#HP 1900

[poz-patrol]

The Sinking City

[wellpresseddaisy]

The Demon Prefect Rides Again

Bertram Harroway put on his evening clothes as if headed to war. In a way, he was. It would be an emotional war, he supposed. He let his valet help him into his coat and glanced down at the letter from Vera Dalrymple that kicked the whole thing off.

Darling Bertie,

That certainly wasn’t what she’d called him when he found her in a compromising position with Hector Grantham in her fifth year. And Eliza Dearborne in her sixth.

As you are possibly the only person on this planet who can make Albus Dumbledore mind you,

He thought, perhaps, one other existed, but it didn’t do to dwell on Gellert Grindelwald. He’d never liked the little wart, no matter how infatuated Albus was with him.

could you please do something about him? I popped into town last weekend and ran into him in Diagon. He looks dreadful. And his robes!

Bertram sighed. He knew precisely what Vera meant.

He’s gone old on us. I know it started creeping up on him in the aftermath of That Man followed on by That Gobby Upstart in the seventies, but something is really, terribly wrong. I suspect a whacking great load of guilt and grief, but really, Bertie, he looks like a stiff wind will carry him off. He looks more like he’s in the middle of his two-hundreds than just past his first century.

Trust Vera to look at a dark lord terrorizing the country and call him a gobby upstart. He’d seen photos of Albus recently and he agreed with Vera. Voluminous robes only his so much and Albus always had been nervy, no matter what he pretended otherwise for the magical public.

Honestly Bertie, I’m worried. He’s always worked much too hard and taken on too much responsibility, but he’s never been so frail before. He wouldn’t even go to tea with me and there is little Albus Dumbledore loves more than a cream tea and a good gossip. He doesn’t go anywhere, either. He used to love the theater and I can’t remember when he last made up part of a theater party. I think he might be punishing himself, in some bizarre way.

That was the part that spurred him into action. A quick note to the Deputy Headmistress and he secured a Saturday evening away for Albus.

He isn’t researching and he won’t meet with friends and it’s as if all he’ll allow himself is duty. It can’t go on. It simply can’t, Bertie. You remember how he got after exams? We’re headed for a crash the likes of which we’ve never seen and I’m so frightened it’ll take him from us. You’re the only one I could think of who might get through to him. Our Vally needs the Demon Prefect to come out of mothballs.

He'd see what he could do. Vally Dumbledore (nicknamed for the way he’d valiantly come to the defense of anyone he thought wronged) was the most infuriatingly stubborn young man he’d ever met.

We’ll plan a little reunion for all of us this summer. Dahlia wants everyone to see her gardens, in any case. She’s doing some interesting things with roses these days. Or perhaps, if you can persuade Vally to take care of himself, we could make up a theater party. I hear the latest from that Carruthers girl is splendid fun.

With love and thanks,

Vera

PS It probably isn’t my place to say so, but I’m going to anyway. He always had. G.P. for you and you ought to have swept him off his feet, all Oxford-polished, before That Man had a chance to get his hooks in. You helped create this problem by being as obtuse as a box turtle, so you can fix it.

Bertie sighed and went down to the Floo room. He knew he bore some responsibility in never acknowledging his own feelings. He simply hadn’t thought it appropriate since he was a perfect and then Head Boy. He could easily have picked up their acquaintance once Albus left Hogwarts. Although…there came a point where Albus pushed everyone away after his mother died, when all those lovely plans he’d made fell through so he could care for his sister. He never really let any of them back in after.

He wondered if he could have made a difference there, kept Albus from ending up so cut off from the academia he loved that he clung to the only person able to keep up with him. They would never know, he supposed.

He checked his pocket watch and collected coat and hat from his hovering valet.

“Thank you, Deverell. Don’t feel the need to wait up if I’m late returning.”

“Of course, sir.” If he didn’t know better, he’d think his valet quietly judging him.

Most likely the man judged his early departure. If he knew Vally as well as he once did, it would take quite a bit of persuasion to rout him out of his office and make him dress properly, especially if Vera was right and he was somehow punishing himself for his failures, perceived or otherwise.

Vera, irksomely, was usually right.

As he stepped to the Floo and gave the direction, he wondered if he should bring his old slipper. It always made an impact on a  recalcitrant Vally.

-----------

Hogwarts hadn’t changed in the decades since his leaving. Like Oxford, she endured, only she housed grubby schoolchildren instead of grubby undergrads. Professor McGonagall sending him through the internal Floo system came as a surprise. He’d never really thought about the professors needing to get somewhere quickly before.

He stepped out into the Headmaster’s office and brushed the slight traces of soot from his clothes.

“Good evening, Vally.” He began.

Albus looked up sharply from a thick book propped on his desk.

