#<- going in the tag because this is barty meta

[sixlane]

It’s gross barty likes seeing girls kissing ew this is reminding me of irl for some reason

barty is literally a pervert i don’t know what to tell you

[birlwrites]

Does anyone die in ttdl? like, anyone us readers might care about? Obviously you can't say who, if anyone does, but it is a war story… And the war is going to really start being the main, front and center focus as Regulus and Co. become of age and then after they graduate…

people will naturally die and i have in fact introduced one character with the specific intent of killing them later - i will say regulus, barty, and evan are For Sure Safe. i can definitively say i will not kill them, they will survive the series, they will generally be okay

as for, like, BIG character deaths, i make no promises, mostly because i have plans for one but i'm still weighing whether it is actually the best way for the story to go. (those of you who have been around for a long time may remember the MCD tag that used to be on ttdl afjlskghjskf - yep, still thinking about that one!)

i won't be killing people off just for shock/angst value - it is a war story, yes, but i personally never like feeling like a character's been killed just to make me sad with no other point to it afjsllhgkjdsf

so, like, for every [significant] person who dies, there's going to be a narrative point to it. with minor deaths it'll be a bit more nebulous, but in general, characters will die for a reason (whether that reason is in-text or meta) and it won't really be a bloodbath

[lovelornloserboy]

warning this is written by me on very little sleep and i'm probably going to sound very aggressive. this isn't very well thought out and i didn't proofread.

confession i kind of hate the tumblr tagging culture?? like the whole 'dont post anti character posts in the main tag' thing just kind of seems like people creating an echo chamber for themselves ngl.

like there are characters who are OBJECTIVELY BAD. for example, that guy who kept a whole fucking man inside a trunk for almost a year!!! BARTY CROUCH JR!!! but you can't post about his canon behavior or canon actions in the main tag because there are people who have taken his name and slapped it onto an out of character, fanon oc who is nothing like the real character.

you also just can't post character meta in the main tag anymore?? like characters have good and bad sides but unless you're exclusively praising them you get a million people telling you to 'tag your posts properly'. and no, i'm not just talking marauders fandom here; just the other day, i saw people going after a fairly new tumblr user over a 'take' on snape and why he was a bad and irredeemable person. i'll admit that it was a poorly thought out, childish, and immature post based off fanon, but the problem most people had was that they'd tagged it 'severus snape' and not 'anti severus snape'. there was like one or two people talking about how they were objectively wrong, but there were a ton of snape lovers on anon who felt the need to attack the person who posted just because of the whole tag thing. as a snape lover, i found the behavior of those anons even more annoying and childish than i found the original post.

can people just admit that they're wrong sometimes? it's fine to see a post that's anti your favorite character and actually read it and try to comprehend it. it's okay. no one is going to explode. if they're wrong, you can be mature and point that out without insulting them as a person and sending them death threats! crazy!

i had more thoughts on this but i lowkey cannot remember so yeah

some people live in a bubble/echo chamber and kind of need to step out if they want to develop their critical thinking skills

[pangaeaseas]

#this makes a lot of sense!#you've probably put more thought into it than rowling ever did#but it really fits the narrative#I guess if snape did know that sirius was innocent#he wouldn't have said shit either#he was probably relieved to be rid of him#and happy to continue the narrative (in the hopes of getting sirius locked up/killed after he escaped)#harry potter#sirius black#hp meta#ministry of magic#death eaters#propaganda#worldbuilding in hp#the order of the phoenix tags from @arkadijxpancakes... yeah even in a world where for some reason Snape or anyone else knew who the real spy was they wouldn't have spoken up because the Sirius as scapegoat narrative suits everybody. It's extremely convenient as propaganda and if you hate Sirius (and he would have enemies from both sides of the political spectrum) the more the better. Also even if Snape had known (again, somehow) and spoken up--or anyone short of Dumbledore, like Remus--I doubt too much would have happened because it would make the Ministry look bad, and we can't have that. Hell, imagine a world where Remus knew Sirius wasn't the spy and didn't betray James and Lily...and had to see him go to prison anyway because no one takes a werewolf's word for it.

And like no wonder Sirius doesn't get a trial: Barty Crouch Snr knows full well he isn't Voldemort's right hand man but doesn't want to litigate what he actually did, because that would reveal that the Ministry was less successful in catching Death Eaters than it would want.

