#DH adjacent

[akkivee]

they updated what activities are happening in that official hypmic festival, hypnosis flava 2, and they’re so funny lmao

round one’s going to have

🔴: the best bukuro curry party!!!!!- you have to guide the stick thru the curry png without touching the edges

⚪️: shinjuku’s fishing pond- *doppo voice* FISHING

🟠: rollin in takoyaki!!- a roulette wheel but instead of using small metal balls, you’re rolling takoyaki

and round two is going to have

🔵: hama’s so serious shooting game- your mission, should you choose to accept, is to shoot the target

🟡: doki doki⭐️ darts!!!- a dart game!!!

🟣: hella concentration!!!- clear your thoughts and hit the buzzer at exactly 10 seconds!!!!

[toorumlk]

Hi I'm so freaking obsessed with your twitter.

Also what's your favorite Romione moment in the books and why?

ohohoho thank you, friend, i’m quite proud of some of the stuff i’ve posted on there B)

and as for my favourite romione moment in the books, when i read the question i first blanked out for a couple minutes, thinking of a bunch of smaller, sillier scenes. but then i remembered that i do have a favourite and it’s from chapter 11 of DH, when remus visited the trio at grimmauld place and filled them in on he goings on of the war -including the implementation of the muggle-born registry. ron’s response upon hearing this (after his immediate outrage) was

and it’s not just the hand holding and the “‘you won’t have a choice’ said Ron fiercely” that played out so vividly in my head like this:

but this scene demonstrates so perfectly the political weight of this pairing (muggleborn/blood traitor) which i think is the immovable narrative foundation of romione. all of their silly moments and idiosyncrasies aside, there is genuine narrative purpose behind this love. ron has always had an astute understanding of the blood supremacist politics of the wizarding world (need i remind that he was ready to curse shitco at the ripe age of 12 for calling hermione the in-universe slur) and just how wrong it is. ron is a pure-blood wizard and by design has so much privilege in this society bc of it, but by virtue of having parents like arthur and molly, he’s grown up knowing the importance of fighting against blood supremacist ideology. always.

so, after hearing about the completely horrifying muggleborn registry ("People won't let this happen," said Ron. "It is happening, Ron," said Lupin.), he immediately turns to his muggleborn best friend and love of his life and says “i’m making you a family member, i’m going to use the protection my family-name has and use it to protect you from the awful injustice of our situation, no you won’t have a choice but to let me help you”

i remember having such a… visceral reaction while reading this scene like holy shit .. these kids, THESE KIDS!!!!! this is the bone-marrow-deep love that makes me feel insane. this dynamic of the blood traitor/muggleborn always there, from CoS all the way to the epilogue. We get to see that romione is the story’s pure blood/muggleborn that finally made it (rip jily and tedromeda :(). we see it in hermione keeping her muggle last name after they get married (oh my god these two actually got married) and we also see it in the hyphenated Granger-Weasley (granger being first!) in their kids’ last names (oh my gof these two had TWO kids). they are a true symbol of change and progress in their world.

also this is one of those moments where i’m so glad that our only window to romiones relationship development is through harry’s narration because it so brilliantly shows the readers this blossoming love story instead of just telling us about it because harry obviously doesn’t have access to the inner thoughts of his two best friends, he can only witness them fall deeper in love. showing the audience acts of love is always more powerful and my god is this an act of showing your love to your beloved.

(and not to go on an unrelated tangent, but this is exactly why i could never ship my girl hermione w any DE or DE-adjacent character. no fucking way. not when the concept of a muggle-born registry exists in this universe, not when the antagonists in this story wish to eradicate people like her from their society. idk about the rest of y’all but im going to keep taking the narrative seriously bc the worldbuilding obviously has real world ties/implications and i like engaging with the canon. tangently to the tangent, i saw someone (a ron basher) on twitter say that ron, OUR RON FROM THE ABOVE EXCERPT, was “one bad day away from becoming a death eater” ohhhh ohhh i ought to beat you with sticks bc HUH? this is the same kid who said he would’ve boarded the train back to kings cross if he got sorted to slytherin, the house notorious for birthing DEs, at the tender age of 11)

anyways, all this to say is that romione is incredibly, realistically, materially romantic and i love them and i love their love <3

[1969chevycamaro]

Ok, I got inspired to make a stupid poll. Choose one of these superpowers with drawbacks that are rules-lawyerable and exploitable.

