#anti classist rich boys

[maxdibert]

Well, I was going to be a minimally civilized person, but considering that you called me a TERF out of nowhere, when I haven’t mentioned anything related to gender issues, when I haven’t alluded to that topic at all, and you just pulled that out of thin air as a fallacious argument to try to discredit me from the very first paragraph—well, I’m going to be a bit of a bitch and choose violence.

First: idk what book this person read, but Snape's obsession with Lily was creepy to the extreme. That their friendship started by him all but stalking her and Petunia should have been red flag #1. I mean, sure, he was a traumatized kid without friends, but that doesn't absolve him of his continued obsession. He literally stood outside the Gryffindor common room, refusing to leave, until she came out to talk.

Are you saying that a nine-year-old boy watching other kids play is a creepy stalker? I suppose you, at eight or nine, would just jump right into groups of kids and start playing with them for no reason, but let me introduce you to the quintessential representation of an introverted child. Because yes, introverted kids exist, although to you, it seems all of them must be stalkers just because they don’t know how to introduce themselves to other kids and just stand there watching. That’s something normal for any introverted kid who wants to socialize but doesn’t know how.

Severus and Lily were friends, mutually so—not because he was following her around. Some of you really need to learn to deal with the canon of the books. They were friends before Hogwarts, and clearly, during their school years, the relationship weakened until it eventually ended. But during that time, there is absolutely no indication that Severus was following her around because it was a CONSENSUAL childhood friendship. Did he wait for her outside? Of course he did. I’m sorry your personal life is so pathetic that your friends always ignore you when you’ve had a disagreement, but in my circle, it’s quite common that when we argue, we even knock on each other’s doors if needed to talk it out and resolve it. So, I don’t know, girl—it seems like a pretty normal attitude to me, wanting to fix things after a fight. What doesn’t seem so normal to me is a guy coming up to me and saying that if I date him, he’ll stop bullying my friend, as James Potter did. Nor would it seem normal for a bunch of kids known for bullying and casting spells on others to have a magical GPS to track where everyone at school is going, like the Marauder's Map. That’s super stalker-ish and creepy as hell because you can see where everyone is and what they’re doing. But I guess in your psychotropic view of reality, that’s just some mega-fun thing, while a nine-year-old not knowing how to introduce himself to other kids is the devil reincarnated. Truly, you have a totally coherent and undistorted view of reality, honey.

And yeah, he did switch sides out of guilt. But he canonically didn't give a damn about Harry. If he was actually trying to protect the kid, he would have done more than bully and abuse (occlumency lessons anyone?) the kid. Teaching at Hogwarts was never about redemption. It was about staying out of Azkaban. (And Dumbledore's manipulation, but he's a whole 'nother can of worms)

And what does it matter? I mean, Harry doesn’t have to care. Again, these are moral assumptions you impose on the character just because you feel like it. I don’t give a damn if he cared about Harry or not; what matters to me is that he did his job effectively. What’s canon is that he spent seven years saving the ass of a kid who was constantly trying to get himself into trouble and who, along with his friends, was a constant headache. But thanks to Severus, they didn’t end up dead more than once, so whether or not he cared deep down about those kids doesn’t matter because what matters is that he did his job properly and kept them alive.

And well, I’m sorry if you don’t understand how sentencing works, but not all sentences involve going to prison. Community service is a type of sentence, for example, so maybe Severus didn’t go to Azkaban, but he paid his debt to society in full by serving Dumbledore for 16 years and then continuing his legacy even after his death. I don’t care if he was a bad teacher; that’s Dumbledore’s fault for putting him there at 21, with massive trauma, zero chances to heal emotionally, and an overwhelming workload. Good or bad teacher, he paid his debt to society, so sorry, but your whining is, once again, utter nonsense based on your ethical and moral expectations that don’t matter for presenting the facts.

Second: the books actually say that Snape was 'up to his nose in the dark arts'. He was an active participant. He didn't just 'hang out' with to-be-DE, he WAS one. He joined up of his own free will. He became Voldemort's RIGHT HAND. He didn't regret calling someone a mudbl***. He regretted that it was Lily.

It’s funny that you attack me, calling me a TERF, and two seconds later, you talk about Severus as if he’s pure evil incarnate without taking into account his context and how he perfectly fits the usual target demographic for far-right groups to recruit new members. How the fact that Severus came from a poor and extremely violent environment made him a perfect victim to fall under the influence of people who offered him a better life, recognition, and support, when outside of that environment, all he knew was not even having enough to buy clothes and being tormented by a couple of rich pure-blooded kids making his life miserable. And yes, girl, he called Lily a Mudblood, but honestly, Lily had been about to smile at her bully while that bully was sexually assaulting him, and he had just come out of a highly stressful situation. We all say things we don’t mean in moments like that because we act completely irrationally. Plus, Severus could also be considered a Mudblood, considering he was a half-blood with a Muggle father and had grown up in a Muggle neighborhood surrounded by Muggles, so it doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me, but whatever.

And Snape CANONICALLY attacked the marauders just as much as they went after him. Just because they went after him first in that ONE memory, doesn't mean he didn't instigate too.

I don’t know if you’re still drunk after Christmas Eve dinner or what, but the books never establish such a thing. That’s something Sirius says, who is a completely unreliable source because, at 36, he was still calling the guy he nearly killed by that shitty nickname. So, sorry if I don’t trust anything from a guy who showed zero remorse about being a disgusting bully, but what do you want me to tell you?

What is established in the books is that Severus and Lily were calmly talking on the train, and James Potter interrupted their conversation to make fun of Severus. What is established in the books is that Sirius committed attempted murder. And what is established in the books is that Severus was walking along minding his own business, and since Sirius Black was super bored and wanted it to be a full moon, his best friend James Potter decided to attack Severus Snape and humiliate him in front of the entire school. They attacked him two-on-one, outnumbering him. Not only that, but they were also two rich kids from upper-class pure-blood aristocratic families going after a half-blood, working-class kid who didn’t have a dime to his name and no parents to defend him. Ignoring the extreme inequality between Severus and his bullies shows a tremendous lack of social awareness and absolutely zero understanding of class dynamics. I’m surprised that some of you claim to be activists and call yourselves social justice warriors when you haven’t cracked open a book in your lives. If you had, you’d see how problematic it is to defend a couple of rich bullies over their poor victim. It’s absolutely classist and disgusting, and pretending they were on equal footing and it was just a rivalry is to completely ignore all the power imbalances inherent in relationships affected by pronounced social and economic disparities. James and Sirius were two abusive rich brats who constantly mocked a kid for his appearance, which was directly tied to his lack of financial resources. When they laughed at him in the school courtyard, they made direct references to the state of his underwear, which relates precisely to his economic and social condition. You’re defending a couple of classist jerks, and then you throw around buzzwords like "she must be a TERF." Well, I’ve never excused anyone’s transphobia—you should stop excusing classism because, in that sense, you resemble J.K. Rowling far more than I do, clown.

