#*:･ﾟ✧ SPELLS AND ENCHANTMENTS. ( v. potter. )

[thebestofoneshots]

MARAUDWEEEN

Feels Like The First Time | James Potter x reader

Pairing: James Potter x Reader

Word Count: 6 k

Warnings: Smut, fingering, P in V, lots of praise, consent is sexy, lusty!James, bashful!James, he literally can't take his eyes off you.

Prompt: As a part of the Marauween Series, this fic takes you to an Alternate Universe where James Potter is a fireman, telling the story of how you met, and how your first time came about.

Maraudween is a Halloween-inspired anthology series where each chapter transports you into a distinct alternate universe. From the real world to old western Texas and even through the dark times of vampires. These standalone tales invite you into a realm of boundless potential. Experience the enchantment of Halloween as it weaves its spell, intertwining the magic of costumes, AUs, terror and spice.

NSFW (Smut under the cut) ♡

“What can I get you, sir?” You asked, not looking up from the register as you were trying to close the tab of the previous order. The machine had been acting up lately and no matter how hard you tried, it seemed to take its sweet time between closing an old order and opening the feed to start a new one. 

You were almost scowling at it when you heard a low chuckle from behind the counter, you instantly recognized it. The cute fireman, you felt your cheeks flush at the thought. 

“Everything all right, angel?” he asked, voice soft even as a little smirk played on his lips. 

“James!” you said with a smile, deciding to ignore the machine and talk to the man instead. He lived a few blocks away, in your same building, and he always passed by the shop to get some coffee and a snack before he finished his walk to work. Sometimes he came on his way back too, he was over so often, that you almost knew his orders by memory, “Americano?” 

He shook his head “I’m feeling up for something sweeter today.” 

You hummed in response, running his typical orders in your head “Late with a pump of strawberry?” 

He tilted his head, seemingly thinking about it, you couldn’t help to let your eyes linger over his uniform. He’d typically alternate between blue, yellow and grey. Today he was wearing grey and you would be lying if you said he didn’t look disarmingly attractive. He was big and well built too, but that was a lot easier to appreciate on hotter days when he wasn’t wearing his jacket on top of the usual either crisp white or neat black shirt, “Yeah, that’s perfect.” 

You smiled and started writing down the details in his cup. When you realised there was no one on the line behind him, you decided to prepare his drink yourself, instead of passing it over to Marcus, your coworker, and better barista between the two. James knew, and yet, he much better liked the drinks you prepared. 

“Want me to add a bit of whipped cream?” You asked. 

“You spoil me,” he said with a smile, you turned to give him a questioning look, a smile playing on your lips as he nodded, perhaps that’s why he liked your drinks best, they almost always came along with a smile. 

“You do spoil him,” Marcus added as he used one of the machines to draw pictures over a latte. 

You gave him a pout as an answer and continued with your preparation. Once it was done you turned around, Marcus had gone off to tend some table and you walked over to James, handing him his cup straight to his hands. His fingers lingered over yours as he took it from you and you felt your stomach flutter, “I’d add some cinnamon for spice,” you told him, he nodded and walked over to the sugar table, doing exactly as you told him.

“Hey, James?” 

“Hmm…?”

“Good luck at work today,” you added with a smile, Marcus from one of the tables almost rolled his eyes, while James’ smile only widened. 

There was a huge fire that day, you saw it on the news on the small TV in the corner of the shop, one of the old buildings near the centre of the city had caught fire. Since it had been during work hours there hadn’t been that many people inside, and thankfully no one died but about 2 dozen had ended up in the hospital due to smoke toxicity. Or so was reporting the news lady. 

“Do you think James’s all right?” you asked, turning to Marcus with a little frown. 

“Why don’t you go home and check on him? He lives almost in front of you anyway. This happened about an hour ago, he might be there soon...” 

You nodded, and hurried with the wiping of tables, still looking a bit nervous and rushed “I’ll finish up closing,” he added. 

“Thank you,” you said as you went to pick up your stuff and remove your uniform from the back room. 

Marcus called your name, you turned to him “Bring him something. His favourite treat of whatever… I’m sure you already know it by memory.” 

“I… Well, I mean…”  

“Don’t play dumb and just take it to him, whatever it might be. Would serve you well, maybe admit that you like him as well.” 

You flushed “Shut it, Marcus.” 

“He likes you back, did you know?” You gave him a look “Hey it’s true! I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” 

“He’s just polite.” 

“Polite my ass, he’s never looked at me like that. Go on, knock on his door, patch him up and admit your crush. Maybe get it going with him too. What do you think he’d look like with those snug pants and a pair of suspenders? Only a pair of suspenders.” 

You flushed a lot more this time around, the image floating to your brain unprompted, and you weren’t able to shake it off that easily. Curse your imaginative mind and Markus’ dirty one to put the idea in your head. 

“So… his favourite treat?” 

“It’s the lemon tart,” you admitted reluctantly. “He orders it whenever he’s feeling down. And also after bad days.” Markus smiled and leaned down to take two of them and place them on a small box for you to take home, “Thank you.” 

“Thank me when you’ve seen him with only pants and suspenders!” he joked, and you shook your head in disbelief, a smile still plastered on your face as you did. 

You got home after a short walk and went straight for a quick shower. It was then that you heard the thud of heavy boots in the hallway. He was walking towards his apartment. You hurried to finish and changed into simple shorts and a sweatshirt before walking the 2 door distance to his apartment. You took a deep breath and knocked on the door. 

There was no answer, you considered leaving, your nerves getting the best of you, but you remembered you still had the lemon tarts and decided to try again. This time you heard some shuffling and then the door opened, revealing James, still wearing his uniform, hair clinging onto his face from sweat and blotches of soot patching his cheeks, he looked tired, but he smiled the moment he saw who it was at the door. “Fancy seeing you here, darling.” 

You swallowed, his gaze having a powerful effect on you “I… I uh… I saw the news and well, I assumed you had been there, I guess I was right,” you added after gesturing toward your face, trying to refer to how blotchy he was “I thought I’d come to check if you were all right… I also brought you some of those lemon tarts you really like.” 

He stared at you for a second, as if trying to process the fact that you really had taken the trouble to bring him food, just because he’d had a tough day. When he realised you really were there, and not only a fragment of his imagination, he smiled “You picked my favourites,” he said pointing at the box. 

You gulped, as if scared of getting caught but nodded “You… order them often,” you said with a shrug. 

He hummed “And you know all of your client’s orders?” he asked, a flirty tone slipping as he moved to the side to let you in, nodding towards the kitchen, although you already knew where it was, since the layout of his apartment was almost an exact mirror of yours. 

“Only the ones of my favourites,” you responded, which got him to raise his eyebrows as he pulled out two plates and a pair of forks, placing them on the counter. You opened the small box and gracefully served one of the pies on each of the plates, he didn’t wait too long to dig in, moaning at the sweet and acidic flavour. 

“You’re the absolute best,” he told you as he continued to eat “Getting this after a fire might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

You just giggled at his exaggeration, you didn’t know he didn’t mean only the pie, but also your company. As the two of you finished your meal, you stood up to go back to your apartment but he stopped you, a hand gripping softly onto your forearm “Hey wait!” You turned to him “Let me pay you back.” 

You gasped and then shook your head. “Oh no, don’t worry about it, I get free treats since I work there.” But he didn’t let go of your arm just yet. 

You saw him bite his cheek, looking to the side as if trying to find the right words “Regardless, I–  Let me take you out, yeah?” 

“Out… to the door?” You asked with a frown “I mean I know where it is but–” 

“Out on a date.” 

“You want to– Me?!?” He nodded fervently in response. 

“So...?” 

You smiled, you were sure you were blushing madly but his nervousness only made him even more adorable “I’d love that.” 

He’d taken you to a small Italian restaurant that his friend Sirius had recommended, he told you about his life, about how he got into firefighting and you told him about yours, how you were working at the cafe as a side job to pay for your online studies. He thought you were a hero, which was almost ridiculous because if anyone was saving people between the two, it had been him. 

After that date you went on many others, he frequented the cafe a lot more often, sometimes to order something, sometimes to drop by a bouquet of roses or some other kind of flower. Markus had teased you relentlessly after that, but he really was happy to see you happy. He also started giving you treats to take home a lot more often, but that was because he knew you were always sharing them with James.  

“Thanks love, see you at dinner?” James asked as he took the takeaway coffee cup from your hands, you had written “Prongs,” and drew a pair of antlers on it just to tease him, since he’d told you about his friends giving him that nickname in school. 

You nodded in response “Sure, want me to bring something?” 

He leaned over the counter as if it were about to say something of the utmost secrecy “How about some of those chocolate tarts?” he whispered. 

“Sounds about perfect to me,” you agreed and gave him a quick peck on the cheek before pulling back. He smiled dumbly after that and waved on the way out, almost bumping into a tall teacher who was also your regular. 

“Watch your step, lover boy,” he told him. That day you found out Remus –the teacher who was a regular– and your boyfriend not only knew each other, but had been best friends for the longest time. He’d told you about him many, many times, but you had no way of knowing the calm, concentrated teacher who sat on his laptop grading students was the same mastermind prankster he always called Moony. 

“So… how does he look in suspenders?” Markus asked you as he eyed your boyfriend finally leaving. 

“Oh… well, I mean… I haven’t– we haven’t-“ 

“Shut it,” he said turning to you “You’ve been dating for a while now, like 2 months, right? Didn’t you tell me you slept at his apartment the other night?” 

“Yeah, I mean, I did… I fell asleep watching the telly and he didn’t want to wake me.” 

“I thought you meant something else…” he said as he shook his head “Maybe he’s asexual,” he added with a shrug “Total bummer for you.” 

You frowned “I don’t think he– I think he’s just trying to be a gentleman.” 

Markus shook his head, unconvinced “Have you tried to initiate anything?” 

“We’ve snogged a couple of times.” 

“And when it gets more heated?” 

You shrugged “Don’t know what to tell ya.” 

He hummed “You need to try harder.” 

“I need to try?” 

“Well to find out at least, don’t you want to?” 

You shrugged it off then, but truth be told, the idea had already cemented itself in your brain. You paid closer attention to the times you snogged after that. Be it on the couch, or the counter of yours or his kitchen, it was always romantic kisses and even if he certainly seemed affected, be it his ragged breath, pink lips or expanded pupils, he never pushed for more. Perhaps he really was waiting for you to initiate things. 

A few nights later, there was another fire, you had already gotten the key to his apartment so you waited over at his, bringing over some cream puffs and setting yourself on the couch while you waited. He arrived a little late, covered in soot like he had that first time you walked into his house with lemon tarts in your hand. He smiled the moment he spotted you on his sofa “Fancy seeing you here, darling,” he teased, echoing the words he’d said that first night. 

You smiled “How are you feeling?” you asked. 

He sighed, his shoulders slumped at that “We couldn’t… One of them didn’t make it.” You frowned, you knew he’d torment himself about it all night, so you walked over to him, taking a wet towel as he sat near the counter and started wiping some of the soot from his face.

“‘S not your fault.” 

“But if we had gotten there sooner maybe–“ 

You pulled his chin, making his eyes look straight into yours “Jamie,” you said sternly, trying to ground him “It’s not your fault.” 

He sighed again “I know, I know…” he said, and buried his head in your neck, smelling your perfume as he grabbed onto your hips, “Stay over tonight?” he asked “Please, I don’t– I don’t want to be left alone with my thoughts.” 

You smiled, placing your hand on the back of his head, brushing it lightly over his messy hair before settling it at the nape of his neck “Of course, my love,” you responded simply, and pulled his shoulders back to look straight at his face “come on, let’s get to the sofa, maybe we can play something on the telly to get your mind off things.” 

He pouted “I’m sweaty, and I smell of charred wood.” 

You tilted your head, a small smile drawing on your lips “I think you look sexy,” you teased, before grabbing his hand to pull him up and towards the sofa. He had a diverted look as he followed. 

They were screening Karate kid for like the 5th time that week, but both of you were watching it patiently. That was until the commercial break started and you turned to James, he had a small frown on his face, almost imperceptible, as if he were trying to hide it from you, but you knew him well enough to know. “You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?” 

James turned to you, a sorrowful look in his beautiful hazel eyes, “I found them, I tried, but…” You kneeled on the sofa and gave him a bone-crushing hug, or at least your version of one, since you had about half the strength he did anyway. Regardless, you heard the huff of a laugh coming from him. 

You gave one last look at the telly, they were still going on some infomercial about a magical razor, yeah, no way in hell he gets distracted by that. “Hey Jaimie,” he hummed in response “How about we find another way to get your mind off things?” you asked, pulling back a little so he could see your face.

He gave you a look, “Like playing Monopoly or…” he didn’t even finish his sentence since you crashed your lips against his with a kiss. He was surprised at first but followed the kiss shortly after. Tightening his grip on your waist. 

“Like this?” you said as you pulled out for air. He still had a bit of a frown, so you leaned into him again, determined to erase it with a kiss. He pretty much melted into you again, at some point you crossed your knee over his lap and you were straddling his thigh. You didn’t lean closer to him too fast, you wanted to give him some time. 

Your lips started to travel from his lips to his jaw, he was right, he was sweaty, you could feel the salty taste of it as you kissed, and there was something else too, a little bit of that smoked flavour going on. You didn’t care, if anything, it really made him feel sexier. You landed on his neck, and started pressing wet kisses on a section you knew from experience he liked, and you heard a low moan coming from his throat, music to your ears. 

“Wait… wait… hold up,” he said as he patted your shoulder softly, you didn’t pull back “Angel, please, I’m gross right now…”

“Don’t care,” you said between kisses “I like the way you taste.” 

He stifled grunted after you said that –partly because of what you said, partly because of the way you sucked onto a particularly sensitive part of his neck– it was hard enough for him to restrain himself as it was, and you saying things like that was only making it harder. 

You, without quite noticing what you were doing, started grinding against his leg, not quite against his crotch yet thought, you could still think enough to know it’d be too soon. You leaned back, trying to get to his mouth when you spotted him, he had a rather interesting expression on his face, brows furrowed, as if he was trying really hard to concentrate on something, or not to concentrate on something. 

You smiled, holding back a laugh before placing your hand on his cheek, he opened his eyes, a worried look on his face “James, what is it darling?” 

He swallowed, his breath was heavy, “I’m just… I’m trying not to– thinking of something else.” You raised an eyebrow at him, not sure exactly what was going on until you saw his gaze flicker down to his crotch. 

“Oh.” You said quietly, and then, in an outburst of bravery, pulled your hand down to pat him. He hissed, grabbing your hand and pulling it back.

“That– that’s going to make it worse.” 

You smiled again, tilting your head just a little as you stared at your beautiful boyfriend “Allow me,” you said softly “I want to make it worse.” He looked at you as if he was trying to decipher whether what you were saying was true, and you leaned in to place a kiss on his cheek “Pretty please?” 

You had your forehead against his when he bit his lip and nodded, letting your hand free as you pushed it towards his crotch again. He was a lot harder than you had initially assumed he’d be, but you started rubbing your hand up and down regardless, feeling out his entire length which was nothing short of surprising. His head had somehow ended up on your shoulder again “fuck,” he said and trailed off with a few other curse words you weren’t sure you had heard him say before “That feels incredible Angel, You feel so good,” he whispered. 

Eventually, you pulled your hand backward and he gave you the most reproachful look, “Hey… I want to be able to kiss you,” you said softly before leaning in for a kiss and finally closing the gap between your bodies. You had been wearing a pair of simple lycra shorts, so everything felt very close when you finally leaned your hips over his, grinding your core against the rough texture of his firefighter pants. 

James was about to moan when you pulled him into a kiss again, so he moaned into your mouth, half attempting to return the kiss. His hands had now travelled to your hips, and he was helping you grind onto him, gripping almost a little too tight, not that you minded. If anything, you thought seeing this less controlled side of him was the hottest thing. 

Your hands travelled to his jacket, he’d been so lost in thought when he arrived home that he hadn’t even taken it off, but that was fine, you could help him with that now. You found the plate box and started to unbutton it one by one, he had been so engrossed in you that he didn’t notice what you were doing until you moved your hands to his inside shirt to push the thick jacket to the side. 

He helped you shrug it off and you set it to the side of the couch since you knew how much he cared for it. He gave you a smile through huddled lids and this time around he was the one pulling you towards him for another kiss. 

You went to the buttons of his pants this time around, grinding on his thigh in an effort to not stop the buildup you’d already created. “Angel what are you…?” 

“Material’s too rough,” you managed to mumble. His eyebrows knit in concern and he helped you in an instant. While he did that you fumbled with your shorts and took them off as fast as possible, not sparing a second glance to see where they fell on the floor, they were pretty ruined either way. He didn’t notice you had done that, not until you went back to straddle him and he felt the wet patch of your panties on his trouser. On his cock. 

“Fuck dove,” he said when he realized. 

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, almost shy, thinking he might think it was gross but he shook his head.

“Don’t be, it’s fucking hot,” he said as he grabbed onto your hips again and started sliding you against him, grinding you against him. This time there was a lot more purpose behind his movements, he was quite literally rubbing you right onto his cock, you could feel it almost in between your folds through the two layers of clothing separating you from each other. 

The room started feeling too hot, and you removed your hands from the back of his head and brought them to the hem of your sweatshirt, attempting to pull it off when his hands travelled to yours. 

He pulled back from the kiss and stared at you, searching for your eyes “You don’t have to– Not because of the…” he took a deep breath, trying to think straight “We don’t have to do this just to distract me.” 

Your expression turned soft, as you looked at him. How on earth did I get so lucky? You thought. You licked your lips, biting the bottom as you brought your hands to the side of his face. “It’s not just because of that, I want to do this Jamie, I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” He swallowed. “You think that sexy little uniform does nothing to me? I’m only human James.” He chuckled, eyes averting to the side in an adorably bashful expression that you were certain only James Potter would be able to pull off. When he looked back you gave him a teasing smile “Help me?” you asked again, nodding down. 

This time it was he who bit back a grin, almost giving you a wink before he let his hands to the hem of your hoodie and helped you pull it off. He stared at you for a second. You were wearing a simple sports bra, nothing fancy, in fact, you’d dare say it was a little embarrassing since the bottom hem was frailing a bit already, but that didn’t seem to matter to James. He was staring at you as if he’d seen the hottest woman on earth. As if you had been wearing the most exquisite set of lingerie. 

You blushed, obviously, you blushed, and hid your head on his neck so he wouldn’t notice, pretending you were going for a kiss, but he stopped you. “Hold up, I wanna enjoy the view,” he complained. 

“When I’m wearing nicer underwear I’ll let you,” you said, pushing against him to go to his neck again, but he was stronger, if he didn’t want you to move, there was no way in hell you’d be able to move. 

“Darling, your underwear is the last thing I’m paying attention to,” he said honestly. You took a deep breath and allowed him to pull you back, his eyes were blown with lust as he stared at you, at your bare shoulders he’d seen a couple of times, although not many since you started going out in winter and it still was winter. At the supple curve of your hips. At your breasts, you felt his hand twitch in your shoulder, as if he was holding himself back from touching anywhere else. 

“James,” you said, getting him to turn his gaze back to your face, although you noticed it flicker down a couple of times, “You can touch.”

It was as if that had been all the permission he needed, he brought his hands down, letting them roam through your bare waist as you started to grind against him again. He was harder, if that was even possible. He groaned as you rolled your hips against his, and started trailing kisses down your neck, setting in the curve of your breasts as you continued to dry hump him. 

He could see your hardened nipples through the thin cotton fabric. He’d actually seen them harden as he kissed, and then he did something you weren’t expecting, he held your waist and pulled you up a little, you almost whined at the loss of contact, but he pushed his head forward and gave an open mouth kiss to your breast, sucking and nipping through the fabric, you were now helping him hold you up with your own legs and holding onto his strong shoulders, absolutely lost in the feeling of his mouth. 

He pulled back, giving you a mischievous look as he trailed his fingers over the frilled hem, there was almost an innocence to the way he was looking at you “May I?” he asked. 

“Please.” He was already digging his fingers under the hem and pulling it over your head. “You too,” you added, pulling at his shirt. He quickly passed his hand to the neck of his shirt and yanked it off in a second. You gulped, you’d never seen anyone take their shirt off in such a hot way. 

He was staring at you as he placed his hand on your waist and pulled you towards his face, this time licking from the underside of your breast all the way to your nipple before he closed his mouth around it and started sucking again, without the fabric in the middle you could feel his wet tongue and teeth grazing against your sensitive skin, you arched against him, and moaned his name when he bit softly. 

His other hand was already massaging your other breast, kneading it and brushing his thumb over your nipple every couple of seconds. It felt incredible, and you relished on the feeling until your neediness got the best of you, “James,” you somehow managed to form the words, and grabbed the hand that was still kneading on your breast, pulling it down, to your core “Here, please.” 

You saw him pull back to look at you, and he swallowed thickly but nodded, moving to kiss your neck as he traced his fingers over your wet panties “fuck, you’re so wet,” he whispered between kisses. You gripped onto his shoulder a little harder, when he pressed his finger onto your folds, you were already pretty sensitive from so much rubbing onto his hard uniform pants that even the slightest touch had you on fire. 

After toying with you for a bit, he slid his finger through the hem and pushed your panties to the side, digging his fingers on your folds, while his thumb searched for your clit. He found it in the blink of an eye and you were pretty much bucking your hips against his hand in search of more friction. He let out a breathy laugh “So needy,” he said before setting one of his fingers near your entrance and digging it in. 

His finger was long, much longer than yours and it reached places you wouldn’t have dreamed of, he curved it in a particular way and you let out a gasp “Yes! Please, James, do that again,” you said as you panted, he obliged, and had you grinding against his hand again in no time. 

“Angel you’re too tight,” he whispered as you leaned in to kiss him again, slowly lowering yourself onto his tight. He went in for another finger as you kissed him and swallowed your whimper. He was already moving his fingers and slowly opening them inside of you, trying to prepare you, in case you wanted to continue because hell knew he did. 

He pressed his thumb against your clit again, he could feel you faltering on him, your hip movements becoming sloppier as he continued to rub “Jamie I’m gonna…” 

He kissed your neck “Please do.” 

You leaned closer to him digging your nails into the muscles of his back as you bit your bottom lip. James separated from your neck for a second to look at you, you looked fucking stunning as you whimpered and whispered his name and a few course words almost incoherently. 

“So fucking stunning,” he told you with a smile. It took you a second to come back and be able to pay attention to him, to the way he was looking at you. 

You huffed a laugh “Shut up Jamie,” you said with a smile as you shook your head, he still had his fingers inside you, and it looked like he didn’t have the intention to remove them any time soon.

“How are we doing?” he asked. 

You frowned, “Why do you– oh.” He flicked his thumb over your clit again, thrusting his fingers in and out in a rather sharp way “James you aren’t thinking of…” 

“Of course, I’m thinking of it angel, I need to see that pretty face of pure bliss on you again.” 

You almost let him convince you but you shook your head. You didn’t miss the way his smile faltered, you leaned into him, making sure to let your clit rub onto his thumb again as you shifted your weight and your hips “Not until I see yours,” you whispered in his ear, bringing your hand down to the hem of his boxers and digging your hand to grope him. 

He groaned at your harsh movement, but his head fell back, an expression rather similar to yours as you dragged your hands through his length. 

“Help James,” you said, words cut with sharp breaths from the effort you were making to pull his boxers down. He lifted his hips and helped you do it, all the while you continued pumping him. There was already a bit of white precum coating his tip, even if the boxers had sucked up most of it, you used it to allow your hand to glide easier around him. 

“Faster,” he asked, you complied, he was already bucking his hips into your hands, “fuck doll I think I’m going to– “ You instantly stopped moving your hand and his eyes snapped open, looking at you like you had betrayed him. But you didn’t give him an explanation, you used your legs to prop forwards and lined him against your entrance “Wait, doll–“ you lowered yourself onto him, “fuck.” 

You gulped, allowing yourself to adjust before giving him a look, he was looking at his cock buried in you attentively, and he swallowed thickly, you didn’t wait too much after that, and started grinding onto him, “Fuck Jamie you fill me up so good,” you whispered, as if he needed any more encouragement. You thought he did since he wasn’t moving, but that wasn’t the reason he wasn’t. 

He grabbed onto your hips, and halted your movement “fuck, angel, hold up– I need–“You looked at him worriedly, accidentally bucking your hips again as you tried to search for his eyes, and then you felt it. Wet and sticky, inside you. He’d cum.

He looked at you with the most mortified expression on his face, as if he was sorry “I’m– I’m so sorry I…” 

You just laughed, placing your hand on his cheek to prompt him to look at you “Hey, It’s okay my love.” 

“But I didn’t… Not even like 30 seconds I–“ James was completely flustered, you weren’t sure you’d ever seen him that flustered before, you pulled him into a kiss. 

“I’m taking it as a cumm-pliment,” you told him, he gave you a reproachful look and you gave him a peck on the lips. A small smile wavered its way towards his lips. 

“That’s the– what a terrible pun,” he added. You bucked your hips against him again “fuck.” 

You raised your eyebrow at him “Keep insulting my puns and I won’t help you with your little issue,” you threatened playfully as you started to buck your hips again, helping him empty himself completely. This time a lot slower, enjoying the way he felt on you, the way he was filling you up, how much easier it was to glide onto him with his warm cum all over you, some of it dripping to the side of your thigh and onto his already, you continued until he patted on your tight. 

You nodded and pulled out slowly, setting yourself on his lap still. He still seemed awfully bashful, “Come on Jamie, I really don’t mind it.” 

“But it was– our first time and I… ugh” he placed his hands over his face, groaning as he replayed the events in his head.

You bit your tongue not to laugh. At least he wasn’t thinking of the fire anymore. Mission success? You sighed and placed your hands onto his own and pulled them down, tilting your head a little in search for his eyes.

 “How about…” you started, it seemed to gather some of his attention, although he was still looking at you with a dissatisfied expression “We go get a bath, and clean up…” you continued, he had finally lifted his head towards yours “we relax together a little,” you added, letting your fingers trace over his muscles, “we clean all the soot of that pretty face of yours,” you added, pinching his cheek which earned you a playful scowl from his part “and then chill for a while, see what happens next,” you finished, making sure your tone, raised eyebrows and half bitten bottom lip was suggestive enough. He looked at you, a diverted smile playing on his lips. “If it makes you feel better, we can pretend the shower was our first time instead,” you added just to spite him. 

He huffed, a smile on his face as he placed his hands on your waist and stood up, holding you against him with ease. You squealed and laughed at the sudden action “James!” you reprimanded “We didn’t even take your boots off, you’re gonna fall and drop me in the process,” he looked down and groaned when he realised it was true. Regardless he tried to jump his way before the two of you ended up back on the couch. You were laughing merrily as he huffed. 

“Come on hot fireman,” you told him with a smile “Take off those pretty boots of yours…” you smiled as you sneaked out of his grasp “I’ll meet you in the bathroom.” 

He pretty much groaned as he saw you leave, staring at your ass as you disappeared through the door. 

A/N: this one came out so much sweeter than I expected it to, but I kind of love it. It really captures that James Potter humour, doesn't it? Maraudween and The Five Senses are the anthology series where I explore writing smut, all as a way to hone my skills for the moment I write it in my Wolfstar x Reader series that's currently being posted on a weekly basis. If you have feedback, please leave it in the comments below. I absolutely love reading your comments <3

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Vulnera Sanentur [Weasley twins x reader]

Part 3

Part 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Title: Vulnera Sanentur

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Reader x George Weasley {established relationship}

Timeline: DH1- set during the battle of the seven potters. Canon and certain plot points have been altered for the needs of the story.

Summary: The battle of the seven Potters throws your world into chaos when one of your boyfriend’s is cursed. As Snape’s ex-potions assistant and previous protégée, you recognise the inflicted curse immediately and demand answers from your mentor.

Warnings: Angst, mentions of war and Voldy, descriptions of injury and blood, descriptive smut, p in v sex, shower sex, tension. Outside sex. Semi public sex. None sexual nudity. Crying. Snape has a soft spot for reader. Arguments. Probably some cursing. Mentions of nightmares. Reader is part of the Order of the Phoenix. Mentions of death (Dumbledore). Mentions of Tonks’ pregnancy. Not spellchecked nor beta read, we die like Madeye.

With a loud clack you were gone and appeared only moments later in a small, deserted park, surrounded by metal railings and vacant benches, knowing you had to be safe and not go straight to your destination. You set off on your little walk and in no time at all you were facing Grimmauld Place. With a flourish of you wand and a wordless charm, the building began to rumble and pull back, sliding out between the next door residences that were totally black in the dead of night until number 12 was clearly visible.

"Homenum revelio," you cast as you walked through the door, looking down at the slightly illuminated hallway, the dark walls and grotesquely gothic architecture making you feel a little more than uneasy but you couldn't allow yourself to be frightened now. Nothing happened from your spell and you realised you were entirely alone in the property, an sigh of relief falling from your lips at the revelation.

"Lumos," you said quietly as you walked deeper into the safe house, illuminated wand guiding your way, walking directly up the creaking staircase towards the third room on the right, the bedroom you'd been sharing with Fred and George only a year ago. You prayed it was still here.

You didn't divert from your path and immediately crouched down towards the small round rug in the centre of the room as you entered your old bedroom and peeled back the rug to check the floorboards beneath it. Knocking three times, then two, and saying a muffled 'revelio', you watched as the floorboard popped up out of its socket just as it had been enchanted to do. You pulled the floorboard away and smirked to yourself as you saw the very thing you'd hidden all that time ago, still in perfect condition. The marauders map.

During your last year at Hogwarts, Harry had spent an agonising amount of time following Draco on the map, so much so that it was becoming detrimental to his school work, his sleep and his life. You and Hermione had both decided to remove the map from his possession, knowing the risks that the map held if it were to get into the wrong hands and so you'd each vowed to hide the map with only the pair of you knowing it's hiding place.

Pulling the map from its confines, you uttered the words you'd heard Fred and George say so many times before and right in front of your eyes the words appeared, brown ink bleeding onto the page.

I solemnly swear I am up to no good.

It took mere seconds for you to locate exactly what you were looking for, spotting the singular name on the map exactly where you'd predicted it to be. The climax of your plan could now take place.

You realised that this whole step of the plan could have been avoided but you wanted to make sure that the figure you followed on the map was exactly where you'd planned them to be, no doubt slipping into your determination.

"Mischief managed," you uttered, tapping it once with your wand and the writing began to fade away, leaving the parchment bare once again. You quickly stuffed it into the hole and replaced the floorboard, uttering the enchantment you'd placed upon it and exited the house completely. As you left, the creaking of the metal and rumble of the bricks faded into the background as the house fought to conceal itself once again.

You walked quickly back to the park and with a quick glance around to determine no one was around, you disapparated straight to your next destination.

Hogsmeade was notoriously cold early in the morning, in fact you'd called it the coldest place in the U.K. numerous times over the years and as your feet landed on the dewy ground, you had to hold back a shiver. Your stomach lurched as you landed, the multiple apparitions and disapparitions taking their toll on your body but you pressed on, wanting to get this over with.

You'd apparated just outside the border of the anti-disapparation jinx that was placed upon Hogwarts and the surrounding grounds, knowing the range of the jinx from a side along apparition you'd undertaken with Snape two years ago to collect ingredients for his personal store.

You trudged around a deserted Hogsmeade in the darkness using only your memory to guide you and appeared around the back of the only illuminated shop in the entire village; Honeydukes.

They were notorious for baking their homemade treats overnight, prepared fresh for the morning trade the next day. Fred had told you a while back that all their deliveries were made in the early morning as to have everything on hand for the busy morning rush; something he'd seen firsthand when him and George had been to visit a vacant unit in Hogsmeade after store close back when they considered expanding before putting that plan on hold. All it would take was a carefully timed entry through the small cellar door and you'd be on your way to your last destination. As you crouched in the darkness, concealed by the shadows of the nearby shops, you mentally wished that you'd managed to acquire Harry's invisibility cloak for your mission but there was no going back now.