“Bertram Harroway? What are…how…”

He ended by staring as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Thankfully, he looked a good bit better than Vera described. Still too thin, of course, but he’d always forgotten meals or spent an hour just moving his dinner about his plate when in the grip of An Idea (or nerves). He looked as if he'd let go of some of the guilt and grief weighing him down. His hair, which had turned white practically overnight, had regained its more youthful ginger hue. The deep lines carved into his face by decades of worry seemed to have filled in. He looked more like he ought to look, like a non-magical of fifty or sixty instead of a man nearing the end of his life.

“Vera sent me, Vally. She said you’re getting old and could do with a bit of livening up. I thought you might like a night out. I have a box at the Savoy. They’re doing Pinafore at the moment and I know how you feel about well done G and S.” He moved into Albus’ office, helping himself to a chair when Albus continued to stare.

“Vera Dalrymple said she’d rather be boiled in Frederica Morningside’s failed potions projects than ever communicate with you again via any medium.” Albus finally spoke.

“I had just gated her for the rest of term. You can’t blame her for being distraught.”

“I couldn’t possibly go out on such short notice. This whole idea is patently ridiculous.” Albus nodded firmly, as if he’d made up his mind.

“You can go and get dressed right now is what you can do.” Bertram insisted. “The show starts at eight and I booked a table for supper after, at the Palace.”

“India Palace?” He at least looked interested at that. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve been there.”

The wistful note in his voice belied his firm refusal.

“It was the day you got Greta Saatchi’s autograph after standing in pouring rain for two hours and we spent a further two getting you properly warm again when you returned.” He chuckled at the memory.

How had they been that carefree?

Well, he hadn’t. He’d had to play the heavy when the miscreants tried to slip back into the castle with the Hogsmeade crowd, as if they hadn’t slipped off to London for a matinee and a curry. Albus shifted slightly, as if remembering Bertram’s method for warming him up.

“We were thrilled when you finally left to terrorize Oxford, did you know?”

“I’m sure you were. I’ve returned just to terrorize you, Vally, you know?”

“Oh how lucky am I.” Albus replied acidly. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve decided.”

How well he remembered that rather sulky tone. He certainly heard it often enough.

“I suppose I could go and fetch my slipper if you need convincing? I don’t care to see Vera so distressed, you know.”

It wasn’t often that anyone shocked Albus Dumbledore into complete silence.

“You still have that…that thing?” It always entertained Bertram to see shades of their youth in his friends.

“Of course I do. It’s an exceedingly motivating piece of footwear. Now, be a good chap and go get dressed. Theater waits for no man and Professor McGonagall assured me you were overdue for a night out. Something about you working all hours?” He put a bit of the old Demon Prefect in that one, the same tone he’d used countless times when locating an Albus who quite forgot about such mundanities as curfews.

Albus was out of his chair and halfway to the door to his quarters when he stopped.

“What do you mean Professor McGonagall assured you?” he asked waspishly.

“Of course I wrote her first to ensure you could have a nice evening with an old friend. It’s no use organizing a surprise one can’t pull off in the end.”

Albus gaped at him. “You cannot just go about organizing the world as you please.”

“It’s worked for me thus far.” Bertram answered mildly. “Do go and get dressed, Vally.”

“I can go as I am.” Albus insisted.

“Oh no you are not. I know you own perfectly nice evening clothes. Go and put them on.” He cared very much for Albus, but he’d rather chew his own arm off than attend a public event with Albus wearing golden yellow robes patterned with swirling suns. “We aren’t leaving until you are attired to my satisfaction.”

Albus stared at him for a moment before turning, very clearly not stomping to the door, and entering his quarters. He shut the door just shy of a bang.

Bertram settled down, quite pleased with his evening’s work. They’d make the theater in a timely manner now, and he could treat Albus to a lovely meal after. He’d have to suggest Dahlia and Hitty invite a little party for dinner one evening. And perhaps Albus would join him for the theater more frequently now. Albus, now more than ever, needed the people who cared for him to pull together.

The feelings he once thought faded raised their heads again, like a parched garden in the rain.

[thewellofastarael]

Tamora Pierce, CS Lewis, Diana Wynn Jones, Garth Nix, Philip Pullman, Gail Carson Levine, Orson Scott Card, Robert Heinlein, Brian Jacques. All off the top of my head. All active and successful before JK Rowling got close to publishing anything.

So, like, the thing you have to understand is that prior to the mid-2000s, the "Young Adult" genre as we now know it didn't exist. The expectation was that you would graduate to the adult aisle of the book store at, like, 13-14. This worked because the only people still reading long form novels into their teens were precocious bookworms who were better read than their parents.