And let's talk about the werewolf incident for a minute because i am sick and tired of Snape Apologists using this as an excuse. That was NOT planned. That was a lapse of judgement on Sirius' part alone (yeah, fucked to hell and he is fully responsible for that). At the same time though, NO ONE MADE HIM GO. Snape was given a vague instruction and he was so focused on 'getting back' at the marauders that he put HIMSELF in danger. That is just as much on him as it is on Sirius.

Ah, there it is, the one who calls women TERFs but then engages in victim-blaming. Yes, it was planned—Sirius planned it. And it’s called attempted murder, which not only should have resulted in expulsion but in the real world would have landed Sirius in a juvenile detention center for a few months if the prosecution's lawyer had been good. But setting that aside, I really like how you say “nobody forced Severus to go,” blaming him for what happened. It reminds me of when I was almost raped in a nightclub a few years ago, and the security guard I told about it to catch the guy said something like, “Well, no one told you to make out with that guy, you know.” It’s exactly the same goddamn speech that any basic straight guy would give to a woman who’s been assaulted or nearly so, questioning her about how she was dressed, where she was, or how far things went with the man in question. A round of applause—besides being a classist jerk, you re-victimize abuse victims. You really have it all, my friend.

Then the sexual assault? This is another common thing I see and it took me forever to figure out what it was even referring to. The pantsing? You cannot tell me he was the only one that happened to. If the levitating spell was really as popular as it's stated, this incident wasn't special. I'm willing to bet Snape did it to others too.

I’d like you to imagine Severus as a girl for a moment, and James exposing her in front of the whole school in her underwear. Then I’d like you to picture her in her bra and panties and imagine James’s voice saying, “Should I take off her knickers?” And now I want you to tell me that’s not sexual assault. It’s incredible how Marauders stans try to come across as super progressive and woke, but you just can’t, because your entire personality is based on defending rich elitist kids. And, of course, the mask slips. I have to laugh because seriously, it’s pathetic.

Third: Lupin not taking the wolfsbane. Yes, serious lapse in judgement. He also just saw Peter and Sirius on the map. The argument of it being criminal and a ticking time bomb is honestly werewolf prejudice and exactly why Remus has such a hard time finding a job in the first place. Way to go. You've discovered discrimination.

And no, I don’t feel sorry at all for the bullying accomplice who grew up to be an irresponsible adult, ended up knocking up a 24-year-old at 38, and then bolted. As far as I’m concerned, Remus Lupin can go to hell a thousand times. But hey, no problem, let’s keep defending accomplices to abuse who treat their partners like garbage. Why not? Poor thing.

Fourth: Get McGonagall's name out of your fucking mouth. She is CANONICALLY shown NOT showing prejudice and treating EVERYONE by the same standards. And, did you forget that 'Moody' here was actually a death eater in disguise? No duh he's using cruel and unusual punishments??? Full of abusive teachers my ass.

I never said McGonagall didn’t treat people equally; I said she was quite a strict teacher, and that’s canon. Severus wasn’t the only teacher who talked to or treated students in questionable ways, and if it had been such a big deal, his colleagues would have called him out—which never happened.

Fifth: What do you mean the kids weren't scared for life? I do believe those CHILDREN will carry that trauma with them for the rest of their lives. Saying that it didn't break them is cruel and completely dismisses the VERY REAL pain and suffering that they went through. They are real heroes because they OVERCAME their trials. Not all of us out here in the real world are so lucky.

It’s funny how you’re so convinced that having a strict teacher will leave children permanently traumatized for life, clutching your pearls over the cognitive and psychological consequences that might result, yet you wrote an entire text tearing down a character who endured violence as a child, suffered intense bullying, and was abandoned by every adult around him. For you, suffering and pain only matter when it’s about tearing down a character you hate. You’re like a typical right-wing politician, only concerned about social issues when it’s time to crush the opponent. Quite hypocritical and double-standard behavior on your part, but then again, not much more can be expected from someone with zero class consciousness.

And saying Regulus accomplished nothing? Disgraceful. Of course it took a catalyst for him to change his ways thats how redemption arcs work.

Ehhhh no. Regulus was a rich kid like Draco Malfoy, thrilled to be a Death Eater. He joined because he genuinely believed he was superior to others due to his blood status and aristocratic family. But when faced with bloodshed, it overwhelmed him, and he backed out. He didn’t accomplish anything—he just acted foolishly, which delayed things for Harry years later. Funny how you see redemption in Regulus but not in Severus, who spent almost twenty years of his life paying his debt to society. Funny how you’re so lenient with Regulus, who’s described as handsome, wealthy, similar to his brother physically, coming from a privileged family, fitting the aesthetic of a mysterious, elegant guy that looks great on Pinterest boards. But you’re not so understanding with Severus, who came from abject poverty, is constantly described as ugly and unpleasant, and clearly lacks that smooth aura. I love it because people like you point fingers at others for things that are really just projections of your own internal prejudices.