As one worker excited the back door, leaving it swung right open, you ran in and rounded the corner, running straight down the back stairs that lead to the cellar, a route you'd taken many times with your boyfriends in your school years. With a quick look around, you lifted the slab and slipped into the passageway, carefully replacing the stone slab behind you. You breathed out a large breath and cast a light spell so that you could see, quickly making your way through the hidden passage that led to Hogwarts.

It was freezing and damp in the passageway and you briefly pined for the company of your boyfriends as you walked the long distance towards the castle. You took the time to consider how you were going to do this but quickly put it out of your mind, realising that your anger was your greatest weapon in this instance.

You finally appeared at the alcove behind the one eyed witch statue and expertly made your way around it like you had many times before, finding yourself in the deserted great staircase. Only once you'd breached the castle did the overwhelming sense of danger register with you. If Snape had turned in his allegiance, you could be in serious danger, coming face to face with a death eater, the same one that you knew had cursed your boyfriend so severely. The very thought of George lay there covered in his own blood and looking so gravely ill made the adrenaline inside you surge and suddenly you didn't feel fear anymore.

You marched directly over to the headmaster's tower, reaching the concealed gargoyle staircase that led to Dumbledore's office, or rather Snape's office now.

"Sherbet lemon," you said, expecting the staircase to appear but the Gargoyle you had seemed to disrupt from slumber suddenly cursed you out for getting it wrong. You hadn't considered that Snape would change the password, though of course it made sense.

"But, Dumbledore," you began to argue until falling silent only a moment later as the staircase opened up and slowly unfurled, making you momentarily frown in confusion.

Taking a deep breath, you ascended the moving stone staircase until you were met with the closed door to the office. You considered knocking, but thought better of it and burst through the doors, directly facing the man who had betrayed your trust.

He was sat at his desk, eyes wide open as he looks upon the indignant intrusion, first with a glare of complete outrage before it transformed into confusion and from what you could see, guilt, as he realised it was you that had stormed into his office.

It was the first time you'd seen him since the news that he had killed Dumbledore that night on the astronomy tower had spread around members of the order, though it was not known to the general public. Years of bonding and working closely together, of building something that could be described as friendship now felt fragmented and broken as you stepped into the office, your anger consuming you at his attack on George.

"Y/n," he says, rising from his seat, casting aside the book he'd been reading on the desk without thought.

"Save it," you spat out, your fury building within you as you slammed the door behind you closed with a resounding bang. You looked at him in pure disgust, with such hatred in your eyes that you could almost see his shoulders sagging under the force of your gaze. Clearly he had not expected you, nor had he expected to be on the receiving end of your fury.

"How could you?" You said, already raising your voice as the emotion overwhelms you, the memories from the formative years of you working hard under his initial harsh scrutiny, the slightly odd but important bond you'd formed, your important role working as his assistant and the time you'd shared together. "I trusted you!"

"Then you are a fool," he says quickly with a cold, dismissive tone, averting his gaze from you.

"Don't play that with me, you should know it doesn't work headmaster," you retort warningly, the last word dripping from your mouth with loaded sarcastic aggression.

You'd been used to his cold and harsh exterior, had seen it weaponised and utilised for his benefit many times before but you knew the real Snape, the intelligent and warm man underneath.

He turns and casts a few spells with a flourish of his wand that leads you to believe they are strong silencing charms as a translucent barrier forms around the room, as if keeping your conversation isolated.

"I had to watch the man I love be carried in, completely limp and haemorrhaging blood knowing there it was you that cursed him. He could have died Severus!"

"You have no proof it was me-" he begins to say, still keeping his hardened resolve, deflecting your accusations but it only infuriates you more, tears beginning to well in your eyes as the emotions overcome you completely as you interrupt his pathetic denial.

"No? I was there that night with you and Draco, remember?" You say hatefully, "I saw how that curse slashed Draco apart, the very same curse Harry found in your own copy of advanced potion making,

Sectumsempra."

For the first time since entering his office, Snape turned to look at you in shock, realising now that you knew all along. "You really believe the person that has worked with you closely and tirelessly over the years would fail to recognise your handwriting?"

He falls silent as he takes in your words, which prompts you to continue your verbal assassination.

"I saw the very same slash marks on George's head, I knew that curse could only have come from you. Funny how you knew exactly what incantation to use to heal the marks when it was an entirely unheard of curse! Do I mean that little to you that you'd go so far as to curse the ear off the man I love?! I thought we were... friends." A singular tear fell from your eye as the anguish inside you disappeared, leaving only sadness and betrayal.

He remains silent for a moment and you prepare yourself to walk out, realising this was a pointless and fruitless endeavour. Just as you turn to walk away, his quiet voice cuts through the silent, tension filled room, pausing your movement. It appears that your words and willingness to leave had broken his resolve, the truth finally coming out.

"It was never meant for George," he says quietly, not meeting your eyes. "There's so much of this you do not and cannot know but you must understand it was never my intention to hurt him, it was a miscalculation in logistics. I saw a masked one aim at Lupin and Weasley and I retaliated in kind, but it all moved so fast, the curse bounded towards him and I was powerless to stop it."

He turns to you then, looking directly into your eyes with a sadness that seemed to reach his soul.

"And to answer your question, your friendship means everything to me, you mean very much to me."

"Severus," you breath out, listening to his explanation and finding yourself believing him, though you tried to resist.

"You've always overlooked my predisposition for life's negativity, shown me kindness that no one else has in a very long time, like a beacon of goodness in what seems a lifetime of darkness and solitude. I value our friendship a great deal."

He looks up at you once again, focusing his complete attention on you.

"I'm sorry that George was hurt, it was very much never my intention. How is he?"

"Alive," you say, feeling suddenly exhausted by the journey and your emotions as you perch yourself on the edge of the chair. He nods solemnly just once, eyes lingering over you as an awkward silence falls between you both. There's so much that isn't said between you, of friendship and war and questions of loyalty, but all of those go unsaid.

"You're no longer on our side are you?" You said quietly after a moment, slowly looking up into his emotion filled eyes as you keep your tone neutral and unaccusing. You'd surmised as much, though you were loathe to actually believe it even after the events of the previous day which you assumed could only have been down to him. He had leaked the information to Voldemort, you were now sure if it. Mundungus might have had questionable morals but he wasn't brave enough to supply the death eaters with information, he'd have been too cowardly, which only left the one order member that wasn't present or assisting with the removal of Harry.

He blinks slowly and you can almost physically see him deflate as he looks into your eyes with a piercing intensity, not wanting to answer your question.

"I should go," you say, looking at the patterns in the stone floor. You don't hear a reply but you can envision him nodding in reply and so you move to stand, straightening out your jacket.

"Use the floo, Hogsmeade is no longer safe if not accompanied," he says, gesturing vaguely towards the fireplace in the corner. With a wave of his hand, the fireplace immediately ignites into green tinted flames, ready for your exit.

"Y/n," Severus says, stepping closer to you with uncharacteristic hesitation before you can step into the fire. He looks plagued, like he wants to say so much but can't for whatever reason.

"I'm sorry it has to be this way, I hope one day you will understand and find it in yourself to forgive me."

You're briefly taken aback by his words, finally realising that from this point onwards you would no longer have the relationship you had always had, you'd be natural enemies on either side of a budding war. His words felt like a final goodbye and you bit the inside of your cheek to prevent tears from forming in your eyes once again.

"I hope you can forgive yourself, and I don't just mean for George. I hope one day you realise that you're a good man and finally see yourself the same way I have always seen you. Goodbye Severus."

Your eyes remain locked on each other for a few moments, sad eyes meeting as you part ways, both physically and emotionally. You take a handful of floo powder and with one last look at your now ex-friend, you speak loudly and clearly into the fire, 'Diagonal Alley' before the fire consumed you and you're transported to the Leaky Cauldron, just as you had envisioned in your mind, knowing their fireplace would be one of the few open for all use even at this time of night, or rather early morning. You exit the deserted Inn and exited onto the cobblestone streets of Diagon Alley, walking absently until you were directly outside your boyfriends' shop.

You wheezed and caught your breath as you stood looking up at the shop, guilt niggling at you as you thought of how you couldn't go straight to the Burrow, sensing that it would give Snape the advantage of knowledge that you could no longer entrust him with, if he hadn't known already.

You walked to the door of the shop and cast the charm to unlock the door, the specific spell that Fred had created that was specific to this lock and acted as an anti-unlocking charm that couldn't be penetrated by alohamora or even the more creative unlocking spells. Once inside, you pointed your wand at the lock and cast the charm to lock the door before closing your eyes and with tired determination, you climbed the stairs until you reached the flat you lived in upstairs with Fred and George.

Fred had cast a anti-apparition jinx in the shop and the surrounding areas that they owned as a precaution and right at this moment you were mentally cursing his efforts, feeling exhausted, though apparating your current state would be incredibly dangerous anyway, the tiredness in your body and mind would most likely have gotten you splinched.

You entered your flat and immediately grabbed a glass of water, taking a seat at the kitchen table, feeling suddenly very alone without the usual company of one or both of your loves, the flat seeming empty and without life. You needed to get back before sunrise and you maybe only had an hour before the sun would begin to peak over the lowest points on the horizon so you quickly went into the bathroom to relieve yourself and wash your face, changing your clothes on the way back through.

In your note to the twins, you'd lied and stated that you needed something from home and would be nipping back to get it so you moved a couple of things around on the coffee table and kitchen, as if you'd been searching for something before walking to the bedroom you all shared and pulled out your jewellery box, reaching for the locket they had bought you on your 17th birthday. Inside was a picture of each of them, Fred on the left and George on the right you'd taken at the Yule ball all those years ago.

You'd realised during the wait for the order to return that you'd forgotten to pack it and you knew the twins wouldn't question you going back for it, knowing how sentimental you were about this particular piece, making it the perfect rouse.

Stepping towards the fire, you yawned and cast one last spell to connect the floo, seeing green flames once again rising. You thought about Severus and felt a pang of sadness hit you but you carried on regardless, feeling more than ready to crawl into bed with your boyfriends again.

Hagrid, still sleeping soundly on the floor, no doubt knocked out by his firewhiskey intake, didn't even flinch as the flames surged in the fireplace as you returned to the Burrow, feeling exhausted. Your confrontation with Snape had been tiresome but cathartic and though there was so much that went unsaid, you were pleased overall with how things had gone. You were exhausted in both body and mind but somehow you didn't feel tired, at least not tired enough to sleep. You considered making a cup of tea but with another look at a snoring Hagrid, you decided it was best not to.

You trudged up the staircase, mindfully stepping in a perfected sequence that avoided all the creaking steps and noisy floorboards until you reached the door to your boyfriends' room. You gently twisted the door handle and crept inside the mostly dark room, the essence of first light creeping in over the hills.

Immediately, you felt yourself engulfed into a large figure and had to hold back a scream at the sudden movement, realising only when the voice whisper yelled at you that it was Fred.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" He asks in a harsh whisper and you freeze, realising with one single glance at his face that you'd never seen him look so worried before.

"Had to get my necklace," you said, your gut dropping as you lied to the man you loved, feeling more than uneasy about it. To solidify your lie, you reached into your pocket and pulled out your locket to show him. He visibly took a deep breath and pulled you deep into his chest.

"Next time let me go with you, I was so worried," he says, holding you tightly in his arms. You simply nodded and allowed yourself to melt into his embrace. "He woke up, asked for you."

Suddenly your guilt felt immeasurable, not being here for your other love. "Said you'd nipped to help mum, didn't want him worrying too."

"I'm sorry Freddie," you said with full honesty, feeling ashamed.

"You're back now," he says, stroking your back, keeping you pressed into him. "You must be tired."

"Not really," you admitted. Exhausted and weary yes but you could sleep if you were paid to.

"Want to go to our spot? He'll be knocked out for a few hours now, mum topped him up with some sleeping potion," he says, gesturing towards George who is evidentially deep asleep, mouth hanging wide open and breathing deeply and steadily from what you can see over Fred's wide shoulders.

"Lead the way Weasley," you say with a smile and he steps out of the room towards the top of the staircase and with two perfectly synchronised cracks, you apparate to the spot in the forest behind the burrow you'd claimed as your own years ago.

He took your hand as soon as you'd landed and lead you further into the clearing, stopping only briefly to help you over the little wooden stump and logs that created a barrier around your spot. You each sit around the fire that Fred starts with a flourish of his wand, sitting on the larger logs around it.

"I want to feel normal again," he says quietly a little later on as you sit in silence, Fred's wand enchanting some of flames to idly play with them as you watched the sun very slowly begin to creep higher in the sky, though it was hidden by the vast number of trees around you, keeping you mostly in the dark. You turn to him with concern, seeing his eyes blankly staring at the fire, his face expressionless.

"Seeing George like that, then waking up without you there, I've never felt so lost in my life," he says.

"Freddie," you begin to apologise, feeling overwhelmed by guilt again until he shakes his head.

"I'm just so used to always having one of you there, if not both. It's never been just me, always been 'the twins' or Gred and Forge and then you came along and we became a three. For the first time tonight I had a glimpse of being alone, completely alone without you both and it was unbearable."

"You're not alone, me and George will always be there," you say, shuffling closer to him to take his hand.

"We don't know what will happen, if something happens in the war and I lose you both," he begins to say.

"Then we'll still always be with you," you say firmly, squeezing his hand to force him to look up at you which he does.

He gazes at you for what seems like forever, as if he's searching your face for something before he leans in and kisses you with surprising intensity. You kiss him back just as feverishly, your body igniting under his touch as his hand creeps up into your hair to hold you to him. His tongue licks into your mouth and massages your own tongue as his other hand begin to wander.

"I need to feel you," he says breathlessly and desperately against your lips, never quite pulling away from you, "please sweetheart, let me feel you here with me."

"Freddie, yes," you say in reply, just as breathless as he. You sense a primal need in his desperate plea and can't deny him, nor did you want to. Much to how open you had both been during your shower earlier, you couldn't help but feel the pure connection between the two of you, the desperate need for comfort in the way only you could provide.

He blindly reached for his wand, still fixed to your lips and cast a spell against your lips that made a large blanket appear, a spell you recognised him creating a few years back when you'd pulled him right here to this spot for some alone time.

The past 24 hours had been a whirlwind of emotion, loss and pain. When George had been cursed, he became your primary focus and after he was healed, you'd been hell bent on getting answers if not revenge from your ex-friend and mentor, overlooking Fred and the torment you'd endured having to wait for his return, knowing he was in danger too.

You wrapped yourself around eachother, a tangle of passionate, sloppy kisses and wandering hands as you desperately clawed at each others clothes, needing to feel each other's warm skin and beating heart against your own.

Fred ripped off your shirt and wasted no time in lifting your bra up above your breasts so that he could bend down and suck on them, both of you finding comfort in the sensation of his lips sucking at your nipples as he briefly fiddled with the clasp before throwing the garment to one side, never once pausing his assault of your sensitive nipples. You had already tore away his sleep shirt and then pulled at his pyjama bottoms to feel him naked beside you. Your jeans were shimmied off somewhere along the way and your panties were physically ripped from your body at the waistband and thrown into the distance, leaving the both of you completely bare.

"Freddie, need you, don't make me wait," you said breathlessly, pulling away from his ravishing lips, feeling them connect to your neck almost as soon as you'd began talking.

"But," he begins to protest, his hand creeping down between your thighs to test how ready you were for him, not wanting to hurt you.

"I'm ready, fuck please I need you," you begged, opening your legs further as if to beckon him to you. You heard him groan as your words, capturing your nipple between his lips once more as he shifts to move between your legs, his muscular arms bulging either side of your head as he shifts into position, needing to see your face. He kisses you again and you feel the evidence of his arousal pressing into the crease of your groin before he pulls back to adjust himself and take hold of his cock with one hand and slides into you slowly and carefully. You both erupt in moans as you feel him sink into you, not stopping until you were taking nearly every inch of his thickness.

"Fuck, y/n," he groans, slowly pulling out of you before crashing his hips back into yours, making you throw your head back in pure pleasure, feeling his cock stretching you out and filling you in all the right ways. His eyes are clenched tightly shut as his mouth opens on its own accord as he begins to rock back and forth into you, building up to a slow but forceful rhythm.

Your legs wrap around his hips as your hand begin to grab at his wide shoulders, pulling him further into you as he reaches down to kiss you passionately once again. His hips speed up and he finally gives you what you want, both of you moaning once again at the change of angle, feeling him hit the deepest parts of you which makes you gasp and moan out his name.

It's primal and desperate as your bodies meld together, never really pulling apart even as his hips rock in and out of you with pure need. Neither of you can hold back your cries of pleasure, moaning each other's name and verbal curses echoing through the woods as he pounds into you. Suddenly needing something new, you place your hands on his chest and as he pauses his rhythm, you force him into his back and begin to ride him with all the strength you have left over. His big hands immediately lock onto your hips, guiding you and helping with your movements as he looks up at you with adoration in his eyes and mouth agape. His eyes are fixed onto your bouncing breasts and you make no move to conceal yourself as you bounce on his cock, hips bucking wildly and your hair falling over your shoulders. You steady yourself on his thighs as you lean back, giving him the perfect view of your bodies meeting and his cock disappearing in and out of you and he roars with arousal at the sight, hips thrusting upwards to fuck up into you as you both near your end.

Suddenly, his right hand reaches up to cup the back of your neck and he forcefully pulls you down onto him to kiss you again, sloppy kisses and teasing tongues as you lay chest to chest, his hips pounding into now. His other hand grins your hip and he lets out a loud groan against your lips as you feel him cumming. You're powerless to move as he holds you in place, fucking up into you with abandon and the sensation of him overpowering you hurtles you towards your own finish, your walls squeezing his twitching cock as you cum together, feeling his warm seed flood you from the inside.

As your orgasm ebbs away, the tingling sensation fading slowly, the world around you seemed to fade back into your conscious again. You looked down at Fred and saw him lay with his eyes closed, a peaceful look on his face with just the hint of a smirk tugging at the left side of his lips as his hands caressed your skin where he'd been holding you. His eyes slowly fluttered open a moment later and he looked up at you with love in his eyes, a look that you were certain was mirrored in your own.

You lifted your hips gently and his softening cock slipped out of you, both of you groaning in sensitivity at the sensation as you felt some of his load slipping out of you with the movement.

"I needed that," you half chuckled as you bent down and rested your head on his shoulder, legs extending either side of him so that you were essentially lay on top of him, which he was only happy to accommodate.

"Me too princess," he smirks, running his hand over your naked back. "We should get dressed, don't want you getting cold."

You dressed quickly with whatever clothes had survived your mass, frantic scrummage earlier. Fred ended up having to give you his sleep shirt as he'd literally ripped your T-shirt apart and your jeans chafed your bum uncomfortably as your panties were also beyond repair, leaving you without.

The sun had risen almost completely now, noticing as soon as you walked out of the tree line and you had no doubt that Molly would be up soon, delegating chores to every unsuspecting resident and guest. You wanted to be back with George, hopefully before he woke and so you both walked back and crept into the house, walking tiredly towards the twins bedroom where George was still sound asleep.

You took a moment to look at him, smiling and grimacing briefly as you saw the little puddle of drool that had formed on his pillow and the little snores he was omitting.

"I'll tell mum you've been brewing some healing potion all night," Fred says as you slip off your jeans, leaving you in just Freddie's T-shirt as you both slip into the small bed beside George's as Fred tucks the duvet around you both and pulls you into him so that you can cuddle into his chest. "At least you'll get some more sleep."

"Thank you Freddie, love you," you say sleepily, true tiredness hitting you immediately as you snuggled down into the soft covers.

"I love you too princess, so much," he says with a kiss to your head before your eyes close and you cuddle down into him, feeling sleep already taking over you.

Next

[millenniumspirit-retired]

   please coddle this boy @defiantcharms

              Ryou trades an owl treat for the letters from Hogwarts and sends the old barn off with a little scratch around the edge of her white heart. He slips back inside and doesn’t so much as sneak up on his mother as he does quietly step into her space in the kitchen. “ Letters are here, ” he says brightly.

[lornaslibrary]

Magic

Last week I asked you to recommend books on the subject of magic. Here are all of the books that were recommended!!

Bold = the books I’ve read * = the books I personally would recommend + = want to read/on my TBR

Rivers of London (Peter Grant #1), by Ben Aaronovitch

Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha #1), by Tomi Adeyemi +

The Girl Who Chased the Moon, by Sarah Addison Allen

Garden Spells (Waverly Family #1), by Sarah Addison Allen

Magic Bites (Kate Daniels #1), by Ilona Andrews +

The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy #1), by Katherine Arden +

Shadow and Bone (The Grisha Trilogy #1), by Leigh Bardugo

Six of Crows (Six of Crows #1), by Leigh Bardugo *

The Iron Trial (Magisterium #1), by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare

The Children of Green Knowe (Green Knowe #1), by L.M. Boston

The Magicians’ Guild (The Black Magician #1), by Trudi Canavan

So Far From God, by Ana Castillo

The Demon King (Seven Realms #1), by Cinda Williams Chima

Wicked Fox (Gumiho #1), by Kat Cho

The Bone Witch (The Bone Witch #1), by Rin Chupeco +

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

The Belles (The Belles #1), by Dhonielle Clayton

The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library #1), by Genevieve Cogman *

Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark is Rising #1), by Susan Cooper

London Falling (Shadow Police #1), by Paul Cornell

Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors (The Risen Kingdoms #1), by Curtis Craddock

The Naming (The Books of Pellinor #1), by Alison Croggon

Thornfruit by Felicia Davin

Half Magic (Tales of Magic #1), by Edward Eager

We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1), by Hafsah Faizal

Inkheart (Inkworld #1), by Cornelia Funke 

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

The Dark Days Club (Lady Helen #1), by Alison Goodman

Warped, by Maurissa Guibord

The Goose Girl (The Books of Bayern #1), by Shannon Hale

Frostfire (Kanin Chronicles #1), by Amanda Hocking

Switched (Trylle #1), by Amanda Hocking

Practical Magic (Practical Magic #1), by Alice Hoffman

The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician #1), by Charlie N. Holmberg

The Silvered, by Tanya Huff

The Shadow of What Was Lost (The Licanius Trilogy #1), by James Islington

Wintersong (Wintersong #1), by S. Jae-Jones

The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1), by N.K. Jemisin

Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle #1), by Diana Wynn Jones

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Vol. 1 (Chrestomancy #1-2), by Diana Wynne Jones

Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay

Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1), by Jay Kristoff *

A Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle #1), by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Magician’s Nephew (The Chronicles of Narnia #1), by C. S. Lewis

Ash, by Malinda Lo

The Witches of New York, by Ami McKay

When the Moon Was Ours, by Anna-Marie McLemore *

The Last Magician (The Last Magician #1), by Lisa Maxwell

The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1), by Jodi Meadows

Circe, by Madeline Miller

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern +

Sabriel (The Old Kingdom #1), by Garth Nix

Uprooted, by Naomi Novik

Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik

The Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O’Shea

Tempests and Slaughter (The Numair Chronicles #1), by Tamora Pierce 

The Wee Free Men (Discworld #30, Tiffany Aching #1), by Terry Pratchett 

An Enchantment of Ravens, by Margaret Rogerson

Sorcery of Thorns, by Margaret Rogerson

Carry On (Simon Snow #1), by Rainbow Rowell

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter #1), by J.K. Rowling *

Ordinary Magic, by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

Magyk (Septimus Heap #1), by Angie Sage

The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive #1), by Brandon Sanderson

The Final Empire (Mistborn #1), by Brandon Sanderson +

Warbreaker (Warbreaker #1),  by Brandon Sanderson

Elantris (Elantris #1), by Brandon Sanderson

A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1), by V.E. Schwab *

Troubled Waters (Elemental Blessings #1), by Sharon Shinn

Trafficking in Magic, Magicking in Traffic, edited by David Sklar and Sarah Avery 

Poison Study (The Chronicles of Ixia #1), by Maria V. Snyder +

Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke and Bone #1), by Laini Taylor *

Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer #1), by Laini Taylor *

An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes #1), by Sabaa Tahir

The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1), by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins #1), by P.L. Travers

Among Others, by Jo Walton

The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1), by Brent Weeks

Dealing with Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles #1), by Patricia C. Wrede

If you recommended books but don’t see your recommendations here, feel free to message me to let me know I missed your response

Other Chain Recs Masterposts

[profmoonmoon]

kin memories

april 4, 2020

i decided i would post all of the memories i’ve been able to remember so far, i will probably add to this as i remember more

i was almost a hufflepuff, i was a hat-stall for so long that i thought the hat wasn’t going to let me in for being a trans werewolf

the marauders and i started getting close very early on, but i hid everything from them until they found out about me being trans in 2nd-ish (?) year when puberty had really started and somehow snape was involved with me being outed?

was able to start muggle testosterone injections (pomfrey couldn’t find a way to do it with magic), and since i was terrified of needles james had to do it for me

i can’t remember how they found out about my furry little problem

dated sirius-started talking/ flirting kind of in 4th year? and we started dating in the summer between 5th and 6th? when sirius was living with the potters

peter, james, lily, and a bunch of other gryffindors had bets placed by 5th year on when we would finally get together^^

i was close with lily, especially in our last few years at school

we used to all sneak out to to roof of gryffindor tower and smoke muggle cigarettes and drink firewhiskey, plotting prank ideas and working on the map

full moons went from being absolutely excruciating to almost fun with padfoot, prongs, and wormtail

after school, sirius rented us a flat and paid for my top surgery as no one in the wizarding world would perform any spells to do it

we stayed in hiding and only got to see harry, james, and lily a few times before everything happened

peter still gave up james and lily to voldemort and sirius still went to azkaban

i believed that sirius betrayed us and fled the wizarding world, lived in a run-down flat in london for a while, i remember working at a library and a coffee shop but the full moons became too much to handle alone

i hid away in the countryside until dumbledore asked me to be the dada professor

the shrieking shack happened the same but pettigrew didn’t escape and dumbledore was able to clear sirius’ name somehow

i still left the dada position even though it hurt not to see the kids anymore, the backlash and fear would have been too much to bear

sirius and i got back together so easily it almost felt like a dream, he was able to help me with full moons and harry lived with us in the summers

pettigrew ended being a very-much needed cog in the machine and voldemort was defeated much easier without him, sirius and i both lived even with him helping the order full-time on very dangerous assignments

i got close with molly and would help her take care of things around grimauld place, i couldn’t do too much hands-on order work like sirius, years of full moons had left me with arthritis, terrible ptsd, and a lot of other problems

——————————-

july 16, 2020

always sleepy. i could fall asleep any time, anywhere. at a desk, in a classroom, on the floor, in a tree, even standing up sometimes. if you woke me up too early on the weekends you’d better be ready to face certain death.

sweaters and plaid pajamas pants on the second i didn’t have to be wearing uniform, usually with a mug of tea and a book in my hand, curled up in an armchair in a cozy corner of the gryffindor common room.

appease annoyance with chocolate. also a valid payment method, especially if it’s the good kind.

slept curled up in a very small ball with too many blankets.

almost always the last one up, sirius usually having to drag me out of bed by the ankle onto the floor to try and catch the end of breakfast.

lily and i used to have very heated (but still friendly) debates for hours, or even days, on end. usually it would turn into near shouting in the middle of the common room. all the first years thought we actually hated each other because of this, but i loved the intellectual challenge we provided each other.

color-coded notes and planner. stationary obsession.

we all shared a vinyl collection that started when we found a near-perfect condition record player at a “novelty” muggle shop. it was one of the only useful items in there, but james and sirius dragged us all in constantly to look at all the “funny little trinkets.” (one time they spent almost a half an hour marveling over a gumball machine) when the store got ballpoint pens in i thought their heads were going to explode so i bought them each one to play with in the dorm. they draw crude doodles of us and then used a charm to permanently stick them to our walls.

hot chocolate ��parties” in the hospital wing after full moons. no marshmallows for james, extra for peter and sirius.

stupid socks, usually not matching and usually falling down.

fantastic at making saturday morning breakfast (but at like.... noon.)

all of the cats on the grounds used to flock to me and i would be late to class sometimes because i wanted to scritch behind all of their ears.

always cold. blankets, big scarves, hot drinks, sitting next to fireplaces, multiple sweaters, stealing sirius’ jackets (especially the leather one)

eventually got an enchanted lunar cycle tattoo to keep track of the full moon easier.

constant tally of whose made the best wolf puns.

books, E V E R Y W H E R E

—————————

i desperately want to find my sirius, james, harry and lily. i miss my friends, my pack, more than anything in the world. i would also love to find anyone else who remembers any of this.

[dmcheadcannons]

Hello. Can you do a headcanon about the DMC 5 crew finds their s/o is a witch? Thank you. Also I love your blog.

Dante

·         He thinks it's hella cool

·         His mind immediately goes to Harry Potter when you tell hem

·         Dante? Read? Harry Potter?!

·         Dante Reads????

·         He thinks you will definitely be a kickass couple

·         He doesn't ask too many questions, but just drags you out to go demon hunting to see your powers in action

Nico

·         She goes quiet for a moment after you tell her you are a witch

·         Nico???

·         She goes into deep thought for a few minutes, and you become nervous, thinking she is going to react negatively

·         "As a witch… can you do enchantments? Like, enchant items?"

·         "yes?" her eyes sparkle at your response and you realized you just made a BIG mistake

·         "I got an idea, follow me…" she says, dragging you to her workshop whilst simultaneously phoning Nero

·         You know it's going to be a long night for both you and Nero

Nero

·         He thinks it's cool… but has no idea what all 'witch' includes

·         You explain your powers to him and offer to give him a few health and defense potions for his next job

·         He gets a bit irritated at the offer. He can handle any demon that comes his way no problem.

·         He's no deadweight

·         Giggling at how childish he can be, you convince him that they are good to have on hand in case someone needs help

·         "Well, then, looks like you're just going to come with us huh?

 Lady

·         She thinks it's really cool

·         As long as you don't curse she

·         It's an ongoing joke you both have where you playfully threaten to curse her

·         You are able to enchant her weapons, making her even more powerful on the offensive overall

·         When you join the group for a job, you are mainly on the defensive and focus on healing the others, along with some powerful long-distance attacks

·         "Man, you're more of a bard than mage" She teases you

V

·         V's interest was sparked immediately upon hearing you were a witch

·         You, knowing him, immediately led to show him your collection of tomes on witchcraft

·         You can see a small glint in his eyes at all of the books, and insists you show him some of your favorites

·         You pull out a tome on crystals, and show him the powers associated with each one

·         You figured this info would go in one ear and out the other, since he wasn't a witch, but he absorbed it like a sponge.

·         Imagine the surprise you get when after a mission, he presents you with a piece of obsidian he had found.

·         That was one of many different rocks and crystals he had kept his eyes out for to bring you

·         He is too afraid to ask, fearing the answer, but he can't help thinking in the depths of his mind how powerful you really are… powerful enough to give him his own life?

·         What a silly thought….

Trish

·         Like Dante, she thinks it's hella badass and is excited to see what you can do

·         But she won't go out and look for trouble just cause like Dante

·         She's curious, and wants to learn the basics of what you can do

·         She will tease you at first

·         "A witch huh? Hah, well, show me a magic trick"

Virgil

·         He becomes immediately interested

·         He asks you to explain, and you do, excited at his intrigue

·         You tell him about enchantments, spells, curses, potions, and runes

·         Every word you speak he takes a mental note

·         Unfortunately, you didn't see the gears in his head turning…

·         Old habits die hard

[i-writing-is-hard-i]

Blood Traitor pt7

Summary:  You are Draco’s older sister.  A pureblood Witch, without the prejudice and anti-muggle beliefs of your family. Who just so happened to fall in love with none other than a blood traitor, just to complicate matters more Voldemort has returned.  What will you do?

okay, I suck at writing descriptions,

[Disclaimer] Mentions of sex, violence, and hints of torture, I may have screwed up the timeline somewhere along the way, and no one dies, because, thats sad

[Begining]  - [Previous] - [Next]

Part 7

Days had passed since George’s love confession, yet you still had a spring in your step.  You had noticed George looked happier than normal too.  The two of you managed to meet up every two days.  Thankfully.  Even if it meant sitting in silence to do homework.  Well, you did homework, he goofed off, but he let you get on with it without much fuss.  Sometimes you would read while he worked on something for his shop.  It was nice, and you couldn’t hope for more.