1. Cabin teleportation. You can teleport to any cabin in the world with a one-minute cooldown.

2. Midas touch. Everything your forearms and hands touch turns to gold, except for trash and waste.

3. Invisibility. No-one can see, hear, or touch you. You still can interact with the world.

4. Know all languages. You can write and speak in any language with perfect grammer, but you have no clue what the words mean.

5. Immortality. You are Immortal as long as the world has under 50% of the mosquitos it had when you gained the power. If it goes above 50%, you have 10 years left to live unless you get it back under 50%.

6. Super speed. You can run at mach 3.5, but your brain still processes information at normal speed. (Look to the insect world for a solution)

7. Perfect accuracy. You have perfect aim, unless you are using a firearm-adjacent or slingshot-adjacent weapon.

8. Mind reading. You can read minds, but only of those who don't speak your native language.

I'm curious to see the ways these will be rules-lawyered

@sky-is-purple-because-i-said-so @so-no-headpats @2006-chevytahoe @dh-ng @trashsouppossum @jacktheeldergod2 @i-like-swiss-cheese @transasfuck30 @bananapudding752 @i-love-dopamine @ibuildblasters @lesbianseaweed @nerdybluehairandpronouns @acebutnotthehardwareplace @parsley-and-lesbianism @friendly-neighborhood-gambler @mintbecrazy @maryland-officially

[maryellencarter]

Andy Serkis, of course, as *the* expert in motion-capture acting ever since he first played Gollum 20+ years ago, is a shapeshifter in ways beyond even most character actors to achieve.

He's also a high-level shapeshifter by normal character actor methods -- when I saw him in Black Panther (I think possibly the only place I've seen him wearing his own face, me not being a great moviegoer at the best of times), there was only one brief moment where an expression that reminded me of Gollum flickered through.

Recently, it turned out that a free trial of Amazon Prime which I happened to have running could be converted into a second free book credit on Audible if I should take a free trial there. I've been curious for some time about the 2021 audiobook of LOTR performed by Andy Serkis, and while trying to get my sleep schedule right way up for job-hunting purposes, I've been working on listening to his Fellowship of the Ring. (I've just reached Moria.)

It's a straight-up audiobook, not a play, by the technical definition: one performer, no music or added special effects. But *damn*, you want to talk about shapeshifting? Serkis does startlingly accurate impressions of every actor in the Peter Jackson movies, plus unique voices for characters with no movie casting, and he sings the songs that are described as having tunes.

(I don't have the ear to tell whether he's using new compositions or some kind of traditional tunes, except that I can say for certain he doesn't use Tolkien's rendition of "A fox went out on a winter's night" for Sam's "Troll Song". If anyone with a better ear than mine happens to investigate, I'd be delighted to know what's discovered.)

His narratorial voice isn't 100% Jirt, which is a Choice, but one I honestly support. The Professor had a thick Old English accent which would probably be a chore to listen to or perform for 60+ hours of total audiobook length. Serkis seems to be using something close to his natural Middlesex accent for the narration, as far as I can tell, but there are enough of the familiar Tolkienian twists (like using the "o" sound from the word "tossed" in "shone" and "wroth") that I'm favorably impressed so far.

His Elvish pronunciation isn't perfect, but it's solidly movie-quality (positive); you'd likely have to be me, with a quarter-century and counting of Sindarin as a second language, to snag on the tiny things I'm snagging on, stuff like the Finnish-style double-length "m" in Remmirath or the "eth" sound represented by the "dh" in Caradhras. (There is properly no D sound in Caradhras; the middle consonant sound should be that of the "th" in "these clothes", but I've never actually heard anyone besides myself say it that way.) He gets a lot of the tricky sounds correct, better than I do when I'm being sloppy, like the long-i-adjacent diphthong in Edain or the broad second A in Gandalf.

Also, the unique voices and the vocal effects he brings in for certain scenes are just... I don't even have words. The Barrow-Wight is as terrifying as it was when I was ten. Tom Bombadil sings about 95% of his dialogue, which I've never imagined any performance acknowledging unless it were the hypothetical LOTR opera I suggest every so often, but goddamn if he doesn't somehow make it work. For the movie-cast voices, he flips so smoothly between the mishmash of accents that I keep forgetting I'm not actually listening to a full-cast play with Billy Boyd's chirpy Glaswegian, Sean Bean's gruff Yorkshire, and Sean Astin's earnest put-on West Country all complete.