Harry Potter changed all this. The success of the Harry Potter books convinced the publishing industry that selling full length novels to normie children was a business model. The thing about the Harry Potter books, though, is that at least for the early books, the target audience was a bit younger than what we think of as the YA demographic; tweens, rather than teens. Now, the publishing very much wanted to keep all these normie kids buying books into their teens and beyond, but the previous model of treating teens as functionally adults for marketing purposes would not work; there was simply no way that normie parents were going to let their normie kids read fully adult novels where the characters, like, do drugs or have unprotected sex and stuff. So, in order to be allowed to market to the teen demographic, the YA genre was created.

However, teens have an inherent interest in reading about sex and violence and drugs, and so authors who are able to incorporate these kinds of themes into their YA novels in a discrete way such that it flies under the radar of the moral guardians are met with success. But this is a precarious tightrope to walk. Not enough "mature" themes and the teens will loose interest, to much or to blatant and the teens won't be allowed to read it. And so, it should come as no surprise, that the first person to successfully navigate this tight rope was a Mormon housewife with a vampire fetish.

[vintagegeekculture]

The Evil Little Hairy Cave People of Europe in Pulp Fiction

From the 1900s to the 1940s, there was a trendy theme in occult and horror stories that the explanation for widespread European legends of fairies, brownies, pixies, leprechauns and other malicious little people, was that they were a hereditary racial memory of the extremely small non-human, hairy stone age original inhabitants of Europe, who still survive well into modern times in caves and barrows below the earth. Envious of being displaced on the surface, these weird creatures, adapted to the darkness of living underground and unable to withstand the sun, still mean mischief and occasionally go out at night to capture someone.... usually an attractive woman....to take to their dark caves for human sacrifice.

Displaced by the arrival of Indo-European language speakers at the dawn of the Bronze Age, these original, not quite human stone age people of Europe were driven deep underground into caves and barrows below the earth, where they went mad, adapted to the darkness and acquired a fear of daylight, became extremely inbred, in some cases acquired widespread albinism. It is these strange little people who gave the descendants of Europeans a haunting racial dread of places below the earth like mines and caves, and it also is these strange, hairy troglodytes who originally built the uncanny and mysterious menhir, fairy rings, and stone age structures of England, Scotland, and Ireland that predate the coming of the Celts and Romans.

In some cases, these evil troglodytes are usually identified with the mysterious Picts, the pre-Celtic stone age inhabitants of the British Isles. In some cases, they are identified with the Basque people of Spain, best known as the inventors of Jai Alai, and the oldest people in Europe who speak a unique language unrelated to any in the world.

The original codifier of this trend was Arthur Machen, a horror writer who is less remembered than his contemporary, Henry James, but who may be the best horror writer in the generations between Poe on the one end and Lovecraft/CL Moore/Clark Ashton Smith on the other. His story, "the White People" from 1904 (a reference to their strange cave albinism) was a twisted Alice in Wonderland with a girl who is irresistibly attracted to dark pre-Roman stone age ruins and who is eventually pulled underground.

In addition to being a great horror writer, Arthur Machen was a member of the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn, an occult organization, and was often seen at the Isis-Urania Temple in London. Many of his works have secretive occult knowledge.

H.P. Lovecraft in particular always pointed out Arthur Machen as his single biggest inspiration, though he combined Machen's dread and occultism with Abraham Merritt's sense of fear of the cosmic unknown, seen in "Dwellers in the Mirage" and "People of the Pit."

Another and scarier example of this trend would be "No Man's Land," a story by John Buchan, a Scotsman fascinated by paganism and horror, who often wrote stories of horrific discoveries and evil rites on the Scottish moors. He is often reduced to being described as a "Scottish Ghost Story" writer, a painfully reductivist description as in his career, Buchan wrote a lot of thrillers, detective, and adventure stories as well. In later life, he was appointed Governor General of Canada, meaning he may be the first head of state to be a horror writer.

It was Buchan who first identified the cave creatures with the Picts, something that another Weird Tales writer decades later, Robert E. Howard, would roll with in the 1920s.

Howard is a very identifiable kind of modern person you often see on the internet: a guy who talks tough, but who was terrified to leave his small town. He created manly man, tough guy heroes like Conan the Barbarian, Kull, and El Borak, but he himself never left his mother's house. It's no wonder he got along well with his fellow Weird Tales writer and weird shut in, HP Lovecraft. With 1920s Weird Tales writers, despite your admiration for their incredible talent, you also can't help but laugh at them a little, a feeling you also apply to a lot of Victorians, who achieved incredible things, but who are often closet cases and cranks who died virgins ("Chinese" Gordon comes to mind, as does Immelmann).

With Howard, his obsession with the Picts and the stone age cave dwelling people of Europe started with an unpublished manuscript where at a dinner party, a man gets knocked out and regresses to his past life in the Bronze Age, where he remembers the earliest contact between modern humans and the original inhabitants of the British Isles, the evil darkskinned Picts. This is a mix of both the "little cave people" story and another cliche at the time, "the stone age past life regression novel," another turn of the century cliche.