It was now time for the first Quidditch match of the school year.  Gryffindor v Slytherin, even if your boyfriend was on opposing team, you had to root for your own house right?, though most were nothing but thugs.  Today was the first time you had ever felt embarrassed by the other supports.  They had come up with a cruel chant for Ron, he already had confidence issues, this was not helping.  As the crowd chanted, Lee Jordan tried to drown it out.  You could faintly make out a lion’s roar, scanning the Gryffindor crowd you found the source, someone was wearing a large lion’s head,  it actually looked pretty cool,  you quickly enchanted it, without being noticed so that the roars would drown out the noise of the Slytherin’s but it only made them sing louder, they were pretty much screaming at this point.  It was deafening

You were actually a little disappointed when your team was winning, you had a feeling it was because of the chanting, but the snitch still had to be caught, that would turn it around and just as you were thinking that, Harry dove, followed by your brother.  Harry caught it.  The Gryffindor’s won.  The crowd erupted into cheers and complaints.  You watched the teams land, Gryffindors players swarming Harry.  Your heart sunk when you watched Draco walking towards them.  Just as you guessed, he said something, probably cruel.  Whatever it was angered the twins, from here you couldn’t really tell who was who, but one of them was being held back by two people, while Harry held the other.  Suddenly Harry and the Twin he was holding back dove on to Draco, you instinctively stood up, he was an arse, but he is still your brother.  You didn’t have to do anything though, Professor McGonagall intervened.  The two were ushered away from the rest, while Draco was seen too.  

You had reached the common room, before Draco, but he as soon as he entered everyone bombarded him.

“Draco what did you say to them?” Pansy asked

“Nothing, I only spoke the truth” Draco feigned innocence.

“Then why would they attack you like that, That Potter really is crazy, and those blood traitor Weasleys” someone spoke, you felt yourself become defensive.

“You were talking about their mothers” someone explained, in an indifferent tone

“Well, of course, they got angry you insulted their loved one’s idiot.  You don’t get to play the victim when you do something like that” you pointed out.  Some people agreed with you, others just glared.  

“Well, I only told the truth” Draco lied.

“Really? And what was it you said” you continued.

“I simply pointed out that their house stink” Draco smiled

“You insulted a dead woman Draco, that’s pretty shameful” you were getting annoyed at how calm and okay with that he was, but you didn’t let it show.

“And? why do you care?” Draco asked defensively

“Why do I care that my brother is acting like a right dick? Because it’s embarrassing” you kept your cool,  the people around you stiffened, turning their attention to other things, but of course, they were still listening.

“Since when did you start caring so much about the Weasley’s and Potter?”

“It’s not them, its the fact that you're, well, you are a childish bully and it’s embarrassing, and I am not going to argue with you, especially in front of everyone, so I am going” you stood up leaving Draco and heading to your room.

The next day you were waiting for George, he had detention, thanks to his ‘outburst’ you knew it would be after curfew, but you didn’t mind.  You kind of wanted to apologise on behalf of Draco.  Finally, he came in rubbing his hand, like he was in pain, you looked down to see the scarring. instinctively you ran over to him, grabbing his hand to get a better look.

“What is this?” you asked, looking up at his face.  He looked annoyed.  You looked back down to his hand, though it was healing, you could tell it was, words, layered on top of each other.

“Did Umbridge have something to do with this?” you asked.

“It’s fine don’t worry about it” George went to pull his hand away, but your grip tightened, pulling out your wand

“Hold still” you ordered.  You used Episkey on it, healing the remaining scarring and easing the pain it had caused then you kissed it.

“I know Draco insulted your mum and Lily Potter” you mumbled, “I am sorry, he’s an arse”

“Forget it, it wasn’t your fault” George was blushing bright, from your kiss.  Your eyes drifted back to his hand.

“So, what happened?” you repeated.

“Eh, Umbridge’s new punishment” George explained,

“Excuse me, Umbridge’s new punishment? it’s abuse, she hurt you” you were clearly annoyed.

“Well, who’s gonna stand up to her about it, besides’s Fred and I will get her back for this” George smiled, he kind of liked it when you were being protective

“Well, it better be good, but it’s still wrong, do the other teachers know? we should tell them, she can’t get away with this, the old bat” you ranted, pacing the room.  George’s smile grew, but then he quickly looked sad again

“This isn’t the worst of it” he muttered.

“What?” you turned to him again, he could see the anger in your eyes.

“Fred, Harry and I have been permanently banned from playing Quidditch while we are at Hogwarts, she got our brooms locked up”

“What!” you practically yelled, “But that leaves your team with no beaters of seeker!”

As annoyed George was, he couldn’t help but smile at your reaction “Gah, you two better make her life a living hell here” you ordered.  This made George burst out laughing

“You are adorable, sometimes love” he breathed, “But don’t worry we have it all planned out”.  

You joined in on the laughing.

“Good, but this is Draco’s fault and for that I am sorry” you spoke.

“Your brother said some mean things, but we shouldn’t have gone for him like that, bloody deserved it though”

“I should really say no to that, but if the tables were turned I would have probably done the same” you mumbled feeling a little guilty for agreeing

“By the way, where did you learn that spell?” George changed the subject for you.

“Charms, Weasley, some of us pays attention in class” you smiled, George simply shrugged,

A few days later, you were sitting in potions working on the brew in front of you, when you felt eyes watching.  You had expected to see George looking at you, but it wasn’t him, it was Tommy, a Slytherin.  He used to flirt with you all the time, but Ignis had warned him off you since then he barely talked to you let alone.  He wasn’t a bad guy.  He seemed to have gained confidence again because recently he had started flirting with you since the start of the year.  When you looked up he gave you smile, you quickly smiled back as to not be rude, then turned your attention back to the colourful liquid.

After class, he caught up to you, as you left the room

“So, huh, Y/N, I know we are pretty busy with all this school work, but I was thinking we could head to Hogsmeade this weekend,” Tommy asked, smoothly, with just the right amount of confidence that most girls would love, not you of course.  He slowly leaned into inter the pretense that it was so he could hear your reply over the crowd, but it was a little too close for your comfort.

“Actually, I uh, have plans” you replied, you actually hadn’t.

“Oh, well we could hang out after class, it’s not like we have much time left at school to spend together,” Tommy asked

Your eyes darted up to see George watching you could really read his expression, it made you smile.

“Well, maybe pretty busy with school work, but I will let you know, when I am free” you smiled sweetly at him, you had no intention in hanging out with him but you didn’t want to be rude.

You weren’t aware that George was now in earshot of your conversation.

“Great, I look forward to it” Tommy looked pretty happy the outcome, you felt a bit guilty, but it wasn’t like you could tell him ‘Sorry I’m dating someone’  after that rather awkward moment you headed down the corridor towards the library, it was a free period, before Dinner.  There was so much work to do.  Just as you reached the door, a certain redhead slid a note into your hand, you quickly read it, ‘Meet me’ it was all it said.  You were supposed to meet BFF/N but decided you could come up with a good excuse later, besides the two of you had agreed to meet later on anyway so you assumed it would be quick.

Pretending you forgot something in potions you made your way down the corridor, slipping down another without being seen until you reached the far empty room.  George was pacing around inside.  Once you had closed the door, he had you pinned up against the door.  Kissing you harshly.  It took your breath away and caused you to drop your bag.  

“George?” you breathed, but he moved his lips to your neck, sliding kisses down while his hands gliding down to your arse.

After some more intense moves from George, he pulled away.  Looking sheepishly at you.

“Sorry, Tommy has been flirting with you too much for liking”  he mumbled.  Looking at your slightly annoyed expression.  The reason of which was because he pulled away.  To show this, you pressed your lips to his, just as urgent as he had.  Pushing him back onto the table.  He didn’t put up a fight as he stumbled back, you took the opportunity to remove your jumper and his before pressing your lips against his.  Part of you was doing this because you simply wanted him, but the other part of you wanted him to know you only cared for him.  George didn’t complain at all, lifting you up letting you wrap your legs around his waist.

Things only heated up from there.

The two of you laid in breathless silence beside each other.  Your clothes were scattered around the room.  It wasn’t exactly the first time the two had done it, but it was never quite as intense.  Once you two caught your breath, you both quickly got dressed, rushing down to dinner, looking a bit of a mess, but you covered yourself by saying you had fallen asleep when BFF/N asked.

Later before you were to meet up with George again you headed up to your dorm room to get changed.

“So, What is going on?, I know you are seeing someone, and I am guessing it’s someone you shouldn’t be seeing” BFF/N suddenly asked.  You froze mid-change.

“What makes you say that,” you asked, returning, tossing your shirt on the bed.

“Well those marks are a dead giveaway” she continued.  You quickly looked in the mirror, finding love bites scattered around your body.  You stared wide-eyed at yourself, you hadn’t even noticed them earlier when you were getting changed.

“Uh, well, I” you stuttered what were you going to tell her? You knew she wouldn’t tell anyone, or even judge but was it still the right thing to do?

“Oh, great Godric, is it a teacher, but who would it be?” she started pondering to herself.

“It’s not a teacher” you stated, blankly.

“Oh, then who, if you can’t tell me then that’s okay” she smiled, at you with a slightly sad expression.  

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, it’s just” you did really want to tell her.  She looked so sad, and a little hurt.

“It’s George” you, blurted out.  Feeling a little bit better already.

“George who?” just as she asked that realisation hit her. “George Weasley?”

You nodded as she stared.

“Ah, I see, that’s why would can’t tell anyone” she looked sad again.

“Yeah, well, after this year we won’t have to worry about keeping it hidden” you smiled.

“So, how long as it been going on?, is this who you're with when you disappear?, who asked who out” BFF/N bombarded you with questions, it felt normal.  You smiled at her, maybe sharing somethings wouldn’t be bad.

“Well, we’ve been dating since the ball, George made the first move and yes he is who I am with when I go off, I am not telling you where I do” she shared, as you continued to get ready.  BFF/N wanted to know more and more details but you were going to be late.

“Don’t worry Y/N, I won’t tell anyone and I can help cover you, when you go know” you were grateful for it, you said goodbye and left to go meet George.

You were sitting there for a while before he arrived.  

“Sorry I am late, Fred wouldn’t get off my case, he’s eventually going to notice” George replied, he gave you a kiss on the cheek then plopped down beside you.

“You can tell him if you think that’s okay,” you said.

“I think I will if you are really okay with that,” he asked

“Well, thanks to you, BFF/N knows” you pulled down your shirt revealing one of the love bites he had left.  George's face went the same colour as his hair.

“Uh, Sorry” he was smiling a bit pleased with himself but then he caught on.

“She won’t tell anyone” you reassured.

George relaxed, laying his head down on your lap,

“I thought we were going to homework” you smiled.

“I have an idea, you read and I listen” he suggested.  In Transfiguration, you had to read a few chapters of the textbook, for a quiz tomorrow so you agreed. Reading the book out loud.

George loved the sound of your voice, he could listen to you talk all day, and somehow he managed to take in every word you said and remembered it all.  You quizzed him every so often to see if he was actually listening, and he got it right, then again it might have been because you gave him a kiss every time he got a questioned right.  All in all, it was a rather productive night.  George was the first to get up, helping you up.  He quickly gave you a kiss and a hug.

“I love you” he smiled

“I love you too” you kissed him quickly then left.

The next day at breakfast, none of the Weasleys showed up, it was the same at lunch and dinner.  Maybe they went home early?.  Later that evening you were supposed to meet George again before the Christmas holidays, but he was a no-show.  You were getting worried, but who were you to ask?  BFF/N tried to reassure you but nothing she said worked.  

[mirasdarkmaterials]

The Wizarding World - The Coming of the Metamorphmagus - Chapter 5 (Legends & Charms)

THE WIZARDING WORLD of Harry Potter - THE  COMING OF THE METAMORPHMAGUS

   David was still in utter disbelief at what he just witnessed. He thought that he has seen it all: enchanted food, elves, half-giants, freaky water, ghosts! But cats turning into humans, he looks at the cat before him and wonders if this is a poor soul of Mrs. McGonagall…or a real cat.    Reality was getting hard to distinguish in this place…the laws of the Muggle world just don’t apply to this realm! Minerva usually pulls this stunt with all the first year students to gage their ideas, inspiration and to see which students will be trouble. She adjusts her glasses as she addresses the class. “I must apologize for my tardiness, there was an incident in the courtyard prior to class that I had to attend to.” as everyone turns and glances at Rowan, Lily and David. “Please, if I can have your attention for a brief moment longer,” she says as everyone looks at her. “Welcome to your transfiguration class, today we will learn proper wand techniques! All movements should be firm and decisive! Any movements that are weak or indecisive will result in fail transfiguration. Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts. Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned.” she begins and get to the subject, “Now, can anyone tell me what one can use transfiguration for?”    Rowan raises her hand as Minerva acknowledges her, “To transform objects into another?”    Minerva nods her head as she explains, “Correct Miss Bagnold, we can use transfiguration to transform one object into another…you all will not be learning those spells until year two however. Any other uses?” as she looks at the many faces looking at her.    David raises his hand and gives it a shot, “What about revealing an objects true form?”    Minerva was surprised to see David take a chance in answering a question as only two days ago, all he knew was the Muggle world. She nods as this brings her to the subject of today. “Correct Mr. Adriatian, we can use transfiguration to reveal an object, or persons...” as she glances at David for a moment “...true form.” as she writes onto the chalkboard…a true artifact! ‘Transfiguration is very hard work and needs a magically scientific disciplined mind!’ “According to Emeric Switch, transfiguring requires decisive wand movements. Do not wiggle to twirl your wand unnecessarily or your transfiguration will certainly be unsuccessful!”    Rowan leans into David’s ear, “You should do great in this!” as Minerva glances at David and Rowan and tries to ignore Rowan’s out of place conversation, knowing it is important for self-encouragement.    “Transfiguration is literally advance mathematics! You need to take all this into consideration before applying your spell.” she writes this on the blackboard: T = (w×c)(v×a)×Z∗    “‘T’ equals the intended transformation…take your cat for example…what would you want to turn your cat into?” Minerva asks as a Slytherin gives a cocky reply.    “How about a pot of gold!” he says as Minerva accepts the idea and continues.    “So ‘T’ equals a pot of gold and to be successful you need to consider first your wand’s power times by your concentration at the moment. At the same time, you need to know the cats viciousness times by the cat’s bodyweight and times that by the power of the spell, which is ‘Z’. Each and every one of you will have 10 minutes to take mental measurements of your individual cat and what you want to turn it into and when I call your name, you’ll write in on the board.” the students remain transfixed on her. "Well, have at it!"    David looks at the foot tall grey cat as he tries to calm the cat, but it wants nothing to do with him and if he tries to touch it, it hisses at him. A few Slytherin’s chuckle as Rowan tries to help, and takes the cat with no issue, but as she hands the cat to David, the cat freaks out! “I think your cat is jinxed!” Rowan says as David looks at his fussy feline.    “Okay Mr. Kitty, we need a truce between you and I!” David says as Lily comments.    “Ah, I think that is a Mrs. Kitty, David!” she says as David smiles as it does not help his problem.    David writes down the equation and then thinks of what to turn this cat into: ‘I know the perfect thing to turn you into…a catfish!’ David thinks as he writes Catfish on his paper and writes: ‘Catfish = Decisive wand movement X Concentration while taking the cats state of mind X the cats weight 2.5 pounds X the incantation.’    “Okay, times up…” Minerva looks around to see many lost faces as science does not come easy to wizards and witches. “Mr. Adriatian, please come to the board and write your answer.” David looks around as he rises and walks over to the chalkboard and writes: (Catfish= Decisive wand movement X concentration + Cats state of mind X 2.5 pounds of mass with X being the incantation.) David lays down the chalk and looks at Minerva as she looks at David’s work and says nothing as she dismisses him back to his chair. David does not know what to think as Rowan and Lily come to the front and add their answers and then the rest of the class. Most of the answers shy away from David’s answer whereas Rowan’s and Lily’s answer are close to his.    Minerva looks at the class as she holds the answer in advance. “Can you use transfiguration on yourself or another?” she asks as there is a mixed response. David shakes his head as it does not sound safe and Lily nods her head as Rowan is divided. “Yes, you can use transfiguration on yourself…but it is very dangerous and if you choose to live as a human transfiguration or are an animagus, you must register with the Ministry of Magic or face a trial and punishment. It is dangerous as if a human is transfigured into a lower class animal, you can become trapped in that form for the rest of your life. Only Animagi retain their mental processes.”    “What about the dead?” asks a student as Minerva shakes her head.    “You are speaking of necromancy, we don’t teach the Dark Arts here Mr. Rowley. Transfiguration is only used on living or inanimate objects…also, to transfigure an item like the size of the Main Table in the Great Hall would require much concentration and power…which most of you will never achieve! Even I cannot transfigure a Dragon into a pot!”    David looks up sharply at the mention of dragons, “Dragon’s? There are dragon’s here?” he asks as Minerva shakes her head.    “Not here…but they do come here from time to time.” she states as David tries to picture a dragon like Smaug clawing around! Minerva continues with lecture, “The second order of Transfiguration is Conjuration and you must follow the five principals of exceptions of Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration…anyone know the first one?”    Lily raises her hand, “There is only one known and it is a restriction that you cannot conjure food.”    “Unless it already made and charmed…” explains a Hufflepuff first year student, hearing about how the elves send the food to the Great Hall.    “Well done!” Minerva says as she smiles. “10 points awarded to Hufflepuff and Gryffindor!” she says as Lily smiles, earning her first points whereas David lost Ravenclaw 50 points for his little stunt with Kalama. “So what is the four branches of Transfiguration?” David raises his hand as she acknowledges. "Mr. Adriatian."    “Transformation, Untransfiguration, Vanishment, and Conjuration.” he says as Minerva nods and asks him.    “Explain Transformation Mr. Adriatian…” Minerva says as she feels that David is doing well and wants to see if he is making connections.    David hesitates as he does not want to disappoint her, “Transformation is the process to alter ones form. Human transformation is split into three subgroups; Animagus, Metamorphmagus, Therianthrope...”    “What about vampires?” asks Mr. Rowley.    “No…they can’t change form at will Mr. Rowley, same with Werewolves.” Minerva pauses to ask a difficult question. “What other subgroup was there before it went extinct?” she ask as David raises his hand.    David hesitates to answer as he isn’t confident in saying the word. “Mermaids?” he says as Minerva nods her head and smiles.    “Well done Mr. Adriatian, for adding a correct answer to the board, answering the four branches and even four subgroups…I award Ravenclaw 50 points.” David smiles as he got his house’s points back…but would have had 50 plus if he didn’t duel Kalama in the first place. “For homework, you are to study and practice the incantation of reparifarge which is used to reverse partial transformations and is required before you can move on to further spells…come prepare next Monday to demonstrate.” as there is a chime and the class is over and the students file out. David, Lily and Rowan stay behind to wait for David as he approaches Minerva nervously.    “Professor McGonagall, for the reparifarge spell, how do we know if we are doing the spell correctly?” he asks as Minerva looks at him and comes up with an idea.    “What you have in your pocket?” she asks as David takes out his cellphone and places it on her table. She takes out her wand and casts a partial transfiguration and turns his smartphone into a partial old fashion brick cell phone. David picks it up and smiles and pockets it.    "Wow...what a downgrade! Verizon will be pissed!" he chuckles as he thinks of question two. “Second question,” David asks as Minerva nods; showing great patients. “Where can I find Mr. Hagrid?” David asks as Minerva squints her eyes at the strange request.    “He is outside of the schools grounds…near the Haunted Forest.” she says as she picks up her books and heads for the door.    “Isn’t that area restricted?” David asks, not wanting to get in trouble again. He just got Ravenclaw’s points back and he does not want to lose them again.    “At night, yes…” she says as she opens the door and leaves as David looks at Rowan and Lily. David brushes off his robes as he sighs and looks at Rowan.    “Any idea where the Haunted Forest is?” he asks as Rowan shakes her head, she will not take him.    “Sorry, I will not risk losing more points for Ravenclaw.” she says as she does not want to leave David all alone in the dark. “I’d check you welcome book…I am sure there has to be a map in there!” as she and Lily turns to go. David understands their reluctance to go. Students are warned to stay away from the woods and lake…wild things lurk there. Inside the Transfiguration class all alone…well except for about 20 cats…he pulls out his book and sure enough, there is a map that shows where he is. Currently in the school wing of the castle…he needs to go back to the dorms, through the courtyard and over the foot bridge that spans the Deep Gorge.    Exiting the classroom and walking along the school’s edge, David follows the map back to the second tallest tower that serves as Headmistress McGonagall’s office from where she watched the duel and the offices of Professor Hermione Granger-Weasley where she can stay in direct contact with the Ministry. Climbing up the tower, he comes to the third floor and takes the walkway across to the dorms. Heading for the Grand Staircase, he goes to ground floor and walks through the cobblestone courtyard as students stand around in small groups talking about their first class.    David goes pretty much unseen as he goes through the main gates and out to the courtyard guarded by the last few surviving sentinels. Many are missing chunks of stone, limbs or even their weapons…but stand guard over the massive foot bridge that crosses the deep chasm.    Stepping off the cobblestone walkway and onto the grass he sees a hut off in the distance with smoke billowing out of the chimney. The hut is a simple structure made of the wood from the Haunted Forest and stones that were rolled here. There is a small garden surrounding the building and a fence surrounding the house. The smoke smells sweet, as if someone was cooking cake mixed with hickory. David walks up to the house and knocks lightly on the door as he waits. The door opens as Hagrid looks down at David and smiles.    “Ah good, yer got the message!” he says as he opens his door the rest of the way and waves him in. David never like to enter another person’s home, but does so out of respect and the fact that he is trapped in a strange land! “I see the clothes fit ya well!” Hagrid remarks, looking at the bright blue trim and black cloth.    “Thank you for getting them for me…plus my books!” David begins as he does not know exactly why Hagrid did so. “Thank you for helping me survive…it was certain by now I would have left and gone home…” David looks grim as he wonders if that is even possible now “…if I even can.”    “Nonsense!” Hagrid says as he checks his boiling pot. “You’ll have the chance to go home by Christmas break…unless you wish to stay?” he offers as David smiles. He really would like to go home to see his mom and dad and ask for their forgiveness for doing something as stupid as going out on his own. “Yer must stay for at least one Christmas here at Hogwarts…it is simply a magical time!”    “I think everything here is ‘magical’, Hagrid!” David remarks as his first class at least had some science in it.    “True!” Hagrid says as he stokes the fire and continues, “So how was yer first class?”    David thinks about transfiguration with Professor McGonagall, surprising, he did well in it. “It wasn’t bad…we are to practice the reparifarge spell.” he says as his cellphone was turned into a useless piece of junk!    “I never did well in transfiguration…" Hagrid says as the embers crackle "...I did well in charms and especially care of mythical creatures…which is why I asked you to stop by…” as Hagrid opens the door to the cottage and welcomes David to follow as old Fang comes over, slobbering. Fang comes up to David to sniffs him up one wall and down the next and then waddles away.    “Glad he is friendly!” David remarks, “Professor McGonagall’s cat really hated me! Even that cat that follows Mr. Filch gave me the stink eye…I don’t know why?” David says as it disappoints him.    “Don’t take it personal, Mrs. Norris is not liked by any of the students…even I would like to give that cat a good kicking!” Hagrid says as they come to the edge of the forest and take the route to the lake. “You have time?” he asks David as he nods.    “Next class is at 1pm.” he says and thinks about the third class. “Hagrid, for flying class…we are not really going to learn to fly!”    “On brooms and all!” Hagrid laughs as David’s experience in the magical world is a breath of fresh air. “Madam Hooch is a strict instructor, but she knows her stuff…you’ll do fine!” he states as they finally arrive to the shore of the lake and hands David a rake. “Need to look for some glass.” he says as David looks puzzled.    “Glass?” David asks as Hagrid nods.    “Glass.” he replies as David decides to do his best and rake the soil and finds nothing that looks like glass…only slate and stone. David helps Hagrid for about 30 minutes until Hagrid gives up. “Looks like no glass!” he says as David wipes the sweat from his forehead and nods.    “Not a shard!” David smiles as Hagrid and David leave the beach and head back to the hut. Tired from all the hiking, “Trebam uzeti disanje!” David calls out as Hagrid glances back at David.    “Huh?” he asks as he does not understand a single word the boy just muttered.    “I need to take a breath!” David replies as Hagrid pauses and is certain that isn’t what David said.    “Do yer speak any other languages?” he asks as David stares at Hagrid as it is making sense, he must have had one of his episodes again! David looks away as Hagrid sees that this has been an issue for him. “Yer don’t have to say if yer don’t want to!”    “No,” David lightly says as he will be honest with the gentle giant “for years I have had this issue of speaking phrases when I am stressed in what Ted said is Croatian…he thinks I am from there!”    “I thought you were from Fort William?” Hagrid says, remembering seeing David’s ticket when he crashed on the tracks.    “I am from Fort William…I was adopted…” David says as this is new to Hagrid.    “Adopted…” he says as he thinks about all that has transpired. “Makes sense, so you aren’t a Gill?” David shakes his head.    “I don’t know my mom and dad’s real name, Professor McGonagall keeps calling me Adriatian.” David says as Hagrid’s eyes open as wide as two full moons as the name sparks a fire in his memory.    “You say Adriatian!” Hagrid says as David nods, “No, can’t be!” he adds as his suspicions are coming true.    “What is it Hagrid?” David asks as the 7 foot tall man will not say. “Hagrid!” David cries out once more.    “Sorry David, I got the wrong name, I thought you said Adriatic!” he says as he looks at his cabin. “Come, I have another gift I have been taking care of for you.” as he opens the shed behind his house and pulls out an Ural owl. “Strix uralensis…” he says as he hands David the cage. “Isn’t she a beautiful creature!” as David looks at the white owl with brown pillars scattered all over its feathers. “Could have gotten you a toad, but those are useless and I hate cats!”    “You’re not alone!” David remarks as it seems cats hate him. “What is her name?” David asks.    “She’s your bird!” Hagrid says as David lightly chuckles, his mom and dad don’t want any pets!    “Mur,” he says as he looks at the bird and then at Hagrid. “I appreciate the gift, but I am not one for caged animals!” David says as Hagrid nods with a gleeful smile as David opens the cage and gently pulls the bird out and with a gentle toss, the bird takes flight and circles around as Hagrid and David watch the owl swore around one silent wings. Mur flies down and lands upon David’s shoulder to his surprise.    “As I said, she is your bird…and with your kindness…I think you two will be good friends.” he comes up to Mur and gently pets her and then looks at David. “Tell her to go to the owlry…there you can go see her and send letters when needed…”    “Even to home?” David asks as Hagrid nods.    “I know how much you miss yer family…” he said as he looks at the Ural owl and smiles brightly.    David looks at Mur, "Head to the owlry, and feel free to fly whenever you like my friend." Mur takes flight as she fly's toward the solo tower. David hears the bell alerting that lunch is near and looks at Hagrid. “Thank you so much for the gift Hagrid, I own you a debt!” he says as Hagrid waves off the notion.    “It was instructions from Helena Ravenclaw…first time she ever came to see me!” he says as David recalls the grey ghost…she must have been the one who coordinated all this! “But I did buy you a few things not on the list…” David smiles, “See you tomorrow in class!” he says as David nods and smiles.    “At nine a.m...” David replies as Hagrid returns to his hut to get cleaned up as David rushes across the bridge and back into the castle. Hurrying off to the Great Hall, he finds a few students have arrived including Rowan and Lily who are sitting at the Gryffindor table, talking. Lily sees David walk into the hall as she waves him over.    “Over here David!” Lily says as David joins the two girls. “Did you find Hagrid?” she asks as David nods, still over joy with the gift of his own owl.    “How is it that owls don’t claw out your eyes or fly away?” David wonders as if he took an owl back at home, he’d be bloodied!    “These are not your typical muggle owls…they were raised by Owlgots and trained to serve until death their wizard or witch.” Rowan says as she too has an own in the owlry. “Was that what Hagrid wanted to see you about?”    “I guess it is required that a student has an owl, cat or toad!” David says as Lily nods her head.    “I have an owl too, dad wasn’t to incline about having a cat and mom hates toads!” Lily says as Rowan smiles and the three sit at the table as Lily plays with her farting gnome she got from Ron. A young boy, Lily’s cousin named Hugo walks over and takes a seat at the Gryffindor table. He isn’t like the other Weasley children, his hair was quite bushy like his dads, but brown like his moms. His face decorated in freckles with the utmost inviting smile that could charm an alligator!    “Bring two over to the Gryffindor side cous?” Hugo says as David and Rowan are aware they are at the wrong table. Lily looks at Hugo, quite annoyed with his interjection as she looks at her two Ravenclaw friends.    “Head to Charm’s after lunch?” Lily asks in her charming voice as Rowan nods and takes David over to the Ravenclaw table as the Prefect glares at them.    “Just some advice,” the Prefect says, annoyed. “I’d start spending more time with your own house then the houses of others.” he looks at David with piercing eyes. “If you start ‘acting’ more like a Ravenclaw Mr. Gill, you would not make glaring mistakes that cost Ravenclaw 50 points!”    “I gained 50 points back!” David says in protest.    “No!” he barks back, “You lost us 50 points for illegal dueling!” he says as some of his roommates stare at David, hearing about David’s fooling ventures with dueling Slytherin and walking off campus. David just stands there rejected as he sighs and nods and turns and walks out of the Great Hall, disgusted as his house sneers and jeers. Rowan looks at the Prefect as she shakes her head.    “How clueless are you!” Rowan says as everyone looks at her. “He only did what he had to do to stop Slytherin from using the flipendo charm on Lily. No one would come to her aid and David did what he had to do to stop the bullying!” There is exchanged of looks across the table as the opinion on the matter of the subject changes in favor of David. Even the Prefect sinks back in his chair as he was not told this. Lunch appears before them as Ravenclaw has lost their appetite while Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Slytherin scarf down their meals. The Prefect has too much pride and ego to correct his mistake as the guilt makes him sick.    David walks across campus to the school as he goes back to the area where he royally screwed up. He does not even know where he learned those spells and he used them on another soul! David worried that if this could happen on day 1…what would happen on day 365? He could have killed those girls! Even his friends look at him like a freak, now! What was he becoming?    David sits on the banister as the water cascades behind him, soothing and calm. It is moments like now that he yearns for home and thinks to himself ‘I’ll give it one week! One week and I’m gone!’ as David tries to fit in, but he just cannot. The clouds fly by as David watches them and then pulls out his book on Charms. He looks at the map and sees that the classroom as just across the court, between Defense Against the Dark Arts and Wand Wizardry. Getting up and walking over, David opens the door and goes inside as he looks around at a classroom divided into two sections. Stadium-like seats on either side look to the center of the room like a stadium with massive windows filtering yellow light upon a staircase of books.    David walks over to the tower of books and picks one up and opens it and reads: ‘Lapses in concentration while charming can result in painful side effects; remember Wizard Baruffio, who said 's' instead of 'f' and found himself lying on the floor with a buffalo on his chest.’ David chuckles at the idea as he flips through the book. He comes to a charm as he reads it, “The Cleaning Charm, Munda prius, is a charm used to clean the target. This spell is on the W.O.M.B.A.T. test and considered an advance charm.” David places down the book as he picks up a black book and opens it.    “The Spell Of Concealment is considered an advance spell used to hide things from sight and unable to be revealed by a simple revealing counter-spell. There was one spell designed by Adriatic that requires a transfiguration and charm to break and was called ‘A Spell Of Concealment’.” David looks for the incantation, but finds that page is gone. He coughs and for a moment, the book glimmers as the missing page comes into view and then fades again. So David breathes on the book as the missing page comes into view and he sees the words: Cantatio de occultis and then the words and page fade again. “So weird!”    David places down the book and takes out his wand as he swishes and flicks as he says, “Cantatio de occultis as nothing happens. He looks at the teaching lectern and again points his wand and takes a stance and says in a strong voice, “Čarolija uskrsnuća!” just as the lectern begins to flicker and fade away and then it is gone. David stares as he walks over to where the lectern once was and finds that it isn’t there. “Oh no…!” as he realizes that he just vandalized!    “Oh no indeed!” a tiny voice says as a little man walks in from the shadows. It is Professor Flitwick who has been watching from the side and is impressed. “Where did you learn such spells?" Professor Flitwick says as he approaches David.    “Out of this book…mom taught me few before I came to Hogwarts…” David says as he is disturbed by his Head of House’s appearance and looks away. Flitwick, being the head of house for Ravenclaw, he has great interest in helping his fellow Ravenclaw’s excel.    “I’d be impressed if you could break your spell of concealment!” Flitwick says as David looks grim as he shakes his head.    “Sorry Professor Flitwick, but I don’t know how to!” he says as Flitwick nods and takes out his wand to start the lesson.    “One should never use charms that they cannot correct!” he says as he climbs his stack of book and stands beside David. “Hold out your wand and shout passionately, revelio!” as he looks at David take stance and with his wand in hand; Flitwick shakes his head. “No, no, no…holding your wand like that is fancy, but not advised!” as David holds his wand with a death grip. “Let me see your wand!” he says as David passes his wand to the half-goblin half-human as his bushy white eyebrows rise. “What a unique wand! Lot of power!” he says as he picks up the wand and holds the wand at the end where the wand has a depression for secure holding against counter spells. “Like this!” he says as he hands the wand back to David and David holds the wand like Professor Flitwick held it and has the professor check his form. “Good…now swish and flick with the word, revelio!”    David swishes and flicks and says, “Revelio!” as the lectern begins to appear and then fades away.     “Hmm, that is one powerful charm you cast onto my lectern!” Flitwick says as he takes his wand and says, “Revelio!” and like before, the wand casts a white light and his lectern appears and then disappears. David takes his wand in hand and together they cast the revelio charm and this time the lectern appears and remains in form. “There we go!” he says as David walks over to the wooden stand and touches it and it is solid.    “That is a hard charm!” David remarks as the professor chuckles and agrees.    “Most second year students struggle with the charm…you seem to have a natural talent for charms Mr. Adriatian!” he says as David smiles and finally feels good about himself. “If I may ask, why did you not have lunch with your House?”    David walks to a seat and sits down near the center and sighs, “To be honest, I feel like I am wearing shores that are too tight!” David says as Professor Flitwick makes his wand at the ready.    “I can help with that!” he offers as David smiles and shakes his head.    “Nothing is wrong with my shoes Professor, it is a terrible saying apparently that muggles use I guess.” David states as Flitwick accepts that theory as he has little experience with muggles and prefers to simply avoid them. “Ever since I have come to Hogwarts, I feel as if I am constantly at odds with everyone! The Prefect even wonders why I was put in Ravenclaw and I think he has a point…with the trouble I cause, I should be in that snake house!”    Flitwick leans against the books as he has received reports about his student, David. He pockets his wand as he gives some advice. “Did you want to be put in Ravenclaw?” he asks as David nods.    “My mom was in Hufflepuff house and my biological parents…well I don’t know.” as David ponders if they were also in Hufflepuff or in Slytherin! “I did not want to be in Slytherin as I don’t like their message and Gryffindor house seems nice as I have a friend there, but I don’t think I am Gryffindor material. I considered Hufflepuff to please my mom…but the Sorting Hat says I will do wonderful things in Ravenclaw…has the Sorting Hat ever been incorrect?”    “The Sorting Hat is rarely wrong!” Flitwick says as he comes with an answer. “Just seeing your talent with a year 7 spell and mastering a year 3 spell…not to mention the Freezing Spell and Water Spell you used against Miss Kalama...those are both 3rd and 4th year spells!” Flitwick smiles as the door opens and closes, “I think you just need to keep surprising us Mr. Adriatian and be open about being a wizard and not a Muggle!” as the rest of the students flood into the room…this class is packed as the room is much smaller than the wide Transfiguration room.    Rowan finds David and rushes over to him and takes a seat, “David!” she says as she wants to comfort him, remembering how the Prefect treated him. “Are you alright…I told the Prefect to back off!” David grimmest as he is worried that will only make it worse.    “He was right Rowan…I cost Ravenclaw 50 points because…”    “Because standing and doing nothing is far worse?” Rowan says as Lily comes over to David and takes a seat as Hugo sits next to her. Lily looks at David, trying to catch his attention.    “I heard what your Prefect did,” she begins as David looks at her. “I spoke to Mrs. Weasley about it and she said she’ll talk to McGonagall.” Lily feels proud of her actions as Professor Flitwick comes down to the floor.