If you made it this far, I hope you have a good day. Believe whatever you want, obvy I'm not going to change anyone's opinion. You can't MAKE a person understand. Still, it's nice to rant and remind myself how nice it is that I live in my own little corner of the fandom where I don't have to see this bullshit on my dash

If you’ve read this far, I wish you a Merry Christmas. I hope one day you’ll dignify yourself by opening a book on social politics or class dynamics. I hope one day you’ll bother to read statistics on how violence and economics interplay with predispositions to criminality. And I hope one day you’ll think twice before calling someone a TERF without reflecting on your own disgusting classism, beauty privilege tendencies, victim-blaming, and utter inability to analyze characters. Also, you might want to reconsider defending rich, privileged, abusive kids because it’s seriously cringe-worthy. Kisses.

okay, hold my drink *hands u cursed ancient goblet full of mead* i gotta talk my shit for a second.

ive been seeing a lot of severus snape love recently. and this is fine, obviously, y'all can love whomever you want. but. i need to rant or i will explode. if we're talking about canon. severus snape spends his adult years, seven books of it in fact, abusing children. and his excuse for this is the girl he loved (tho not enough not to join a group actively trying to exterminate her) fell for the hot jock instead of him (a tragedy indeed, i weep 4 him, i really do). and also she died, which, admittedly is very sad.

it is simply crazy 2 me 2 look at that and think *romance* or *genuine care and affection*. LIKE. fo real. snape calls her a slur in public, apologizes in private, hangs out with dudes who commit hate crimes against her friends (CANONICALLY, she says "you've been hanging out with that douchebag Mulciber, how could you do that after what he did to Mary???" this is not a direct quote but like, it's close enough). lame. loser behaviour.

"Oh but what about regulus" i can hear you say "he loves James potter but snape doesn't love lily???" well. idk. maybe. bit different tho, innit? due to james not being the demographic regulus is attacking (which doesn't make regulus a better person but does make the dynamic between him and james different). ALSO. Regulus chooses to turn against voldemort without hope for anything in return. snape doesn't seem to give a shit about voldemort, he's just sad he's not gonna get to bang lily evans. he switches sides for that reason alone. also doesn't care about what happens to her husband or her son which like. considering lily would be pretty fucking destroyed if they died. once again points to my whole, he doesn't really give a shit about her, theory. lame. loser. behaviour.

also. im sorry. I"M SORRY. but what snape does to neville? to hermione? to harry? gross. a grown ass man out here telling an eleven year old neville he's worthless or hermione she's ugly and annoying. or spilling harry's potion and refusing to grade him for it???????????????

reg and draco are children when we see them at peak suckage and therefore they feel like they can be redeemed much more compellingly (CAN be, not SHOULD be, not HAVE to be, just narratively i think they are easier to turn into interesting, sympathetic characters). but snape? snape grows up into a garbage adult. like he doesn't get better. and again, the only real excuse we're given is his obsession with lily. not very demure. not very cutesy.

ALSO. yall remember that time he got a destitute, struggling Remus Lupin fired from the best job he ever had just because he felt like it? remember that time snape weaponized Remus's lycanthropy and people's prejudice against him just cause. like. literally just cause??? his ego was bruised after the shrieking shack incident so he was like "get wrecked Lupin I'm going to tell everyone your secret so you will be forced back out onto the streets" DO YALL REMEMBER THAT BITCH ASS MOVE????????? THAT HE DID AS A FULL ADULT.

IN CONCLUSION, this is silly and, of course, like i said at the start, everyone can have their own thoughts and feelings about characters, but i simply needed to interject here on behalf of snape haters everywhere because i feel like so much of snape's shitty behaviour as an adult during a time when he was really under no duress and was very safe and cozy, is ignored. and my hater heart just cannot let that stand.

[nenehyuuchiha]

Ok this time i even filtered "Tim Drake is like a Disney princess" tag (which????) I'm almost sure there's no more poor little meow meow Tim drake tags that i missed

[leoleolovesdc]

im not above disliking a character for being so obviously the author's self insert perfect boy, im not above disliking a character for being the author's way to bring my fave down and im surely not above disliking tim drake

[maxdibert]

Alright, let’s dive into the dumpster fire that the Marauders fandom has become last years and threw any sense of canon or character integrity out the window. Because let’s be real, the way this fandom has twisted the characters of the Marauders and the Death Eaters, all while turning Severus Snape into some one-note “creepy stalker,” is embarrassing. The fandom seems obsessed with scrubbing characters clean, romanticizing abusers, inventing tragic backstories for literal sociopaths, and piling up headcanons that turn a few lines in canon into fully fleshed-out, fanon-only OCs. And somehow, the only character who gets relentlessly dragged and demonized is Severus Snape—a character who has actual complexity and trauma. It’s hypocritical, classist, and downright gross.

Let’s start with Severus. Canon Snape is a guy who came from nothing: poor background, abusive father, dead-end town. He didn’t fit into the wizarding world, was relentlessly bullied by privileged Marauders, and still somehow managed to survive and make something of himself. But instead of acknowledging any of that, the fandom loves to reduce him to this “creepy obsessive” stereotype. People act like he spent every waking moment pining for Lily and never did anything else, as if that’s all his character is. Never mind the fact that he was actively trying to get out of a miserable life, or that he was, you know, bullied on a daily basis by James and Sirius, who had wealth, status, and freedom to do whatever they wanted. Nope, to the Marauders fandom, Snape is just the “weird stalker”—because acknowledging his struggles would mean admitting that their golden boys were actually kind of awful.

Meanwhile, the same people are out here bending over backward to make people like Barty Crouch Jr., Evan Rosier, and Regulus Black look like misunderstood anti-heroes. Let’s be clear: in canon, Barty Crouch Jr. was a straight-up torturer, Evan Rosier died laughing as he fought Aurors, and Regulus was a kid raised with a silver spoon who only started doubting Voldemort when he realized he’d been signed up as snake chow. But no, fanon has turned these guys into “tragic, complex Slytherins” who were “just trying to survive.” It’s like they’re desperate for some tortured prince narrative, so they invent personalities out of thin air to give us this dreamy aesthetic of sad, beautiful Death Eaters who “didn’t really want to be evil.” Apparently, actually following the text is too much to ask when you’ve got fanon fantasies to uphold.

Regulus Black, in particular, has become this absurd fanon martyr. In canon, Regulus was a kid indoctrinated into pureblood ideology, who joined the Death Eaters without much hesitation. Maybe he had a change of heart eventually, but it wasn’t out of some grand moral revelation; he just realized Voldemort’s loyalty was to himself alone. Yet, according to the current fandom, Regulus is some misunderstood hero who was only “pretending” to go along with Voldemort and was “forced” into his choices. They’ve built this tragic romance around a character who, in the actual books, doesn’t have even half this depth. This Regulus in fanon is practically an OC at this point, and people cling to this made-up version of him so hard that they’ll defend it like it’s canon. It’s hilarious, and it’s also just plain wrong.