Still with the Picts on his mind, Howard would later create Bran Mak Morn, a Pict chieftain, who predated Kull and Conan as his Celtic caveman muscle hero. Howard was of Irish descent and proudly anti-Colonial and anti-British, with his Roman Empire and Civilized Kingdoms as a stand in for the British and other Empires, which he viewed as rapacious and humbug, a view shared by his greatest inspiration, Talbot Mundy. His "Worms of the Earth" gets to the heart of why these little cave people scare us so much: they remind us that we live on land that is impossibly ancient and we don't fully understand at all.

It was another Weird Tales Writer a decade later who wrote one of the last stories about the little hairy cave people of Europe, though, Manly Wade Wellman in 1942. Wellman was mainly known for creating the blond beefcake caveman hero Hok the Mighty set in stone age times, and for his supernatural ghost stories of Silver John the Balladeer set in modern, ghostly Appalachia (like many ex-Weird Tales writers, he made a turn to being a regional author in his later career, in the same way Hugh B. Cave became a Caribbean writer), but Wellman also had a regular character known as John Thunstone, a muscular and wealthy playboy known for his moustache who used his great wealth to investigate the supernatural and the occult. Thunstone had a silver sword made by St. Dunstan, patron of Silversmiths, well known for his confrontations with the Devil.

Most John Thunstone stories featured familiar stories, like a demon possessed seance and so on, but one in particular featured a unique enemy, the Shonokins.

The Shonokins were the original rulers of North America, descendants of Neanderthal man displaced by American Indians. This fear that the land we live is ancient and unknowable and we just arrived on it and don't know any of its secrets is common to settler societies, who often hold the landscape with dread, as in Patricia Wrightson's fantasies of the Australian Outback. It was easy enough to transport the hairy cave people from the Scottish Moors to North America. I suspect that's what they are, a personification of a fear shared in the middle class, that in the back of their minds, that everything they have supposedly earned is merely an accident of history, built by rapacity and the crimes of history, and that someday a bill will come due.

A text page in the May 1942 issue of Weird Tales gives strange additional information on the Shonokins not found elsewhere:

Since then, there have been too many examples of evil cave people who predate Europeans. Philip Jose Farmer's "The All White Elf" features the last survivor of a pre-European people who live in caves. A lot of other fiction of course has featured the Picts, but according to our modern scientific understanding, which describes them as much, much less exotically, as a blue tattooed people not too different and practically indistinguishable from the Celtic tribes that surrounded them, and which they eventually blended into.

[pogphotoarchives]

Women on horseback, on a wildflower covered hillside, New Mexico

Date: circa. 1900-1920

Negative Number: HP.1975.51.032

[hpcestfest]

HP Cest Fest 2024: Reveals Masterlist ☕️

All* creators are now REVEALED! *sans those who have wished to remain Anonymous

A huge THANK YOU to all of our HPCF24 creators! With 61 works in the Collection this year, we are so thankful for all of the enthusiasm from creators and consumers alike!

2024 Masterlist Stats 📊

🖤 Blackcest (18)

🩶 Gauntcest (4)

💚 Malfoycest (11)

❤️ Pottercest (8)

🧡 Weasleycest (6)

💙 Othercest (8)

💛 Psuedocest (5+)

💜 Selfcest (1)

2024 Revealed Masterlist ⤵️

Blackcest

📖 Back to Black | E | 6300 by @xveiro 🖤 Orion Black/Regulus Black/Sirius Black

📖 before it gets better, the darkness gets bigger | E | 2400 by @themoonthesunandthestarsbetween 🖤 Regulus Black/Sirius Black/Orion Black/Walburga Black

📖 Daddy Issues | E | 2500 🔒 by @mundrakan 🖤 Sirius Black/Draco Malfoy

📖 darkly deeply beautifully blue | M | 6300 by @ticigi 🖤 Regulus Black/Sirius Black

📖 Daydream Myopia | E | 4400 by @tenrousei-kuroi 🖤 Orion Black/ BlackRegulus, Regulus Black/Sirius Black

📖 fathers and sons | E | 1000 by dalula 🖤 Orion Black/Regulus Black

📖 Finders Keepers | E | 8900 🔒 by @mundrakan 🖤 Regulus Black/Sirius Black

📖 Haunted breaths | E | 5900 by @galaxostars 🖤 Draco Malfoy/Regulus Black

📖 keep your eyes on the stars (and your feet on the ground) | E | 1100 by @ifwerenotcareful 🖤 Orion Black/Regulus Black, Regulus Black/Sirius Black

