#and then said I got it wrong because haha fuck you it's actually scorching

[the-firebrand]

I feel like I’m living in that scene in Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter’s tea party. I’m trying to keep all these rules straight, and I know intellectually they make sense, but it all seems so arbitrary. Like just when I think I’ve figured it out and can say “Oh, I finally understand what the rules are when it’s 12:30,” the March Hare (Barbri) says “No, that’s all wrong! You’re following the rules for when it’s 12:30 when you should be following the rules when it’s half past 12!” And it’s been like this for two months.

We may be all mad here, but I’m starting to get really fucking pissed off.

[thequibblah]

⭐

anon: omg hi I think I sent in a ~free choice~ directors cut a while back but if you can't think of anything you wanna talk about I would LOVE to hear more about the way you write the Snape/Lily relationship and and the way it breaks apart, and even specific scenes related to it because in this house we are Anti S/nily

i hope this person was you but if not HAHA i will take this opportunity to answer their prompt as a "free choice" if you don't mind!

so. good old.... severus. ahhh.

writing interactions between snape and lily is like, one of the most rewarding challenges of this fic. now.... pitchforks away, my lovelies.... it's such an interesting emotional space to explore on her end, to me. personally i've never had a friendship end over something big and irrevocable, so it's really brand-new water to tread.

what makes it even more fascinating is that because of the setup of CT — starting after the lake incident — snape is less a presence in her life and more an absence she's working around. if i can get boring and pretentious for a sec, this was something i worked on a lot in college creative writing classes — writing about a thing in the past by avoiding it, or touching upon it and flinching away, or approaching it sideways.

now. we none of us have the patience of serious literary fiction readers in our fic HAHAHHA so this is a lot more dialled-back (dialled-forward??). but that was basically the approach to begin with, with these two. and then it was a matter of exploring the trajectory of it — how when the wound is rawest, lily is actually most forgiving and generous towards him, as she's had less time and space away from him/their friendship, and is busy making excuses for him.

(aside: i didn't realise until actually confronted by it that so much of her attitude towards him comes from her attitude towards petunia, a relationship in which she got used to receiving barbs before she gave them back, but the blood tie keeps her from a clean break. with snape there's no blood relation, obviously, but there's a shared sense of history, of childhood, that kind of lives in the same part of lily's brain/heart. so... really, two people who loathe each other overlap quite significantly in lily's emotional landscape.)

re: lily's excuse-making — it doesn't help that the only person who pushes her on snape is james. (her friends all have learned to avoid the subject, as you do when your friend is friends with someone you don't like but you can't say anything until after they're finished, and then you're like omg thank GOD i hated them from the start!!! but of course in this case they couldn't go overboard with that sentiment, lest it come off as "you should've known better/we knew better and you didn't") thanks to the circumstances of the lake incident, some of those messy feelings towards snape are entangled in messy feelings towards james (early on in the story especially), so the resulting conflict is.... bad....

She half-stumbled backwards, as if she’d been slapped. “I don’t need you to remind me,” she hissed. To her embarrassment, tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. But if she’d thought that would make him back off, she was wrong. “Yeah, except you do need the reminder,” said James. “Because you don’t get it yet. He chose them. Not you.” Lily was shaking. “I believe in second chances,” she said, fighting to keep her voice level. “But you really, really test my faith, James.” And without waiting for him to answer, she stormed up the girls’ staircase, wiping at her cheeks.

bad.

lily's true blind spot is, of course, that she's more willing to forgive snape's missteps with her. and of course james has to go and point that out :/

“Let me put it this way. If Sni — if Snape were Mary’s friend and he’d said that to her, wouldn’t you tell Mary she ought to never speak to him again?” Lily shifted uneasily. “Well, sure, but I’ve known him since—” “—you were children, whatever. Say Mary did too. Would that change anything for her?”

so the first time lily is like wait actually fuck this!!! it's because he reminds her, in an argument, about how callous he can be — a callousness which i think she's never liked, but it's easier to forgive sharpness when it's your friend poking fun at people you don't like, and less easy when...