And let’s talk about the Marauders themselves. In canon, James and Sirius were rich, spoiled brats who spent their school years bullying anyone who didn’t fit into their world. They were kids with every privilege, and they used it to torment people like Snape, who had nothing. But the Marauders’ fandom has turned them into these fluffy, “good-hearted” rebels who just made “a few mistakes.” I’m sorry, but nearly killing someone as a “prank” is a bit more than a mistake. Yet people will ignore that or wave it away as “boys will be boys” just to keep up the illusion that James and Sirius were lovable scamps. It’s maddening—and it’s also classist as hell. They erase all the ugly realities of the Marauders’ behavior and then turn around and judge Snape for being “obsessive” and “weird” when he was just trying to survive in a world stacked against him.

The classism in this fandom is so blatant it’s laughable. Snape is written off as creepy and unworthy of sympathy because he didn’t have a cushy upbringing or the social standing to make him likable. Meanwhile, characters like Barty and Regulus, who came from wealthy pureblood families, get excused and romanticized to no end. It’s like the fandom is saying, “Well, Snape deserved it because he was poor and awkward, but the rich kids? They’re just misunderstood.” It’s the kind of privilege blindness that makes you wonder if people actually read the books or if they’re just projecting their own biases onto the characters.

And let’s not forget the army of new OCs the Marauders fandom has invented just to justify this headcanon universe (Mary, Marlene, Dorcas, that that Pandora no one knows why suddenly appears here lol) You’ve got random “best friends” for Sirius, unnamed Slytherins who magically have no ties to pureblood supremacy, and love interests for Regulus who supposedly saw the “real” him. All these characters are based on nothing more than a few throwaway lines, yet people have fleshed them out to a level that they’re practically new characters in the universe. It’s like they need this entourage of made-up people to back up their version of the Marauders and Death Eaters because, without them, their headcanons would fall apart. And all of this, while they keep painting Snape as this creepy loner with no real friends or worth. The hypocrisy is unreal.

At the end of the day, the Marauders fandom has taken a bunch of characters with clear flaws and complexities and rewritten them into these sanitized, tortured souls while dumping all their scorn onto Snape. They’ll go out of their way to redeem a literal torturer like Barty Crouch Jr. or turn Regulus into some tragic hero, but they can’t bring themselves to even consider Snape’s trauma or the systematic abuse he endured. It’s all about maintaining this fantasy where their favorite characters are perfect and untouchable, even if it means twisting canon and ignoring the ugly truths about class, privilege, and abuse that is reflected into the story. And that, honestly, just makes the fandom look shallow, hypocritical, and completely disconnected from the reality.

[goodoldfashionedengineer]

Theatre kid Jason Todd headcanon:

His favourite character in Ride the Cyclone is Mischa Bachinski

Mischa is Ukrainian, his mother died due to radiation exposure because she was part of the clean up crew in Chernobyl. Before she died, she faked his birth certificate to say that he was 2 years old and gave him up for adoption. The people who adopted him were NOT happy and put him in the basement, leaving meals on top of the stairs.

That's how the bad boy persona started, how he became the angriest boy in town.

He also says he has two traits: Aggression. And Passion.

He is anti-classist (but he still has a song about his rich power fantasy to cope with life)

One of the main characters is saying that he's "going to jail, guaranteed", playing into prejudice and bias due to him being a refugee who has a gangsta persona and loves rap.

"Just 'cause I'm all gangsta don't automatically make me homophobe!"

Bonus: They almost have the same birthday! Jason's being 16th August and Mischa's being 18th August

[iamintoomanyfandomsistg]

so for the past like 1hr I've been reading through this anti marauders/pro snape blog cus I was bored and I guess I get their view point plus they were only shoving it down people's face at like 1or 2 instances so it's not like they were doing anything but sharing their opinions, but I just wanted to jot down my opinions and thoughts on what they said

The person running the blog clearly thinks James and Sirius were “huge, bigoted, rich, pureblood, stuck-up classists.” They keep going on about how James and Sirius attacked Snape because he was half-blood, and their hero complexes wouldn’t let them mess with Muggle-borns, but half-bloods were fair game. But here’s the thing: Snape’s worst memory (SWM) happened when they were around 15, so they were just 15-year-old boys who hadn’t fully matured yet. They were picking on the “typical ugly nerdy boy” from the group they hated, which is messed up, but again, they were 15. James' hatred for Snape was all about jealousy over Lily, and in the end, James did win her over.

Lily adamantly hated James and Sirius because, as a lot of pro-Snape people argue, they were rich purebloods who bullied Snape for almost no reason. But still, Lily ended up with James. Why? Because he matured. Between their fifth and seventh years (when James and Lily got together), James grew up. He realized his bullying of Snape was wrong and grew out of it. He went from being a 15-year-old boy to a young man who had learned and still had more to learn. Yeah, he was canonically a bully at 15, but if you’re going off canon, James Potter grew up. He changed. Like all the characters, he was gray, not black and white.

Speaking of which, that’s another thing I wanted to mention. All the Marauder-era characters (including Snape) are morally gray, not black and white. That’s why I find it a little hypocritical (no hate, of course) when anti-Marauder people, who are also pro-Snape, don’t recognize this.

So on this blog, they mentioned how Snape was totally overworked with three jobs, grading exams, and setting work, so of course he wasn’t bothered to be nice to the students who made his life harder—like the Golden Trio or Neville. I tried to read through all their posts without bias, but this part really pissed me off. Like, what?! Every teacher at Hogwarts was going through stuff on top of their teaching and grading!

Absolutely! Here's that section with the original tone but with a few tweaks for clarity and flow:

So on this blog, they mentioned how Snape was overworked with three jobs, grading exams, and setting work, so of course, he wasn’t bothered to be nice to the kids who messed everything up for him, like the Golden Trio or Neville. I tried to read through all their posts without bias, but this seriously pissed me off. Like, what?! Every teacher was going through stuff on top of their teaching and grading! McGonagall was working for the Order, teaching, introducing Muggle-borns to Hogwarts, delivering news of deaths to students, and working hard with Dumbledore often absent. Lupin was a lonely, heartbroken werewolf STRUGGLING to find a job and to generally get through life. Yet you don’t see them degrading students or calling them names. McGonagall wasn’t calling students “insufferable know-it-alls,” and Lupin wasn’t being mean to a distressed student, like when Snape said “I don’t see any difference” when Hermione got hit with the teeth enlargement spell. (Like, OMFG, this is SO ANNOYING—no matter how tired or overworked you are, WHY are you straight-up bullying a distressed 14yr old for no reason?) And they wre DEFINITELY not being a student’s worst fear? (Like, Snape being Neville’s boggart??? DONT GET ME STARTED) In fact, they were arguably the best teachers the students had.