Sirius Black: The Perfect Scapegoat

made a post like this once but it wasn't very good so i'm going to say again that Sirius being framed as Voldemort's right hand man, which seems obviously ridiculous on the face of it, actually makes sense.

Like yeah, anyone with any detailed knowledge of the war (so order members, probably ministry workers highly involved in the war effort', and death eaters) would know that Sirius's real crime wasn't being Voldemort's right hand man--that title would more accurately go to someone like Lucius Malfoy (poor imperius victim) or Bellatrix Lestrange (seems to have been captured after Sirius and sexism works against her)--Sirius's real crime was being a spy for Voldemort and betraying the Potters, then killing witnesses in an effort to cover this up. So on the face of it it seems odd that the popular imagination would call Sirius the right hand man of Voldemort. Especially considering that it seems unlikely someone who graduated Hogwarts in 1978 would have a prominent position in Death Eater hierarchy when you remember the war had been going on for eight years by then.

However, no one with knowledge of the 'real' situation would actually have any interest in correcting the narrative of right hand man Sirius once it emerged (and it's entirely possible the Ministry had a hand in this misconception emerging, because it's a very convenient misconception).

The Death Eaters would have known full well that Sirius wasn't a prominent member of Death Eater leadership, and might have even suspected he wasn't even the Order spy, but no Death Eater was going to stand up and say 'hey, as a Death Eater, I know Sirius Black wasn't one!" It's very convenient misdirection for them: Sirius's associates, which by the time of his arrest would be unlikely to include actual Death Eaters as he'd left his real Death Eater relatives behind years ago, would have public opprobrium and suspicion fall on them. Anyone investigating Death Eaters starting from the assumption that Sirius Black was a prominent member of the leadership will go barking straight up the wrong tree. Sirius the motorcycle-riding rebel against pureblood hierarchy is a useful person to accuse of being a Death Eater: the real problem is men with long hair who love Muggles and hate our family values. The problem is societal outcasts, not upstanding citizens. And Sirius is just believable enough as a Death Eater too: he has a history of doing dangerous things at school, his family is famous for its use of Dark Magic, and he looks pretty guilty because he was caught laughing in the blown up street. It's also helpful if you are a Death Eater using the Imperius Defense for there to be a 'real' Death Eater caught. You could blame Sirius for imperiusing you, and you can also point to him if anyone says 'hmm, seems awful strange all the accused Death Eaters got the Imperius Defense, maybe some of them are lying' because he's the exception that proves the rule, the one real Death Eater who can be used to deflect accusations of faking the Imperius Defense.

In the context of only a few people being found guilty of willingly being Death Eaters, it also makes a lot of sense that the public would see Sirius as a prominent Death Eater: there simply aren't many openly known Death Eaters to pick from! Sirius's accused crime seems to have made a strong impression on people. And the other Death Eaters we know were sent to Azkaban or publicly just weren't as exciting, I guess--Rookwood was boring, a spy within the Unspeakables, Bellatrix was a woman, Barty Crouch Jr was a poor innocent baby, Karkaroff was a foreigner and a spineless worm, Snape was a spy for Dumbledore, the Lestrange brothers are just boring I guess (and Sirius seems to have been arrested before BCJ and the Lestranges so he was first. Yay priority.)

Dumbledore doesn't have any reason to correct the idea that Sirius was a prominent figure in the Death Eater hierarchy either. He thought Sirius was a spy, so had no reason to intervene on his behalf. I also think it would have been embarrassing for him to have trusted the spy and gotten his Order members killed, so why would he publicize his own failure? It's a pride thing. Sirius the right hand man is way less embarrassing than Sirius the spy even Dumbledore missed.

And in the Ministry's effort to restore public order and avoid panic, Sirius was a very useful instrument. Here is a successfully caught Death Eater! No need to worry! Also he's just crazy and Not Like Us. He's not normal. Normal people aren't Death Eaters. Everything is under control. They also wouldn't want to publicize Dumbledore's vigilante movement either since that weakens their claim to be leaders of Magical Britain.

The public narrative of Voldemort's first defeat goes something like this: after years of war between Dumbledore and the Ministry against Voldemort, by mysterious unknown magical means, baby Harry Potter was able to defeat the Dark Lord Voldemort. This freed his many, many, MANY Imperius victims from their curses and allowed the Ministry to establish safety and security for the populace, after rounding up a few stragglers who in their madness committed isolated atrocities. Something like this broad idea is how people not heavily involved in the war would have understood it.