As for the lowest bar, the reason I refuse to recommend Rob Inglis's older unabridged audiobooks as an entry point -- Inglis regularly inserts contractions that aren't in the original text, turning the formal tone of scenes where "cannot" and "will not" are important signifiers into something incongruously conversational. I do not forgive that kind of alteration in a text where the formality level, and the changes between levels, are such an incredibly fundamental part of what's being conveyed. Serkis has already successfully cleared one dialogue point where it would have been easy to change "can not" to "can't" (Pippin talking nearly as fast as hobbitly possible), and I'm very optimistic that he'll continue to hit those marks.

Wow, that got longer than I expected, but I'm *really* enjoying this rendition. Unless it majorly blows up in my face somehow, I fully expect to have a new go-to recommendation for How To Experience LOTR for people who can't get through it by reading the text. (And even for people who can. I've said on many occasions, that book is written to be read aloud.)

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

Did you know you can do admech however you want?

Its true!

Some are weird centipede adjacent (Cawl)

Some look like dreadnoughts (Magos Prime)

Wings? Go for it, wing style jump packs exist both in DH and now on table top

Claws? Again those funky skitarii

The flesh is weak. The flesh is also boring. Go nuts. Make some fucked up cyborgs. You don't even need to give them deep motivation beyond "you know what would be neat?"

And, after all, there was the Horse Inquisitor. Nothing the admech do to themselves can be as weird as the Horse Inquisitor (Golesh Constantine Pheppos Heldane)

I interpreted the first line of this ask in a whole other direction. Anyway.

I agree, we need more weird and zany techpriest bodies. You know how esoteric and specific PC builders can get at their upper echelons? AdMech are basically that vibe distilled and splashed across the pages of a religious text. More cool ones, more creepy ones. We need… biblically accurate AdMech.

[juniperpyre]

A terrorist- ‘A person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.’

Death eaters cannot be named as civilians as they were certainly part of a armed force.

However the death eaters were using violence (which was unlawful, at-least when the government was not under Voldemort’s indirect control, and even then technically so) against civilians, ordinary citizens and muggles alike.

this is in reference to this post.

we don’t use dictionary definitions as the source of truth for complex words on my blog. that being said, the definition you provide says “especially against civilians”. for your argument to work it would need to say “exclusively against civilians”

in my post tag i say "#i don't use the word terrorist i think it's always propagandizing". i, and many others with anti-authoritarian beliefs, argue that terrorist is a word to dehumanize certain groups of people through creating an emotional reaction. the word terrorist implicitly identifies the violence as unacceptable.

who decides what violence is acceptable? the state. i don’t trust the state, so their opinions on what violence is acceptable only point me in the directions of their allies and enemies.

plus we know harry, ron, hermione were essentially being treated as terrorists in DH, so we know the text itself is aware that the government uses it's authority to dictate which violence is acceptable.

terrorist is a charge. you can be convicted of terrorism, in addition to the direct crime, murder, property damage, mass murder, etc. it is an explicitly political term used to further condemn certain acts of violence.

one can say, well, [insert country] is a terrorist state. cool cool. i’m not a fan of using the language of the oppressive authorities to create a legitimate opposition. an argument that seriously uses the word terrorist is cosigning the manipulative emotional rhetoric for which the word was created. the word terrorist is a tool of silencing. it invokes evil, monstrous acts and leaves no room for inspection of the event, bc then you're trying to justify terrorism.

it’s dehumanizing, and i’m not really interested in dehumanizing anyone. plus, it’s basically the adult version of “i’m rubber, you’re glue” which is pathetic.

i’m not arguing that the order are a morally incorrect organization. as @/hsvh-hp said, they break into government buildings. they also illegally stake out government buildings. they target upstanding members of society, like the malfoys. and most importantly, they use violence in opposition to government aims. as they should. these are all acts of rebellion against the government.

also, i'd reiterate some of these points about the word civilian. civilians are also designated by the government, and while i think it's meaningful to distinguish between killing combatants and non-combatants, it's important to remember your status as a non-combatant can be removed for political purposes. the USA does this to justify killing the people adjacent to enemies, to point blank bomb random fucking people, to kill people in their beds, etc

so yeah! tl;dr the word terrorist is a tool of propaganda and i'm uninterested in using it as a serious designator of acceptable/unacceptable violence. a terrorist is someone who uses violence in a way the state doesn't like.