When people talk about Snape being a bully of a teacher, pro-Snape supporters love to say, “Oh, but he made great sacrifices and died a hero.” And I’m just like, okay, cool.

So Snape was a blood purist, used and created dark magic during his teenage years, killed dozens of people, and bullied students for years. But since he decided to help Dumbledore because of his childhood love for Lily, that somehow makes everything better? It’s all excused because of his trauma and sacrifices?

Sirius Black was a bitch as a teenager, but he was trying his best and maturing. Plus, he ALSO came from an abusive household with childhood trauma. Yeah, he still had some issues in adulthood, but he wasn’t bullying kids half his age like Snape. Yet, just because Sirius was a rich pureblood and Snape came from a poorer background, Snape’s actions are magically forgiven?

Both Sirius and Snape are morally gray characters in terms of their actions. I don’t get why some people hate on Sirius but praise Snape just because they come from different class backgrounds.

Personally, I love Sirius, but I get that his actions were morally messy, and he made horrible mistakes. As for Snape, I’m pretty neutral about him. I just really hate his whole bullying of students, especially since my own mental health struggles at 15 were made worse by a terrible teacher.

I also saw the blog talk about how none of the Marauders “did anything in the war” and called them “losers.” But just because they weren’t the sole reason the war ended doesn’t mean they didn’t do anything. The Marauders joined the Order when they were really young. They fought, and they were powerful, intelligent wizards who would’ve definitely made a dent in the Death Eater ranks.

Plus, Remus went undercover to join the werewolves and try to bring them over to Dumbledore’s side. They made efforts during the war, they helped, and they died fighting for their cause. Don’t try to downplay their struggles just because their contributions weren’t as big as others’. It’s like saying the soldiers who fought on the front lines didn’t help just because they didn’t kill the enemy leader.

And one more thing that annoyed me: the blog kept mentioning how Remus “knocked up” Tonks and left her because he’s “a typical white cis male with a fragile ego.” WHAT? Yeah, it was cowardly of Remus to leave Tonks, and Harry had to send him back. But it wasn’t because he was a bad person. It was because he was terrified of ruining her life. Sure, he was being selfish, but he was morally gray. He’s not perfect—he made mistakes—but he also sacrificed for others and did good things. Like I said before, ALL of them were morally gray, and Snape did worse, so why is Remus getting this treatment for one mistake?

To sum up, I’ve just been jotting down my thoughts after reading through an anti-Marauder and pro-Snape blog. I mean no hate, so please don’t start a fight. Overall, I think all the Marauder-era characters were morally gray, with their UPS and DOWNS. So when anti-Snape people glorify Sirius and James’ actions while ignoring their mistakes, or when anti-Marauder people glorify and excuse Snape while constantly criticizing 15-year-old Sirius and James, I think we should all just admit that each character did selfish and horrible things, but they also did good things, changed, and matured. We need to stop over-glorifying and over-hating Marauder-era characters (including Snape)

[dvandom]

What bugs me the most about the latest NaNoWriMo-caused furor over AI as accessibility tool is that it is very clearly a case of a corporation cynically using a set of lefty buzzwords to try to bludgeon their critics. To add injury to insult, boy howdy is it backfiring, catching people like the posters above in the shitstorm. (They also try to claim anti-AI views are classist, I guess because po' people need a machine to write for them or something? The only class struggle involved with AI is "rich corporations trying to avoid paying people to make art.")

I guarantee you, the raw output of an LLM for a 50,000 word "novel" will be unreadable glurge, harder to edit into readability than just writing a new piece from scratch. GAI art output has gotten pretty good, but the text equivalent is only on that level for maybe a paragraph or three, and only because it can copy some rigid essay formats taught in AP English classes. (Mind you, try to get Midjourney or its brethren to make a 30 minute animated movie and it's gonna suck just as hard as ChatGPT's novellas. The scale is not there yet, and may never be.)

The NaNoWriMo situation has them deliberately conflating the accessibility benefits of GAI with an LLM's output, and while an LLM can be helpful as a writing tool in limited circumstances (like prompts, suggested outlining, etc), it is not really at the same level as GAIs in terms of helping creators turn ideas into works.

ChatGPT is a bullshit machine, and sometimes bullshit can be amusing or pretty, but it's rarely going to tell a consistent story and it has no concern for facts. Midjourney may also be a bullshit machine, but art is more about vibe anyway, especially if you're not looking for anything specific. (@therobotmonster has written extensively about how much work is involved in getting even kinda close to what he wants from Midjourney gens, both from prompting/reprompting and post-gen editing.)

this is so funny/enraging to me because yes that is an actual disability called "aphantasia" and i know several ai artists who use ai specifically to compensate for that.

anyway collection of some awful ableism in the <name redacted> thread.

it's grim out there, folks!

[dirtytransmasc]

y'know what really gets me about billy antis? They're normally:

Karen stans

Steve stans

Jason Carver apologists

way to neutral about Neil

all of the above

Like, Karen drooled over and tried to fuck a teenager, a boy the same age as her daughter, and had her husband and daughter not been asleep by the door, she would have gone through with it. Plus she's kind of a shit mom like she has a few moments with her kids, but normally she only notices their not ok once they're way past their fucking breaking point. it is obvious her (and ted, he definitely holds some of the blame) shit parenting fucked her kids up

Steve, as much as I love him (I literally kin him as hard as I kin billy, but I still acknowledge his past), was a fucking dick in season one and even part of season two, and he lived a pretty similar life as billy. But he gets a redemption arc and all of the fandoms fawning because he's a palatable, 'simple' abuse victim (I hate having to say that cause that doesn't exist in actuality, only in the minds of assholes who don't actually give a shit about mental health). But because billy was more reactive than steve, which is warranted given his whole situation and the way his abuse presented itself, and didn't live long enough to even start trying to become a better person, he deserves to die painfully, right? Make it make sense cause steve checks all the boxes billy did; bigotted (homophobic and classist towards Jonathan, sexist towards nancy after they break up, I'm putting good money on him being racist in high school because he's rich and white, and its the fucking 80s), classic highschool douche bag. the double standard is gross.