📖 look, listen, learn | E | 2000 by dalula 🖤 Sirius Black/Draco Malfoy

📖 Morning Glory | E | 8600 by @faeries-withspirits 🖤 Regulus Black/Sirius Black/Remus Lupin/James Potter

📖 new dog, old tricks | E | 2300 by dalula 🖤 Sirius Black/Draco Malfoy

📖 Perfect Doll | E | 1100 by @piximera-fic 🖤 Narcissa Black/Walburga Black

📖 Princess Treatment | E | 5400 by black_promises 🖤 Cygnus Black III/Narcissa Black Malfoy

📖 Safe Place | E | 2900 by @zadezy 🖤 Regulus Black/Sirius Black

📖 territoriality | M | 1600 by @rotfraud 🖤 Marius Black/Dorea Black Potter

📖 The Open Secret | E | 1900 by @zadezy 🖤 Regulus Black/Sirius Black

📖 well you'll never find it if you're looking for it (rather waste my time with you) | E | 2700 by @themoonthesunandthestarsbetween 🖤 Regulus Black/Sirius Black

-

Gauntcest

📖 Inspection Day | E | 2600 by @eleniaelres 🩶 Marvolo Gaunt/Ominis Gaunt/Ominis Gaunt's Father

📖 Lilium Candidum | E | 6800 by @noxxytocin 🩶 Marvolo Gaunt/Ominis Gaunt

📖 On Body and Soul | E | 3800 by @shyinsunlight 🩶 Marvolo Gaunt/Ominis Gaunt

📖 secret sweetness | E | 3000 by Anonymous 🩶 Marvolo Gaunt/Ominis Gaunt/Sebastian Sallow

-

Malfoycest

📖 A Beach Day for Draco | E | 1400 by Anonymous 💚 Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy

📖 ain't that like them (gifting life to you again) | E | 5000 by puzzlewood 💚 Draco Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy

📖 Beautiful Little Miracles | E | 2700 by @just-a-whorecrux 💚 Scorpius Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy/Draco Malfoy

📖 Empyrean | E | 1200 by BrokenBoughs 💚 Draco Malfoy/Scorpius Malfoy

📖 gifts in august | E | 2300 by dalula 💚 Abraxas Malfoy/Draco Malfoy

🎨 Helpful Son | E | Digital Art by @raptorhonks 💚 Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy

📖 His Father Will Hear About This | E | 3000 by TheseDarkDelights 💚 Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy

🎨 it was nightmare times | E | Digital Art by Anonymous 💚 Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy

📖 The Perks of Being a Malfoy | E | 3500 by @faeries-withspirits 💚 Scorpius Malfoy/Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy/Abraxas Malfoy

📖 tiny mirrors inside of your skull | E | 2900 by solifuge 💚 Draco Malfoy/Lucius Malfoy

📖 Wizards Without Wands | E | 14,300 by @rachels-memories 💚💛 Albus Severus Potter/Lucius Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy/Abraxas Malfoy

-

Pottercest

📖🎨 a fire they can't put out | E | 4600 | Digital Art by @the-invisibility-bloke (fic) & @kis00kis (art) ❤️ Albus Severus Potter/Harry Potter

📖 Like Riding a Bike | E | 4200 by Anonymous ❤️ Harry Potter/James Sirius Potter

📖 Mirror of Desire | E | 1800 by Ancient_And_Noble_House_Of_Gaunt (The_Heir_of_Hufflepuff) ❤️ Harry Potter/Lily Luna Potter

📖 my whole existence is flawed (you get me closer to god) | M | 900 by Anonymous ❤️ Harry Potter/James Potter

📖 Scent Memory | E | 3100 by @daydreamerdisease ❤️ Fleamont Potter/James Potter

📖 Tense and Release | E | 6300 by anonanyway ❤️ Harry Potter/James Sirius Potter

📖 The Final Piece of the Puzzle | E | 9800 by @joe-dwaw ❤️💛 Harry Potter/Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter

📖 we are family (i got all my siblings with me) | E | 3500 by @themoonthesunandthestarsbetween ❤️💛 Scorpius Malfoy/Albus Severus Potter, James Sirius Potter/Lily Luna Potter, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Albus Severus Potter/James Sirius Potter, Scorpius Malfoy/Lily Luna Potter

-

Weasleycest

📖 D.B.C.C.H. | E | 6400 by @schmem14 🧡 Ginny Weasley/Charlie Weasley, Ginny Weasley/Other Weasley(s)

📖 Daddy Dearest | E | 2000 by @piximera-fic 🧡 Bill Weasley/Victoire Weasley

📖 Got Milk? | E | 1200 by @piximera-fic 🧡💛 Hermione Granger/Fred Weasley/George Weasley

📖 I'm a rebel just for kicks, now | E | 8400 by @faeries-withspirits 🧡 Arthur Weasley/Charlie Weasley/Ginny Weasley