[padfootastic]

This sainthood of Lily is a bit funny, because Lily was out here making excuses for her best friend’s blood purity for legit years, she had to repeatedly make excuses for him to her other friends and she admits this in DH. It’s actually more interesting to think about that side of her, the side that refuses to let go of a loved one and won’t accept what they’ve become until she quite literally has no choice but to do so.

no but this is what im saying!!! saint lily, mix of hermione and molly weasley, is so funny but also so boring to me like,,,

i dont think lily was ever opposed to james in swm because of the macro 'bullying innocents' aspect. i think it was a problem only bc he targeted snape (and thats an imp distinction for me) bc we know, from her later conversations, that she was friends with snape knowing his friends (and him, presumably) tortured/bothered innocent muggleborns and didn't really do anything until it came to her. she gives off more of the ~privileged minority vibes than ~social justice warrior to me, tbh. and it's interesting--because not making her a paragon of morality is so much more fascinating to me.

like, lily as a cutthroat, slytherin-adjacent muggleborn who's doing all she can to not just survive, but thrive.

[annabtg]

what is your unpublished wc?

Hi, Anon!

Nom De Plume is currently at 37.4k. The As If By Magic sequel is almost 11k. The Tournament is 14.6k but probably needs a lot of trimming. The Long Game (aka the angsty Sirius/Lily first war AU) is 5.7k. The Unnamed Double Date Fic is 4.1k. I've got 5.8k on some The Great James Potter adjacent stuff that I would like to turn into an alternate version of it, about 3k in various little oneshots, and around 20k of buffer in Through Times Of War (my pre-DH version of DH, sequel to The Journey of the Phoenix, of which I'd published 50k before drifting away from fandom).

So, discounting any other WIPs that predate my return to the fandom and I don't think likely to go back to, that's a total of 101.6k words.

Thanks for your interest! ❤️

[amphiptere-art]

Hi I'm Amphithere_Art and I love drawing. I'm using this website as motivation to improve my skills.

Asks are open

A link to the discord

Current hyperfiction. The sun and moon show. Below is either things I'll be updating constantly or stuff I look at constantly.

Warning, I am not afraid to swear.

Important refs- RBB, CC, EC, ITTBAG, offshoot references, DH, SMOA, Crimble, SSC, LL, BM, sundown, CE, Ralph, arcade, etc

Everybody's height chart

Everybody's pronouns

Big list of characters/worlds

Here is a link to all my stories, events, and info posts

Crossover Canon

Nicknames

Size chart

Sticks and stones

Magic system

The locked door lore

Dragon culture and history

Demons and fae

Just for convenience more convenience

Doodle ideas

My dumping ground here @amphiptereartdump

↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ All my AUs below ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

—————————————————

Lore/story au's

Most of these are heavy in story. Asks concerning the story will be more received. And will be drawn with story in mind. (Might receive written stories)

mechanical medic AU-Ralph the repair dragon works as a moving parts and service. But is haunted by 3 fragmented souls of mechanics that died in the Plex. Sun n Moon struggle to get the medical mechanic animatronic to leave them alone.

Rusty wheels-a apocalypse au were a nanite Afton virus infects the world. It's cyberpunk with a rustic feel. Y/N has a big truck sized motorcycle thing and finds sun n moon. And drags them in their attempts of adventure and survival.

Warehouse AU-after the fire story were the dca, Freddy, DJ, foxy and Bonnie are moved to a big werehouse (owned by a y/n) is modified into a mini Plex (honestly more like a side road arcade that's bigger). And the dca has to relearn how to function with the band.

purrfect thief-you are a shape-shifting cat. You work with The gang Lord Eclipse but live as a house cat with the detectives Sun and Moon. You are an informant with the spiders web. A info company owned by DJ. Life has been simple and happy. But on the horizon a pack of dogs is ready to ruin that simple life.

saving waves-a sun n moon mer story. Were sun n moon were once in our lab/mer fighting facility. They are saved by a rehab facility and have to learn how to be normal Mer again. Also following the other side of the family. Who are trying to get pesky humans to stay out of their wild waters.