Do I need to explain why the whole Jason apologist thing is bad cause they love to attack billy stans for being racist but defend the kid who was only friends with Lucas cause he was 'one of the good ones' only to try and shoot and beat the shit out of him once he was no longer 'one of the good ones. like he held him at gunpoint and made him beg for mercy... totally wasn't racially motivated. And the way he had his goons tackle erica, an 11-year-old girl. He also got him shit-faced (Lucas was a freshman, Jason is a senior, and I don't know much about how party code is around other places and what it was like back then, but major red flag in my book). Not to mention leading a literal manhunt for an unconfirmed suspect and being prepared to hurt and/or kill anyone who got in his way, no matter who or what age they were. Like y'all will defend him, the picture-perfect white boy who did all that, but not the 17-year-old abuse victim who lashed out what? Twice in the literal 3 weeks of screentime he got? Jason did all that in a week's time, which is way worse than anything Billy did.

Wanting death for an abuse victim, acting out because they were abused, but not giving half a shit for their abuser is fucking weird. Like how can you do that? It's canon that Neil beat his last wife and billy, and by the way we see Susan act, probably hit her too. Like if your gonna hate billy, at least hate Neil too.

Like I could go on about the hypocrisy in the billy anti fandom, but these are the major things. I have so many words for billy antis tbh, but they don't have a long enough attention span for it to matter.

[evilelitest2]

Please don't insult Tsar Nicholas II by comparing him to Stalin. Yes, Nicholas had commited many truly vile shit, but... he wasn't an evil person by heart, just an autistic boy who was unlucky to be born in the position of absolute power in the most corrupt and opressive country in Europe. Unlike him, Stalin wasn't born in absolute power. Stalin has many chances to stop going over Old Bolshevic's heads for absolute power and establishing personality cult of himself, but he didn't.

I mean...he killed a lot of Jews dude. Like his secret police wrote The Elders of Zion, one of his long term goals was to eliminate all the Jews in Russia (the imperial policy was 1/3rd of Jews would be converted, 1/3rd killed, and 1/3rd exiled). like there is a reason why I am not a fan of Tsar Nicholas II. My girlfriend's great grandfather had to flee the country because of the pogroms and then again later when he became an activist. In my mind, Nicholas and Stalin are basically two different flavors of horrible Russian autocrat.

Nicholas was certainly a nicer person than Stalin, he was a caring husband and a good father (in a time period when that was not normal) and he was a friendly affable guy to those around him. Meanwhile Stalin was just kinda a dick to everybody at every moment. But when judging a historical figure, how nice they are and how sweet they were personally doesn't really change their policies. Also like...Nicholas was born into the richest family in the world. Stalin was a disabled ethnic minority born into an abusive household in relative poverty, I'm not really sure why Nicholas being from a super privileged background makes him less of a monster? It's true I feel a lot more sorry for Nicholas than Stalin, since his son was a hemophiliac and his entire family is murdered (which for the record I don't consider acceptable) but if we are talkin about autocracy the fact that Nicholas is more likable shouldn't change the fact that again, killed a lot of Jews.

Now Nicholas II was born into power and personally didn't want to be Tsar but...he was given many many opportunities to give up some amount of power and he didn't. He clung to power in the face of the advice from almost anybody who wasn't an arch royalist super conservative. Even if we compare him to other conservative Monarchists at the time, Nicholas is so stubbornly unwilling to share power that it literally gets him killed. In the last two years of his reign he and his wife prefer to lose the war rather than accept aid from the Duma/Worker's Councils. After the disasters Russo-Japanese war (a war that he caused due to his incompetence and lost due to his incompetence) you have the 1905 revolution where after the death of thousand of people and the crippling of the Russian economy finally gets Russia Duma. And then Nikki's Black Hundreds brutally massacre thousands in order to make the Duma largely a puppet organization, and leads a series of nation-wide pogroms against Jews (who he blamed for all of his own mistakes). And what does he do with this absolute power he so furiously clung too? Help get his country into WWI and then does so badly in that war that his dynasty gets overthrown. And when you get into the details of the Russian Revolution, it becomes clear that Russia could have won WWI and the Romanovs could have kept power had Nikki been at all flexible. He is remarkable in that almost every decision he made as Tsar was the worse possible decision he could have made, it's like the platonic ideal of a bad monarch.

Nicholas was an absolute monarch with a brutal secret police and one of the richest men in the world. And under his administration labor conditions were some of the worse in the Industrialized world, political freedom was denied. None of this was for the good of the empire or anyone really other than himself and his rich friends, its just that Nicholas did it under the name of "tradition". Sure he inherited his horrible state whose national motto was "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality" but he was an absolute monarch, he could change it if he so choose. And he didn't, when he oversaw two failed wars, two famines, and two revolutions, at no point does he ever take responsibility for his actions and go "Hey maybe I should take steps to prevent the suffering of my people."

In many ways, that is Nicholas II's greatest crime, he would have been happier as a Constitutional Monarch, but because he was so damn stubbornly conservative he wouldn't even change when it was in his self-interest. All of this was avoidable, had he simply accepted the reforms his people so desperately wanted, he could spend more time with his family, not have to worry so much about his heir, and could leave the governance of the empire (which he sucked at) to people who like....were at all good at it. He would have been great as a Constitutional monarch, he could just sit around and be sweet and then hang out with his family, but instead he stubbornly clung unto power and blamed all of his mistakes on the Jews. All to defend a job he didn't even enjoy. It was all....so avoidable, almost everything under his reign didn't need to happen if he had simply accepted reforms rather than retreat into his little fantasy bubble of pure Russian peasants loving their little father the Tsar.

And again, his secret police wrote the Elders of Zion, which is in competition for "Book with the Highest Death Count in History." And this document was written because Nicholas didn't want to share power. A ton of his loyalists are going to end up working for the Nazis.

Now most of Stalin's crimes came out of malice and most of Nicholas' (again, except the violent racism) came out of incompetence, which does matter in terms of understanding their motives and why they were awful, and I don't think Nicholas enjoyed the amount of death he brought the way Stalin did...but like if your family starves to death it doesn't really matter if it was done because the ruler actively was doing it on purpose or was too fucking stupid to understand how a supply chain worked--you are still dead. And in the case of the Jews, Nicholas was intentionally murdering them by the thousands for its own sake. Stalin was also a racist anti-Semite but you don't have full pogroms under his reign until the last year of his reign (and the Doctor's Plot is no in no way comparable to any of Nikki's pogroms). Again, Nicholas loved and encouraged the "Black Hundreds" who were basically Russian fascists.