📖🎨 Right Place, Wrong Time | E | 3400 | Digital Art by TheseDarkDelights 🧡 Hermione Granger/Fred Weasley/George Weasley

📖 Two Wrongs Make A Right | E | 1600 by @piximera-fic 🧡 Ron Weasley/Ginny Weasley/Harry Potter

-

Othercest

📖 eye for eye, hand for hand | M | 3700 by @lumosatnight 💙 Astoria Greengrass/Daphne Greengrass

📖 Hers to Love | E | 12,600 by Anonymous 💙 Alice Longbottom/Neville Longbottom

📖 Playdates at Malfoy Manor | E | 9000 by @rachels-memories 💙 Lucius Malfoy/Rose Weasley

📖 Sisterly Life Lessons | E | 2500 by @nightfalltwen 💙 Astoria Greengrass/Daphne Greengrass/Other(s)

📖 The Grotto | E | 2700 by @schmem14 💙 Colin Creevey/Dennis Creevey

📖 The King of Underworld and his Queen | T | 1100 by @evadne01 💙 Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort

📖 Unmoored | M | 1300 by @ifwerenotcareful 💙 Padma Patil/Parvati Patil

📖 Unnatural Thoughts | E | 700 by @piximera-fic 💙 Dudley Dursley/Harry Potter (fantasy)

-

Pseudocest

📖 For it might come true | E | 5000 🔒 by @mundrakan 💛 Harry Potter/Sirius Black

📖 tastes like the real thing | E | 15,900 by @the-invisibility-bloke 💛 Harry Potter/Teddy Lupin

📖 Training of the Disrespectful | NR | 1600 by @piximera-fic 💛 Harry Potter/Vernon Dursley

📖 Trapped by His Uncle | E | 1400 by @piximera-fic 💛 Draco Malfoy/Rodolphus Lestrange

📖 Written in the stars | E | 11,100 by @galaxostars 💛 Sirius Black/James Potter

-

Selfcest

📖 again and again | E | 9400 by @swoontodeath 💜 Tom Riddle/Voldemort

-

See you next fest!

[huggingtentacles]

"Her healing through shields is cheating" — person with no skills, no maidens, no endurance and no air fryer. /j

Ok but on a lighter note this is really cool. I can see that you're not just holding L1 and spamming R1 there's actually some timing in some places, it's not a brainless strategy. But it's still amazing how much aggression a shield allows for. With minimal dodging of some moves that you took in on purpose this fight could be half as long. Just goes to show that a. you're cracked at the game b. complainers are just coping.

the most optimal way to fight malenia. clearly

[blackpatrxnum]

WE AS A SOCIETY (hp wlw shippers) HAVEN'T TAKEN ENOUGH ADVANTAGE OF THE FACT THAT "ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIPS" BETWEEN WOMEN WERE SOCIALLY ACCEPTED (and encouraged) AMONG HIGH SOCIETY WOMEN IN EUROPE IN THE 1800s AND 1900s

[citizenscreen]

On November 22, 1900, the first Mercedes goes for a test drive.

Also pictured:

Mercedes 8/11 hp

Produced

1901 - 1902

[walzerjahrhundert]

Peugeot

Type 31 5-HP Duc

1900

[armouredgoblin]

I only did some actual research to confirm or deny my own opinions. Learning a bit more about HP Lovecraft himself does help to contextualize some of his views. I checked a range of sources just to be safe and found that I am right in some aspects as he was a product of his own time. Some of those views including the disliking of the Irish. During the mid to late 1800's they were having a bad time thanks to the English (Potato blight) so there was a mass exodus to America in order to get away from it. Later in the 1840- 50's the new movement which was a nativist movement creating the "Irish Need not apply" for jobs and whatnot. (Source: https://www.history.com/news/when-america-despised-the-irish-the-19th-centurys-refugee-crisis ) He was a well travelled man for his time and did a lot of writing about those travels. The next section was grabbed from a website which will be linked below it: Lovecraft travelled often and wrote at length about those travels. His travelogues include “Vermont—A First Impression” (1927), “Observations on Several Parts of America” (1928), “Travels in the Provinces of America” (1929), “An Account of a Visit to Charleston” (1930), and A Description of the Town of Quebeck, in New France, Lately Added to His Britannick Majesty’s Dominions. At 75,000 words, Quebeck was Lovecraft’s longest work (roughly 50% longer than The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), and he described it as “136 pages of this crabbed cacography.” His travels took him as far south as De Land, Florida and New Orleans, Louisiana; as far west as Cleveland, Ohio; as far north as Quebec, Canada; and out to the island of Nantucket for a week. Hardly a “recluse.” (Source: https://www.hplovecraft.com/life/myths.aspx)

His fear of the unknown or new is a semi understandable one. It was mostly about the new technologies of the time. He was extremely weary about how it would affect things such as economy and politics