-------------------------------------------------------

Ask based au's

These aus are very open to ask. Most of them have no more than a basic story. They will be drawn more frequently with asks.

red, blue, and black-a SAMS AU where suns kill code merge with him and Moon is attempts to control his kill code makes two AI but fails. computer takes over and creates eclipse with those two AI. Eclipse then has to figure out how to keep his family together.

Cryptid eater-a Sun and Moon are Hunters story but you are a creature that eats vampires and werewolves and things like such. And the story takes place with you trying to convince them that you're on their side.

warehouse daycare-a version of the warehouse AU where it's only sun n moon. The werehouse is smaller and they grow a closer relationship with y/n and a emotional support cat.

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Art doodle au's

These a use are mostly created out of the will to draw something fun.

Stop you silly siren-suns a tired Pirate. moons a silly siren. Eclipse is an angry sea captain. Popped in my head. want to see were it leads.

Star foolery-basic place for me to draw the dca in different situations. no major story but has lore. does occur during after and before in dca history

Creature dca-a random look for sun n moon. Has flip floped between being and basic non animatronic form to fey creatures that deal with changelings and guardian God entities.

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Story's ive had since childhood.

Most of these stories occur in the same or adjacent universe and are more likely to get to to get drawn due to my familiarity with it.

Shadow wars-Major wars that occurred in the history of dragons. Particularly wars of Shadow dragons versus light dragons. split up into four.

Outsting of the dark(Shadow dragons being misjudged and cast out),

shadons terror(an evil emperor of Shadow dragons taking revenge only to be beaten by family),

falling twins(a family split by different ideals),

the hybrid(a hybrid child that finally solves the war).

chains-The comic series I started as a kid about a wolf and his companions as they travel. Split into three.

The fallen stars(how chains fell out with his best friend),

fleeing revenge(chains fleeing his old friend now enemy),

God war(chains son and others get in a great war over religion and power).

dreamers musing-various stories that take place on "the a locked door". Occurring from dragons, Kings, knights, dinosaurs, animals. anything that comes to mind that uses the same gods.

moss and car-car -a old spinosaurus and a baby Carcharodontosaurus meet up together and decide to live alongside each other. The Old spinosaurus trying to care for a youngster that is not his kind. And the Young therapod running around trying to figure out how to dinosaur correctly. Shenanigans issue.

[inmyownlittlecorner5]

tell us about Kairos in Retrograde!

Oh boy!

So, Kairos in Retrograde is Part 3 of my canon adjacent Snape/OC saga. At this point in the story, we're in the Deathly Hallows section of the timeline, so everything is a mess and all dark and twisty. The OC is Miranda Rose, an American Muggleborn (or No-Maj born as she would say) witch, who works as a magical bounty hunter. She and Sev met in the summer between GoF and OotP, and had an on again-off again relationship until the end of OotP when they were pretty well on for good. She is an honorary member of the Order of the Phoenix (not official b/c of MACUSA stuff) and is currently acting as an Auror to help with the Ministry's Auror shortage. By the end of the HBP timeline, Miranda and Severus were about to get married. Unfortunately, the Death Eater attack on Hogwarts and Albus's murder got in the way of that.

While Miranda was very aware of Severus's being a spy/double agent, Severus neglected to tell her about how he was going to be offing Albus. So now she doesn't know what to think. Like, she still loves him and hopes that he's somehow on the right side of things, but it's hard to keep believing that when there's all this evidence to the contrary.

Things are made all the worse as Kairos opens, because neither she nor Severus can openly approach the other to explain anything. Severus is wanted by both the Ministry and the Order; and while Remus and Minerva vouched for Miranda's being innocent of any of Severus's crimes, not everyone trusts that she is innocent, so she can't really step out of line.

I'm excited/intimidated to dig into this book, because I think that the DH timeline has the biggest of all missing moments: what happened at Hogwarts while Harry and CO. were busy camping? And I'm also working in a Bigger Bad that will be the main villain when I get to the fourth and final installment of the saga: The Quick and the Dead.

Thank you so much for this ask!!!