“Yes, do let’s talk about Potter,” she said, dangerously calm now. “Let’s talk about how your mate Mulciber used an Unforgivable Curse on him—” To her absolute shock, Severus scoffed. “It was three bloody seconds—” “Shut up,” Lily said, too stunned to think of something better to say. “Shut up, you don’t seriously think that — that because the two of you have a childish rivalry, he deserves torture?” “That’s not what I said,” he replied, looking mutinous. “I just meant, everyone’s acting like he’s some big survivor — always playing for attention—”

...well, when that.

best/worst impulses aside, lily knows that the true measure of someone is how they treat the people they dislike, not their friends, and in a sense his attitude towards james (and generally other people) in this scene makes her realise what she'd read as inconsideration or insensitivity is in fact...

"...You’re weak-willed and pathetic and you’re — you’re not a good person.”

...so there's that.

as anyone who's read lily's current petunia drama will know, she's got a bit of a problem with letting go. but after her mother's death (and the attached stick to your sister she's all you've got), she manages a weirdly good break from cokeworth — because a lot of her childhood was wrapped up in hogwarts, and in snape (whom she hasn't spent vacation time with in over a year at that point). with neither at hand, she hardly has time to process it/feel homesickness.

but note this, at the start of 7th year:

“Was last year nothing to you?” Her voice had sharpened. “I wasn’t freezing you out to punish you, Severus. I was treating you how I plan on treating you from now on.”

of course lily's just making a point here, but when i wrote that i was like wow she (and i lol) are kind of onto something — snape totally does think this is like, a temporary purgatory period after which she really will come around. and through months of her getting visibly closer to his nemesis, he holds onto that belief — despite what she says. (funnily enough, childhood rose-tinted glasses make them both see what they want to see in each other, in very different ways)

that's why when he hears her say what she says to una in that hogsmeade trip, he immediately comes to his own conclusions. that was another important, interesting thing for me — for other slytherins, "loose ends" are opportunities for cruelty, for punishment, to finish what they've started. (not so for regulus, who's grown up with sadism and is frankly repulsed by the idea of pain for a flimsy cause — best believe there was absolutely a point to him orchestrating an attack on the teacher getting close to his brother. but that's another story.)

not for severus either — his loose end, in his own mind, will always be lily. he senses that something's broken, but he has absolutely no self-awareness about what it is, and his extending an olive branch was more about her coming to his level than him going to hers (aka the way apologies ought to work). he realises, over a year out, that it's up to him to fix it, but it's too late — lily's quite moved on at that point, and her residual emotions towards him are indifference and pity.

if only snape had known to leave it there!

looping full circle back to the lake incident, then, the argument in 41 is once again very personal — but rather than him pushing her away, it's him trying to get her close again. and now, stressed about all the bs in the world but also with all the petunia-related learn-to-let-go stuff fresh in her mind, lily is absolutely in the right state of mind to recognise when she's wrongly judged someone. this calls for scorched earth, she realises, or she'll never be able to shake him and move on for good.

and so what started with severus telling her that she's special, that there's a place in a new world for her, ends sort of the same way.... and the break that began with his casual, almost unintentional cruelty, ends with her very deliberate cruelty. as a bonus, she's ready now to use the one thing he's always wielded like a shield in their arguments — james, how the marauders are, etc. etc. — against him, and genuinely mean it.

(she might regret that soon. but not the way you'd think!)

[the-starless-sky]

The Cat’s Whiskers / drama part full translation

As usual: If you want to see the prettier version a.k.a subbed version with proofreads, please head to the Paradox Live discord!

Names: Saimon Naoakira: N Kanbayashi Yohei: Y Natsume Ryuu: R Ando Shiki: S

P.S. This translation starts right after the sample (again!), so head there if you haven’t read it yet!

Y: We really got knocked out of our seats back then. It was a performance that scorched into your soul.

N: Yeah. Unmistakably, their existence made hip hop boomed thereafter. That’s why everyone thought Buraikan would lead the newcomers as it is, but...

S: Did something happen?

Y: In just a night, they disappeared… Just like children’s fairy tales, that is.

S: No way… Why so suddenly…?

N: It was said that they disbanded, but nobody knows the truth. It was something God only knows.