All I want is to know things. The black gulph of the infinite is before me . . . I have no use for the machine age or any of its conceptions, methods, & ideals. I have use only for abstract cognition without social or utilitarian connotations; the thing which Thales & Anaxagoras & Heraclitus went after, & which was clearly definable by the word philosophy until those pragmatical puffballs Socrates & Plato threw a monkey-wrench into the works & crippled human thought for the next two millennia. Now it is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether or not baser interests cluster round the search for truth & lick the molasses-drops that ooze out of the fact-barrel. This apelike parasitism of the herd means nothing either for or against the abstract is-or-isn't quest which Thales began, Democritus continued, & Einstein prolongs. If machine-culture chooses to worship "science", that's its own business. It doesn't imply that the abstract process of cognition-craving turns about & reciprocally worships machine-culture! . . . Cognition, as such, is completely without social or aesthetic implications except so far as it places certain obvious contradictions of natural laws, & certain pointless exaltations of empty trivialities, in a light so unfavourable as to encourage obsolescence. It is nobody's tool or handmaiden—it is itself alone. Practically speaking, the mind likely to worship pure cognition most sincerely is that most of all opposed to industrialism & standardisation. Cognition is that branch of human desire & celebration most antipodally removed from anything envisaged or wished by Thomas A. Edison, Henry Ford, & the late Charles P. Steinmetz. It is the enemy of urban civilisation as it is the enemy of all handicaps which cripple the free individualistic excursions of the disinterested intellect into unknown cosmic space. It is the sworn ally of beauty because it is itself one of the supreme forms of beauty—the catharsis of a primal, titanic urge which links man to the uttermost gulfs of dramatic immensity. It is one with the greatest music & the loftiest poetry—being perhaps a glimpse of the liberating & expanding reality which both are blindly seeking.

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (February 27, 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 300 (Taken from Wiki Quotes)

Reading the above was interesting and took a few goes for me to understand it but I don't think I will ever be able to get in the same mindset that he held during the time of penning the letter.

As for his beliefs on his bloodline. I cannot say as I couldnt find anything in the brief time that wasnt a reddit post that didnt cite any sources. Finally politically held various views including when he went through the great depression

This letter to Catherine Moore, written in the final year of his life, is an incredible document for a fan of Lovecraft. To hear him rail against “plutocracy” and capitalism is quite interesting, not to mention his explicit repudiation of his younger self, which most of his fans conceive to be Lovecraft.

“Capitalism is dying from internal as well as external causes, & its own leaders & beneficiaries are less & less able to kid themselves. I’m no economist, but from recent reading I’ve been able to form a rough picture of the dilemma—the need to restrict consumers’ goods & to pile up a needless plethora of producing equipment in order to maintain the irrational surplus called profit—which has caused orthodox economists like Hayek & Robbins to admit that only starvation wages & artificial scarcity could stabilize the profit system in future & avert increasing cyclical depressions of utterly destructive scope. Laissez-faire capitalism is dead—make no mistake about that. The only avenue of survival for plutocracy is a military & emotional fascism whereby millions of persons will be withdrawn from the industrial arena & placed on a dole or in concentration-camps with high-sounding patriotic names. That or socialism—take your choice. … All this from an antiquated mummy who was on the other side until 1931! Well—I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was…”

His harshest words in this letter are for capitalism, which he describes as a “crazy orgy” of “legalised��� corruption. Under capitalism, he writes, “the chief corruption is actually legalised under the name of private profit”.

“Industry should be socialised by degrees, & only as soon as the mass of the people are ready to back up the various absorptive moves. The government must dictate hours & wages, & see that employment is universally spread. If private industry can meet such rigidly enforced demands, well & good. If not—& it probably can’t—absorption will be in order.”

He’s in favor of gradual socialization rather than violent revolution, and he pokes fun at Marxists (who hasn’t?).

“I can’t see that socialism would hurt anybody who is willing to work & who expects a just return from the work he performs—including guarantees of proper security in old age & in times of necessary unemployment or disability.”

“A few can reason, & can see that capitalism is automatically doomed by the natural course of economics unless upheld by fascist bayonets.”

One passage of the letter to Moore echoes Rosa Luxemburg’s famous “socialism or barbarism” slogan:

“The only avenue of survival for plutocracy is a military & emotional fascism whereby millions of persons will be withdrawn from the industrial arena & placed on a dole or in concentration-camps with high-sounding patriotic names. That or socialism—take your choice.”

Source : https://emersongreenblog.wordpress.com/2021/10/18/h-p-lovecrafts-1931-radical-political-transformation/ Further on in this article he actually defends communists.