   “Welcome everyone to your first charms course, you’ll all find that charms greatly differ from Transfiguring spells, and does anyone know why?” Flitwick asks as David quickly raises his hand. “Ah, Mr. Adriatian.”    “Charms add individual effects to an object or creature whereas transfiguration changes the object into something different.” David says as people look back to Professor Flitwick smiles and puts his hands up in a celebratory fist.    “Well said Mr. Adriatian!” he states as David is patted on the back by Rowan for good work. “So what do you call a charm that lasts for hours, days or weeks?” he asks as David isn’t certain, but Rowan is as she raises her hand. “Ah yes, Miss Bagnold!”    “It is called Bewitch!” Rowan says as David writes this down as he did not know that as Flitwick nods and smiles.    “Well done Miss Bagnold…10 points to Ravenclaw for coming prepared!” he says as a few Gryffindor’s and Slytherin’s don’t agree…Hufflepuff could care less as they are like David and feverishly writing notes. “Remember, this class will require you to come prepared and practice outside of the class…everything will determine on your technique…remember always, swish and flick! As you go through your schooling here at Hogwarts, your spells will grow with power and even aid you in daily tasks and defending yourself! Take the Fidelius charm for example, cast properly, you can completely hide a person or a place so no one can find them without the aid of the secret keeper. There are many spells you will learn in the 5 years here at Hogwart’s, and if you excel in your OWLS, you can practice on advance curses, jinxes and hexes.”    David sits there as the idea of learning curses, jinxes and hexes bothers him as he is afraid that he could use them…and before today, using a charm on another individual seemed like something he’d never do! David listens to Professor Flitwick talk about how to successfully cast a charm by concentration, precise wand movements and proper pronunciation of the incantation. “And what would happen if you say it incorrectly?” a Hufflepuff student asks as David looks to Professor Flitwick.    “If you fail to properly cast a spell, the spell can backfire on you.” Flitwick answers as Lily whispers a story to David about her uncle, Ron.    “One time my uncle tried to curse someone to eat slugs with a broken wand and he ended up puking slugs for over three hours!” Lily says as David cringes at the idea of throwing up slugs.    “Eww…why?” David asks as he wonders how many points her uncle lost for that.    “Defense of his friends!” she says as David glances at Lily and understands that he made the correct choice in the Fountain Courtyard.    “Your first charm you will learn is the Levitation Charm. It is the fundamental charm that all wizards and witches learn…to make objects fly and levitate! Now everyone, take out your wands…” as Flitwick and the rest of the class takes out their wands and look at him. “…and swish twice and flick with the words, wingardium leviosa!” he says as the students make an attempt with saying wingardium leviosa while swishing twice and flicking their wands. Flitwick passes out white egret feathers for them to practice. “Now concentrate on the feathers and cast your charm!” he says as he stands on the books as he looks at the class.    Rowan works swishing her wand and Hugo swishes his wand too and the wand flies out of his hand and nearly nails David in the head. He picks up Hugo’s wand and hands it back to Hugo. “I think you dropped this?” David says as Hugo blushes and takes back the wand.    “Sorry!” he says as he holds on tighter to his wand as he tries the charm one more time. “Wingardium leviosa!” as his wand control is a bit messy. Rowan and David take pity on him as Lily, help him on his form. With a few tries, his feather flutters and he smiles as David, Rowan and Lily return back to their own work. Rowan has beautiful form as she works on her concentration and the feather flutters and dances on the table.    For David, he has already did the levitation charm and he picks up his wand and says, “Wingardium leviosa!” as the feather lifts off the table and David uses his wand to put it up into the air. There he leaves the feather floating there as Flitwick looks at the feather floating in the air as he smiles and cheers.    “Well done! Look everyone, Mr. Adriatian has done it!” as Flitwick writes down ten points for Ravenclaw as Rowan and Lily looks at the feather floating there in the air and David loses concentration and the feather gently floats down to the table.    “How did you do it?” Rowan asks as she takes pride in her ability to conduct magic and being shown up by her friend makes her feel inadequate.    “I just concentrated on the feather and after saying the charm, imagined the feather was floating.” he says as Rowan tries this and soon her feather begins to lift slowly off the table and float before her eyes. “Help Hugo and I’ll help Lily…" David says as he turns to Lily as he tells her the same and after a few tries, she manages to get her feather to rise off the table.    With time, David opens his book to year one charms and sees that he will be required to know the following charms: Levitation Charm, Wand-Lighting Charm, Lumos Solem, Fire-Making Spell, Softening Charm, Severing Charm, Unlocking Charm, Locking Spell, Mending Charm, Dancing Feet Spell and the Knockback Jinx…    David flips to the next spell “Wand-Lighting Charm…” he reads as he wonders, “I wonder if this is the same as the lumos charm?” he reads a warning from author, Miranda Goshawk; ‘The Wand-Lighting Charm is simple, but requires concentration. Take care not to accidentally set your wand alight as damage of this kind can be permanent. If in any doubt about your abilities you would do better to buy yourself a magic lantern.’ He looks at his wand, he would be devastated to damage this precious piece of wood, it has been through a lot and he promised to take care of it. He thinks how many times he foolishly performed the charm without education and he could have set his wand and trailer on fire!    David continues to work on his charm casting as he seems to become fluid with the casting and it becomes easier to cast the charm. For about 30 minutes, the class seems to go by quickly as the bell rings to end the class as the first year students are to report to the grassy courtyard for flight as everyone files out as they have 30 minutes to prepare. Flitwick calls out. “Mr. Adriatian, please hold back for a moment.” he says as David looks at his friends and they go outside to wait for him. “I saw what you did Mr. Adriatian, with helping Miss Potter and Miss Bagnold…you have great leadership and skill in charms. For a moment, I thought you might be one of the great to come to Hogwarts…but now I am sure! Don’t overwhelm yourself with so many spells…pace yourself...enjoy the process. Magic isn't suppose to be work, it is suppose to be relaxing!”    “Thank you Professor Flitwick!” David says as he likes the feeling of being on task.    “If you ever need someone to talk to…you know where my office is!” Flitwick says as David nods and he smiles, “I better let you get going…Madam Hooch does not like tardy students!”    “Thank you sir!” David says as he turns and hurries to find Rowan, Lily and Hugo waiting for him as they hope that the conversation went well. “Ready to go?” David says as this next class has worried him since he learned he was signed up to do it.    “Ready!” Hugo says as Lily and Rowan smile and nods as they hurry down the center of the Fountain Courtyard to the gate and crosses under the inner wall between Dragon Science and Advance Arithmancy as they come into a shaded courtyard surrounded by high castle walls and towers. This is the first time David has visited this part of the castle and he looks around as the castle seems so massive in size! Passing through the outer castle gate, they enter the grassy field.    David, Hugo, Lily and Rowan have arrived early as the sun was warm and the air conformable as they sit down in the warm grass. Hugo laid down and closed his eyes as David and Rowan practiced on their charm as Lily watched. “Is it true,” begins Lily as she finally has time to talk with David without having to stay with her house “that you apparited before the train?”    “What does apparited mean?” David asks as he has heard this word, but still is unclear.    “It means to appear.” Rowan says as she uses her book to levitate. David nods as he still has a few bruises from that fall.    “Yeah, broke a few bones too!” he commented as Hugo remarks.    “That is so cool! You have to be the youngest to have ever apparited!” and Hugo was correct! The youngest to ever apparite was Mr. Harry Potter at the age of 13…David was 11.    “It hurt like hell!” David remarks as a woman with silver hair and jaundice eyes walks out onto the field in light black robes with a white trim. She wears brown gloves that look like she just got done horseback riding with a brook pendant necklace hanging on her chest.    “Hey you four, give me a hand?” Maddam Hooch says as she calls over to David, Hugo, Lily and Rowan to help her bring out the brooms. The two Gryffindor’s and two Ravenclaw’s come over to her side as she guides them to a wooden door “Alohomora” she says as the door unlocks and they look inside to see brooms and gear for Quidditich. “Grab three brooms and take them to the field.” she says as they all pick up 12 brooms together. “Thank you.” Madam Hooch says as she looks at them, “For your help, 5 points to Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.” as they lay out the brooms with six on one side and six on the other side.

[ao3feed-snape]

Složité soužití

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/3r3tgsb

by Kartist

VOLNÉ POKRAČOVÁNÍ POVÍDKY - STÍNY MINULOSTI

Harry, který byl schopen zachránit Severuse z Chroptící chýše a následně se s ním sblížit, když se ukrýval prakticky před celým světem v mudlovském světě, už žije s bývalým mistrem lektvarů ve společné domácnosti dva roky. A nyní má před sebou další perný úkol. Vyrovnat se s tím, že na něj nemá tolik času, jako dřív.

Words: 809, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Čeština

Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Harry Potter, Severus Snape

Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape

Additional Tags: Gay, Gay Sex, Cauldron, Herbology, Potions, potion, Christmas, Sex, Anal Sex, Magic, spells, Spells & Enchantments

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/3r3tgsb

[millenniumspirit-retired]

from the player’s handbook ;;

HOGWARTS

RYOU BAKURA IS A HUFFLEPUFF. But the Sorting Hat would have placed him in Ravenclaw. Ryou embodies much of what Ravenclaw herself once highlighted in her students, but he values the traits of Hufflepuff far more. Trust and loyalty and justice are very big for Ryou who always wants to see the best in people. Yes, he’s creative and inquisitive, but those are just things. They don’t define a person. The way they treat others is more important.

His patronus is a Jackal.

THE SPIRIT IS A SLYTHERIN. While he embraces a lot of the traits that make a Gryffindor, power and cunning are a stronger pull for the Spirit. ‘ Slytherin can help you on the way to greatness. ’ Done & Done. His loyalty is hard won, but quickly proven. He will fight tooth and nail for him and his and will go to impossible lengths to achieve his goals. While he’s known to show bravery and daring, he also knows when to have a backup plan and retreat to fight another day.

His patronus is a Cobra.

[whatxdoxthexcardsxsay]

Main: The main verse follows the story of The Arcana, in which Iris is a magician’s apprentice in Vesuvia, telling forturnes and selling charms, before the widowed Countess Nadia hires her to find the late Count Lucio’s murderer before the start of the Masquerade.

This will be the default fantasy verse used, unless another is specifically chosen.

[Tags included- v: main; sometimes this will be untagged.]

Modern: This is the default, modern-world verse that will be used with most modern-day muses and will be one of two main stories. One, Iris is a budding magician, searching for a way to regain her lost memories and to find her ‘master’ Asra, who has gone off on an unknown journey and has been missing for two years. Two, Iris is a performing artist with Rennassiance Faires around the world, selling fortunes during the day and selling protection charms during the day, and solving mysteries with ghosts and spirits at night.

[Tags included- v: a modern magician in a modern world; v: traveling mage; v: scarborough faire.]

Marvel: Set for any Marvel universe (including MCU), to be use with any Marvel muse. Iris is a mutant with the ability to astral project and dream walk. Because of this, Iris is often able to tell a person’s hopes, dreams, fears by going into their psyche. Additionally, she can tell if a person is possessed, controlled, or cursed. She comes from a long line of mages, dating back centuries, but due to a recent accident that almost cost Iris her life, most of her knowledge and memories of magic has been lost, and thus, her magic is a big chaotic. Her kind heart sometimes leads her open to be maniuplated, which can result in her unintentionally working for the bad guy. Her code name is Arcana.

[Tags included- v: marvelous arcana; v: arcana UPRIGHT; v: arcana REVERSED.]

DC: With possible ties to Merlin in her bloodline, Iris honed her magicals talents and skills under Madame Xanadu (aka the Arthurian sorceress, Nimune). She communicates with the Major Arcana through a tarot deck that has been passed down for generations. (She is the reincarnation of Ganieda, Merlin’s sister, but possesses none of her past life’s memories) Iris channels her powers through the cards, can astral project, dream walk, and create illusions.

[Tags included- v: student of xanadu.]

Once Upon a Time: In the Enchanted Forest, Iris is an apprentice to a powerful magician named Asra. Her master was hired by a king to find out why his daughters went through so many dancing shoes even though there were no balls and they were always limping and in pain in the morning. However, thanks to a pompus knight making a deal with Rumple, Iris was separated from Asra when he was trapped in a magical realm. She spent years studying magic, trying to find a way to bring him back. She caught the ire of the Evil Queen when she helped Snow White to escape her grasp a few times. In the cursed Storybrooke, her name was now “Daisy”, and she worked as an art teacher at Henry’s school. Once the curse is broken and Iris regained her memories, she immediately started her search for Asra again, her skills now stronger and hopefully just enough to find her beloved master again.

[Tags included- v: 12 little princesses dancing in a row; v: a story book with no magic; v: now the story has magic.]

Charmed: Iris is a modern-day witch, with the specialized powers of astral projection and electricity manipulation. Asra is her Whitelighter, with whom she had a brief affair. She works in a mystery bookstore, owned by Nadia and Lucio Vesuvia. [NOTE: Mun has only watched the original Charmed series!]

[Tags included- v: a charmed life.]

Supernatural: Iris is a Witch (Natural), who only practices her magic in order to help spirits move on into the afterlife and to assist hunters with protective charms and sigils. She tries not to advertise the fact she is a Witch, but she won’t sit by and let innocents get hurt.

[Tags included- v: saving people magic things the family business.]

Star Wars: Ris Gale is a Force-using “witch” from the planet Dathomir. How she left the home planet will be decided by the players. Ris is a bit more reserved than the typical Dathomirian witch, but she is still quick, agile, and talented with the force, using songs referred to as “spells” to channel the Force. 

[Tags included- v: witches of dathomir.]

Harry Potter: Iris Galen is an Irish witch attending Hogwarts, sorted into Hufflepuff. Her favorite class is Divination, with her weakest one being Potions. She has dear friends in all four houses and is known by her peers for just geninuely being such a nice person, which has gotten her some negative attention by bullies, but she doesn’t let them dissuade her. She longs to open her own tea shop after graduating.

[Tags included- v: a huffle’s life for me.]

Tea Shop: Your basic barista AU. Iris works as a barista at a tea and book shop called The Mystical Arcana, owned by Asra Alnazar. Her usual customers include an E.R. doctor named Julian, a fashionista influencer named Nadia with her assistant Portia, Nadia’s ex-husband and mayor’s son Lucio, and veternary assistant Muriel.

[Tags included- v: a tall latte with a double shot of magic]

College: Typical college AU. Whether or not magic is a thing in this world shall be determined by myself and my partner. Either way, Iris is a college student, living on her own at the dorm building, working at the library coffee shop part-time for some spending money. She is initially studying for a business degree, at the insistent requests of her aunt, who wishes her to take over the family bookstore, but she’d rather be writing mystery stories.

[Tags included- v: a mage has got to study.]

...and more to be added!

[thewiccanwitchling]

105 Witchy Questions Answered

Disclaimer: I haven’t been tagged. I found this list here, so, thank you @prettyalice13. Having this in mind, I won’t tag anyone neither. And I love doing this sort of thing, and reading too. Tag me, I would love to read this about you.

1. Are you solitary or in a coven? Solitary. 2. Do you consider yourself Wiccan, Pagan, witch, or other? At this very moment ‘wiccan witchling’. Chose to follow and learn both paths, but many others too (my answer didn’t help I know) like Paganism, Hellenism, Heathenry and so on. 3. What is your zodiac sign? I’m very proud to be a Sagittarius. 4. Do you have a Patron God/dess? No that I know. The idea warms my heart, but I have recent studying this subject and saw that isn’t that easy or simple. 5. Do you work with a Pantheon? So much yes. I don’t know if it will show another question like that, but my beliefs involves Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Hindu, Armenian, Celtic and oh my, many others. I grew polytheistic and is part of what I am. I grew loving the Gods and Goddesses. 6. Do you use tarot, palmistry, or 
any other kind of divination? Tarot, Runes, Shufflemancy. I want to learn and practice Pendulum and just learn some others like lychnomancy, scrying, etc. 7. What are some of your favorite herbs to use in your practice? (if any) I have a little and loved herbs shelf that I’m learning their properties, but I love to have in hand cinnamon. 8. How would you define your craft? As a “baby witch” or “witchling” I’m in a place where everything is beautiful to learn yet. I’m too curious and wiling to learn. I want to Heal and Protect, but it do not exclude my strong will to learn about Demonology or Death Witchcraft or even Spirit Work (or even Conjuring). 9. Do you curse? If not, do you accept others who do? Not yet. Or not thought that was necessary at this moment. Each witch or baby witch own his/her own path. If they thinks it’s necessary, so I think they have (or even ought) to. As I said in the previous question, every ramification of Witchcraft is beautiful and valid. And the one thing I will do is learn about other kinds of craft too.

10. How long have you been practicing? Less than a year. (Literally newborn) 11. Do you currently or have you ever had any familiars? I’m very unware of spirit work of any type. I have a kind of anxiety about this subject, so at this moment I say ‘no’ because of it.    12. Do you believe in Karma or
 Reincarnation? Both. Karma is very powerful. 13. Do you have a magical name? Actually, don’t know. I like to use “Sonata” in some situation, rather than my name, but I’m studying this better. 14. Are you “out of the broom closet”? Nope. I’m still a ‘secret witchling’.  15. What was the last spell you performed? Actually I do not remember. Just remember one I’m studying to write, it’s an anti-anxiety and protection from the Gods. 16. Would you consider yourself knowledgeable? Yes, but I want to be more. 17. Do you write your own spells? Yes. To be honest, few, once I’m in the learning process, so... 18. Do you have a book of shadows?
If so, how is it written and/or set up? I’ve started with a Grimoire that isn’t finished yet, but I started a BoS too and a “witchy journal” (a notebook that I’m not whereas neither BoS or Grimoire). I treat them like a planner. 19. Do you worship nature? Yes, how I can. I live in city and green areas here are VERY rare.   20. What is your favorite gemstone? This is a hard question. So many... Love when they are very shiny! 21. Do you use feathers, claws, fur, pelt, skeletons/bones, or any other animal body part for magical work? For now, feathers dropped from my Calopsita/Cockatiel. 22. Do you have an altar? Yes and no. My images and some witchy stuff are in a shelf in my room, discreet. 23. What is your preferred element? Fire to study and Water to relax. 24. Do you consider yourself an Alchemist? Oh! I would love consider myself with this title some day. I would be so proud of myself! One day... One day. 25. Are you any other type of magical practitioner besides a witch? ...Hm... No? 26. What got you interested in witchcraft? To find my place. To find mental and spiritual healing and balance. I’ve always loved the Gods and witchcraft but I never thought I could be able to be part of it, just because I’ve never considered myself capable for such wisdom. 27. Have you ever performed a spell or ritual with the company of anyone who was not a witch? No. The only thing I usually make is talk about it with a friend that isn’t a witch and with my mom. She isn’t a witch too, but I consider her one. 28. Have you ever used ouija? No and I do not know If I would some day. I personally want to have one, but use... As I said, at this moment, my fear and anxiety gives me a invisible wall to this subject. 29. Do you consider yourself a psychic? Yes, at least a little for some experiences. 30. Do you have a spirit guide? If so, what is it? As Patron Deities, I don’t know. 31. What is something you wish someone had told you when you first started? Actually, this is something that no one told me, but I knew already: This isn’t easy. And I would love to say this for someone who has a step back about Witchcraft: it’s not what you see in the movies or television is more personal and intense and... Beautiful. 32. Do you celebrate the Sabbats? If so which one is your favorite? Sort of... Sometimes I forget them. But I do love each one. 33. Would you ever teach witchcraft to your children? If someday I can call myself a Witch or Alchemist or Herbalist or Spirit Worker, I would love to teach my children or someone willing to learn. 34. Do you meditate? Rarely. But I consider a meditation when I sit to listen my fav music or showers. 35. What is your favorite season? My heart loves with Autumn and Winter. 36. What is your favorite type of magick to preform? Related to Healing; Protection; Luck; Prosperity.  37. How do you incorporate your spirituality into your daily life? These tips that we cross here too helps a lot to incorporate this, daily. Like some little incantation when I’m going to shower, or got a crystal with me when I’m going to pay videogames, sometime I enchant the controller to give that boost in my matches online of Call Of Duty or Battlefield.   38. What is your favorite witchy movie? The Covenant, Immortals, Wrath Of Titans 2. The first one is a group of witches that are the last descendents of Salem and they discover a fifth member that was supposed dead. In another moment I will do a witchy movies list as I did already with my musics. The second one is about the king Hyperion search and having in his power the Epirus’s Bow, which is capable of releasing the Titans to realm of Man. The catch? Zeus, Athena, Poseidon and Apollo came down to help the mankind. The last one is about Hades and Ares releasing Chronos. Zeus had all His power drained to His father awake. Why I consider the last two witchy? ‘Cause my love for the Theoi is so strong in my heart. That the most strong connection and offering from me to Them is watching those movies (and of course, considering good enough for Them). And personally WoT 2 and Immortals are a strong view of how I see Them. Physical and mainly: personality. (and I cry very much watching these two movies). The first one is one of my views of modern Witchcraft. (and the cast is so handsome) Wrath Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3LuuxhQV0A Immortals Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE3yR8bZ1pY The Covenant Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGv1T4CiwKg

39. What is your favorite witchy book, both fiction and non-fiction. Why? The Book Of Moon Magick by D.J. Conway it was my first witchy book ever, have it for years. Fictional, I can’t think of any right now (besides Harry Potter and I do not like it anymore, so I’m not counting it here). Because all my witchy-little-library that I have in my room are all non-fic. 40. What is the first spell you ever preformed? Successful or not. Charm Of Happiness. For me is very successful. 41. What’s the craziest witchcraft-related thing that’s happened to you? If you believe or not, was and is about my Tarot decks and readings. I was the kind of person of “tarot anxiety”, I had so much afraid to even think about it. Then I learned, practice and the results, still amazes me. Even when I do readings for clients, sometimes is so accurate that hurts. And some recurrent dreams I have about me as witch and with my Beloved Deities. 42. What is your favourite type of candle to use? White or blue. 43. What is your favorite witchy tool? My crystals, decks and runes. 44. Do you or have you ever made your own witchy tools? Not yet, but I have planned working on Witches Runes. 45. Have you ever worked with any magical creatures such as the fae or spirits? No. But In my house we already had some cute situations with Gnomes. 46. Do you practice color magic? Always. Color and numbers are daily basis. 47. Do you or have you ever had a witchy teacher or mentor of any kind? No. I learnt all of I know, by myself.