[s2z]

Moreland, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 2023-04-22 15:21:43 by stuart murdoch Via Flickr: Moreland train station has been upgraded recently as part of the Level crossings removal project. And of course contemporary art is often commissioned for each project. Transformer, created by Louise Paramor, pays homage to its urban surroundings – the historic Union Knitting Mills and the Hoffman Brickworks in Moreland. While suggestive of actual industry the work is playful an mysterious, hinting at a science fiction fantasy. Transformer’s colours are those of energy itself, orange and yellow, evoking the origins of life, as well as heat and potential.The overall skyward thrust of the piece inspires feelings of buoyancy and optimism. The work also references everyday objects, a choice inspired by the objects that members of the local community have placed along the Upfield Bike Path, in an attempt to humanise the surroundings. The central orange ovoid of the sculpture is taken from a children’s outdoor ball game and suggests the insulators of the nearby Substation No.33, as well as the power lines of the railway overhead. This central form is held by a yellow frame derived from a stand for dress-up wigs; the pole beacon atop the sculpture, a scaled-up version of a knitting needle, echoing the adjacent historic art deco Union Knitting Mills. The work was fabricated in steel by DJ Projects. It stands at 6.7 metres in height and rises from a circular brick base that forms a pattern of concentric rings which allude to the ripple effect of water; a symbol to mark the approximate halfway point between Moonee Ponds Creek and Merri Creek. The bricks have been custom glazed in black and white, paying homage to the historic Hoffman Brickworks in nearby Brunswick, one of the first mechanical brickworks in Australia, established in late 1880’s, purported to have produced a staggering 40 million bricks per year. Artist- Louise Paramor Title – Transformer Year – 2021 Art Consultant – ADA ConsultingFabricator – DJ Projects Painter – DH Corrosion Coatings Location – Moreland Station precinct, Coburg Commissioned for the Level Crossing Removal Project One of several projects, that explore photography as evidence amongst other ideas. Blog | Tumblr | Website | Instagram | Photography links | s2z digital garden | pixelfed.social | glass | grainary | vero | hipstamatic

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

why the greek alphabet is so great

Here's a piece of shit I don't like about the Greek alphabet: the only non-adjacent letters that are not pronounced in the same way are

dh, rh

rh

I don't care if you "only pronounce" dh. I want to be able to get my point across to rh -people. If my friends don't understand what the hell is "th" doing there, how will I be able to have my conversation across? What about non-Greek-speakers learning the language?

dh is basically the exact same as "th," but with a bit more of a "humph" sound. But it's so common that you can't help noticing when a word you read actually has it vs. doesn't. This is a big source of confusion when reading things in non-American languages, or even in English.

Is there a different letter that I should use instead? Maybe? There are some characters that are very similar, like ΩΔΦ for what "th" should be in Greek -- but I think they're different enough that if I replaced "th" with one of those letters I would still be understood by all the relevant speakers?

(This is an example of a case where the most common solution is really bad. I used to replace the ths in my posts with lowercase o's, but I had a really hard time keeping track of which ones matched which ones.)

Maybe there is some kind of compromise I could make where I would say the letters were similar enough to be mistaken for one another, and also be pronounced in roughly the right way for the purposes of communication to people with the language? That would be very nice. I wish that were the case.

But instead, we have dh for no good reason. And every time I have to write "the" and pronounce it "tha," or read some other letter and feel like I have to think about how I'm doing the spelling, I am like "ugh, not like that, I hate it"

Some more ways it's not great:

-- de is the exact same as "th"

-- in the letter φ, you are not allowed to pronounce the second letter until the first is pronounced

-- there's a special way of pronouncing certain consonants when you're reading out a number

But I think that's all I can think of. You guys are clever and good at stuff. Why the fuck is there a letter called "dh"

I am very much looking forward to your answers, as usual

[naengmyeong]

It's no insult, honestly, because when I see people who gathered more years than you it makes me feel like you should have,too but

I realize DH is really around the same age as you. I always thought he was older because he maybe acted a bit more seriously. Of course, now he seems so young. Many times he's the youngest at lunch, his hair is black but he already complains about getting old. He must have a hard time now, really, it must be hard, in light of this year, last year even. Its hard, I know, people ask him why he always seems stressed. He cries a lot.. we know. The photo I saw was recent, maybe 3 years ago, but since then he's different. I realize you were his friend and you probably spent a lot of time around or at least adjacent to one another. And then after that Y, certainly they were close that he would give him such a thoughtful gift. I think Y must be younger, but thinking about seeing any friend, but especially one close in age lying in a hospital like that.. its hard. It's hard.