Finally I understand that he is a flawed human being. Brought up by the time period he was raised and holding beliefs that seem really stupid to those of the modern age. I can never put my own head into the mind of someone in the past as I only have the experience of my own time. History is something that happened and we can only observe it for what it was but my point still stands. There are people out there who will force Modern Beliefs on a man who died near a century ago.

He was brought up by people who were born even further back. All in all I will read his stories and separate his views from his art. Thank you for being nice and speaking to me. Would appreciate if you did it without hiding your blog.

bxjsjx sorry to be bothering you over hp lovecraft of all people but unfortunately he did actually suck so much that his contemporaries thought his attitudes were extremely prejudicial/discriminatory and that his aversion to unfamiliar things was excessive

I shall do a little more research and come back to you on that :)

[wordssricochet]

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[les-belles-mecaniques]

1900 De Dion-Bouton Type E 3 ½ HP vis-à-vis

[greenerteacups]

You like downtown abbey! I almost did not watch this show because frankly a bunch of rich people from early 1900s England did not interest much but the writing is so good and the characters so intereting that I was rooting for them by episode 2. Anyway. What prompted me to write this ask is: do you have any recs for shows/movie/book with great characters? The specifc genre doesn't matter much. I'm curious to know what media have your favorite characters (besides HP of course)

I do like the Edwardian rich people show! The bastards got me again. It's such an interesting period — I think that the early seasons are the best because you can see the writers are still trying to *say something* about Edwardian Britain, especially the decline of the class system in England during and after World War I. The whole war plotline is really great, some of the show's best writing, and it hits series heights when it's doing the initial aftermath stuff (also not coincidentally the season where they develop Thomas's character beyond 'evil gay footman.')

My favorite characters are scattered all over the place — off the top of my head, Wuthering Heights, Sense & Sensibility, Jane Eyre, Middlemarch, Brideshead Revisited, anything by P.G. Wodehouse; more recently, White Teeth, The Goldfinch, Atonement (book and movie), My Brilliant Friend, and Wolf Hall (books first, but also the TV show). In terms of straight movies, Chimaera was the most recent one that moved me deeply; also When Harry Met Sally, the Before trilogy, The Social Network, Inception, the Daniel Craig bond saga but ONLY Casino Royale and Skyfall and the 35 minutes of Quantum of Solace I actually like; The Royal Tenenbaums and The Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel, and basically anything Wes Anderson before he got too in his own head about shit; Downton Abbey for fun, The Sopranos for different fun, Mad Men for the most fun of all, and Better Call Saul but only in small doses, because otherwise I'll get brain worms and start crawling on the ceiling about stuff. So, uh. That's a start.

[saintsenara]

Which HP characters (except Severus, his primary school days at St Anthony of Padua give him an unfair advantage here) are most likely to jam to the bangers that are Sing Hosanna, Lord of the Dance, Here I am Lord and the ultimate tune, Sing it in the Valleys?

ron, one hundred percent. never has a man been more "i the lord of sea and sky" coded.

[ron's got this on repeat the minute it turns 1st december.]

harry clearly went to a standard church of england primary school, so he's undoubtedly familiar with the genre, but he's too belligerent to get into having a good sing, while hermione was obviously privately educated prior to starting hogwarts, and so had a rather higher class of hymn practice [nothing written post-1900].

everyone's fave dark wizard was, of course, getting dragged into mass by mrs cole in the wild old days before the second vatican council. no hymns, but he can do a cracking "victimae paschali laudes".

[theonceandfuturequeenoftarts]

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it

Thank you for the ask! <3

🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

So, I research a lot of things just as a matter of course. I like diving down rabbit holes so I better understand some esoteric little bit of knowledge that will never benefit me in any tangible way.

For fics (often for throwaway references...), I've spent hours researching film release dates, grocery store rivalries, what rides and foods were available throughout the 1900s in the UK at fairs, what circuses were like in the 1930s and what it's like to be part of one as a performer (thank you, randoms on Reddit), selective mutism, the historical and geographical availability of banana cultivars (this is probably the strangest?), representations of death and death gods in multiple cultures, and selkie lore.

Also, snake dicks, but I feel like that's a rite of passage in tomarrymort. Everyone eventually ends up in hemipenes territory.

Edit: Wait, I forgot about bower birds!! And interesting animal courting/mating rituals. Albatrosses remain my favourite.

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it

It's really difficult to choose just one for HP/tomarrymort! There are so many talented artists, we're really lucky~ I'm going with this piece by ysaribi. The closeness, the implied care and intimacy, "my soul" <3 And, of course, how the characters are drawn is amazing. I dunno, I write a lot of fluffy slice-of-life where these two cuddle -- it only makes sense I'd like it in fan art too ʅ（‾◡◝）ʃ

For non-HP fan art, I also really, really love this piece of Link by eori-namo. Just, the colours, the softness, Link's contented little smile. Gorgeous.