48. What is your preferred way of shopping for witchcraft supplies? Unfortunately, just online. In my ‘hood is very, VERY rare a witchy shop. And the religious stores that I have by, don’t of course, work with Wicca or my type of Witchcraft. So everything I have and search is gathering from some different places. 49. Do you believe in predestination or fate? I used to believe in those subjects more. Still do, but... Not with that strong feeling anymore. 50. What do you do to reconnect when you are feeling out of touch with your practice? Movies and Music gives me that witchy boost. 51. Have you ever had any supernatural experiences? Yes. I’m a little sensitive with dreams. Already dreamt of crashes that already happened, premonitions and empathy. 52. What is your biggest witchy pet peeve? I do not know. I... feel REALLY annoyed when someone come to me (in most of the cases non witch or hellenic related) to tell crap about Zeus, Odin, Loki, Ares or Hades. Once I got very irritated when the person talked crappy things about Athena. But “witchy pet peeve” I can’t tell anything that comes to mind yet. 53. Do you like incense? If so what’s your favorite scent? No, mostly because I can’t use. I have chronic allergies, and incenses and most of aromatic stuff triggers my allergies. 54. Do you keep a dream journal of any kind? No, because my stress and anxiety disturbs my sleep. And can occur that when I wake in the morning, those problems can happen and destroys my days. 55. What has been your biggest witchcraft disaster? None, yet. 56. What has been your biggest witchcraft success? Being part of aaaall of this. I tell this with my heart. 57. What in your practice do you do that you may feel silly or embarrassed about? Verbal conversations! 58. Do you believe that you can be an atheist, Christian, Muslim or some other faith and still be a witch too? Actually, yes. I grew up in a catholic school, but in my religion classes, I’ve always studied about many other faiths and religions. So, for my, this World has place for many Faiths, Religions and Beliefs. In other words: This planet has place for everybody. 59. Do you ever feel insecure, unsure or even scared of spell work? Yes. So much yes. 60. Do you ever hold yourself to a standard in your witchcraft that you feel you may never obtain? Frustration in it. Like... always stuck in the basics, or not feel that feeling of capable of pro witch. It’s silly what I’m writing, but it’s what I feel. 61. What is something witch related that you want right now? I miss my grimoire at the moment. My will is to write in it for hours. 62. What is your rune of choice? I really can’t pick one. For me, one complements the others. 63. What is your tarot card of choice? The Hermit! Sometimes The Fool. 64. Do you use essential oils? If so what is your favorite? The same situation about the Incense question. 65. Have you ever taken any kind of witchcraft or pagan courses? Not yet. 66. Do you wear pagan jewelry in public? Yes. People just look, some get curious in their eyes. Some tell nothing, like the day I went to a book store and the seller was wearing a Yggdrasil choker. 67. Have you ever been discriminated against because of your faith or being a witch? As a secret one, directly no. But I’ve always loved this path and my best friend once told something about Wicca that disappointed me. Edit: just remembered something that hurted me awhile ago, I did even deleted the post, I’m not here to argue. I posted about a dream that I had both with Loki and Hermes, and I had a response from a tumblr user. I did not lost my time to it, ‘cause were a White Supremacy/homophobic piece of sh*t replaying as a absurd the fact that I “mixed” Hellenic with Norse. He even said that I wouldn’t be serious with my dreams/words. 68. Do you read or subscribe to any pagan magazines? Not yet too. 69. Do you think it’s important to know the history of paganism and witchcraft? Surely. It automatic envolves history. The same when you choose polytheism. 70. What are your favorite things about being a witch? Sorry, but everything. The Craft is a beautiful path. I love to see others conjuring, others with spirit work, others practicing Demon/Goetia/Death work, Deity Work, Green, Shadow, Black, Witch, Pink, Grey, Voodoo, Hoodoo, Ecletic and which tag or how you call yourself in Witchcraft. I admire you and I want to learn from you, and for me what you do is beautiful. 71. What are your least favorite things about being a witch? The hate. The prejudice. The phobia. It breaks my heart with such disrespect. With the spreading hate. It’s 20-fucking-17 and looks like the hate spreads more and more in the World. 72. Do you listen to any pagan music? If so who is your favorite singer/band? Actually no. Certainly I heard some pagan singers and groups but not to being fav (If you consider Kerli as one... Some of her music are actually very proper to witchcraft and she is a “white witch”) 73. Do you celebrate the Esbbats? If so, how? Same of the Sabbats question... Forgetful witchling. 74. Do you ever work skyclad? No. 75. Do you think witchcraft has improved your life? If so, how? Mentally, spiritual and to improve my knowledge. My Witchcraft if for me, ‘cause I found my place, you know? I can search, talk, worship without judgment. without someone telling and hurting my feelings using the words: “the old gods are dead”. No, They are in my heart. Always were and always will be, with or without being my patrons, or phone or spouse. It’s the more intense feelings I have and is where my heart warms and beats fast. 76. Where do you draw inspiration from for your practice? Could be silly, but from my love to it. The inspiration comes from my emotions and heart, to real. 77. Do you believe in ‘fantasy’ creatures? (Unicorns, fairies, elves, gnomes, ghosts, etc) Sure. Strong yes here too. 78. What’s your favorite sigil/symbol? Pentagram, Vegvisir and  Ægishjalmr. 79. Do you use blood magick in your practice? Why or why not? No, I do not use fluids in my practices. At this moment, I prefer not too. Maybe ‘cause I think that kind of ingredients are very powerful. Even hair or names I do not use yet. 80. Could you ever be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t support your practice? No. I’m single and I prefer that way, for many years now. In friendship I hadn’t that problem yet. At least with someone who knew. 81. In what area or subject would you most like your craft to grow? Alchemy, Herbalism and Study of Deities, I really would love to be better in these three subjects. 82. What’s your favorite candle scent? Do you use it in your practice? The same about allergies here. But, even with, I do use scented candles. Most of times I lit to make a test with its scent. If my nose aproves, so ok. My nose and me likes chamomile, pomegranate, passion fruit, cinnamon and clove.  83. Do you have a pre-ritual ritual? (I.e. Something you do before rituals to prepare yourself for them). If so what is it? Sort of yes and no. I do love to use proper music when I’m doing Witchcraft-related things. (like now, answering these questions).   84. What real life witch most inspires your practice? Now, I can’t remember any names, seriously. 85. What is your favorite method of communicating with deity? No spirit/deity work yet. 86. How do you like to organize all your witchy items and ingredients? As a secret, I do have my shelf that I mentioned earlier, with images of saints and deities plus herbs. Besides that I have three medium to little boxes with my witchy tools and stuff. Everytime I use anything, I clean or dispose and keep back to its boxes. 87. Do you have any witches in your family that you know of? “Hereditary” No. But as I said earlier too, I consider my mom, one.  88. How have you created your path? What is unique about it? I started my path with love. I fell in love with Witchcraft since I was a child, but I used to read about, movies, music, nothing besides and never had any crystal or incorporated anything. Fun fact: When I was young, I bought a pointed crystal. Years later I passed it on, I didn’t liked it anymore. A month or less, I made a haul from a witchy store and they gave me as a gift a pendulum. The same crystal, type, everything that I had in that time. Today I know one thing: that crystal I had was a pendulum and looks like the universe got it back to me. 89. Do you feel you have any natural gifts or affinities (premonitions, hearing spirits, etc.) that led you toward the craft? If so what are they? Yes. I consider myself and already had some situations that prove me that I’m not alone, that supernatural exists and all this kind of “things”. Intuitions, emotions and some premonitions from my dreams. Sometimes I can know what people can tell me before I talk to them, I already dreamt about disasters that happened, and one of the most powerful situations was the healing of a family’s friend. He was in a wheelchair, we didn’t know it, and weeks passed and we didn’t saw him anymore. One night I dreamt that him was visiting us like he used to, walking, healed. The day after that dream, he knocked in our home, as I mentioned, healed. -One morning, I was in my bed, watching TV. I wasn’t making any movement. Suddenly, I feel like someone was sitting by my side, then it left. -In other situation, me and my mom went to get a pizza that we have ordered and when we got out of the condo hall, both of us saw a man (or sort of) in black standing outside. Was so strong the felling that me and my mom we moved like... We gave excuse to him to pass, like if he was entering the hall and we going out. -In other news, I passed in front of the Church Of Saint Jude here in São Paulo, and I saw something white, medium size and four-legged descend the stairs of its Chapel. “fun fact”: there was nobody using those stairs, and in that moment was so... clear, that I stood in shock for some minutes. 90. Do you believe you can initiate yourself or do you have to be initiated by another witch or coven? Being a witchling in a place there is no other witches or coven or anything in the middle, I have two options: not initiate myself, or initiate myself when I learn and feel prepared. 91. When you first started out in your path what was the first thing or things you bought? Clear crystal + amethyst and another pentagram necklace (since I was little I already had a silver pentacle that my mother gave me).

92. What is the most spiritual or magickal place you’ve been? When I went to Cancun, Mexico, many years ago and met Guadualupe personally. Her statue was there that time, so splendorous. Since that time, She is one of the Beloveds that are in my heart.

93. What’s one piece of advice you’d give someone who is searching for their matron and patron deities? Study. Learn. Patron deities is stil spirit work and you can’t play with it, you have to know what you are doing. It’s a serious subject even if you feel (like me) disappointed to know that in the moment you do not have one. And learning, you’ll understand how it works. The same advice goes to godspouse and godphone. 94. What techniques do you use to 'get in the zone’ for meditation? Music (mostly instrumental), No Talking ASMR and ambient sounds.   95. Did visualization come easily to you or did you have to practice at it? I have to practice it. For some reasons I get distracted easily, even with bad thoughts. 96. Do you prefer day or night? Why? Day. Is when I have more energy, boost and spoons. 97. What do you think is the best time and place to do spell work? Whenever you feel confortable and necessary. 98. How did you feel when you cast your first circle? Did you stumble or did it go smoothly? I didn’t yet. I’m having a hard time to do visualization. 99. Do you believe witchcraft gets easier with time and practice? Yes and no. With time, you become more aware of what you’re doing. But the same time, you will have to know what you are doing. Witchcraft is study, learning, wisdom and knowledge. 100. Do you believe in many gods or one God with many faces? Both visions. Seriously.   101. Do you eat meat, eggs and dairy? Yes and I’m addicted to eggs. 102. What is your favorite color and why? At the moment is Purple and mainly Maroon/Burgundy/Dark Red. Purple is a set of coincidences, my vision is highlighting so much this color in the past months now. And the other option always was my fav color, it’s a color that I feel, simple as that. 103. What is the one question you get asked most by non-practitioners or non-pagans? How do you usually respond? I didn’t had this experience yet. with the few people I talk about, just listen to me. 104. Which of your five senses would you say is your strongest? I think it’s Vision. But I do not know how to explain it, really.   105. What is a pagan or witchcraft rule that you preach but don’t practice? Some situations, like all time concentration for divination or cleansing. Having the will, I do the way it is, regarding the situation. Took me two days to answer this and I fricking loved it. Hope I could show you a little of what I am. I just a baby witch, but I’m eager to learn and to help with what I know. Congrats and thank you if you made until here.

[that-marshmallow-boy]

Hi~ can i pls get RFA reacting to finding out mc is a witch? like, real world witch, not fantasy witch. thx!

Listen. Nonny. Friend. Pal. You came to the right place. Also as a bonus, what kind of witchcraft each member might lean towards! Also also as a bonus, V and Saeran because…reasons.

This request brought me back from like a 2-3 month hiatus, thank you! (More to come!) @specialagent–danascully - tagging by request and also because this is right up her alley! :)

Requests are open.~

✦ZEN:

really doesn’t know much about witchcraft

but when you tell him you are a witch he becomes really curious

like…thinks it’s so cool tbh?

wants to tell everyone if you’re out of the broom closet anyway

loves glamours and beauty spells

“Not that I need them, of course.”

(he asks for them anyway)

lets you make all of his soaps/masks/beauty products bc you enchant them for him

but always w/ intent like emotional calm or happiness bc that boy doesn’t need any help to be prettier but he could stand to chill from time to time

asks for a glamour spell to keep him hidden every time y’all go out together so he doesn’t get noticed by fans

gets really excited whenever you do a spell

(always willing to help with them)

seriously this boy is your #1 fan

✦Yoosung:

SO. MANY. QUESTIONS.

he wants to know everything like…everything

there’s a lot of explaining how it’s different from TV or movie witchcraft

there was a long discussion about Harry Potter and the differences between the two

“It’s a lot more…subtle than that.”

he loves it though

always wants to watch

he ends up really loving crystal and candle magic

the house always smells good! you always smell good!

plus, crystals are pretty! and used as magic items in LOLOL

he also loves kitchen magic, but!! is too afraid to ever try it tbh

his cooking tends to be…touch and go he’s afraid he’ll cause a magical disaster

✦Jaehee:

a little stunned

like until you told her, she had no idea it was a real thing that people could just…be

she’d heard of it ofc, but only in terms of the past, or books, or musicals

research mode: ACTIVATE

soon she knows more about witchcraft than you do

discovers kitchen magic very quickly and suddenly realizes why you would suggest certain ingredients oooohh

asks if you would mind to enchant the ingredients whenever they’re delivered

you already do and she’s delighted

makes pastries and desserts for all the holidays, even if you don’t celebrate them

your bakery gets a very dedicated following of local witches

and becomes a very popular after-work stress relief stop (nobody understands how your desserts seem to make everything better)

✦Jumin:

totally clueless about witchcraft but accepts what you tell him immediately, without question

buys some books, quietly researches without saying much

tbh for a while, you think he’s actually distancing himself from you bc of discovering you are a witch

but it turns out he was just so clueless about it all that he didn’t even know what to ask - so he had to study first

becomes a super diligent supporter

buys you a ton of supplies, meticulously researching each purchase

“This wand is selenite, so it doesn’t need to be cleansed. Also, it’s got black kyanite and smokey quartz for–”

“Er, it’s gorgeous, Jumin, but you know I was fine with–”

“MC, that other one is literally a twig. It still has dirt on it.” he didn’t throw it away, he’s got some common sense after all

secretly memorizes tea/herb correspondences and brings you different teas depending on how your day went

he thinks he’s being sneaky but you notice and love him even more for it

lots of magic theory discussions with him

or random semi-related things:

“MC, can only witches have familiars?”

“…I don’t know, but don’t worry - you definitely have the same kind of relationship with Elizabeth the 3rd as a witch and their familiar, even if it’s not called the same thing.”

✦Saeyoung:

you manage to surprise him, which is really hard to do

“Okay but how did I not know?”

“There are still secrets to discover about me after all!” okay he loved that a little too much tbh

p much unfazed though

“Well, if you don’t have one already, we should get you set up with an online grimoire. So much easier!”

spends free time doing extra research so he can understand this side of you more

loves cosmic witchcraft! researches the shit out of it

after all, he’s always felt a connection to the stars

witch memes, witch puns, ~witchy humor in general~

“You’ve got me…under your spell” *eyebrow waggle* said at least once a day

hacks your phone to send you crazy emoji spells that he made up

“Saeyoung…they’re emoji spells. You can send them in a text instead of hacking to…”

“Aw, but hacking is how I charge them!” gotta love this boy 

he only slows down when weird things keep happening because of his spells

tbh he starts making everything about magic and you love it

“Saeyoung…what are you doing?”

“I’m cleansing!”

“…you are literally covered in empty chip bags. Eating chips.”

“SALT.”

like he makes jokes all the time but he’s 100% supportive

also always makes sure your wards are in place and working no way is he gonna let your home go without magical protection once he learns this is a thing

✦V:

he’s surprised but doesn’t really show it

asks a lot of questions, very intrigued!

you start to talk to him about spirits and astral travel

and he particularly enjoys that!

you introduce him to some spirits

turns out his energy just attracts genuinely kind and gentle spirits

he can sense them but not much else - he does feel very happy and at peace though

you two bond over energy work!

he’s really good at it, his loss of eyesight makes him extra sensitive to the energies of objects and people alike

he ends up getting you a little black kitten cliche, i know, fite me

he loves when he comes home to you doing a spell bc it almost always smells wonderful we don’t have to talk about what it smells like when you’re using valerian root okay

✦Saeran:

totally unsurprised, tbh

the things he’s seen - why would that, of all things, seem strange?

curious, but doesn’t really ask questions

just kinda…quietly observes

once you notice, you start to talk about it without him asking

you can tell he’s really happy

total fan of chaos magic you drew a sigil on him once and he was hooked

he is the best at creating sigils, they look amazing and always work

you tell him it’s because he has an amazing will, to go through what he did and make a full recovery - he believes you sometimes

he’s all about the witch aesthetic though he won’t admit it

turns your grimoire into a work of art with his illustrations

ends up lowkey becoming a witch himself, grabbing bits and pieces of different magic to suit his own craft

(his grimoire is a masterpiece)

(y’all are the first in a long line of witches in your family, tbh)

[uvicgirl]

Fuck Fantastic Beasts

Ok so shower thoughts... or ranting at my shampoo bottle thoughts...

So you know that scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Griphook takes the sword of Gryffindor from Harry and leaves Harry, Ron, and Hermione to be killed by the dragon or captured by Gringotts guards? And there’s this whole backstory/cultural history here where Griphook believes that he (or goblins in general) deserve to own the sword because it was made by goblins despite the fact that it belonged to Griffyndor and is now enchanted to present itself to any worthy Griffyndor...

Tea Time! - JK Rowling is Griphook (and let’s throw warner brothers in here with Rowling as well). JK Rowling believes that since she created Harry Potter, she, and she alone, deserves to call all the shots. And we, the fans who grew up on the books and movies, are the golden trio being utterly fucked over in a dungeon with a fire breathing dragon (maybe warner brothers is the dragon).

Because here’s the thing, I can see where JK Rowling is coming from. This is her baby. She’s being protective. But no! That’s not good enough when there is a fucking amazing prequel already perfectly set up but Rowling / warner brothers is refusing to make it - they’re snatching the sword from our hands - and insists instead on shoving Newt fucking Skamander down our throats.

Fantastic Beast and Where to Find Them was a fucking text book! not a novel!

I don’t want a goddamn niffler! I want to see the muggle boys torturing Ariana and their father being carted off to Azkaban for retaliating. I want to see Albus succeeding at Hogwarts, planning his trip around the world with his best friend, sitting his final exams and celebrating their completion before receiving the devastating news that his mother is dead and he’s now trapped in Goddric’s hollow taking care of his siblings. I want to see to this all weigh on him in the stifling heat of the summer. I want to see that tension grow with the boy next door who recognizes the sense of injustice and resentment bubbling in Albus. I want to see Gellert manipulate and radicalize Albus and I want it be homoerotic goddamit! because I’m not here for this no-homo, queer baiting bullshit Rowling and warner brothers are pulling. I want to see Albus to fall for Gellert and I want to see it all blow up at the end of the summer when Ariana is killed.

And god fucking damn I want to see this all integrated into WWII. I want to see Dumbledore finally making the choice years down the road to move on Grindelwald. D-Day has been a success, the Allied troop have finally made in back onto the continent. They’re in the end game. They just have to keep pushing. There are finally murmurs of hope in Britain. And Dumbledore can’t sit back anymore knowing that the muggles have been fighting for their freedom for five years and are so close to defeating the Nazi’s and it will all to be for naught if Grindelwald succeeds.

Like this shit is brilliant! It’s all right there!

And you know what could make it even more interesting! If they found a way to weave in Voldemort’s back story - The stuff about his mom slipping Tom Riddle a love potion and Voldemort essentially being conceived via rape and how he therefore turns out sadistic and void of any humanity or love... I mean come on! That’s gold! And if they could somehow compare & contrast the two ‘taboo’ forms of romantic relationships here (gay v. rape-y) it could be brilliant. I’ll admit that this would be tricky to pull off in a way that condemns the non-consensual ‘relationship’ and removes the taboo from being gay... this would need thought and care (laughs - i say that as if Rowling & warner brothers is capable of thought and care lol) but it could be done and it could be brilliant! and guess what - you may be thinking that rape-y stuff seems a bit mature for a younger audience. But the people who grew up on harry potter aren’t kids anymore. We’re adults! We’re still the audience. Harry Potter will never hit a new generation the way it hit ours (so stop trying to abandon us in a dungeon with a fucking dragon while you hop skip and jump with your shiny, new bullshit over to a new batch of kids!!!).

But we’re never going to get this despite the fact that it’s already laid out for them on silver platter, you know why? Because goblins are greedy motherfuckers who only care about money - chinese and middle america box office money to be precise and you know what china and middle america hates? gay people! So we can’t risk pissing off china and middle america and miss out on their shiny shiny coin. We need to pander to their ‘traditional values’. So fuck all sense of integrity and good story telling, they can burn in dragon fire in the dungeon with the original fans who made the harry potter phenomenon a fucking historical event and instead of telling the real fucking love story here...

(and yes it’s tragic and possibly entirely one-sided and yes people are running away from tragic gay romances these days because it’s become an off-putting/offensive trope but i stand by the fact that if the story is told well, it still has merit Getting to see a fucking gay badass hero - the goddamn protagonist in a big franchise blockbuster - in action, i think that has merit.)

... we’re getting fucking newt & tina, newt and lida (don’t know how to spell that, don’t care), newt’s brother (can’t remember his fucking name - who goddamn cares) & lida, queenie & jacob, credence & nagini, newt & his assistant (don’t fucking remember her name either). There are so many fucking straight people here it’s insulting! And like full disclosure, I’m straight and there are straight romances in flims/tv/books that I love but these? These are trash!

So fuck Griphook, fuck Rowling, fuck warner brothers. The story doesn’t belong to you! It belongs to us, the worthy Griffyndors!, the fanfic writers who will give us the real prequel. I refuse to give Rowling any money for the bullshit she’s hawking.

[eelcojamesdiopedals]

Silencio

The info:

Built: October 2019 Type: Volume control / Master control Size: 1590A enclosure The story:

I love playing guitar at home. Often i’ll grab the acoustic, but -especially when trying new pedals- from time to time I want to play the electric. I have a small Orange Micro Terror with that cute 1 x 8″ speakercab. It’s great, it’s loud and ideal for testing things quickly. But! One of my first ever amps was a Fender Deluxe 112 Plus. I have a love / hate relation with it. Right now I’m in the loving phase, especially it’s clean tones are great. The downside? If i put the volume at 0,5 it blows the windows out of my shed. 

So. I figured i should be able to create something to replace the volume pedal i stuck in the power amp in/out. Some googling, and there you have it; a simple box with an input and output and a lineair potmeter. Sort of a final master volume that goes at the end of the chain.

It works great, i can put the amp at 3 or 4 now (at least higher than 2 when it starts to really sound nice), dial in the Silencio - and there we have it: an acceptable volume with a tone that doesn’t suck (except when playing the home built Flying V, but that’s a different story).

Oh, I dyed it gold because I thought that’d fit it nice. I was still struggling with a catchy name for it and a cool image, when my girlfriend suggested to do something with the gold, as in a gold brick. She immediately linked it to Harry Potter - and his gold is at Gringotts bank, where it’s protected with an protective enchantment. The spell to silence something is silencio - so there you have it; the history of the name.

The photos:

Put some primer on the enclosure, grabbed two mono jacks and a 100k pot. Tried the lineair and log ones, and went with the A100K Log.

Drilled the holes for the jacks and the potentiometer.

Took a little piece of stripboard and attached it to the potentiometer. Not really necesarry, but this particular meter pushes into veroboard really well and when soldered won’t get loose for years I reckon.

Dyed the enclosure gold (spray paint) and put in the parts to test it.

It worked! Took it all out, added the decal and after drying put the insides back. Gave it a clear coat, assembled it again, tested it and it works!

In action!  The “Protective Enchantment Level” goes from 0% to 100% and sets how much volume comes through.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

The Demon's Blah Blah Blah

by Wardog

Wednesday, 01 September 2010

Viorica was right, and Wardog was wrong. Wardog tears into The Demon's Covenant.~

The Demon’s Covenant is the sequel to The Demon’s Lexicon, which I reviewed

here

, and very much enjoyed. I sometimes suspect that being liked is a mixed blessing at Ferretbrain as all it does is prepare for the way for a crushing disappointment, and I was, indeed, disappointed by The Demon’s Covenant. I’m vaguely suspicious that I might have read a different book to the rest of the internet, because every single other review I’ve seen has been full of love and squee, and I won’t deny that The Demon’s Covenant is full of Brennan’s usual charm, but it’s also extremely self-indulgent and does very little beyond set up the third book.

It reminded me most strongly of Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire – not because there’s any real similarity between the texts themselves but because, at the point book IV came out, I was still a stalwart Harry Potter fan and, although I was surprised at the sudden jump in length compared to the third book, I decided to forgive the book its obvious flaws because I was so into the Harry Potter world. Of course by the time the fifth book came out it was clear that no amount of engagement in the text could save the series from what it had become: an undisciplined, unedited mess. The Demon’s Covenant is NOT Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire but compared to the tight plotting and exciting twists of the first book it might as well be.

In essence, nothing happens in The Demon’s Covenant until the final thirty pages. The story opens some time after the end of The Demon’s Lexicon, with Mae trying to get her normal life back, when she discovers Jamie is in contact with the Magicians. Needless to say she calls in Nick and Alan and that’s basically it until the very end of the novel when there’s a big fight between The Goblin Market and the Magicians’ Circles. Yes there’s some politicking, with Jamie being passed about like the magical McGuffin he so clearly is, and Alan does another one of his trademark manipulative switcheroos, but largely there is a lot of “stuff” in the story but not much to make it a coherent narrative.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is the natural move from novelty to familiarity that affects every sequel. There is no sense of discovery here, only further information about the people and places and concepts that were introduced to us in The Demon’s Lexicon, information which largely serves to render these things less interesting, rather than the reverse. Also the “Is Alan going to betray Nick” dance is performed a second time, although less effectively because the answer is self-evidently either “NO NEVER!” or “Probably not in the second book”. And I do recognise it’s meant to be about character not action but as much I like the characters I still felt the amount of time given over to their delineation was excessive, and the degree of detail borderline obsessive.

For example, part of the book consists of extracts from Alan’s father’s journal, charting his son’s attachment to the young demon and his own developing relationship with Nick. It a chilling, and heartbreaking account (“when I drew the blanket back, Alan was sleeping with one arm curled around the monster. In his other hand was an enchanted knife”) and yet also completely unnecessary. It doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know, and it has to be bunged awkwardly into the narrative by having Mae read it aloud to Nick, who cannot read well when he’s emotionally distressed. Since the story is entirely told from Mae’s point of view, she spends a lot of time acting like Harry Potter with his invisibility cloak so she can be in on the right scenes for the sake of the reader. Furthermore, Alan’s father writes like a teenage girl with an LJ and literary pretentions, rather than a grief-stricken ordinary man, beset on all sides by enemies:

My blood ran heavy and cold through my veins, as if terror could turn me to stone, and I tried not to think of what bloody game or dark purpose the demon might intend for my son. That night I went upstairs with an enchanted knife in my hand and stood over the cradle. Drowning hadn’t worked, but this knife had the strongest spells the Goblin Market knew laid on it. The nightlight was on, casting a pattern of cheerful rabbits on the opposite wall. It [that’s the demon not the nightlight] lay sleeping in a pool light, but even sleeping it doesn’t look like a child. Not quite. I stood there sweating, the hilt of the knife turning slick my grasp. Then from the door, I heard Alan say, “Dad?” I turned and saw him looking at me, and the knife, and the demon. My little boy’s face went so pale it seemed translucent. He looked like the tired old ghost of a child long dead.

I know the effectiveness of first person narration depends largely on reader being willing to suspend disbelief, but there was something so self-consciously dramatised about Alan’s father’s journal that it consistently detached me from the story it was telling. I also suspect there’s a difference in a narrative being in the first person from the outset – you know it is not literally a journal any more than an epistolary novel is literally an exchange of letters – and a first person narrative being included in the body of the text as a found item, in which case basic plausibility demands that it sounds at least a little bit like what it’s supposed to be. And I’m honestly not sure what the journal of guy protecting a crazy magician ex-girlfriend and her demon spawn at the cost of his own son’s life and future happiness would sound like (Number of times tried to kill demon today: 7 –v. bad) but as much as I like the line “He looked like the tired old ghost of a child long dead” it just struck me as far too constructed to support the ‘reality’ of the journal as a journal.

Although I’m away I’m whinging here, and I have to say, I didn’t like The Demon’s Covenant, Brennan is a talented writer. She has a lot of wit and style, and I genuinely enjoy the experience of reading her, even if, in this instance, I didn’t actually like the book. Although I’d kind of reached information-overload on the emotional and psychological intricacies of the characters by the midpoint, I do have a degree of fondness for Nick, who is just as hot, ruthless, confused and genuinely entertaining as ever:

She glared at the back of Nick’s head and said, furious and irrational, “You could have danced with him at the club.” “I could have,” Nick said. “There were kids from school there. He gets hassled enough. Anyway, I don’t really dance for pleasure much.” “Uh – so you, uh, dance professionally, or what?” Seb asked. “Yeah,” said Nick. “The ballet is my passion.”

And I think I like Mae. She is strong, and compassionate and smart, and pretty much everything one would want in a female heroine, while still being flawed and human and making mistakes. The tone of the book is much more emotional than The Demon’s Lexicon, as one would expect now the point of view is not rooted in Nick, and perhaps Mae’s natural insight and interest in the people around her is partially responsible for the amount of time spent dwelling on the minutiae of character. But there was also a part of me that couldn’t shake the conviction that big advantage of Mae’s point of view for the author is that it liberates her to spend a lot of time describing hot dudes being manly and self-sacrificing at each other.

“Oh Nick,” he said in a soft, amazing voice. “No.” He limped the few steps towards his brother, then reached out. A shiver ran all the way through Nick, as if he was a spooked animal about to bolt, but he didn’t bolt. Alan’s hand settled on the back of his brother’s neck, and Nick bowed his head a little more and let him do it.

Just shag already!

Although I got through The Demon’s Covenant with my appreciation for Nick and Mae relatively unscathed, the same could not be said for Jamie and Alan. Jamie, at least, has stopped wearing purple and being fabulous, but the quirky charm I found reasonably endearing last book has paled through overuse to the point at which I find him genuinely grating. Again, this is probably completely unfair of me but from the fragments of Brennan’s LJ I have read here and there, his style and general approach to life is so reminiscent of hers that he’s evolving into some kind of gay Mary Sue:

“I can cook better than you,” Nick corrected absently. “I think monkeys can probably be taught to cook better than you.” “I’d like to have a monkey that cooked for me,” said Jamie. “I would pay him in bananas. His name would be Alphonse.”

Also I find his vulnerability when combined with his homosexuality bothersome. I know he’s a powerful magician, but he’s also sweet and forgiving to the extreme, subject to crazy crushes on unsuitable people (I mean he does kick off the books by canoodling with an incubus which naturally gives him a demon mark) and squeamish about violence. Couple this with a tendency to make a fool of himself in public and an inability to hold his drink and you’ve got a character so mind bogglingly pathetic I would be up in arms if she was a girl. Perhaps it is a symptom of my own internalised prejudice that I see these qualities as feminising but it’s less about Jamie being girly than the fact he is very much ‘other’ to the rest of the men in the text. I suppose I should probably just be relieved he’s not Magnus Bane but the implicit association of homosexuality with a ‘different’ set of virtues to those of straight men was not exactly comfortable for me.

And then there’s Alan. Oh dear. He was my favourite character in the first book, because he was unexpected, a supposedly “nice” guy, as cold and ruthless, in his way, as the demon he guards. However, in The Demon’s Covenant, his presentation seems to have moved into a space that is less interestingly ambiguous than completely unfocused. I skimmed a few reviews out there on the Internet at large and the general feeling is largely Squee!Alan. His fucked up, loveless life and his unrequited love for Mae seems to be winning him the pity vote. However, I found him icky, icky, icky and although that’s not a problem per se I couldn’t work to what extent I was meant to find him icky, icky, icky. The love triangle between Mae, Alan and Nick established in the first book is continued, or rather repeated, with little development. Alan is still in lurve with Mae, Mae still fancies the pants off Nick, Nick seems to feel some sort of reciprocal desire for Mae but obviously is supposedly incapable of love … and therefore thinks she should be with Alan, partially because he knows he can’t do the human emotions thing but also because he’d do anything, give up anything, for Alan, and if Alan wants Mae than Nick will probably do whatever it takes to ensure he gets her.

I don’t know if we’re meant to find this creepy and objectifying but it fucking well is, not least because it isn’t presented as a demon treating a human being as a trinket, but because everyone else in the book – including Mae – believe she’d be better off with Alan. And it’s annoying that Mae, who is a smart girl most of the time and managed to navigate the love triangle with some dignity intact last book, ends up in precisely the same mess this book – grinding with Nick while he’s pissed off with Alan until the point Alan interrupts them and Looks Sad. Get a new hobby, Alan, for God’s sake.

Mae also semi-encourages Alan’s attentions, even though she knows she doesn’t feel much of a spark, basically because she pities him. I know I am not the target market for The Demon’s Covenant but regardless of age and experience: pity is not the foundation of a healthy relationship. Just (wo)man up and tell him you don’t fancy him. Of course, midway through the pity fest, Alan lets rip with this little speech:

"After my dad died, I looked everywhere for someone to love me. I used to sit on the bus and watch people, see if they looked kind, try to make them smile at me. I had a hundred dreams about a hundred different people, loving me." Alan's voice was low, but he didn't falter. He reached out and touched her hair, very gently, pushing it behind her ear, "Of all the girls I ever saw," he said, "I dreamed of you the most.

Again, I know I’m not the target market here, so perhaps I’m more inclined to find things creepy that a teenage audience might find gloriously tragic and romantic but, seriously, if a man ever said that to me I’d run away screaming. Yes, right then, right there, because he clearly has a raging case of

Nice Guy Syndrome

. And guys who guild trip you into going out with them are so dreamy. Not. I’d take the demon anyday, he’s significantly less emotionally maladjusted.

And, this, I suppose was largely my problem with The Demon’s Covenant. I read lots of books for which I am not the market audience – I even enjoyed Twilight until I realised it had no sense of self-irony at all – but the more I read of The Demon’s Covenant, the more I felt the gap. I honestly just don’t get it, and I wonder if there’s just a fundamental disconnect between myself, the author and the world as envisioned by the author. One of the big themes of both books has been self-sacrifice – the brothers, and to a lesser extent Jamie and Mae, are always tumbling over each other to get themselves roundly shafted in the name of protecting the other person. I’m not saying that self-sacrifice is not a powerful device and all that, but it tends to work as a climax, or at the very least as a one-off. When people are constantly sacrificing themselves for each other, it soon loses its impact. I might be pulling justifications out of my arse here, but I also suspect is a trope that gets more play in fandom. Over-used, however, it rapidly degenerates into little more than emotional pornography.

And there’s an uncomfortable moral dimension to it: self-sacrifice, by its very nature, is an act performed in spite of, as much as because of, another person. Needless to say, because of this it tends to be largely non-consensual, which has the weird side-effect of infantalising and disempowering the sacrificee in a deeply unpleasant way. Ultimately every self-sacrifice involves a run-up of double-dealing and deceit, so that the act itself is a massive massive betrayal of trust – trust, that is somehow miraculously restored through the act of self-sacrifice.

To put it another way, mean, Sydney Carton’s sacrifice has nothing to do with Darnay – he does it for Lucie, because he loves her, and because she loves Darnay, and partially because Carton realises he’s wasted his life completely and therefore has little to give to the world, except his sacrifice for a better man. In the world of The Demon’s Covenant, Carton would love Darnay, and therefore trick Lucie into helping him look like he’s betrayed Darnay to allow him to sacrifice himself for Darnay instead.