After we took of masks, that point in time was passing and we couldn't tell.

A face that looks older is okay, because it's still here

[sideprince]

Been thinking about this and that meta about how Snape looks out for Draco because he sees him making the same mistakes he did himself. Draco may come from a very different background - he's cared for, he's provided for, he doesn't have the struggles a young Snape did. But Draco is also very intelligent and ambitious, and Snape might relate to the insecurities he shows in the face of Harry Potter's successes at school. Of course, Draco is also chosen to be a prefect and plays on his house's Quidditch team, so where Snape was once-in-a-generation brilliant but was overlooked, Draco gets the recognition he deserves, it's just that Harry is constantly treated as exceptional and that triggers Draco's insecurites. Nevertheless, Draco is intelligent and excels academically, is in Snape's house, and it's clear Snape has some kind of relationship with the Malfoy family, so there's already an affinity there.

Snape also sees Draco being raised to share his family's values. I think Snape almost definitely knew that Voldemort would eventually find a way to return to a corporeal form, and knew that Draco wasn't just being raised with his family's ethos of grabbing wealth and power wherever and however possible, but that at this point in history, to them, that would mean Draco becoming a Death Eater like Lucius when Voldemort returns. Snape would have seen Draco's cruel determination to have Buckbeak put down for having scratched and humiliated him, and would have almost definitely been aware of his casual use of "mudblood" and the childish, inexperienced viciousness with which he talked about Slytherin's monster killing muggleborns in CoS. Draco and Snapes motivations were very different, but I think Snape recognized in Draco an anger coupled with naivete and had the experience that Draco didn't, to know what that cruelty looks like when it's put into action.

We know that the Malfoys as a family are, historically, interested in being adjacent to power and accumulating wealth. Draco, in his own way, is constantly trying to distinguish himself from his family. He wants attention and validation and often conflates the two. He talks a lot of big talk, but we see by the end of HBP that he doesn't walk the walk when he can't kill Dumbledore. By the beginning of DH he's terrified at the reality of the things he's spent his childhood boasting about being the future he wanted and got: the child who was excited by the idea of muggleborns being killed by Slytherin's monster, the teen who goaded Hermione about getting murdered for being a mudblood, has come of age to find himself face to face with the reality of what this kind of violence means and looks like and it terrifies him. Perhaps some of that is the fear of being disgraced by Voldemort while he's taken over his own house and is ever present, but I think Draco's inability to do more to Dumbledore than disarm him while knowing that his own failure means his death, speaks to an aversion to violence. He just didn't realize it until he was faced with it. It makes sense: his father is the kind of man who won't get his own hands dirty, he'll profit off others doing the unpleasant work and slither out of accountability for his own involvement.

And Snape knows this. He can see Draco's reckoning coming from miles away. Because he lived it himself. The one time we see Snape attacking is in self-defense, otherwise he chooses, again and again, to act defensively. Where Voldemort would strike an opponent, Snape disarms. Where Voldemort would neutralize, Snape de-escalates. We see him teach this to Harry, as well as to Draco, because who else's influence would have made Draco disarm Dumbledore on the tower instead of attack him? Snape joined the Death Eaters young, full of anger and angst, the abuse of his home and the bullying of his Hogwarts years fueling his need to feel empowered and the DEs promised him exactly that. He didn't know what enacting violence meant beyond an abstract desire to project his anger and frustration onto someone or something, and the DEs weren't promising violence in those days, they were promising power and domination through rhetoric. Snape came to understand what violence and death truly mean when you're the one causing it instead of experiencing it; he came to understand that revenge doesn't bring the satisfaction and catharsis you expect it to, that it's always more satisfying when it's anticipated than when it's enacted. He sees Draco heading down the same path and wants to protect him, even though he can't. Draco is beyond his reach.

He's done his best to keep Draco from this road he's hurtling down, and has sworn to protect him to the best of his ability, and now here the kid is, bleeding profusely on a bathroom floor from a spell that Snape himself invented. I think he knew Harry had his old Potions book even before he read his mind, but whether or not he did, he recognized Sectumsempra's effects and in his mind it was his own indirect hand that had led to Malfoy lying there bleeding.