Every element of this narrative has a purpose. Open conflict between the Ministry and Dumbledore benefits neither of them, so the existence of Dumbledore's vigilante organization separated from the Ministry would not have been publicized, and many people who knew about it vaguely might well have assumed what Dumbledore was doing to gather fighters against Voldemort was under Ministry auspices. Harry inexplicably being able to defeat Voldemort discourages people from digging into dangerous magic to understand what happened and gives the public a nice feel-good story--and a baby is a more politically beneficial hero than young vigilantes Lily and James, who, to the Ministry's thinking, might be risky symbols especially given their mixed-blood marriage (if youbelieve that Lily intentionally sacrificed herself to kill Voldemort, the pureblood supremacy motive for this narrative is even more important). Prominent citizens accused of being Death Eaters were actually Imperius victims, which allows the Ministry to avoid reckoning with the depth of Death Eater penetration of British society. The Ministry had everything under control once Voldemort was dead, with Sirius and the Lestranges being isolated exceptions motivated by fanaticism and insanity.

Sirius's easy capture allows the Ministry to claim it had controlled Voldemort, and that he would never return. There was no ongoing war, and thus nothing to be dissatisfied with the Ministry about. The Ministry didn't fail to contain Voldemort, because it had successfully captured Sirius. Sirius may have committed an atrocity but capturing him (initially) wasn't difficult, allowing the Ministry to demonstrate its power and the correctness of its harsh anti-Death Eater policies.

And Sirius and the Lestranges are also ideal poster children for framing the Death Eaters as politically isolated crazy Dark wizards and not a movement with broad support. It's no accident that Sirius is called a madman, a Dark wizard without parallel. He's a mystery. He acted alone even though he was supposedly a prominent Death Eater--because there weren't many Death Eaters! No one supported Voldemort! Of course, there was actually far more sympathy for Voldemort's cause than anyone post-war would like to admit, and much of the upper class was heavily involved in the Death Eater movement. Using Sirius as the scapegoat allows for this to be ignored, because of instead of analyzing the ideological content of Voldemort's movement, which the Ministry absolutely wouldn't want to do because we know Voldemort was anti-Ministry, it can just claim that all of its opponents were crazy, like Sirius supposedly was. Instead of having to say that the call was coming from inside the house, Sirius the scapegoat allows deflection of any criticism of the Ministry, its response to the war, and Magical British society as a whole.

We can assume this is where the right-hand-man story came from, because the Ministry repeats this exact story--Sirius the madman acting alone--when it needs a scapegoat again, in the canon era. By GoF Dumbledore is no longer convinced Sirius was the spy, but we see both the Ministry and the Death Eaters, who don't want to act openly yet, using the idea of Sirius for their political advantage, making it easy to see why the false narrative of him as Voldemort's right hand man was so convenient earlier.

[secondgenerationnerd]

What was the batfam/flashfam’s reaction to meeting bby Asha??

So! I have a few fics in the Speeddemon tag addressing that

Wally and Linda adore their grandbaby. They are proud of Irey for stepping up and working her butt off to be a good position given everything going on.

Jason, Tim, and Dick make a joke about Damian completing the circle of bird daughters, but they all love Asha. Dick feels strange being her uncle, especially when Mar’i and Jon adopt Charlie who’s a month older than Asha. Tim and Jason bring Grace and Dahlia over all the time.

Stephanie, Cass, and Barbara will steal that baby whenever Damian and Irey are around. (Because Asha is cuddle baby)

Selina calls her kitten (and is only slightly offended Asha is allergic to cats)

Helena likes playing with her and tries to remember using nice hands.

Barry and Iris offer to babysit when they can.

Mel thinks Asha is adorable and it gives her some baby fever

Dawn and Donny had a moment of “Our baby cousin has a baby” panic, but Asha’s sweet face made it all better.

Bart is Uncle Barty and won’t respond to anything else

Given the events just before Asha’s born, and his general attitude towards metas/speedsters, it’s a while before Bruce meets asha. Not as sweet as the others.

[amorremanet]

I got tagged by @a-mi-zivi

Rules: 1. Tell us your Top 10 characters from different fandoms. (…I limited myself to five, each. Except HP, because it was too hard. Dude, that was hard enough. All arranged alphabetically, not in order of preference or anything.)