Self-sacrifice becomes a closed system, in which the keyword seems to be “self” – it’s less about the person you save, than the personal act of saving, catching all the characters in a perpetual game of “I love you more”. Sacrificing yourself for the person you love is ultimately a pretty selfish act – essentially all you’re saying is that if someone has to live on miserably you’d rather it was then. Sacrificing yourself for the happiness of the person you love as Carton does actually has meaning. And, yes, I know, I know, Alan sacrifices himself for someone who isn’t Nick, but it’s basically sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice, and thus as irritating as hell. Of course it doesn’t help that it’s only the second book so most attempted self-sacrifices get derailed, so it seems we’re meant to be enjoying the exquisite anguish without having to actually, y’know, be upset or lose a character.

I guess I’ve been pretty harsh on The Demon’s Covenant. Although I found individual things to like about it, for example the strength of the characterisation, Mae and Nick, witty, lively writing, I can’t really say I enjoyed it. I’m willing to chalk up, largely, to me rather than the book since it seems to be generating rave reviews across the internet. I think maybe I’m just too old and grumpy.Themes:

Books

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Emocakes

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Arthur B

at 13:52 on 2010-09-01I know this is absolutely nothing to do with the review, but what the hell is up with the cover?

I mean, seriously. If you ditched the title the cover only conveys four things:

- It takes place in London.

- There is a martial arts smackdown at some point.

- The weather is bad.

- Someone's been dying their hair.

None of which implies a fantasy novel, none of which implies demons, one of which implies pretty much anything I recognise from the review.

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Dan H

at 13:56 on 2010-09-01To be fair, I don't think the cover of a book with demons in it has to have a demon on the front.

Also, the word "Demon" in the title might be considered a clue.

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Arthur B

at 14:01 on 2010-09-01I dunno, "Enter the Dragon" didn't actually have any dragons in it. I think the chances of the book being mistaken for some sort of edgy modern day almost-cyberpunk martial arts thing aren't bad.

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Dan H

at 14:55 on 2010-09-01I really, really think you're reaching here.

Urban fantasy hardly *ever* has anything explicitly supernatural on the cover. You might as well complain that because /The God of Small Things/ has a flower on the cover, people might mistake it for a book about botany.

I'd also point out that this is another argument in favour of the Dark Fantasy section. Otherwise people might accidentally pick up Urban Fantasy books expecting ... umm ... cyberpunk martial arts novels.

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Arthur B

at 15:11 on 2010-09-01Actually I'm taking the piss. :P

Though that flower on GoST is floating down the river which is the allegorical spine of the book.

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http://mary-j-59.livejournal.com/

at 15:50 on 2010-09-01I kind of disagree about Nick's father's diary. It gave me more insight into Alan, and I found the man's progression from extreme hatred into love and protectiveness for Nick rather moving. I also ended up admiring Jamie, who seems braver (morally, I mean) and clearer-eyed than anyone else in the book. He may be a hopeless idealist, but I'm hoping he succeeds in finding a way to use magic for good, not evil. And I'm hoping Seb may be redeemable, in spite of his cowardice. Oh, and Annabelle rocked.

Back to Alan. I think he is creepy, and meant to be creepy, and the insight we get into his childhood explains why. I actually asked Sarah Reese Brennan about this, telling her that I found the prospect of Alan in a relationship scarier even than Nick in the same situation, because Alan is manipulative and profoundly damaged. She said I was right.

My two cents, as always. BTW, did you read "Fire"? I keep asking that!

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Wardog

at 16:32 on 2010-09-01I liked the arc, and I thought it was *interesting* - but I don't think it showed you anything you hadn't already seen, and in a book I personally found bloated with detail, it was simply one step too far. I might have liked it better had the book been generally tighter. Also the style bugegd me, as you know :)

I liked Annabelle, but I found the sudden intrusion of an adult presence a bit disconcerting, especially because of the role she plays. I think the problem with YA is that since they often function on an allegorical as well as literal level, adults strain, and sometimes break, that allegory.

I'm slightly comforted by the fact Alan was intended to come across as horrendously creepy - only slightly comforted, mind you, because that means most of the internet is REALLY SCARING ME now.

Your two cents are always welcome! I read Fire, and I loved it, I must review it :)

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http://mary-j-59.livejournal.com/

at 17:37 on 2010-09-01What you say about adults in YA is interesting. I hadn't quite thought of it that way, and it makes me wonder what people will make of the adults in my story, when/if I get it published. Glad you loved "Fire"! I think she is awesome, and I have to review that one myself.

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Sister Magpie

at 18:43 on 2010-09-01I, too, assumed that Alan was supposed to come across as unhealthy and damaged--and not really in love with Mae, tbh. I thought his late conversation with Mae was supposed to imply that, where she basically realizes that he's just manipulated her this whole time (and not even manipulated her through seduction but through pity) and seems surprised that he doesn't realized just how screwed up it is. I think she says something about how he made it impossible that he would be loved so he wasn't throwing anything away by betraying her. Like for him there was only manipulating her pity for him as someone disabled and loving her unrequitedly. Which was why his relationship with Sin seemed to have the most potential. Her repulsion to his limp made him want his good leg back.

One thing I wonder given your thoughts on Jamie--what did you think of Seb? Did he undercut the bad impressions about Jamie by passing for straight in Mae's eyes for so long?

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Wardog

at 21:16 on 2010-09-01It's possible I haven't quite appreciated the complexity of Alan - or given Brennan enough credit. But I don't think the portrayal is quite clear enough, one way or the other, and that goes beyond interesting ambiguity into slightly over-ambitious or perhaps unfocused characterisation. I mean, like I say, I think there's enough scope to read Alan as endearingly broken (he just needs someone to wuv him), and it seems a lot of people have. Again, I'm probably lying issues of interpretation at Brennan's feet unfairly

And I also read his love for Mae as sincere, although it's still something he's willing to give up or use to further his own ends, which, again I think is more interesting and complicated than straight forward exploitation.

The general feeling of other characters seems to be that Alan is a good guy but, again, perhaps that's just meant to reveal how good he is at concealing what a manipulative wreck he is. I guess I'll see how the third book plays out - and, yes, I will probably read it. Because having started I'll damn well finish.

I guess I would be interested in all these layers if there hadn't been so much to wade through.

I slightly preferred Seb, but then again, he's just another stereotype: The One Who Is Mean To The Out There Gay Because He Is Secretly Gay Himself, Zomg!

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Sister Magpie

at 21:30 on 2010-09-02

And I also read his love for Mae as sincere, although it's still something he's willing to give up or use to further his own ends, which, again I think is more interesting and complicated than straight forward exploitation.

True. The reason I didn't consider him to be in love with Mae was really more that it seemed like the series in general, as stated by Mae, was sort of rejecting the idea that teenagers considering dating each other could be true love. Like at one point Mae said something about how nobody's going to "lose her" or whatever if they don't go out with her, they'll just date someone else. So it was kind of making a point of saying that romance at this point was not going to be the main driving force because nobody felt that deeply about anybody (perhaps only yet).

So the way I read the thing with Alan was that yes, he actually did have a crush on her. But once he decided to sacrifice that for Nick (like the self-sacrifice addict) that was what shaped his behavior. Like, if Alan was really hoping to date Mae he wouldn't be making speeches about dreaming about her the most because he's giving up anything like a healthy relationship chance in favor of guilting her and inspiring pity. But I could be totally wrong there. It's quite possible that that speech was Alan's true feelings coming out as a sort of tragic declaration out of hopelessness. As opposed to more of a perverse/bitter put down of himself as an object of pity that he's making work for him.

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http://katsullivan.insanejournal.com/

at 11:18 on 2010-09-07While I agree that Ryves Snr's diary did not read like the journal of a grown man, it's easily explained if you realize that Ryves had been a prose writer or poet before he became a demon huntert.

Again, this is probably completely unfair of me but from the fragments of Brennan’s LJ I have read here and there, his style and general approach to life is so reminiscent of hers that he’s evolving into some kind of gay Mary Sue

I definitely agree that Jamie comes across as authorial self-insert. Whether Brennan did this deliberately or this was subconscious is arguable. I don't think that automatically makes him a Mary Sue.

It's interesting that you found Book 2 so padded because I found it lacking in details about the mythology of the world. I still don't understand how Jamie's power is so dissociated from his free will that a Circle will go as far as to kidnap him to have it?

The reason I didn't consider him to be in love with Mae was really more that it seemed like the series in general, as stated by Mae, was sort of rejecting the idea that teenagers considering dating each other could be true love.

Interesting you should observe that, Magpie because that was definitely the impression I had got all through out the books and I found Mae's discovery that she is in love with Nick at the end of DC extremely profound because the distinction made it clear that it was no casual teenage-type of love that she was professing.

My one grouse with the characters is the lack of demographic diversity. All the main characters are White and this includes the protagonists and antagonists. Sarah Rees Brennan has written a lot of powerful articles about female represenation in stories but the fact is that a quarter of her main cast is female. And this person is also the most magically disempowered one. Her gay presentation, as you noted, is also problematic: Jamie and Seb.

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http://katsullivan.insanejournal.com/

at 11:20 on 2010-09-07I also found the death of Annabelle extremely problematic for the same reason. She reminds me of Spock's mother in the 2009 movie: she appears in the story just long enough for her to have a Meaningful Death for the benefit of her children's own story.

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Sister Magpie

at 21:19 on 2010-09-07

the main characters are White and this includes the protagonists and antagonists.

Except for Sin. Also I would quibble that while Mae is the one non-magical person, she's not exactly disempowered as she's being considered for what seems like a very important job in the magical world.

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http://katsullivan.insanejournal.com/

at 10:12 on 2010-09-08Have fun!

Except for Sin.

*face-palm* Why is it that when the race-fail or gender-fail in a story/TV show/movie is pointed out, the first response you get is almost always: “It can’t be racist if there is one Black/Asian/non-White supporting character in a sea of major White players.”? How does it help the conversation about racism and under-representation in fiction and fictional work (and the way that under-representation spills into real life) if every time the topic is raised, tokenism is used as a defence?

Sin is racially ambiguous – her little sister is described as blonde in the first book. She is also a peripheral player until hopefully the third book which is written from her PoV. (This may still not make her a major player, just the narrator.) Apart from all these things, Sin is still one character amongst White characters like: Mae, Nick, Alan and Jamie, Gerald, Black Arthur, Olivia, Sebastian, the female leader of the other Magician’s Circle (whose name I can’t recall), and Merris Cromwell.

Also I would quibble that while Mae is the one non-magical person, she's not exactly disempowered as she's being considered for what seems like a very important job in the magical world.

A job that can go to either Mae or Sin. So that’s two women fighting for a position of power (or a White woman making a power play for a Black woman's own position of power), which is far better than two women fighting for a man, but still two women fighting for one point of significance! As opposed to the men who get to be fought over for being uniquely powerful snowflakes.

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Dan H

at 13:38 on 2010-09-08

How does it help the conversation about racism and under-representation in fiction and fictional work (and the way that under-representation spills into real life) if every time the topic is raised, tokenism is used as a defence?

To be fair, I don't think Sister Magpie was trying to present a defence so much as a clarification. I could be wrong but I didn't read her comment as dismissing your concerns, just highlighting that rather containing exactly zero non-white characters, the book in fact contains exactly one.

I'd also agree (although I haven't actually read the book) that "least magically powerful" is not necessarily the same as "disempowered".

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Sister Magpie

at 15:22 on 2010-09-08

Why is it that when the race-fail or gender-fail in a story/TV show/movie is pointed out, the first response you get is almost always: “It can’t be racist if there is one Black/Asian/non-White supporting character in a sea of major White players.”?

Dan is right, I didn't say anything about how it couldn't be racist because there was one non-white supporting character. I just corrected the statement that there wasn't one single main character who wasn't white, and who I considered at least as important as the villains. She's not racially ambiguous, I believe she says flat out what her background is and it's biracial. I thought it was just giving a neutral fact.

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Leia

at 09:52 on 2010-09-09I think what Kat is saying and I agree is that nitpicking about supporting character Sin's race just derails the discussion about race and gender representation. And, for the record, I didn't know Sin was biracial until I read the comments.

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Arthur B

at 10:27 on 2010-09-09I think it depends on how the nitpicking's done. Pointing out Sin's race but emphasising that this doesn't really change the situation because Sin is arguably only there for reasons of tokenism is different from pointing out Sin's race and dismissing the argument entirely.

Ultimately, it doesn't help to let factual inaccuracies stand unquestioned because people have this tendency to say "Well, this one thing you said isn't actually correct, so I'm going to dismiss your entire argument". If the nitpicking is done with a view to strengthening and supporting the general point that's a bit different to nitpicking done to rip the argument apart.

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Sister Magpie

at 15:01 on 2010-09-09

I think what Kat is saying and I agree is that nitpicking about supporting character Sin's race just derails the discussion about race and gender representation. And, for the record, I didn't know Sin was biracial until I read the comments.

And I just didn't see how it could be derailing a discussion to correct something that I figured was an oversight. It didn't even seem like nitpicking to me.

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Dan H

at 15:13 on 2010-09-09I think the thing is that "correcting errors" is often used as a derailing tactic - while I don't think that was your intent in this case, people do tend to fixate on minor factual-level quibbles in this sort of discussion which isn't *necessarily* helpful.

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Sister Magpie

at 15:24 on 2010-09-09

I think the thing is that "correcting errors" is often used as a derailing tactic - while I don't think that was your intent in this case, people do tend to fixate on minor factual-level quibbles in this sort of discussion which isn't *necessarily* helpful.

True. Though in this case it seemed like the opposite to me, that you don't want to make it sound like it's important that there are absolutely no non-white characters anywhere when there is one. That just leaves you open to actual derailing in the future or accusations that you just erased the one non-white character.

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Arthur B

at 15:40 on 2010-09-09I think it's like I said earlier - it really depends on whether you are correcting the mistake in order to derail the argument, or correcting the mistake in order to tighten up the argument against precisely that sort of derailing attempt. And the thing is, people do the former

far

more than they do the latter, so even though I think Kat jumped to conclusions in interpreting your original comment I think it's a completely understandable jump.

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Leia

at 15:41 on 2010-09-09Maybe that wasn't the intention but the fact is that so far, all the discussion has been about a supporting character's ambiguos biracialness and there has been NO discussion about SRB's choice to make

all

the four main characters and

all

the principal villains white. Kat's point about Mae's mother's fridging has also been completely unaddressed. Whatever Sister Magpie's intention was, bringing up Sin's

ambiguosly presented

race has shifted the discussion from this.

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Arthur B

at 16:07 on 2010-09-09To be fair I think the discussion very swiftly shifted from Sin's race to the subject of derailing itself as it relates to this conversation, and the fact that this particular point doesn't actually change Kat's point.

In fact, I think more or less everyone has declared that they actually agree with Kat's point. Which, er, leaves us with nothing to discuss.

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Sister Magpie

at 16:15 on 2010-09-09

Maybe that wasn't the intention but the fact is that so far, all the discussion has been about a supporting character's ambiguos biracialness and there has been NO discussion about SRB's choice to make all the four main characters and all the principal villains white. Kat's point about Mae's mother's fridging has also been completely unaddressed. Whatever Sister Magpie's intention was, bringing up Sin's ambiguosly presented race has shifted the discussion from this.

Yes, they are all white. But it still seems a bit sneaky to complain about everyone discussing Sin's race (which hasn't really been what people are talking about) while making an argument twice, once in bold-faced, about Sin's race with the implication that this will be the last word on the subject.

Sin refers to herself as a dark-skinned girl, Mae has a moment of awkwardness about not wanting to say something racist in response, and then Sin says that her mother was Welsh and her father's family was from the Carribean originally. I do not think this absolves the book of any and all accusations of race, sexuality or gender fail. But it didn't read as ambiguous to me.

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Sister Magpie

at 16:18 on 2010-09-09p.s. Looking back on my original comment I can see how just saying "Except Sin" could read as a gotcha, like I was saying, "Um, except SIN! Who totally pwns your argument!" That was one of those times where how something sounds in your head doesn't come across on the page. In my head it was meant to be more, "Right, except Sin everyone is white."

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http://mary-j-59.livejournal.com/

at 03:16 on 2010-09-11It was absolutely clear to me that Sin is a girl of color. Because this is set in England, it didn't especially bother me that all the other main characters are white. After all, one of the chief main characters isn't even human! But I did find Annabelle's death problematic, and can't quite put my finger on why. What I said to Sarah Rees Brennan in a recent q and a session was that she runs off with her fencing foils to help in the fight, and we are never shown that the buttons are removed. Everyone else has sharps. Sarah Rees Brennan responded that the buttons had indeed been removed, but she didn't feel it necessary to show it. So - really, I guess my problem is that Annabelle was a pretty awesome character, but she existed (as a powerful and capable woman) primarily to die. And that does bug me a bit.

OTOH, the scene between Nick and Mae in the aftermath was really, really well-done.

My two cents! (again.)

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Leia

at 05:45 on 2010-09-11

Because this is set in England, it didn't especially bother me that all the other main characters are white.

*sighs* Which is why it's never *just* a story for people who don't have the privilege to assume their race is default. If your impression of England's demography is based on SRB's fantasy monochromatic England, it's not surprising you can make a statement like that.

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Arthur B

at 16:32 on 2010-09-11And in London, for that matter! Notable statistics are

here

. Note that this actually implies that London is more racially diverse than parts of the US.

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Dan H

at 17:36 on 2010-09-11

If your impression of England's demography is based on SRB's fantasy monochromatic England, it's not surprising you can make a statement like that.

Yeah, I was a bit confused by that as well.

I think this is one of the subtler and more pernicious forms of stereotyping, it's very easy to get into the habit of seeing ethnic diversity as something which only exists in America in the twentieth century - certainly I suspect that a lot of the reason most fantasy settings are so full of white people is that most people really believe that there *were* no dark-skinned people in Europe in the middle ages.

It's rather peculiar to see somebody applying the same logic to the country I live in - it's one of those things that encourages one to examine one's preconceptions.

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Wardog

at 18:00 on 2010-09-11I'm pretty sure there are black people in England ...

Also I'm pretty sure nobody was trying to derail or racefail here.

To be honest, I find Sin genuinely problematic as a character; she does, in fact, seem there largely to fill the "except Sin" role, and I find her sexualised exoticism a bit, err, dodgy when she is the ONLY non-white character in the book. I mean I know we all like the idea of hot black women dancing around but ... y'know ... it's especially problematic, I think, because the gypsy/other feel to the Goblin Market.

Also the whole "hey, the person I have raised to take over this might be rubbish at it so let's call in the inherently talented white girl" plot is a bit icky.

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at 18:43 on 2010-09-11Aw, I wasn’t quick enough. I’m a chronic lurker here, but I was going to come out of hiding to point out that England is an *incredibly* diverse society! (I have spent far less time in Wales or Scotland and so don’t feel comfortable generalizing, but I do know there are people of color in those areas as well.) Just taking into account people from the Anglosphere/Commonwealth who emigrate or are educated there takes in huge swathes of Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and so on, not to mention the generations of non-Anglo-Saxons who are born there, or people not from the Commonwealth/English-speaking nations.

I would not necessarily attribute not knowing that to Mary’s (alleged?) race, though. There are plenty of non-white people who think that the UK is wall-to-wall whiteness. I’ve found myself unable to persuade one or two of my own relatives to visit it, due to that belief and the complex attitudes and nervousness bound up in it. Possibly this comes from them not being exposed present-day UK media or whatever, I don’t know.

For the record, I am very lukewarm about both books in the “Demon’s” series. I am going to take a bit of a departure from consensus here, though. And I’m going to be a be anti-Barthian and resurrect The Author, at least for the duration of this post: I agree with Kat’s points in terms of literature as a general body, but I’m not sure I agree with them as regards this particular book, on the subject of race. Aside: I’m glad someone above clarified above that Annabelle being “fridged” was not just a matter of killing off a female character, but that the character existed, basically, *only* to die. I’m on board with that point.

In terms of race (and I speak *only* for my individual self — I’m a black, U.S. woman, and speaking with, I guess, middle-class and Western privilege) I’ve found that I much prefer to *not* see people like me in the books of authors who might not be able to pull it off properly. I’m not keen on the idea of reading practice-run depictions of people like me in the works of authors who are just learning how. It’s upsetting, not entertaining, and it’s gotten more upsetting as I get older and more exposed to subtler types of fail. If I’m going to be misrepresented, I would rather not be included at all, thanks, and I would devote my energies to getting more diverse authors out there and telling their own stories instead.

Therefore if a white Irish/British girl (I believe she has Welsh family? Not sure) wants to write about a bunch of white Irish/British people, I am not going to have a problem with this. This is absolutely NOT to say that everyone should be restricted to writing only about people exactly like themselves — they should not, that would be horrible, and boring, and would diminish the quality of literature in general. But if something is going to be done, it needs to be done excellently, for my satisfaction. It should not be done to check off a list, and believe me, I can tell. And to be blunt, there are more than enough diverse depictions of white people in existence that one or two newbie authors’ screwups will not affect how they are perceived and treated in the real world very much. A white (read male, straight, cis, et cetera also in here, as applicable) character gets to be much more of a blank slate, un-prejudged. Screwing up a character of color feeds into far larger and more pervasive existing stereotyping, prejudice, and bad press. And, to narrow it way down, it affects how people respond to me, for real, in the actual world.

Now, I like Brennan’s blog, and the voice that she uses in it. I have also read and enjoyed her Harry Potter fanfiction. However, there were several things in her fanfiction that pinged me, as a black person, in an unpleasant way. One thing that struck me particularly was a definite sense of Hermione’s hair (large, bushy, frizzy, curly, et cetera — hey, kinda like mine come to think of it, and I know of readers of Rowling’s original work who thought that canon Hermione was actually intended to be biracial due to descriptions of her hair) being unattractive and somewhat mockable, and looking better when controlled with potions or other means of straightening. This in contrast to Draco’s (blond, fine, very pale, described as “the impossible color of childhood” in very romantic passages), mentioned in nearly every description of the character, and even treated as his one beauty when characters have called him less than handsome (Veelas think he is one of them, but wonder if he has had a disfiguring facial accident).

There were also characters she wrote about quite often that I did not know were black characters until I found myself sucked in by a Wiki one day and saw the pictures of the actors portraying them...because...I am more familiar with her fanfiction than I am with the actual Harry Potter-verse. (Yeah, it’s weird, I know, I know. I’m not a fan of those books). There were mentions of Blaise Zabini being black and attractive, but the one time I can recall that involved any detailed description of the character cited his “sleek black hair falling over his face” or similar. Now believe me, I’m well aware there are many people identifying as black with a wide variety of non-chemically induced hair textures; it would be very hard for me to have missed this. But “sleek” and “smooth” remain the only hair textures that get mentioned as attractive: I believe she referred to Ginny’s hair as both pretty and curly, but I was still bothered by the overall emphasis on sleek textures, even on a black character, while the one character’s hair that I empathized with was made fun of.

I don’t exactly hold this against the author. Fanfiction is, to me, a learning workshop, and for at least some of this time period she was a teenager. And much of the more flowery prose, I think, attributable to the fact Draco was the general fetish object of most fanficcers writing at that time; his particular characteristics would therefore be the ones that got lauded and raised above other people’s. And Brennan gets points for outright calling him point-blank unattractive to the viewpoint character(s) in a few stories. Variety!

The thing is, when you put something in writing it doesn’t go away. Even though all official sources of Brennan’s fanfic have been removed from the Internet, it’s still possible to find these examples with a perfunctory Google. How much more indelible would it be if a problematic depiction found their way into a mainstream-published work?

And I certainly don’t see how including a non-white villain would improve this.

I do not know the reasons Brennan neglected to include more non-white characters — it is entirely possible that she could write some quite well at this stage, without including the things that irked me in her fanfiction. I’d like that. I don’t know if she consciously felt she couldn’t, or if it did not occur to her, or if she just plans to do more of it later. But I would rather wait for her to do it at a point in her writing life when she can do it excellently, and I can read it un-irked. I guess I’ll wait and see how she describes Sin’s hair.

And now I’m going to contradict myself — with the books set in London, it’s WEIRD not to see more diverse ethnicities running about even in the background. Lots of times people tend to hang out with people of their own group, and that could explain the main cast, sort of. But there is a distinct lack of background color in this book, and not just in terms of people — I did not get much sense of place in any aspect. Not seeing a variety of people just *being there* is a mischaracterization, I think.

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at 19:48 on 2010-09-11

Not seeing a variety of people just *being there* is a mischaracterization, I think.

That should read "not EVEN seeing a variety of people just being there..." or "Not seeing a variety of people EVEN just being there"... etc. The way it reads above seems like I'm saying people of color *should* be relegated to just "being there," when in fact I'm trying to say that "being there" is a bare minimum, especially for a city like London.

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Shim

at 13:08 on 2010-09-12@Cammalot:

I suppose one difficulty with having a varied background cast is that it's quite difficult to do subtly, because unless you highlight people's appearance (or names, but that can get a bit stereotypey) readers will probably still assume they're white. In fact, it may be especially difficult with lower-tier characters (identifiable individuals who aren't significant characters, your "Angry Commuter" and "Girl in Café" types) because they probably wouldn't merit much description in the normal run of things, and if you start highlighting their ethnicity it might seem rather heavy-handed. For crowd scenes and the like you can at least imply variety.

I'm not saying that's a get-out, mind.

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at 11:58 on 2010-09-13@cammalot: I remember reading Hermione as a Black girl, too. For all her faults, Rowling did

start

at least by making Hogwarts casually multi-racial: the Parvati twins, Lee Johnson, Dean Thomas, Cho Chang... Of course in the end, the people that really counted were White. Maybe the silky-haired Blaise thing in SRB’s fanfiction was a call-back from the time the whole of fandom thought he was an Italian girl?

@Kyra Smith:

To be honest, I find Sin genuinely problematic as a character; she does, in fact, seem there largely to fill the "except Sin" role, and I find her sexualised exoticism a bit, err, dodgy when she is the ONLY non-white character in the book. Also the whole "hey, the person I have raised to take over this might be rubbish at it so let's call in the inherently talented white girl" plot is a bit icky.

THIS. Perhaps if Sin wasn’t the ONLY non-white character. But as it is, it’s so many kinds of problematic. And maybe it’s too simplistic a solution, but rather than insert the token non-White character with all the common prejudices (comic relief Asian best friend, exotic biracial dancer), how about making one of the ‘default’ characters non-White? What’s wrong with Mae and Jamie being siblings with Indian ancestry? Or Dan Ryves and Black Arthur being, pun not intended, Black?

@SisterMagpie:

p.s. Looking back on my original comment I can see how just saying "Except Sin" could read as a gotcha, like I was saying, "Um, except SIN! Who totally pwns your argument!"

Yeah, that was the vibe I got.

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at 15:56 on 2010-09-13Um - sorry. I have lived in England, and am aware that it is racially and culturally diverse - and also that it's probably far more so now than when I lived there as a child, thirty years ago. I didn't mean that the way it sounded. What I meant was: is it always automatically racist if a white person writes about her own culture? If so, why?

That said, I think can seem more racist to have a token person of color than to have no person of color at all. And Sin does seem to be the token person of color. But -

1. Sin is going to narrate/be the viewpoint character for the third book. Before making judgements about her as a character, I'd like to see how Sarah Rees Brennan pulls this off. I, for one, liked Mae a lot better in "Covenant" than I had in "Lexicon".

2. And I repeat that Alan is creepy, and is meant to be creepy. So I do think, Kyra, that you're not giving Sarah Rees Brennan enough credit. But we can't tell for sure until we have the last book in hand. Heaven knows I gave JKR far too much credit! But everything I've heard from SRB reassures me that I'm not making the same mistake twice.

Which is not to say they are great, great books. They aren't on the level of Michelle Paver or Catherine Fisher or Kristin Cashore. But they are smart and fun and seem to me (so far, at least) to have a pretty solid moral core. I may be wrong, but I am willing to wait and see.

That said, the big problem I had with "Covenant" was Annabelle. I've got dead mother figures in my story, too, but there is a difference between a character's dying during a story and a character's existing solely to die. Annabelle exists solely to die, after having been a nonentity in the first book and a large part of the second, and that does bother me.

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Arthur B

at 16:26 on 2010-09-13

What I meant was: is it always automatically racist if a white person writes about her own culture? If so, why?

The thing is, the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention when folk start talking about white people's culture, because they're usually referring to one of two things:

1: The mainstream culture of the UK, or the US, or some other country which is thought of as a "white" country. The problem here is that, whilst the mainstream culture of white-majority places is obviously going to be largely influenced by the majority (that being why it's mainstream), you can't simplify that to "mainstream culture = white culture" - if you do that, you're saying people who aren't white basically can't be part of mainstream culture, which by definition is marginalising.

2: An exclusive culture which belongs solely to white people and which folk who aren't white can't participate in or understand. The thing is, when people get enthused about celebrating that sort of thing, it's usually because they're Nazis of some persuasion or another.

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at 23:37 on 2010-09-13

Maybe the silky-haired Blaise thing in SRB’s fanfiction was a call-back from the time the whole of fandom thought he was an Italian girl?

It’s possible. It didn’t seem to be a spoofy usage to me, though, and it was written well after Zabini’s identity was clarified. (SRB had a clever, funnier throwaway sequence in an earlier-written piece, about Zabini changing genders with the full moon.) And again, these were all relatively tiny things taken in isolation. They just had a cumulative effect on me. And her work is still, overall, a pretty freaking stellar example of Harry Potter fic.

I do wonder, and I ask this with no belligerence whatsoever, but genuine curiosity — would Lexicon and Convenant have worked better if SRB had simply not included a “token” person of color and a “token” gay person? (I’m using the quotes because the tokenism might be disproved in the third book.) If Sin and Jamie weren’t in there, would we have noticed an absence? (Hmm. I guess we would have, since there would have been even fewer female characters.)

What I meant was: is it always automatically racist if a white person writes about her own culture? If so, why?

I have a lot of contradictory feelings on this subject, all of which are extremely subjective and reflect FAR more of “what I would personally rather read” than “what should be done in society.”

1. If a white person has to be told to include non-white characters, their heart probably wasn’t in it to begin with, and they likely won’t do the best job. So they are better off writing white characters, and that in and of itself will not offend me. (Especially if the group of characters is small — e.g. involving a family or similar.) They need to write what they are enthusiastic about rather than checking off points on a list.

2. It will annoy me no end if the sort of writer above then goes on to write non-white characters half-heartedly (or with stereotypes and cliches) while a minority writer writing on the same topics nowadays will either get paid and publicized less, get marginalized on the store bookshelves, or be instructed by powers that be to shoehorn in white characters in order to be saleable.

3. A white writer who wants to write minority characters should be encouraged to do so. (I didn’t always feel this way, but I do now, strongly.) But I really want to see it done well, and such a writer has to assume the risk that they might not do it well and might be criticized -- and will definitely be more scrutinized as an outsider than a person writing from within the race/culture in question -- and must, well, regard that risk as an invigorating challenge, I guess. That whole “fail better” thing.

An exclusive culture which belongs solely to white people and which folk who aren't white can't participate in or understand. The thing is, when people get enthused about celebrating that sort of thing, it's usually because they're Nazis of some persuasion or another.

Yes. It also posits that white people have one big homogenous culture. (Or that anybody has managed to agree on what “white people” means in the first place.) There’s a difference between writing about “white people [within a larger, diverse culture],” writing about “*a* white culture,” and writing about “white culture” (which, come to think of it, could theoretically be done without white characters, like in postcolonial lit).

But no, I don't think it's automatically racist. I don't think it's a question of anyone being a big old bigot at all, what I'm seeing in this thread isn't an accusation of oooh-you-terrible-racist at anyone, but of leaving out things and people that are there and exist in the world that's being described. There are people in our society who need to see themselves included and represented more. (I'm just wondering how best -- and who is best -- to get that done.)