And Nicholas wasn't just a raging anti-Semite, he was also a white supremacist and a Russian nationalist. Despite being mostly Danish and German himself, with barely any Russian ancestry, Nicholas got super into the whole Russian supremacy thing, and his empire actively tried to wipe out the languages, cultures and religions of the ethnic minorities in his empire, most infamously in Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia. In fact, part of the traumatic childhood that probably made Stalin so bad was getting beaten for speaking Georgian (his native language) in school. And Nicholas' anti-Asian racism led to him buying whole hog into the Yellow Peril conspiracy theory, the original "White Genocide," which was a huge factor in the disastrous Russo-Japanese war (he regularly referred to the Japanese as "yellow monkeys").

Now Stalin did kill a lot more people than Nicholas over he course of his reign, that can't be denied, so at the end of the Day Stalin is worse than Nicholas in my mind. But not by much: Nicholas' regime would have killed more if he was competent enough to pull it off, and his stubborn stupidity in the face of an empire in desperate need of reform still killed millions of people. And what's more he never seemed to care. So getting up in arms about even comparing him to Stalin is ridiculous, revisionist, and probably a little bit classist, as well as implicitly counting the murder of Jews as less bad than the murder of Christians.

[hazzabeeforlou]

ALL ABOUT BEING A LOUIE?? Hell yes! Thank you @evilovesyou and @beau-soleil-louis for the tags! ;) 

When did you become a Louie? Well. *cracks knuckles* Many of you know my story of how I joined the fandom post HS1, how I took a tumble (heh) down the tumblr hole by searching Harry’s name and finding two DRASTICALLY different camps, the antis het harries and the larries. I saw horrible things about Louis, from him being a r*t to a deadbeat dad to a druggie to a fuckboy, and then the classist insults. And at first I was like oh my GOD why would anyone link Harry with that man? Then. I started seeing the evidence. The evidence of who Louis really was, the whip-smart determined soft-hearted LEADER of the band, the momma’s boy, a charity-loving dream-chasing humble sweet gem of a boy who is the big brother to everyone in his life, who lives and loves with the same explosive energy, and who is quite obviously not straight. His tender, brave flamboyance and clever usage of camp and incredible star power as an entertainer wowed me from the first. And here we are. 

Why did you become a Louie? I think like many fans I connected with Louis’ upbringing and have a real desire to watch him achieve his dreams because I saw my own hopes and dreams living in him. He was a kid with huge hopes and he was given the chance to achieve all of them, and unlike so many rich assholes and celebrities, he’s done what so many of us WISH we could do with fame and money: he’s brought joy to others, given bravery to kids and adults alike, made music that heals and inspires and encourages, and lived his life in a way that makes us all proud to be his fans. 

One thing that drew you in specifically? Louis’ tenderness towards others; his joy of making people laugh, of cheering them up, of showing unconditional love. 

Favorite song on Walls? Only The Brave

Who would you want Louis to collaborate with? I would actually love to see him collab with Cardi B. She’s such an incredible outspoken political activist interested in class and labor rights and racial justice and LGBTQ rights and socialism, and I think her and Louis would be fucking FIRE together, like can you imagine, and their voices? What a gorgeous blend of soft and warm edges and textures and tones!!  

Favorite hairstyle?

Back To You, Just Hold On, or Miss You? THEY ARE ALL SO DIFFERENT but Back To You

Louis in suits or sweaters? That is unfair, he fucking slays in suits but... sweater Lou is soft and cuddly and adorable and the little overhang down his wrists makes me want to hurl myself into the sun...

Favorite tattoo? TRIANGLE???? But also, It Is What It Is. Such a motto. Says everything you need to know about his resilience and strength and outlook on life. 

Favorite Louis photo (currently?) How can I fucking do just one 😅

Random extra? HAVE YOU SEEN LOUIS WILLIAM TOMLINSON WITH BABIES????? My heart EXPLODES

Mmmm who hasn’t been tagged? @rahashirley @cuethetommo @seasurfacefullofclouds1 @wallsxlouie @pfromb @wastelandbabylouis @weareonejazzhand if anyone hasn’t done this yet!!

[unexpectedreylo]

Why Do They Find Reylo So Threatening?

Reylo is an immensely popular ship but as they say in physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  So we’ve had to deal with ant*s, bad takes, condescension, and even harassment over our desire to see the two most powerful people in the Force hook up.  

I’ve had to deal with this to some degree as an Anidala fan but what I’ve seen and experienced as a Reylo is a whole new level.  It’s visceral.  When something makes people angry enough to act out in very irrational ways, even to the point of going after total strangers, it’s because it is threatening to them.

What is it about the potential for love that’s so threatening?  I’d been thinking about this question for the past few months.  There’s nothing about Reylo itself that is particularly transgressive.  It’s a male/female relationship that so far has been chaste onscreen (though with a heavy serving of UST).  It’s sufficiently modern so that the woman equals the man in power and if anything, you’ve got to hand it to Kylo/Ben for treating her as someone worthy of respect, whether as a potential ally/bond  mate/lover or as an enemy.  He might come off as a bit classist occasionally (“you, a scavenger” and “you come from nothing”) but he never diminishes her because she is a woman.  So what’s the big deal?

My conclusion is, the anti-Reylo crowd finds Reylo as a romantic pairing threatening because they find Kylo Ren threatening.  Oh sure, there are some fans who were hoping to hang their hat on Rey coming out as the world’s first major ace/aro fictional character or hoping she somehow defeats the forces of romance for no other reason than to prove her independence.  But nobody has attacked pairing Rey with anyone else to the degree they have with pairing Rey and Kylo.

So why is Kylo so threatening?  By that I don’t mean they find him a terrifying movie villain who gives them nightmares.  I mean threatening in a way that challenges their very world view.   Having grown up during the OT era, nobody ever found Darth Vader threatening in this way.  There was no moral judgment made on kids or adults who loved him, and believe you me, lots did.  Lots still do.  It’s not that Kylo Ren is somehow worse than Darth Vader.  In fact the movies emphasize that he’s not.  If anything, the usual villain stans don’t think he’s evil enough and hope he becomes more evil in TROS.  No, the difference between Darth Vader in 1977 and Kylo Ren in our time is that the way some people look at pop culture has changed.  