2. Tag 10 people.

tagging: @bizeke @donttouchandrewminyard @derekslaura @gentlepromises @girlronanlynch @pansexualpoedamneron @gaylukeskywalkers @scarlettwitchery @saralanceing @bpdrussell & literally anyone else who wants to do it can just do it and blame me (and contrariwise, if I tagged you and you don’t want to do it, no pressure <3)

Community: Abed Nadir, Dean Pelton, Jeff Winger, Shirley Bennett, (my number five changes on a daily basis, usually between Troy, Annie, and Britta, but I can’t pick right now, so fuck it, I pick Annie Kim and Quendra with a QU)

DC: Cassandra Cain/Black Bat, Harley Quinn, Jason Todd/Red Hood, Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow, Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy

But honorable mention nods go to Dick Grayson/Nightwing, Koriand’r/Starfire, Raven/Rachel Roth, Renee Montoya/Question, Roy Harper/Speedy/Red Arrow, Stephanie Brown/Spoiler, Tim Drake/Red Robin, and Wonder Woman, and this list was hard for, “there are SO MANY CHARACTERS, THE FUCK” reasons.

And Sandman technically is a DC title, but whatever: Death, Delirium/Delight, Desire, Despair, and Dream/Morpheus of the Endless, tyvm

Good Omens: Adam “the Antichrist” Young, Anathema Device, Aziraphale, Crowley, Pepper (Pippin Galadriel Moonchild)

Harry Potter: Andromeda Black Tonks, Barty Crouch Jr., Cedric Diggory, Cho Chang, Hermione Granger, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Lavender Brown, Luna Lovegood, Pansy Parkinson, Percy Weasley, Remus Lupin, Zacharias Smith

Sirius Black and Severus Snape get to share honorable mention status because, even though they are actually in my top ten, I know that being on the same point would annoy the ever-living shit out of both of them. Which amuses me because I am easily entertained.

AlSev Potter and Scorpius Malfoy get to share a point because the ones I love are essentially headcanon, since my take on Cursed Child is, “*nods* Uh huh… that’s nice… I’m going to ignore like 99% of it, but okay, it’s nice”

Legit Honorable Mentions:

[this is where i’d list the Dumbledore family and Gellert but it’s Complicated and i can’t legit list them without needing to Discuss it, so let’s just not even bother today]

Bill Weasley

Charlie Weasley

Dean Thomas

Dolores Umbridge

(in a way where I absolutely despise her as a person, but I appreciate her presence in the story because she is, along with Barty Jr., the only fucking COMPETENT villain in the books.

Also, she’s the actual, “repulsive to the core but makes no excuses for it just like white male villains, does her own thing and fuck anyone who tries to stop her, self-determined and she has decided to be awful, feminist on a meta level where she’s terrible just to be terrible without any excuses being made for it” villain that so many people have tried to make out of Bellatrix, when…… lol no, Bellatrix is a total fucking joke, sorry ‘bout it.

Like, man, Umbridge sucks, but she enriches the story and presents an actual, credible threat that has any kind of internal consistency and isn’t just, “I read an entry on fascism in a children’s encyclopedia and made it an OTT cartoon caricature of itself and added some cult leader BS because of reasons or w/e, and named it Voldemort, lol” — I appreciate that, as a reader, even if JKR did it more by accident than anything)

Fleur Delacour

Gilderoy Lockhart

(I blame myself entirely for making up Kingsley/Lockhart headcanons and getting Defensive of him in the face of JKR’s ableism; I should’ve known better, because shit like literally always happens to me, but I did it anyway because I never fucking learn)

Harry Potter

Justin Finch-Fletchley

(……I have post-war headcanons. A lot of them. You probably don’t want to know them, though, bc they’re depressing as fuck)

Nymphadora Tonks

Parvati Patil

Regulus Black

Ron Weasley

Ted Tonks

Viktor Krum

and a whole bunch of characters who are basically headcanon because they are literally just names who do like one or two things and that's it

Hunger Games: Annie Cresta, Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason, Katniss Everdeen, Madge Undersee

Marvel: shit, I did this one last and I have to go to therapy, so this is basically, “the order in which they came to mind and I stopped at eight bc holy fucking SHIT, there are a lot of characters”  — Erik/Magneto, Kurt “Nightcrawler” Wagner (my small blue Catholic mutant son <3), Sam, Steve, Bucky, Natasha, Ororo, and I feel like I should list someone else, but anyone who knows my usual type knows that Loki is exactly my type and I was all but doomed to be Loki trash. Which I am. Whoops. Sorry for my choices.