R: Even though those two were promising…

Y: Hah, talking as if you know anything.

R: Hehehehehe…

Y: Stop laughing in such a disgusting way, you tool!

R: Tool… tool…? It sounds kinda cute, tool! Yo yo, representing Tools, Ryuu-kun has come! Obeying instincts, toying you with pork cutlets, checkera!

N: Haha. You know those phantometals we use on stage, right? It was said that the first person to use it to visualize their emotion and carry out a Phantom Stage was Buraikan.

Y: Yeah. There’s a really long bridge that’s made off-limits in the bay coast area, right? Beyond that, there originally was a big live house. That’s Buraikan’s home base… Club Paradox.

S: That place held such a past, huh…

N: Yeah. Shall we get back on track? This invitation… what do you think about it, Yohei?

Y: I’ve said this before, but it’s fishy. There’s no way Paradox will suddenly come back. Well, at most, it’s a passionate heads’[1] work.

R: But that Club Paradox came back, you know?

N: Ryuu, why do you think so?

R: Because my friend, Pigeon-san, told me so. He said, ‘Flap flap flap, pow, pow!’.

Y: Oi, Saimon. As I thought, this guy’s lost it.

N: Haha. Shiki, can you look it up?

S: Ah, yes. Umm… Ah, there’s a hit! It seems that people are rapidly uploading pictures on SNS. Um, this…

Y: Seriously…? That island has, again…!? No way…!

N: Very interesting…! What in the world is the mechanism behind it…? I certainly want to confirm it with my own eyes.

Y: Why are you so fixated on that event? If you only want to know the reason behind Paradox’s come back, you don’t have to go as far as participating.

N:I want to try aiming for it once again… with you, and with these children. For the apex of hip hop.

Y: Ah… the glory we failed to grasp at that time, huh?

***

Y: Saimon, this is huge!

N: What’s wrong?

Y: It’s an invitation from overseas! There was an American fest that Buraikan participated before they disbanded, right!? They said they want us to do a phantom live!

N: …!

Y: Saimon…? Oi, what’s wrong with you? Isn’t it a nice offer!? If we perform there, our name will spread in one go! If that happens, even Tsubaki-san will…!

N: I’m sorry. It’s impossible for the current me.

Y: Hah? What’s up with that? You’re not gonna say you’re bored of hip hop, are you?

N: That’s impossible! Even I think it’d be splendid if I could participate. But… I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Yohei…

***

Y: Saying something hard to refuse…

N: It’s a very egoistic reason, yet… I want to dream again.

Y: And? Who else are invited?

N: Each has different inclinations, but all of them are currently uprising teams. The team popular among youths, B.A.E; Militaristic, gangster-representing Akan Yatsura; And lastly, the team running around breaking into every competitions with monetary award, cozmez.

R: Aah~ I broke it! This is no good, no good~ Hm? Shiki?

S: Ah… ah…

Y: Oi… what’s up with you, suddenly?

N: Shiki!? Yohei, I’ll handle this.

Y: Understood. Ryuu, get a broom and dustpan.

R: Aye, aye, Sir~

S: Ah… ah, ah…

N: Shiki.

S: Owner… I… I…

N: Everything is alright, Shiki. Because I am here with you.

S: Ah… but…

N: Poor thing… Turning this pale… Come, take a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. Are you alright?

S: Yes. um… I’m sorry… for interrupting the talk…

N: You don’t have to worry about such things.

Y: Drink this water, ‘kay?

S: Ah… thank you very much.

Y: Hey, Saimon. I’m fine if you want to aim for the top in hip hop once again, but… In reality, won’t a competition be too big a burden for this guy?

N: Hmm…

R: Ryuu-kun thinks Paradox Live sound interesting, but does Shiki not want to join?

S: It’s impossible… for somene stained like me…

R: Shiki, you’re dirty!? Hah, you haven’t taken a bath!? Sniff, sniff…

Y: Stop it, you idiot!

R: Ouch, it hurts, it hurts!

S: Plus, if I participated in that event…

Y: It’s not like this is the first time you perform in an event, right? What’s wrong with you, suddenly? Saimon, don’t you think it’s better to consider participating without Shiki?