In that moment on the bathroom floor, Snape wipes the blood from Draco's face. Like a parent whose rebellious teen won't allow affection except for a kiss on the forehead when they're asleep, Snape takes a moment to give Draco affection when he needs it and won't reject it, to expunge some small measure of guilt for what he feels is his own part in this injury. With this small gesture, he tries to reassure Draco that he'll be alright, he's in caring hands now.

The door banged open behind Harry and he looked up, terrified: Snape had burst into the room, his face livid. Pushing Harry roughly aside, he knelt over Malfoy, drew his wand, and traced it over the deep wounds Harry’s curse had made, muttering an incantation that sounded almost like song. The flow of blood seemed to ease; Snape wiped the residue from Malfoy’s face and repeated his spell. Now the wounds seemed to be knitting.

[niconiconwo]

What would the administrative/political subdivisions of LeftFashistan look like?

Federally speaking if we're talking America, it wouldn't change much. There isn't much wrong with the organisation of departments there, and Fiume largely copies the American republic. Some neat ideas in Soviet administration too but again usually parallel to America or any modern republic.

Honestly very little has to change here other than accomodating the creation of the corporation political aparatus and maybe some changes to how voting ballots work. One big thing is a much more central, unitary federal system. States would likely lose a lot of their power, mainly in order bring greater uniformity and compliance with federal laws and regulations. We kind of already do this through dangling grant money etc, but I don't like roundabout bullshit because it's silly and dumb. Other such jurisdictional things too.

But to appease you, you'd see the usual guys like a foreign affairs dept, defense dept, labor dept, justice dept, homeland security would be reformed into a domestic security department like federal cops and some parts would be absorbed into other depts. CIA should be DOD which would no longer be under the DHS at all, NSA would be like a domestic CIA but obviously actually with oversight, FBI would likely not change. ATF would be abolished itself but also become a normal part of the federal policing system under the internal security dept. Other such things on the executive enforcement stuff, more in line with European and East Asian federal systems which actually makes sense.

USDA stays, FDA gets split and absorbed by the USDA and whatever health department gets made. Anything taken in that isn't considered food adjacent will be much more regulated. Commerce dept sticks around but hopefully better. Postal service becomes an actual department so it can't be fucked with, possibly with a national banking thing going on too since that's gonna be either nationalised or brought to heel in very stern ways.

Lots of reorganising and reforming but generally the overall structure stays more or less the same. The other two branches would remain structurally the same but heavily reformed. Haven't gotten that far because executive stuff is more my forte. Gonna have to either replace one house with a corporative committee or add a house or otherwise make it work with the corporative system, but the judiciary is the least changed overall. I've flirted with the idea of a civil law system but it doesn't jive much, though perhaps a mixed system would be good.

A lot of the issue is how much of the old republic can be used as is considering the drastically different mode a corporative federal republic would work under. Though I guess a grossly simplified and off-base comparison is that the federal system becomes like the employer to the union of the corporations but I strongly dislike that rather antagonistic dynamic since it isn't really accurate at all. More so, the federal system is the check and balance on the various corporations and the reverse is true as well. Almost like how the Chinese have four branches sort of. But this is already too long so I'm not gonna mind dump much more.

[roguepen]

In Absentia Segment

It took this recent family meeting for me to truly realize how old Atticus Graves was becoming. Wix live long lives, but that doesn’t mean time passes over us. Hair recedes, the skin wrinkles, but it’s a slower process then No-Majs until we’re over a hundred, even if we have a lot of energy, there is still the fact that we can see a century before we begin to slow down a little, but there is something in my father that seems immune to that notion. Atticus Graves is a powerful warlock, his battle scars riddle his arms in a complex pattern of patriotism and antagonizing behavior. His silver hair is short and thinning but there is still something so strong in his countenance that no reasonable person would cross him.  

My father’s accomplishments in the family business of being Auror was enough for me to know that it was not a career path for me. Jack had all of this drive on being the perfect Graves son as a young man that played a part in him becoming an Auror and that fall off a fourth story balcony that ended his career before it even truly started.

Atticus was always disappointed that the direct line of the Graves family career tradition ended with his children. It was why he made all the grandchildren learn how to duel like he did with Jack and I. Atticus has always been pushy, he wanted Alex to sit the Auror exam from the time he was fifteen, he said Alex was one of the best duelists he had ever seen. A natural, a once in a generation talent. I felt bad for the kid, Alex refusing to do so was the first time he ever actually voiced an opinion on his career.