Sailor Moon: Fiore (……from the “Promise of the Rose” movie. ……I love my gay glam rock alien son), Tenoh Haruka/Sailor Uranus, Tomoe Hotaru/Sailor Saturn/Mistress Nine, Tsukino “Chibi” Usagi/Sailor Chibi Moon/Wicked Lady/Princess Usagi Small Lady Serenity/etc., Tsukino Usagi/Sailor Moon/Princess + Neo Queen Serenity/etc.

Star Trek (DS9): Captain Benjamin Lafayette “the rest of Starfleet are a bunch of slackers, has YOUR captain become space Jesus and saved the entire Alpha Quadrant lately” Sisko, Elim Garak, Julian Bashir, Kira Nerys, Tora Ziyal

Kasidy, Worf, Jadzia, General Martok, and Ezri get honorable mentions because this list was really hard to even whittle down to FIVE, but.

Star Wars and, “Star Trek (Everything But DS9)” were vetoed as categories because picking was hard and I didn’t feel like it.

Steven Universe: Amethyst, Connie Maheswaran, Garnet, Lapis Lazuli, Peridot

Yuri On Ice: Christophe Giacometti, Katsuki Yuuri, Lee Seung-Gil, Phichit Chulanont, Victor Nikiforov

Bonus — My Own Novel(s) bc Reasons: (also done before running to therapy) Sebastian, Pete, Josie, Margot, Lucy.

[pangaeaseas]

#Voldemort is the negging king#he's very third reich in the way he plays his followers against eachother#death eaters have no loyalty to eachother#only to him#they all get a turn being favorite and when Voldemort shifts attention to someone else they're left chasing that high forever#so like Voldemort is also like your toxic ex#hp#hp meta tags from @blorger --i think the third Reich is a very salient comparison yeah and possibly jkr was even inspired by the Nazis' internal power contestation. There's definitely insane amounts of competition among the death eaters--with bella and Lucius in the DoM it possibly even contributes to their loss (just like the third Reich LMAO) (And someone should write a July 20th plot by like Lucius and Narcissa in DH, that would be fun)

I think it's salient that it's SNAPE in particular. The first person Peter was able to impose his sense of superiority on in school. Probably all this while Peter's been going like 'at least i'm better than snape' and voldemort knows this and is like lol no gotta deconstruct your entire sense of self so you can rebuild it in complete loyalty to me. and it's also a punishment for Snape.

And Barty as the Golden Child is absolutely fascinating! Because he is! And I wonder if he was from the beginning since Barty is SO fanatically loyal, or if Voldemort is just using a convenient means of manipulating Wormtail. I've seen theories where Voldemort really empathized with Barty and saw him as a surrogate son, which is interesting in light of the favoritism he gets in GoF--really unique even compared to the other loyal Death Eaters, though I wonder if that's just a function of Voldemort only having two available and so he has to Golden Child one of them. I suppose having to constantly interact with your abusive dad even if he's Imperiused could be a punishment for Barty, though.

Also, it's interesting that Wormtail was assigned the taking care of Voldy duties if Barty is soooo much more loyal. I could see him refusing flat out to go to Hogwarts, maybe, but who knows if Voldemort would have even respected a hard no. And Wormtail has extensive experience of Hogwarts from being Scabbers that Barty doesn't have. Of course, Dumbledore also already knew about him and his abilities so maybe that's why. But it's fun to consider that Voldemort kept Wormtail close bc paradoxically the more 'disloyal' and self-interested follower is more interesting to manipulate. a guy's gotta have hobbies.

Voldemort constantly belittling Peter throughout GoF is so interesting because he, Voldemort, is probably the person who best knows Peter's abilities at this point. He expresses surprise at Peter being able to convince Bertha Jorkins to go with him. And like...dude, you of all people KNOW how much of a manipulative snake Peter is, you Know how he convinced Lily and James and Sirius to trust him...why are you acting so surprised? Like Voldemort is the last person who should underestimate Peter. But he does: I think because he knows full well Peter is actually competent but belittles him to keep him loyal. Ohhhh the psychology of these two. It's so fascinating.

(....petermort? someone stop me.)