@ Shimmin: This is very true. I think it was Tobias Buckell recently writing about how if you say things like "bronze skin" people (well, Westerners of all shades) tend to assume you're talking about white skin that has been tanned. Maybe it's better at this point to go bigger with it, especially for minor characters? It's unwieldy to say "The East Asian girl at the corner table," but it might just be what needs to be done. (It bugs me to admit that, too, because I have in the past been very annoyed by descriptions that go "The Asian girl" and think they have actually finished giving an adequate visual.)

I thought China Mieville did a wonderful job using quite obvious names to denote ethnicity in "Un Lun Dun," for example -- and he let the South Asian girl be the heroine to boot. On the other hand, I've found myself, at my age, actually squeeing joyfully at a couple books when I realized the protagonist(s) I'd already made assumptions about were supposed to be dark-skinned. Neil Gaimian managed it in "Anansi Boys," and I think Holly Black pulled it off once by mentioning the color of a character's scars. I felt like I had unlocked a really cool puzzle. :-) And I loved how, in that subtle way, the dark skin was not presented as some sort of deviation from a norm. So I think it's a question of skill, not necessarily method.

All that said, the big problem *I* had with the "Demon's" series was the system of magic felt a bit scattered; I don’t really feel a sense of place; and for a preternaturally emotionless guy, Nick seems to be emoting left and right. (Which for me raises an interesting question — how clueless can you honestly be about human emotions and still manage to always be bitingly quippy? Can you *be * humorous, on purpose, if you don’t have emotions?)

I am tired of bad boys. I was never that fond of them to begin with. I loved Jamie’s saying out loud that whoever he fell in love with would be very nice to him all the time and try to make him happy.

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at 23:37 on 2010-09-13meep! I got very wordy there...

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at 02:03 on 2010-09-14I'm glad you did! Basically, I agree with everything you said, except that I haven't (yet) had any major problems with the series - except for the gratuitous offing of Annabelle. And I'd been feeling a bit under attack, though I brought it on myself, I suppose, by writing in haste and when tired.

I do agree with you about Nick, but I think the so-called lack of emotion isn't really such; Nick has lots of emotions. It's just that they are mostly what we would call negative - rage, frustration, etc. But he is capable of what we (or more accurately, I) would call positive emotions, as well. It's going to be interesting to see what happens to him in the final book. At the moment, I'm shipping Nick and Mae, but expecting dead Nick. We'll see.

As far as the system of magic goes, have you read the Bartimaeus Trilogy? It's brilliant, and it almost seems Brennan must have borrowed from it - except that I think she hasn't read those books.

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at 06:21 on 2010-09-14

Sorry if this is derailing, but katsullivan and cammalot's comments suggests this is the right kind of place to ask these kind of questions. Also, it'll be kind of rambling and will involve a lot of talking about me.

A bit of context: I'm a white, cis, middle class dude from a small Australian town where casual racism, sexism and homophobia was the norm, with a strong white English heritage (my grandparents are Welsh and English and moved here in the seventies). I've been trying to challenge my views and perceptions on race and gender in order to become a better, wiser person.

I'm also an aspiring writer, and I've been trying to work the kinds of things I've learned into my writing. The thing is, I'm not sure if the attitude I'm taking is still just well meaning tokenism.

As an example of what I'm worried about, I have an Indian character (currently nicknamed The Jack, after the video game archetype). Born in India, raised in India, moved to England to study engineering and medicine at the same time, snapped under the pressure, bought a gun, became a mercenary, and is now trying to live up to the 'ultra badass' stereotype. This is intended as a parody of the (as far as I know) Western concept of the Indian nerd (seen in shows like 'The Big Bang Theory' and the movie 'Inception', though Inception plays with the concept a little), as well as a commentary on ultra-badasses in Western media (he'll pull Kirk/Mal/Renegade Shepard style stunts, which will disturb and annoy the other characters). So basically I'm writing a white guy who happens to be Indian. Same with Noiry Thief Dude - he'll act pretty much like a classic Caucasian film noir protagonist, for what I think are perfectly legitimate reasons (analysing the concept of cynicism and the motivations stemming from it), except he just happens to be Japanese.

TL;DR I guess I'm wondering whether or not all my characters being heavily based on Western concepts, despite being from non-Western cultures, is a bad thing.

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Wardog

at 11:29 on 2010-09-14I will second the recommendation of the Bartimaeus Trilogy - I LOVED those.

This is just a general rather rather specific point and apologies if I fail all over it but it was in reference to the tokenism of Jamie and Sin. I never felt Jamie was tokenistic - I thought he was a problematic depiction of a gay person, for me, because his vulnerability seems to go hand-in-hand with his sexuality, but it's obvious SRB is pretty damn interested in him, either as a weird authorial self-insert or because fandom, in general, is very into gay men. I know being "interested" can sometimes be an issue in itself (Jay Lake is clearly "very" interested in Green... altogether now EEEEWWW) but it tends to stave off tokenism. I found Sin much more tokenistic because it seems pretty clear to me that Brennan really isn't interested in the hot black girl, and she's just there to be a contrast to Mae, as well as to demonstrate Mae being friendly with other women to show it's not just about Mae and all the hot men who fancy her.

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Wardog

at 11:31 on 2010-09-14Oh, and I meant to say thanks for taking the time to comment, Cammalot - I've found your take on the book fascinating, and I'm generally just delighted to discover I'm not the only person in the world who doesn't like it! :P

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Dan H

at 13:51 on 2010-09-14

What I meant was: is it always automatically racist if a white person writes about her own culture? If so, why?

I think this is a misleading question for a number of reasons. Firstly, I think getting hung up on questions of what is and is not "racist" is often misleading and distracting. It tends to lead to people getting defensive and turns the whole discussion into one about individual white people. Ironically the more seriously we take race issues, the more sensitive we get about the "danger" of calling a white person a racist.

This touches on what Kat was talking about earlier: if somebody says "hey, anybody else notice how all the important people in this book are white" then a lot of people will respond by saying "OMG HOW DARE YOU CALL MY FAVOURITE WRITER A RACIST" which simply isn't helpful. The question is not "is Sarah Rees Brennan a racist" it's "are people of colour underrepresented in Sarah Rees Brennan's imaginary world". The answer to the first question is "I don't know, but probably a little bit but hell so am I" whereas the answer to the second question is "yes".

Sorry, that was a long and distracting preamble.

To answer your question, the problem here is that talking about "a white person's culture" - as Arthur and Cammalot have pointed out - is actually rather misleading. One of the big important items on the White Privilege Checklist is the fact that your ethnicity *is not* a major part of your cultural identity. Although as Arthur points out, a lot of *extremely racist* people like to argue that this is actually a huge injustice.

Because I am a white person living in a white-dominated country (more generally, because I am a member of my country's ethnic majority) my "culture" is the entire culture of my country. In fact since I'm English, my culture actually includes pretty much the entire English-speaking world. Hell, it arguably includes large parts of the *non* English-speaking world, because my cultural heritage includes amongst other things the British Empire and Christianity.

Because my culture - whether I like it or not - is the dominant one in the English-speaking world I have to accept that my culture *does* include non-white people, and gay people, and for that matter women all of whom have been historically margainalized by my culture and whose contributions *to* that culture have been minimized.

If I write a book about - say - being a student at Oxford and that book contains only white characters (which, to be honest, it probably would) then not only would I be erasing and margainalising non-white Oxford students (of whom there are a great many) I would in fact be *misrepresenting* my actual experiences and therein lies the problem. When a white person presents a fictional setting which ignores or margainalises non-white people, it *is* reflective of a wider cultural tendency to ignore and margainalise non-white people *in general*.

Now from the point of view of an individual text, it might be far better to ignore and margainalize a group than to tokenize, fetishize, or demonize it, but that's a different issue altogether.

To draw a rather peculiar analogy, it's sort of like recycling. I generally recycle all of my rubbish but sometimes I don't, sometimes I will throw plastic bottles in the dustbin. The fact that I recycle 90% of my plastic does not change the fact that the other 10% of the plastic I send to landfill sites contributes to global warming. Even if a person's portrayal of race (or gender, or disability, or whatever) is 90% perfect, it is still possible for the remaining 10% to *actively contribute* to a racist society.

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at 16:43 on 2010-09-14Dan, in spite of saying mine was a misleading question, you answered it here:

Now from the point of view of an individual text, it might be far better to ignore and margainalize a group than to tokenize, fetishize, or demonize it, but that's a different issue altogether.

That's pretty much what I meant (and failed, initially) to say.

But it is interesting that, as far as I can remember, no one considered Sarah Rees Brennan racist when reviewing "The Demon's Lexicon". The issue arose in Kyra's review of "The Demon's Covenant", because Sin really does seem like a token person of color. As I said above, she is to be the narrator in the third book, and I'm reserving judgement on the series as a whole until after I've read the third.

I read "Covenant" a bit differently from Kyra. I thought the main issue was: would Jamie be seduced by Gerald into using his magic? And, if he was, would he be able to find a way to use magic for good, or is it always corrupting? That, to me, was the driving tension of the plot - Jamie's struggle with his magic, and Mae's struggle to protect him from the magicians. And I found it interesting.

Although I feel like I'm dancing around a live wire in even bringing it up again, as a white person, I'd be scared to do what Sarah Rees Brennan is attempting, and to write from the POV of a young woman of color in real, modern-day England. In a fantasy world, it's not so intimidating. But in a real-world setting, I'd be terrified to get it wrong - what do I know about being a person of color in England or America? Being an outsider - yes, I understand that. But what are the limits of imagination? Do I, as a white person, have any right to attempt to write from the viewpoint of a person of color? Especially when there are so many fine writers of color who cannot get the buzz that white writers get? As a writer, I do think I have an obligation to present the world honestly, and that definitely includes having varied casts in my stories. As a reader, I have an obligation to read actively and intelligently. As a librarian, I have an obligation to support and promote good writers of all types, and to aim for diversity on my shelves. I do take my obligations seriously. Sorry if I sound defensive here! As I said, I'm feeling a bit attacked, and I really didn't mean to say anything offensive. I apologize if I have given offense, nonetheless.

But - although I can see where Kyra was coming from in the original post, I do actually like Brennan's books so far. The questions Kyra has raised, and which others here have elaborated on, are good and valid, but, as I've said, I'm waiting to see how she completes her trilogy before judging it. After all, if Rowling had stopped her series with OOTP, I would have been convinced it was a good set of books. Even HBP didn't disabuse me of my love for the books entirely; it took DH to disenchant me and break my heart. It was only after the last book had been finished that I had all the information I needed to judge the series as a whole. I'm still a pretty optimistic reader, I guess, and I'm hoping Brennan won't disappoint me as Rowling did.

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at 17:44 on 2010-09-14

I do agree with you about Nick, but I think the so-called lack of emotion isn't really such; Nick has lots of emotions. It's just that they are mostly what we would call negative - rage, frustration, etc. But he is capable of what we (or more accurately, I) would call positive emotions, as well. It's going to be interesting to see what happens to him in the final book.

This is kind of what I mean about the magical system not hanging together -- as presented so far, this feels like cheating, to me. I want more clarification as to what the source of emotion is in her mythos, so that the scenes of emoting don't feel so convenient. I don't want "It was inside him all along." That would destroy the 1st book's twist. (Although, if SRB chooses to pull something in the final book like “Alan gave Nick a part of his human soul through being so loving, and changed Nick’s essential nature while they were kids”...I might buy it. I disliked “Lexicon” until the final twist convinced me that there was some real brilliance in it, so I’m willing to hold out. And SRB has earned huge amounts of leeway from me for her depictions of Pansy Parkinson. She rounded out, redeemed, and made pretty feminist a character created to be Rowling's buttmonkey, in my opinion.)

@Kyra: Thanks for clarifying about Jamie and Sin, re: tokenism. Sin is definitely a hard character to get a handle on this time around. (In Lexicon, I found the *majority* of the cast difficult to get a handle on -- their quip-ful conversations really got in my way -- so I hope that’s reason to believe there will be more to Sin in the third volume). I liked Jamie, but 1) a lot of that is because I like SRB, and I *did* see a lot of authorial-insertiness about him (he also has a great many of the qualities of her version of Draco, but with less of the overt strength and anger), and 2) I remember having been an embarrassingly zealous Minority Warrior for gay rights in my early twenties, and have since erred on the side deferring to the more knowledgeable and keeping quiet. I’m also trying to navigate writing gay characters properly in my own fiction, so...yeah. Shutting up and learning from others now. And I will definitely look into this Bartimaeus business. :-)

And that segues into Stan’s post -- this is so very difficult to tell without seeing the writing in question. As I said above: To me, it’s less about topic or method and more about skill of execution. You should have beta readers, and some of them should of the groups you’re dealing with, or as close as possible (and even that *will not be foolproof* for all readers). If you don’t have such betas IRL, get hold of willing and trusted Internet ones. Your heart’s in the right place, but you shouldn’t take chances. There WILL be small but telling things, and you WILL miss them unaided (because what reason would you have had in your life to know them?), and readers from those groups will notice and be annoyed. Betas. Get 'em. But don’t assume that just because a person is from the group(s) in question that they have the time or inclination to educate you. Get someone enthusiastic, and choose carefully and respectfully.

And I agree with everything Daniel just said.

But it is interesting that, as far as I can remember, no one considered Sarah Rees Brennan racist when reviewing "The Demon's Lexicon".

@Mary — I don’t think anyone is calling SRB (or you) a capital-R racist NOW. We’re giving the “R-word” too much power in this conversation now, I think, which is distracting: SRB’s character isn’t the issue. It’s not about attacking any individual -- you or Sarah. But racism permeates our culture, and sometimes it will manifest in us. Privilege also exists and will manifest. This is not something we can help. This doesn’t mean that anybody is an evil, irredeemable person, or that liking the books makes you terrible. (Wanna know something awful? I liked “300.” And that shite was “problematic” up, down, left, right, and backwards. Racist, *heinously* ableist, *laughably* homophobic considering the people it depicted -- all kinds of crap. There now. I’ve ruined my fledgling reputation already. In my shallow defense, I thought the creators were being more tongue-in-cheek than they really were).

But it does mean that we need to be constantly aware and vigilant of the problems and possible problems that exist, and how to deal with them. And I don’t think anyone has written off the upcoming third book. Try to look at this theoretically, not as personal attack?

SRB has proven herself a strong and resilient young woman, and she has lots of support. I think she’ll be fine and can deal with the fact that there are people who take issue with her work (as there are people who will take issue with any work; nothing’s perfect). And you should write what you feel passionate about -- but writing in public is an act of self-exposure and requires bravery.

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Dan H

at 18:47 on 2010-09-14

Wanna know something awful? I liked “300.” And that shite was “problematic” up, down, left, right, and backwards. Racist, *heinously* ableist, *laughably* homophobic considering the people it depicted -- all kinds of crap. There now. I’ve ruined my fledgling reputation already. In my shallow defense, I thought the creators were being more tongue-in-cheek than they really were

I think you have, in fact, ruined your FerretBrain cred forever.

My favourite comments on 300 have been from my Iranian students. Highlights include: "In my country ... we do not have ninjas" and "We remember Xerxes as a great man. He was not a Gay!"

The latter comment highlights another interesting point about this kind of thing, which is that a person can be offended by something while themselves being *quite offensive*.

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http://cammalot.livejournal.com/

at 19:41 on 2010-09-14

I think you have, in fact, ruined your FerretBrain cred forever.

I know, I know. I am duly ashamed.

I was watching it with a bona fide history professor, at midnight, and we sat there going "La la la, swordy things, la la la, loinclothery, la la la, anachronistic rock music, whoo-HOO, half-naked acrobatics, and hey, isn't that the hot skinny demon guy from 'Hex' -- hey wait, did he just diss ATHENIANS for sleeping with boys?" And then it occurred to us that the rest of the theater wasn't reacting the same way, as in, no, that line was not coming across as hypocrisy, it was coming off as "time to giggle at the gay now". And then there were more things (like "holy shit, did they just VALIDATE throwing babies away??"). And then the lack of irony slowly dawned on me. Much too slowly, really. As in, not before I left the theater. Don't know what to say about that, I had thought I was more astute. And then I read the source comic. (I had not been familiar with Frank Miller before.)

I was also overly impressed that the film acknowledged that black people were around and involved in classical antiquity. Except, you know, then the beheadings and Unfortunate Implications and oh god I'm sorry I'm sorry...

(It's all...yeah, I don't know. I especially don't know what to say about the roars of theater laughter when the head flew through the air. This was, um, not a white theater, shall we say. Things are complicated. I think a lot of the audience were appreciating it as though it were a horror movie.)

a person can be offended by something while themselves being *quite offensive*.

Too true. :-)

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:49 on 2010-09-19Just caught up on this discussion. It was interesting! I have nothing to add to it! This comment may be pointless and excessively exclamatory!

Hi to Cammalot & 3stan, neither of whom I've seen around here before (as far as I remember).

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Montavilla

at 20:55 on 2010-09-28Coming to the discussion late, as I am wont to do.

Wow. This is a great discussion about writing different cultures from your own -- whether race, sexual orientation, so on. I really love how honest people are being about difficult it is to approach racial and cultural inclusion.

Long ago and far away, I edited children's reading textbooks and believe me, inclusion was a major consideration. Along with deleting any possible objectionable material, which makes for great stories. True one: I once as a joke scared my supervising editor by suggesting the team names in a story ("red" and "blue") might cause parents to think we were promoting Communism. She nearly fainted.

Anyway, we were tasked with making sure that the depiction of minority/majority race characters matched the current American demographic breakdown: 16% black, 12% Latino, 6% Asian, 2% Native American, 2% physically challenged, 2% "other." Since we were trying to use as much pre-published material as possible (as opposed to commissioned writing), we ended up changing race/gender in many cases. We also specced artwork to include crowds of racially diverse people whenever possible. Then we had to go back and actually count heads in order to justify the inclusion.

It was all very silly and artificial, but it did have the virtue of showing kids a world where not everyone looks the same. And the California State Board of Education eventually got savvier and started demanding that we follow a demographic breakdown of writers and illustrators, instead of making Ramona Quimby Hispanic. :)

As a writer, I do think about trying to include more diversity in characters. But it intimidates me at the same time. My racial heritage is Italian, Filipino, and Spanish-American. But I don't know diddly about any of those cultures, really. For me to write about a Filipina character would be as inauthentic as my writing about an Iranian woman. But I think I have to try. My only other choice is to set everything in a fantasy world where any real world culture doesn't apply. And don't think I haven't thought about it.

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Cammalot

at 17:03 on 2011-07-12RE: The Demon's Surrender, the last book in this trilogy -- Based on the first few bits... I really wish Brennan had been writing from Sin’s POV all along. I’m much more immediately sucked in, this time.

(Heh. She is also

much more obviously black/biracial now

. Thank you, British bookbinder.)

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Kat S

at 09:40 on 2011-07-18@Cammalot: The UK Cover of Surrender with Sin in front bothers me. It bothers me a lot. It is not in the same style at all as the previous two covers. When you line up the books, Surrender is a different size and the spine lettering is arranged differently. They did just about everything possible to make the book about the PoC look like if it was from a different series.

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Cammalot

at 21:03 on 2011-07-18Hmm. It’s food for thought.

I know that there’s been a shift across the board toward more photographic-looking covers (the background skyline still seems similar, though also converted to more photo style, as is the saturated color and the backdrop-to-face size ratio. I don’t have a copy in hand yet, and have refused to buy the US versions. I can’t stand the US covers. Everyone looks stiff and mannequinlike, and Sin is whitewashed. And aged way up).

I can only guess at the rest, though. It’s weird.

I tend to hate it in general when the look of a series changes midway, and it’s been happening more and more lately. Busting out with much-pricier hardcovers to capitalize on a heretofore paperback series’ steady sales, and thus upping the per unit price by almost double, or more than double in some cases, that sort of thing. I’ve begun waiting up to two years for paperbacks to come out in order to have consistency — among them Simon R. Green, Patricia Briggs, and Jim Butcher (Yes I read some fluff. More important, I can wait a very long time to read fluff, there are other piles o’ books on my poor floor waiting for me, I will not be suckered in. ;-D). Similar happened with the “Monster-Ink Tattoo” series, and Patricia Bray’s books went from trade to hc too, I believe.

As I said, I don’t have a copy in hand yet. Have you got the hardcover? Is there a trade paper even out yet? Is your copy larger or smaller than previous?

This complicates things in my mind, but in a weird way. Publishers are driven by the desire to make cash. And they tend to think in very short and direct ways about it. (This cover sold well last week, let’s imitate it fortyfold, right this instant! Or, more annoyingly: This did not sell a million copies instantaneously, let us never do anything like it again! This is exaggeration on my part, but you get me. That last mentality has especially hurt books about girls and people of color.)

The photographic thing is a definite trend right now and supposed to up sales; this, I am sure, is the thinking, from what I’ve observed. (I’m in publishing. Sadly, never in a Big Decider capacity so far.) I’m kind of surprised they didn’t go that route on the first two. That plus the size change (opposite of what I would expect if they were trying play down the non-white angle) might make me think they want to call even more attention to it...so perhaps the previous two were not selling very well? (Based on what I see on chain-store bookshelves here, what’s actually on the floor displays and what’s even kept in stock, I would tend to believe this: I’m not seeing her on the shelves. Her series has to be doing well enough for them to let her try another -- unrelated -- book, but I don’t know that it’s a blockbuster.)

Increasing the size of this last book to hardcover might say to me that sales *are* going well, and they expect to shift just as many twice-the-price hardcover copies as they did cheaper paperback ones, and will likely even re-release previous entries in the series as hardcovers if the sales on this one hold steady. (Jim Butcher had a similar mid-series redesign, and hc versions of older books are being released. Briggs has had the hc re-release without the redesign, possibly because her books started out with semi-realistic pics of people to start with.)

Smaller size, on the other hand, might say they want to lower the price in order to sell more, possibly because the previous ones did not do as well as they’d hoped. (In this case, though, I would not expect them to put a person of color, and a girl, on the front.)

Either way, change says, to me, an attempt to get more attention.

Now, if they specifically want to CAPITALIZE on the non-white angle (as opposed to thinking “Well, this is surefire and will sell either way, so let’s take an easy risk and put a biracial girl on the front” -- I can’t imagine they’re thinking the third option: “Let’s put a person of color on the front and then downplay everything so no one will notice the book to buy it, and also let’s confuse and misdirect existing fans”) -- If they think a larger size and a brown face is going to move more copies or attract new buyers -- well I say go for it. I feel very mercenary about that. I’d like it if there were more of that sort of opinion happening in the States.

All this, of course, with the caveat that I am not British and so can’t claim insider knowledge of what might drive the British/UK publishing mind-set on the issue.

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Kat S

at 15:57 on 2011-07-19The trend of photographic-looking covers was already on-going when the publishers produced the first two books. As for capitalizing on Sin's PoC-ness, they could have done that without completely changing the style of the covers. Frankly, I doubt it. The changes in Demon's Surrender versus the other books is too close to the way "Urban" romances are usually packaged by publishers.

Not sure how I gave the impression that the size was increased to hard-cover. Demon's Surrender is in paper-back.

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Cammalot

at 19:27 on 2011-07-19You wrote:

Surrender is a different size

I couldn't tell from that wording in what way it was different -- bigger or smaller. (Thank you for clarifying.) On the webpage with the cover version we are discussing, Bookdepository.co.uk has it listed as available in a hardcover edition and a paperback. (The hardcover could actually refer to the U.S. edition, but I find the setup ambiguous.)

Yes, the trend towards more photographic covers has been around for a while, but 1. it hasn't been anything near universal even for North American books and would not necessarily have affected any one particular book we could select; 2. it hasn't been pushed quite as much in the U.K. (Google the original British covers for Melissa Marr, Stephanie Meyer, Rachel Caine, and so on); and 3. it is still trending. In my experience, at least for the past decade or so (possibly before that), British books have tended far more towards the artsy covers than towards the more full and/or photorealistic human representation that U.S covers were going for, especially in fantasy. It's still more or less down to editorial/marketing whim, and still doesn't really tell me anything.

That cover is the British version, and I don't know that "Urban" fiction is that big a genre or a draw in Britain. I would posit that it isn't, just because in my experience of the “Urban” genre as it is (euphemistically) defined here, it has been wildly,

intensely

, and kind of annoyingly) U.S.-centric, and because I haven't seen those marketing categories delineated in the U.K. in the same way they are in the U.S.

at all

. They do not divide up their shelves of genres in stores in the same way; particularly, they haven't, in my experience, been separating out "'urban'-aka-'black'-books" from other types of fiction in the way our "African American interest" sections do, but integrate their authors of various colors onto shelves by topic and subject matter, not ethnicity.

But, y'know, I wouldn't swear to it, since I haven't been there since '09. It could be a new thing. They seem to have a thing called

street fiction

. But not much of it expressly delineated as such, and still, the covers...

do not look like that

. Codes and subtexts are not the same for the two markets.

"Surrender's" differences from the previous two are not striking to me. Spine text is not a large enough indicator -- variations in spine text happen frequently with all sorts of series. The face on the cover, though photographic, is positioned in the same place and at a similar angle and size relative to background to the previous two (though more of her face is showing), and like the other two, does not involve her body. The background, though also more photographic, employs the same shading as the second book (indicating a progression of artistic vision, to me). The cracked-letter effect in the cover font is identical on all three, and in the same place. The author blurbs are also positioned in the same place across the board.

(I also think that there's too much fire in the background of "Surrender" [indicating subject matter larger in scope and apocalyptic than the usual plot of the "Urban" stuff I've come in contact with] and not enough of the young woman's breasts are on display, nor is she positioned "tough-ly" enough, for me to mistake if for Urb-Lit or Urb-Rom.)

Sizing also doesn’t tell me much, as it is not unique to this series and is far more often an indicator of either financial concerns (cost of physical paper fluctuates and has been going up for some time now -- some hardcovers have leaped to nearly $27 from $22 in just the past five years and non-genre authors are under a great deal of pressure to keep their novels to 300 pages or less), or perhaps an overall push to make paperback sizes more uniform. A quick Google tells me paperback sizes across the board have been in flux both in the U.S. and the U.K.

since at least around 2008/2009

. (As Brennan’s book hit shelves in mid-2009, most of the plans concerning its manufacture and release would have been well underway anywhere from 2 to 4 years before that, and the size change could easily have simply missed those first two.)

I'm just not seeing the publishers doing "everything possible" to make the book look like some other series. It doesn't exactly match, true, but this is not unique to this series or to books with women of color on them, and it seems to me that many elements were intentionally retained (I'm looking at Amazon UK right now) in order to link this book to its predecessors. I believe a redesign was intentional, yes, but I can easily see this new full-face style as an improvement, and --*if* the books sell well enough to go to a subsequent printing -- I would not be surprised to see the other two altered to match this one.

Further, I haven't seen any big push to masquerade books as more U.S-esque "Urban" style in the U.K., even with those written by actual black British people: See

Katherine Bing

or

Mike Gayle

, and I'm sure others can be quick-searched. (The Mike Gayle covers have indeed been revamped -- those versions are not the ones I own, so there seems to have been ample time to take him more "Urban," but this is not the direction they went in.)

The two Urb-Rom imprints I worked for didn't have much of a footprint in the U.K. (that is to say, no corporate presence at all, but you can get books nearly anywhere nowadays what with the Internet), but I can only speak to what I know; some British people might have to weigh in on whether or not going "Urban" would be considered an intelligent marketing strategy in the U.K., especially for Y.A. It also does not seem plausible to me that the marketing team would take the very last book of a trilogy and purposefully disguise it as a new genre (especially in a country that genre is not native to or apparently very popular in) in hopes of drawing a whole new audience and abandoning the previous one.

This is not to say that British publishing doesn't have its own problems --

it does

. And I think your concern is valid. But at the moment, in the particular case of this book, I do not share the concern.

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Leia

at 09:28 on 2011-07-20The times I have noticed UK covers make changes, they tend to adapt the US covers. That's what happened with Twilight and the Cassandra Clare books. Spine text is a pretty big indicator when you line up the books side by side. Are there considerably more letters in "Surrender" than in "Covenant"?

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Cammalot

at 17:10 on 2011-07-20

Spine text is a pretty big indicator when you line up the books side by side.

But an indicator of what, exactly? Intentional genre and audience shift and exploitation, or general reconsideration of overall design? Reconsideration of overall design is a given, here; it was publically touted as such. They did in fact reconsider the design, and took it in a different direction -- that's not in dispute.

I'm simply not seeing how it's more likely that the

intent

of that new artistic direction would be to mimic "Urban Lit," a genre for which I have seen no evidence of popularity in the U.K.; a genre which is extremely U.S.-centric and reliant on U.S. tropes, codes, and cultural signifiers; a genre that a great many British blacks (who are predominantly of direct-African and Caribbean descent) would be far less likely to relate to, understand, or drawn to purchase. Nor do I see how it would make sense to hype such a thing in the U.K. Instead of the U.S., or to trust such a thing to generate any hype. (Unless the thinking here is that they’re trying to get the book to fail?)

For my own, personal self, I am very,

extremely

wary and distrustful of overextending/overattributing U.S. mindsets to people it has no reason to apply to. We do this all too often, us Americans (in all our ethnic variety), and it gives us an inaccurate and offensive understanding of other people. I am speaking for myself here, and not assuming U.S-ness in anyone else.

There are a vast number of books being published every year in the UK, many of which go to multiple printings and show an evolution of cover design. A great many of these titles are never even available in the U.S. Often several versions of the cover art remain in print and available simultaneously. (For a very long time, they had both "regular" and "less-embarrassing, grown-up" covers available for the Harry Potter series in the U.K.) Saying that U.K. covers "tend" to adopt U.S. cover design, assigning this to an entire national industry, linking this phenomenon wholly to nothing but some attempt to copy America, is an extremely big and kind of presumptuous stretch, for me. (Not to mention there’s often a lot less “adoption” going on and a great deal more “importing the actual U.S.-produced physical product, because it costs less”.) Maybe for popular Y.A. American authors, they might -- it's far cheaper to “adopt” an existing design, after all, see parenthetical -- but I would hesitate very much to apply that reasoning in this particular case, when the U.S. cover actually features a red-headed white guy in an entirely different art style.

And it still bears noting that U.K. books, particularly in the genres in question, tend to start out more artsy and less photorealistic. (Sometimes they even have wholly different titles. It’s a different market — different things appeal.) I do indeed believe that with this particular book, this move to photorealism is an attempt to mimic the similar U.S. shift toward such trends

in Y.A.

, since these sorts of Y.A. covers have proven themselves more popular (for now) in the U.S. market. That’s business, especially when speaking in terms of specific titles, and it doesn’t always go in one direction either (see the U.S. habitually copying Japanese horror films, or remaking Britcoms, or the fact that we get any translated works here at all — they have to prove popularity at home first). But I'm still not seeing a shift to "Urban Lit" in this particular case, when this specific book by Brennan is not readily available (not without high shipping fees, or secondhand purchase, or knowing about Book Depository’s no-shipping-fees policy — basically, you have to seek this thing out) to the audience that would appreciate or buy Urban Lit.

