ways to die, Harry wants to be friends with him, and Ginny wants to break up with Harry.

Kaleidoscope by Saras_Girl (E, 104k)

If Harry’s honest, the last thing he needs is a house full of Draco Malfoy, but partners are partners, and perhaps, the thing he wants the least will turn out to be absolutely everything. 2021 advent fic, completed.

Far From The Tree by aideomai (E, 112k)

The arrival of Harry Potter’s children—snapped back in time, the children themselves guessed, twenty or so years—was the most interesting thing to happen at Hogwarts for years.

A Sword Laid Aside by @korlaena (E, 128k)

When Draco’s cover is blown during a deep undercover operation and the Ministry is compromised, Ron takes Draco to the only safe place he can think of—Potter. Hiding out with a taciturn Harry Potter, who has been missing from the Wizarding World for almost two decades after a shocking fall from grace, is nothing like Draco thought it would be.

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