S: Yeah… but Ryuu’s tricky sense and Shiki’s prodigious sense of rhythm is vital to our music. Furthermore, Whiskers is comprised of four people, all together. If we can’t all go, let’s give up on participating.

S: N-no!! That’s no good!!

R: Shikki?

S: My feelings don’t matter; I want to be of use to Owner. I have to…

Y: What are we gonna do now?

N: I don’t think your feelings don’t matter. Because I want you, Shiki, to take good care of yourself. And for that, I’m sure that this competition will be a good experience.

Y: Which means…

N: We’ll participate with The Cat’s Whiskers. Is that alright? Shiki.

S: ...Yes.

N: I’m really sorry. Thank you, Shiki.

S: Owner…

R: Ye~s, Ryuu-kun’s sleepy, it’s fifteen minutes until nighty-sleepy Ryuu-kun, beep, beep, beep, beep…

N: Haha, that’s true. Everyone, I’m sorry for keeping all of you up until this late. Ryuu and Shiki, please sleep first. I’ll tidy up the shop with Yohei for a while longer.

S: Understood…

N: Then, good night.

R: The nighty sheep goes ‘baa, baa, baa’…

S: Ryuu-kun, wait, that’s dangerous…Come on… wake up…

Y: Saimon… that just now wasn’t your only reason for participating, right?

(in the back ground) S: Hey, are you listening?

N: My, my, I’m really no match for you, Yohei. Actually, that Alter Trigger Company is trying to buy-out this land.

Y: Huh? That Alter Trigger is?

N: Yeah.

Y: Oi… seriously? ...Fucking around like this…! I’ll never hand over Seven-Four to anyone!! This shop is ours!!

N: Of course, I also have no plans of handing over this shop that easily. However, there’s no other way for us to protect this shop but to buy-out the whole land in a higher price than them.

Y: So, how much is it?

N: Including maintenance costs, it will be difficult if we don’t have ten billion yen.

Y: That’s like a number some brat sloppily thought up of! How are we supposed to gather that much… don’t tell me, you…

N: Yeah, it’s just as you thought.

Y: So that’s your plan. Shit!

N: There’s also the matter with Ryuu and Shiki. That’s why, we have to win this stage battle no matter what.

Y: Well, if you think in reverse, it’s a simple matter. All problem’s solved if we become the top, right?

N: Haha. Well, I guess it is.

Y: Let’s do it, Saimon. Just like us of that time.

N: Yeah. Plus, now we have Ryuu and Shiki, too.

Y: Drink up, Saimon.

N: What, you’re going to drink again?

Y: There’s no way I can go on without drinking after you told me something like that.

N: That’s true. I’m sorry for always troubling you, Yohei.

Y: The feeling’s mutual. We’ll protect this shop for sure.

N: That’s my plan. Cheers.

***

Y: 'Due to event participation, Bar Seven-Four is temporarily closed for today.’ Alright, this is fine.

R: Huh? Shiki, you’re nervous again!

S: I-I’m fine! I’m always like this, after all.

Y: I think that’s a problem in itself, though.

R: You know Shiki, you don’t have to be that nervous!

S: Ryuu-kun…

R: After all, it’s just a competition! It’s not like we’re going to die~!

S: Ah…!

Y: Grr…

R: Ouch!! Master kicked me!!

Y: Don’t say unnecessary things and make him even more nervous!

N: Are you alright, Shiki?

S: Yes, I’m fine.

N: You might not realize it, but Shiki’s the one who had enhanced our music to this point. In order to win Paradox Live, we can’t have anyone missing.

S: Is that true…?

N: Yes, it is.

R: What about Ryuu-kun? Hey, hey, what about Ryuu-kun!?

N: Haha, of course Ryuu is also needed. And Yohei, too.

Y: Stop it, my flattery allergy’s gonna act up.

S: Haha…

R: Ah, Shiki laughed!

Y: Alright, let’s go, Saimon!

N: Yeah. Let’s teach everyone what real music is like… We, as The Cat’s Whiskers.

Notes

[1] Heads = term for hip hop fan.