Sophia McDougall’s (UK, not available in US) books got redesigned mid-series, just in time for the last book of the trilogy to arrive this summer — a much bigger redesign, with no art elements in common with the originals at all. Terry Prachett’s Discworld went through this several times, the UK versions shifting from something that resembled a Benny Hill chase scene to a woodcut-type design. Ian Rankin’s (UK, can’t really find it quite as readily in the US) mystery/crime series underwent a spontaneous size change in or around 2009. Over here, Kelly Armstrong’s latest Y.A. series went from a something with architecture on the front for the first novel to closeups of the lower half of a girl’s face for the second two, and moved from mass market to trade paperback. Octavia Butler’s books got reissued under several different covers; the Patternmaster series that I owned had similar cover designs but a font and paper texture change midway through (less gold-leaf). Then they all got re-released with photos on the covers. This happens with a large number of manga titles in the past few years (money matters, again, as “flipping” manga for Western ease of reading costs more). Ranma 1/2 got size switched (not an improvement, IMO; I stopped buying) without even the excuse of switching to right-to-left reading. Samuel Delany’s “Neveryon” series came out under a redesigned cover quite some years ago, and there has since been a push to re-realease a lot of his older works with covers that resemble those, particularly his literary and social theory. I'm looking at the spine text on Simon E. Green's "Nightside" series (US version) and his "Drood" series, lined up on my shelf, and there is a noticeable spine text shift, particularly on the seventh Nightside one. (I actually think the text shift is very unattractive.) This doesn't, however, say "rebranding" to me. Fans of Green can still read his name very clearly and locate the book, even when only placed spine-out on the shelves. Fans of Jim Butcher were similarly not much deterred when his books stopped looking this way and started looking like this, and then gained nearly an inch in height (and a dollar and change in price).

And if we haven’t seen this happening as much with people of color on the covers, surely we must take into consideration hat getting people of color onto the cover of “mainstream” books has been and still is still a big huge fight, so no, we

wouldn’t

have seen that happening as much, but that was BAD.

Redesigns take place primarily for economic reasons, and the direction those redesigns take come with all sorts of rationales, most of which lead back to “we want more money out of this.” (Unless it’s “We can’t afford to do this anymore, how can we cut corners.” Which is more or less the same thing.) All too often this rush to the cash leads to oversimplified, racist, and other socially problematic decisions, yes. But I am not, in this case, convinced that a British publisher would have any sane reason to cynically target what we know as the “Urban Lit” audience with a book meant for release in the U.K., nor am I convinced it would be a sound financial decision for them. It just doesn’t make any sense to me at all.

I am not willing to outright go: “They don’t have Urban Lit in the United Kingdom, or indeed outside the U.S. much,” but searching for “urban fiction” on Amazon.co.uk gives me this:

http://tinyurl.com/3gjp8oq

An “Urban Lit” search leads off with “urban fantasy/paranormal romance” titles and rounds off with books from America and books on city planning:

http://tinyurl.com/3nd54zn

Searching for “street fiction” gives me this:

http://tinyurl.com/4xf895g

And “street lit”:

http://tinyurl.com/3fvrer4

— again, the one fiction book on that page that fits the bill is an U.S. book. Not even a re-covered Brit version of a U.S. book — the U.S. version. (The major-player publishers of Urban Lit are a very rare thing -- independent publishers -- and they do not have international presence, as I said before. Which is cool, in its way— they haven’t been snapped up by conglomerates.)

And only searching for both together gives me some semblance of the very, extremely US-spawned and US-centric genre that we are speaking of.

The codes and tropes and shorthands are simply not identical. We are both part of the “Anglosphere,” and so the codes and tropes and shorthands are not fully foreign or impenetrable, but they are also not the same.

Now, what’s INSIDE the book is a different matter, and frankly I am filled with a great deal of trepidation about that. But I need to finish it first.

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Cammalot

at 17:17 on 2011-07-20Arrgh. Dropped two links.

Old Jim Butcher:

http://tinyurl.com/3fdjgmy

New Jim Butcher:

http://tinyurl.com/3wfp5sd

And for comparison, Brit Jim Butcher:

http://tinyurl.com/3clzw7s

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Cammalot

at 17:50 on 2011-07-20Completely irrelevant, but eye-catching:

http://www.amazon.fr/Furie-du-Curseur-Jim-Butcher/dp/2352944600/ref=pd_rhf_shvl_2

http://www.amazon.fr/Dossiers-Dresden-F%C3%A9e-dhiver/dp/2811203427/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311180535&sr=1-5

(none of these referrings I'm doing should be considered any particular endorsement, by the way)

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Cammalot

at 19:17 on 2011-07-20Last edit for a bit: "and then gained nearly an inch in height (and a dollar and change in price)." should be "nearly half an inch."

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Leia

at 06:31 on 2011-07-21

Saying that U.K. covers "tend" to adopt U.S. cover design, assigning this to an entire national industry, linking this phenomenon wholly to nothing but some attempt to copy America, is an extremely big and kind of presumptuous stretch, for me.

I said the times *I* have noticed... You clearly know more about this than I do. For the record, I'm not a, American or b, inclined to go witch-racist hunting for the fun of it. And maybe you didn't mean it but the tone of your responses is border-line implying that. Bottom line: I don't have a bone in this and I'm just going to bow out of this conversation right now.

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Wardog

at 09:57 on 2011-07-21I'm sure nobody intended to suggest that you were witch-hunting - I think we've just hit on a topic which overlaps with Cammalot's professional experience.

I hadn't given much thought to this at all, to be honest, so I actually found this discussion really interesting. I remember feeling broadly positive about the UK covers of Lexicon and Covenant - I liked the stylised, slightly impressionistic art style for the characters (better for Lexicon than Covenant, though, Nick was very characterful, whereas Mae just looked like a girl with funny coloured hair). But equally I can see why you might have wanted Sin to look more "realistic", otherwise you've got a cover with an artist's impression of a black girl on the front. I think in this instance UK did way better than US, since I believe the US got a pouting pretty boy against an orange explosion? I do think replicates the major features of the previous covers, though - even if the artwork has changed. However, I do agree with Cammalot that the covers have enough stylistic elements in common (positioning, text style, etc) to seem to be recognizably connected to me. I certainly didn't see any attempt to distance Surrender from the other two books, because it has a POC on the front, or to make it look like another "type" of book.

And for the record, I know bugger all about this, so I could be talking out of my arse.

They do not divide up their shelves of genres in stores in the same way; particularly, they haven't, in my experience, been separating out "'urban'-aka-'black'-books" from other types of fiction in the way our "African American interest" sections do, but integrate their authors of various colors onto shelves by topic and subject matter, not ethnicity.

I do most of my book shopping online these days, but I have never seen anything like this in a British bookshop. You occasionally get "hey, read these books about black people!" displays but as a general rule you just get fiction, sci/fi fantasy, comics, crime, classic fiction, romance if you're very lucky and that's about it. The two genre emergences I've seen in the last few years have been "dark fantasy" and "young adult" - and I remember how tiny-mind-blown Arthur was the first time he saw a dark fantasy section in a bookshop. This being so, I can't imagine "urban" taking off any time soon, with relation to either adult or young adult fiction. But, as I say, that's an impression constructed from a position of absolute ignorance.

I haven't read this either, by the way - I am curious though. But it suddenly stopped being available on Kindle. MYSTERY!

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Arthur B

at 10:21 on 2011-07-21I admit to not really going out of my way to look for any, but the only time I've seen an "urban" fiction book in a UK bookshop it's been a lonely novel by 50 Cent crammed into the Crime/Thrillers section.

Oh, and if I'm remembering right it was a US import. I guess they bought it in due to the name recognition or something.

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Cammalot

at 15:04 on 2011-07-21I was in fact trying to be quite careful about assuming anyone else’s nationality when I said

"For my own, personal self, I am very, extremely wary and distrustful of overextending/overattributing U.S. mindsets to people it has no reason to apply to. We do this all too often, us Americans (in all our ethnic variety), and it gives us an inaccurate and offensive understanding of other people. I am speaking for myself here, and not assuming U.S-ness in anyone else."

However, in retrospect, I guess I used some pretty nonstandard grammar and orthography in there. :-)

This topic does ping on... nearly every aspect of me, really: For the record, I am a combo of a few ethnicities of black American; both the U.S. and the U.K. have played large roles in my educational and professional life; and I've worked in publishing for most of my adult life, although I promise to stop that fairly soon; and I have a

serious problem

with Urban Lit. I am never sure how much I can express how very big and angry and depressing a beef I have with Urban Lit without impacting myself professionally, so I do try to keep it vague online. (But this is a fairly anonymous place, I think?)

And I can be a very longwinded pedant. I like to at least attempt to make sure my assertions are covered. I hope I’m not sounding too Minority Warrior. Can I even BE a Minority Warrior when talking about the UK??? :-)

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Sister Magpie

at 18:00 on 2011-07-21

I do think replicates the major features of the previous covers, though - even if the artwork has changed.

FWIW, I would probably be more likely to compare it to the second book in the US version, since that one has Sin on the cover. She's dancing in a ring of fire, iirc.

Oh, and if I'm remembering right it was a US import. I guess they bought it in due to the name recognition or something.

Do you mean this cover is an import? It's not. The UK has different covers than the US versions for all of them (the UK's are better imo)--and I don't think the UK is publishing them for name recognition. It's a first novel series in both markets published at the same time.

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Cammalot

at 18:17 on 2011-07-21I think Arthur meant his Fitty-Cent book was an import. :-)

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Arthur B

at 18:48 on 2011-07-21That's exactly what I was saying. :)

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Sister Magpie

at 20:24 on 2011-07-21Ah! Now that I read it again that's obviously what you were saying. I think I ran several posts together in my head!

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Leia

at 08:29 on 2011-07-22@Cammalot: Sorry for jumping to conclusions there. I think I was projecting a little: just out of a conversation with someone about how the casting of the Prince of Persia wasn't in the least bit racist, at all.. *le sigh*

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Cammalot

at 17:17 on 2011-07-22@Leia -- Not at all, and rereading my thing I just want to make clear that I

do

think your and Kat’s question is an important thing to think about and ask, and keep asking, even though I don’t think it applies here specifically. There are a host of underlying daily frustrations and problems with publishing as an industry. When I said things like “not logical” I was talking about hypothetical British top-editors and marketers, not you guys.

(Actually I’m making assumptions by saying your question was the same as Kat’s; please correct me if I’m wrong.)

I’m sorry you had to deal with such a ninny. My own feelings on PoP are convoluted, filled with caveats, and pretty tl;dr (this is probably not surprising, by now ;-D), but it’s pretty ridiculous not to concede that they could easily have been much more inclusive.

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Robinson L

at 18:02 on 2012-04-16Warning: extremely long and probably ramble-y comment.

In response to the article, I find it pretty amusing that what

I interpreted

as "cool and intense character development," you interpreted as "nothing happens until the final thirty pages."

I'm also amused that what I read as really sweet fraternal affection between Alan and Nick, you read as blatant slashing.

Dan Ryves' journal struck me as stupid and artificial at first, and I suppose it was mostly just a lot of padding. But I did warm up to it by the end.

I'm ashamed to say I sort of missed Alan's creepiness when I read the book. I might have missed his assholishness too, had Rees Brennan not explicitly pointed it out a few times, as discussed in my review.

By now, I've also read

The Demon's Surrender

, and I think what Rees Brennan did with the Alan/Sin romance was pretty interesting. Granted, there were things about it which bugged the crap out of me (about which more later), but all through the first two books, he's like this untouchable master manipulator who can deceive absolutely anybody. Whereas in the third book, we see that he has limits, and he's not able to deceive people whose life circumstances also require that they be skilled at manipulation. (In this case, the metaphor is that of a performance, because it's from Sin's viewpoint and she's a performer.) The implication to me being that the only way Alan will be able to have a happy functional relationship is if his romantic partner is someone who can see through his subterfuges. Which I think is pretty neat.

I'm pretty sure

Surrender

has a call-back to that creepy line of Alan's: "Of all the girls I ever saw I dreamed of you the most." I don't have the book to hand, but I'm almost certain in

Surrender

, Alan tells Sin that he never dreamed about her because she was too unobtainable. I wish I'd been paying more attention when I read that line, because now I think about it, depending on the context, it could have been a really creepy pedestal line.

I'm so relieved that you liked Mae, though, because I really, really liked her in

Covenant

.

with Jamie being passed about like the magical McGuffin he so clearly is

I find this interesting in light of the fact that he also reads to you like a self-insert character. I'm trying to figure out what to make of that dynamic.

Interesting analysis of the whole self-sacrifice motif – something else I failed to pick up on at the time.

Re: Annabel

Kat Sullivan: She reminds me of Spock's mother in the 2009 movie: she appears in the story just long enough for her to have a Meaningful Death for the benefit of her children's own story.

Yikes, I wouldn't go that far. I mean, the portrayal of Spock's mother is probably one of my biggest personal irritants from Star Trek|| because she was blatantly there for no reason other than to get stuffed into the fridge and further Spock's storyline. If you took that aspect of her out of the movie, she wouldn't have had any reason for existing in it.

Whereas Annabel, apart from being awesome, had her own nice little character arc, and played a part in other characters' story arcs which went beyond passively providing motivation. You could remove her death from the story and her presence in it would still have meaning and purpose. (To be honest, I didn't pick up on the whole fridging angle until I read this.)

And continuing the theme of Stuff Robinson totally didn't notice until someone pointed it out, the only person of color in the first two books (Sin) is exoticized and a dancer (though not an exotic dancer). And the "let's bring in a white girl to take over instead of her" aspect (ick). I didn't so much mind the "two women vying over leadership of the Market" scenario at the end of this book, but that was partially because I didn't realize what a large role it would play in

The Demon's Surrender

. (To be fair to Rees Brennan, it was significantly less terrible than it might've been, but it still wasn't pretty.)

Cammalot: I’m going to be a be anti-Barthian and resurrect The Author

I'm going out on a tangent to gush about how much I adore this wording; lovely. And only slightly more on-topic, I think in this post-TeXt Factor Season 2 world, citing the Author in this manner is entirely reasonable. (I'm thinking about how much people's perceptions of "The Host" were filtered by the knowledge that it was written by Stephenie Meyer).

Maybe it's better at this point to go bigger with it, especially for minor characters? It's unwieldy to say "The East Asian girl at the corner table," but it might just be what needs to be done.

Maybe so. Unfortunately, this

still

doesn't work if you're trying to write far-future or alternate world speculative fiction (like I am. Still haven't entirely figured out a solution yet).

and for a preternaturally emotionless guy, Nick seems to be emoting left and right. (Which for me raises an interesting question — how clueless can you honestly be about human emotions and still manage to always be bitingly quippy? Can you *be * humorous, on purpose, if you don’t have emotions?)

The part which always strains my suspension of disbelief is how, as a demon who finds human speech difficult, he's incapable of telling a lie, but is completely comfortable dishing out sarcasm. The characters even lampshade it in this book, but Rees Brennan never explains how it's supposed to work.

Kyra: I will second the recommendation of the Bartimaeus Trilogy - I LOVED those.

I'll throw in on this one, too; great trilogy. The more recent installment,

Solomon's Ring

is somewhat weaker, but still very enjoyable, and the title character at least is entertaining as ever.

Dan: The question is not "is Sarah Rees Brennan a racist" it's "are people of colour underrepresented in Sarah Rees Brennan's imaginary world"

Superbly articulated as usual.

Mary J: That, to me, was the driving tension of the plot - Jamie's struggle with his magic, and Mae's struggle to protect him from the magicians. And I found it interesting.

I think that's more-or-less how I related to it, too.

Jamie: Just caught up on this discussion. It was interesting! I have nothing to add to it! This comment may be pointless and excessively exclamatory!

Out of curiosity, were you

trying

to imitate the “Jamie” from the books there? If so: good job!

Cammalot: I can’t stand the US covers. Everyone looks stiff and mannequinlike, and Sin is whitewashed. And aged way up

I read

Covenant

with the US cover and I missed that there was an age-up, but I couldn't for the life of me tell if the character on the cover was supposed to by a whitewashed Sin or a Mae with undyed hair. Answer: whitewashed Sin. Figures.

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Kat S

at 12:08 on 2012-06-25

The whole thing is incredibly colonialist, and indeed functions as a miniature of the colonial narrative: Mae, the rich, white foreigner comes in and revolutionizes a native's land with "superior" organization and technology. But it's all for the better, and the "native" (in this case, Sin) admits that, and eventually comes to support the usurper.

This is an excerpt from a review that pretty much highlighted every issue that I have with this book. The way Sin was portrayed in contrast to Mae sickened me at every turn.

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Wardog

at 12:40 on 2012-06-25I have the third book sitting in my tbr pile and I keep looking at it and making this face:

:/

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http://melaniedavidson.livejournal.com/

at 21:26 on 2012-06-25

...I’ve found that I much prefer to *not* see people like me in the books of authors who might not be able to pull it off properly. I’m not keen on the idea of reading practice-run depictions of people like me in the works of authors who are just learning how. It’s upsetting, not entertaining, and it’s gotten more upsetting as I get older and more exposed to subtler types of fail.

I know this is old (but recently commented-on! Who else watches the recent activity page?), but I feel pretty much the same way. I know there are good arguments on the other side*, but for my personal enjoyment I would MUCH rather read, e.g., a story which "just happens"** not to have any women in it, than one which is horrible and faily with its female characters.

*Like the "token x" thing being in some sense a step forward from an implied "x's just don't fucking exist". I guess I see it as being that they both fail, but in different ways, and it's legitimate for someone to be bothered more by one way than the other. I was going to also say something about it possibly being, for some authors, a step towards

actually

writing non-faily depictions (if they're doing it in good faith, I mean) and that they won't get there if they don't ever try, even if the trying itself can be pretty bad--but you're right; their "practice runs" don't need to be public.

**That's a little sarcastic because I don't really mean that I honestly think it

actually

just sort of happens by pure coincidence that a story is like that, but you see what I mean, right? In-universe there could be a plausible reason or it could be sort of coincidential, like being explicitly set in a single-gender environment, or your example of just small groups of characters which wouldn't necessarily be representative.

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Cammalot

at 01:48 on 2012-06-26

And the "let's bring in a white girl to take over instead of her" aspect (ick). I didn't so much mind the "two women vying over leadership of the Market" scenario at the end of this book, but that was partially because I didn't realize what a large role it would play in The Demon's Surrender. (To be fair to Rees Brennan, it was significantly less terrible than it might've been, but it still wasn't pretty.)

Yeahhhhh... I did not like that at all. I did try to think well of it, as I liked much of what was done with the character beforehand (especially her mixed family, which is something I'm noticing a lot more in London now). But as the story veered more and more in that direction... It's like when you're used to driving on one side of the road, and you go off to a place where they drive on the opposite side, and you're sitting in what your lizard brain can't quite grasp is now the passenger's side, and you find yourself desperately trying to slam on the "brakes" to no avail...

I did NOT want it to go there. And then I hoped it might be going there in a different way... but no.

Also, thank you, Robinson.

@ Melanie -- yes! Ha ha -- this is why I try not to be too harsh on fanfiction. Practice does need to happen. (Of course, I also tend to avoid fanfiction -- some, not all -- so that might not be saying much, on my part.)

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Wardog

at 09:37 on 2012-06-26Hmm... I'm not sure but I think one of the, ah, 'problems' with fanfic is that is not, and should not be perceived, as 'practice' for 'real' writing (sorry for all the scare quotes). I think it's an entirely different entity, written in a different way, with a different purpose, for a different audience. I tend to get a lizard brain effect when I'm reading published books by authors who are influential in (and influenced by) fandom - it's rather like tea from the nutrimatic machine, y'know, almost but completely unlike a book. To be fair to SRB she's made the transition better than others I've experienced (peers at Cassie Clare).

Also I'm not sure if fandom could be sensibly relied upon to be a sensible practice audience - in the post you linked to, there's a response from SRB in which she basically criticises fandom for only being interested in straight (?) white boys.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure it is possible to practice run at these things. I mean if you 'practice' on yourself and your friends you'll just confirm your own prejudices and sit around congratulation yourself on your splendid portrayal of somebody who is not you.

On the other hand, published and be damned and upsetting a bunch of people doesn't seem a legitimate way forward either...

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 10:19 on 2012-06-26The only thing I can imagine fanfic being good "practice" for might be some technical issue like writing reasonable-sounding dialogue for an established character or setting up a scene. If the tv-writing business were less impenetrable, a lot of fic writers would probably do much better as guest writers on long-running series than they would as novelists.

As far as creating original characters or coming up with plots that haven't been done to death, I think fanfic-writing probably does more harm than good. I think another of Rowling's many crimes is making hackery look easier than it is.

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Wardog

at 10:25 on 2012-06-26Yes! Hackery is a fine old art and should be treated with the respect it deserves! (and I mean that seriously).

Sorry to randomly bring up an old article written by me (!) but I remember trying to read

City of Bones

and being struck by how ... oddly it was constructed. I probably articulated it in a way that would enrage all fanfic writers everywhere but I found even the technicalities of it (the way characterisation worked, the dialogue) noticeably different from original fiction.

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Arthur B

at 10:48 on 2012-06-26Genuine question: could there be a publisher-side role in helping writers get the sort of practice we're talking about without necessarily unleashing harmfully offensive texts on the public? I mean, commercial publication via a publisher is more or less the only place where writers are obliged to hold to any standard other than their own whim; self-publishing and fanfic doesn't really have any filters that an author couldn't bypass when it comes to getting a text to market. If editors took it on themselves to say things like "Are you sure your portrayal of this character isn't problematic for X reasons?" alongside points like "This looks like a typo but I'm not sure what you intended with it" and "Hang on, isn't this a continuity error?" then at least

someone

is flagging areas for improvement before a text is finalised.

Then again, that'd rely on the editors themselves being clued-in sorts who by and large "get it", and the publishers being willing to hold a book back until the author gets it right. And we live in a world where publishers are willing to put out

The Straight Razor Cure

so clearly offensive handling of race isn't enough of a commercial liability to put them off provided that there's a genre audience that's willing to accept it.

So basically bad authorial habits + fandom of enablers = more fail to come. :(

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Sister Magpie

at 15:39 on 2012-06-26It's an interesting question, though isn't it, exactly how bad it is to recognize fanfic styles in an original work? Is it just jarring or actually bad? I mean, the CoB article imo does a great job in pointing out the ways it can be a problem (and I didn't take it as insulting to fanfic, but that's me), but otoh there's probably a lot of things in fanfic that aren't bad when done in original work because people enjoy them in fanfic and will also enjoy them in original fic.

Like the post above, I do think fanfic can be helpful in improving some things--any writing can be good practice. It's just that there are other things it's not going to teach you how to do, and it can also give you bad habits. At least some of the fanfic writers who have gone pro were *very* popular writing fanfic, and while there are a lot of dismissive reasons for why they were popular (right pairings, right friends etc.), I think part of it was that they were often doing things that a lot of fanficcers lack or ignore.

That is, just as one can read a novel and recognize a fanfic style, one can also be reading a fanfic and realize hold on, this person's actually writing fic like an original work, which can be great. Rare, but great.

I'm not even sure that fanfic is always a good starting point for writing for a series, actually. I've never really written much fanfic (I've done Yuletide twice now, but since that's a fest for small fandoms and a couple of the stories I did wouldn't even qualify as fanfic because of the source material), but I've done tie-in novels and I think they rely much more on the standard "pro-fic" model rather than fanfic. Not that one can't crossover--as at least some Star Trek fic authors did, of course. I don't make the distinction that notorious anti-fanfic author Lee Goldberg does b/w tie-ins and fanfic but most fanfic couldn't be a tie-in novel any more than it could be an original novel. When I read the Sarah Monette books they also seemed very heavily influenced by fanfic to me, yet I don't think she's ever written any. (She does read it, though, so it could still be there.)

Basically I'm just wondering about whether fanfic is fundamentally different from any other type of writing that can influence an author. Like, I've noticed that I'll pick up habits from different writing jobs. The magazine that I work for has a very specific style (a fiction style, that is) that I have to remind myself isn't the law.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 15:52 on 2012-06-26

Sorry to randomly bring up an old article written by me (!) but I remember trying to read City of Bones and being struck by how ... oddly it was constructed.

Yeah, I was actually thinking of that article. Like you said there, that stupid scene with the boy at the piano would have worked if he had been Draco Malfoy. If you have a reasonable idea of who a character is, or at least the fanon version of him, you can put words in his mouth and make him do things that feel authentic. That's why I think the skills used in fanfic would actually transfer to writing for established tv shows in a way that they absolutely don't transfer to writing novels. It's not that fanfic makes you better at writing original fiction, it's that it makes you better at writing fanfic.

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 16:00 on 2012-06-26

I've done tie-in novels and I think they rely much more on the standard "pro-fic" model rather than fanfic.

I didn't know that, but that makes sense too. I'm thinking of the few really good tv-based fics I've read where the dialogue sounds like it could have been on the show itself, and I wonder why this person isn't writing for the show. But of course there are other issues involved in tv writing that I don't know anything about.

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Sister Magpie

at 16:11 on 2012-06-26

If you have a reasonable idea of who a character is, or at least the fanon version of him, you can put words in his mouth and make him do things that feel authentic.

Within reason. Because let's not forget that OOC! is a common criticism of fanfic. The Draco Malfoy discovered playing piano is, after all, often referred to as fanon!Draco for a reason. The key is to sit the sweet spot where you're revealing something new about the character that deepens them and feels authentic but also doesn't feel like shifting the gravity of the piece to revolve around how deep they are, or make the audience feel like you're just fangirling that character, which has certainly been known to happen too. If you start doing that you might get the same "it's like fanfic" criticism.

The CoB example, for instance, really brings up the conundrum. The reveal of the piano scene lacks something because it's not actually Draco. But was Draco in HP lacking something because he had no "piano scenes?" (He did have something close to one in the bathroom in HBP, but compared to the fanfic version that scene's cut brutally short and the emotional fallout immediately smothered. I admit I did find the canon version unsatisfying because it didn't follow through emotionally, but a full-out fanfic version would undoubtedly be out of place even without the porn!)

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http://fishinginthemud.livejournal.com/

at 16:48 on 2012-06-26Yeah, the piano scene fits Draco because it calls up the popular conception that he has a lonely inner life and a genuine but somewhat strained connection to his family and his upbringing. I think the suicide mission of HBP fulfills essentially the same purpose. At this point it's arguably moot what anyone thinks is in character for anyone in HP, but back in the day I found fanon!Draco a reasonable interpretation of the character, mostly because there was so little to him that pretty much anything would have fit.

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Cammalot

at 18:53 on 2012-06-26Kyra, I think I really, really need you to read book three. I find myself craving an article on it. :-)

in the post you linked to, there's a response from SRB

Please pardon my dumb -- can you point me to this? I've scrolled through several times and can't find this link.

My opinions on fanfic are complicated and changeable, and affected by the fact that I haven't been involved in it since about 1999, which was a bit pre-Livejournal and pre-Google and was indeed a time when you wrote the fic predominantly for your friends of like mind in "webcircles," and there was, for the longest, just one guy out there called "Minotaur" (now sadly deceased) who had a website "workshop" to teach people (mostly straight girls) how to write (gay) sex. It was not an enlightened time.

I agree that fanfic writing and fiction writing/novel writing are two different things and require significantly different skill sets. (The fanfiction skill set might overlap more with comic-book or television writing. Not necessarily with tie-in novels, as there's often a great deal of backstory creation and filling in internal-thoughtstream and motivational blanks going on there.) And proficiency at one doesn't mean proficiency at the other.

But it also looks to me, from the periphery, that in the fanfiction world of today, especially since the advent of more community-based (and less Geocities-esque) Livejournal-type sites and large fic archive-type places, there is a wider audience for it, more opportunity for feedback from people who don't know you, and more opportunities for education archived in the Wank blogs and fan history wikis and the various "Sue" and other critique (and snark) communities -- especially post Racefail.

So I'm thinking somewhat selfishly that if people are going to screw up, it might be best for them to do it there, under a pseudonym, in a place where I can comfort myself post-rage by saying, "Well, it's an amateur and at least they are not getting paid for this," or more likely, where I can avoid it entirely.

Also I'm not sure if fandom could be sensibly relied upon to be a sensible practice audience -- in the post you linked to, there's a response from SRB in which she basically criticises fandom for only being interested in straight (?) white boys.

I've read far too much critique of poor handling of characters of color in fiction to believe that fandom is [em]only[/em] interested in white boys. People are producing these versions of characters that are getting critiques. Overall, fandom might be [em]predominantly[/em] interested in straight white boys, but that is also true of the world at large (see the debacle over Rue in the Hunger Games). I feel like there is a growing movement to be inclusive and to get it right. Possibly not as large or as fast-growing as it could be. And there are still areas that need a lot more work having awareness raised than others -- awareness of racism far outstrips awareness of ablism, and acceptance of gayness is more prevalent and even more understood than issues of gender fluidity -- but [disclosure] I was born in the early 70s, so a lot of the progress I see around me looks HUGE.

So it might not be the best practice for excellent novel-writing skills, but overall, if done in public, I think it is at least starter practice for not pissing people off by being socially insensitive.

Tangentially, I saw a huge billboard covering the side of a bus for Cassie Claire's "Angel" series two days ago. I felt very resigned.

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Cammalot

at 19:12 on 2012-06-26(Correction -- not pre Google, but it was very new, and I hadn't heard of it when I sort of petered out of fandom. It was all "search.com.")

Oh, and I've got typos in my html. Darn...

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http://melaniedavidson.livejournal.com/

at 20:11 on 2012-06-26

Genuine question: could there be a publisher-side role in helping writers get the sort of practice we're talking about without necessarily unleashing harmfully offensive texts on the public?

That is more or less what I was thinking of when I said it didn't need to be public, actually--it is at least the publisher's/editor's job to make sure the book is up to standards and ready to be published (as opposed to it

not

being the job of all [insert group here] everywhere to have to educate authors about how not to fail miserably when writing about [insert group here]). But that's thinking ideally (well, sort of ideally--

ideally

the problem wouldn't exist!) and the practical problems are as you said.

But it also looks to me, from the periphery, that in the fanfiction world of today, especially since the advent of more community-based (and less Geocities-esque) Livejournal-type sites and large fic archive-type places, there is a wider audience for it, more opportunity for feedback from people who don't know you, and more opportunities for education archived in the Wank blogs and fan history wikis and the various "Sue" and other critique (and snark) communities -- especially post Racefail.

Yeah, it does seem that with fanfic there is a bit less distance between author and audience and possibly therefore a better chance that they will actually see that type of criticism (because it's more likely to be in the same actual community they're part of), either about their own work or about someone else's (as sometimes you see something someone

else

has done criticized and go, "oh shit, I've done that, too, time to stop").

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Cammalot

at 20:29 on 2012-06-26

Genuine question: could there be a publisher-side role in helping writers get the sort of practice we're talking about without necessarily unleashing harmfully offensive texts on the public?

I wonder about this a great deal.

On one hand, yes, they should. On the other, A) the primary goal of publishing corporations (maybe not academic presses, but they're included, to an extent) is to make money -- to find the hit that will appeal to large numbers of people and make the cash so they can stay in business, and B) the publishing industry seem to be very homogenous, to me -- a lot of the individual editors mean *very* well but might not *know* what they're looking for in order to correct it. I spent more of my time in magazines than in books, and so I'm sure my viewpoint is limited in that way, but I have also spent time as the Only Black in the Village attempting damage control at relatively late stages in the production process pointing out things that simply did not occur to my white colleagues. Also C) the people who are doing the hands-on selection of books aren't the corporate bigwigs who actually make the decisions that stick.

I have to sort that out in my head some more.

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Cammalot

at 20:46 on 2012-06-26(I forgot to disclaim I'm talking about the U.S., and the east coast U.S., for that matter.)

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Robinson L

at 22:02 on 2012-06-26You're welcome, Cammalot; I greatly appreciate getting your viewpoint on the issues on this thread.

Cammalot: Kyra, I think I really, really need you to read book three. I find myself craving an article on it. :-)

I'd like that, too. I've read

The Demon's Surrender

and I'd really like to see - and take part in - a discussion about it. I don't feel motivated to write a review myself (although I suppose I'm somewhat open to being badgered into it).

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Cammalot

at 02:38 on 2012-06-27*puppy eyes at Kyra*

I've read far too much critique of poor handling of characters of color in fiction to believe that fandom is [em]only[/em] interested in white boys. People are producing these versions of characters that are getting critiques.

CRIKEY. That was supposed to be "critique of poor handling of characters of color in "FANfiction." You know, I truly did do a preview...my screen is small... my dog ate my keyboard...