When I was growing up, movies were just movies.  They weren’t real life.  Today, there’s a tendency to view movies as a literal depiction of reality.  On the one hand, real things certainly inform art and today’s fantastical tales are informed by modern understandings about human nature.  On the other hand, I think this tendency can sometimes get out of hand, where the analysis forgets this is fantastical and not real life.  

There are obvious and identifiable reasons why there are those who don’t like Kylo for his own acts (he kills his own father, he harms the good guys).  To hear them talk sometimes however, they sound like they’re talking about some punk they watched on Investigation Discovery, not a fictional character.  They’re thinking he’s guilty of homicide, worse yet patricide, so he needs not to redeem himself in the manner we normally see in high fantasy but by literally going to prison or by getting killed off.  

For others who dislike Kylo, he can become a tabula rasa for whatever real world “evil” the individual wants to hang on him.  They see Kylo Ren as the series’ main bad guy so he must symbolize whomever they believe are bad guys in real life, whether he actually displays those traits in the movie or not.   For some of these people, being a Caucasian man is enough to judge him as evil.  (That he’s seen as thwarting a biracial ship galls them even more.)  If you don’t like MRAs, then you see Kylo Ren as a MRA regardless of how he actually treats women in the films.   Kylo never discusses ideology beyond the dark side but because he’s a bad guy, he is tagged a Nazi and a fascist by those who routinely call other people Nazis and fascists.  If you’ve been at the hands of a manipulator, then he’s a manipulator.  If you think the world’s biggest problem is “toxic masculinity,” then he’s the poster boy for “toxic masculinity.”  If you loathe “soy boys,” then he’s a “soy boy.”  They make him into a secular sin eater there to absorb whatever one finds wrong with the real world.

Since Kylo Ren carries the sins of not only his world but ours and he can never find absolution, the idea of him having a romantic relationship with the “good girl” is abhorrent.  The idea of Kylo/Ben being happy and in love is horrible to them.  How dare he, that (fill in the blank), find true love and connection with the heroine when the haters themselves often don’t have those things?  Some guys cannot get over the fact the cheerleader turned them down for the jock, the rich guy, the douchebag, the bad boy, or whatever.  It’s very telling these people often overlook or are utterly dismissive of the character’s positive attributes.

People need to look at this in the abstract (as kids do) rather than in a literal way.  Kylo Ren/Ben Solo isn’t a school shooter.  He’s not a Nazi.  He’s not a rapist.  He’s not an incel.  He’s not Max Landis or your jerk ex-boyfriend or any real person.  People who like him aren’t racists, fascists, or tolerant of abuse and people who don’t aren’t morally superior.

[everydayanth]

4th of July

I have such a hard time with patriotism. 

Here’s the thing, though. In my personal life only, it was always an amazing holiday. My dad always had one job lined up every year, the Hollyhock Lane Parade. It was in the nice part of town where all my friends lived, old-Dutch money mansions complete with Omas, perfect lawns, and a CRC on every corner. My dad had grown up in that neighborhood and it was always a magical day. 

Strangers knew who I was and old ladies told me stories about my family or said nice things about my grades or whatever. The statue of liberty costume went to a local girl of promise, and I got to dress up like a colonial dork. There was plenty of diversity in as much as my other musketeers were brown and black boys and Lady Liberty was often brown and black (though I’m sure that’s through my little-kid ignorance lens, I don’t know what they had to accomplish to get to wear the foamy star crown). There were free popsicles and a giant potluck, and a big party in the back of the lane that actually was covered in hollyhocks, with a balcony of a mansion serving as the stage for live music. 

My parents didn’t fight because my dad had work and it was a big job, could feed us for a month or payoff the credit card debt that had gotten us through the winter. 

After that we went up north to my aunt and uncle’s house. There was a giant carnival if you walked through the park and over the river a few minutes. There was more free food, tons of family games, a hot tub. We dressed up, my mom even bought us the $5 Target shirts some years to match, which felt real good because we only ever got one new outfit per school year, everything else was hand-me-downs from cousins and siblings. It was a rich town, the carnival was always tons of fun and because my dad was feeling good about the big show, my mom would let him come later (he doesn’t get on with her family), just in time for sparklers, which meant no big family fights! It was magical. 

Later, in my teens, my dad got a new gig at a huge festival. He’s really an amazing producer/sound engineer, he just grew up in an area of analogue specialists and a network of people twice his age, so adapting to the digital age was fine regarding the tech, but much harder for him with people and growing his own business. I would spend all morning helping him set up, all day wandering Lake Michigan beaches, hanging out with friends or sisters, enjoying the concerts and shows and food, then packing up after the massive fireworks. New location, same big event where my parents didn’t fight and I felt special and part of something bigger. 

But as I grew up and went to school and moved away from my role as free-babysitter and pressure of female work, like washing the dishes and making the food and not running around too much (it was a fine line and seemed to be more about noise level of children than me being a girl), I started to question all the celebrations. As I learned more about histories that had been glanced over, or lost in the wave of constant information, I had to confront those big questions, like what does it mean to be American?

I moved away from the idea of patriotism all together. I became infatuated with leaving or not being part of this white American identity that I’d grown up with. They were competing identities, the country Poles vs the city Dutch immigrants, but they were at peace on this one day a year because they were all celebrating the same idea of a better future, of freedom, of hope. 

But I’d seen the cost and I didn’t want any part of that celebration anymore. 

I finally voiced this aversion to a group of POC friends (I’m mentioning it because it matters). I wasn’t seeking validation, but to relate and convey that I understood the harms of America, but you know, in the end, now that I look at it, maybe there was a selfish hope of validation. I can validate my own personal experience though, 4th of July, with the exception of a handful of bad years was a happy holiday, and remained the exception within my own family history. 

But talking with these friends revealed a bigger problem in my thinking. It was the 4th and we were all sitting in a parking lot hill overlooking the bay in San Diego. They pointed out that several of their parents still chose to come to America, that it still had something, or an idea of something, that they wanted to be a part of, and that was why they went out and celebrated the 4th. It wasn’t about the foundation of America, it was about the collective ideal of freedom and hope we share. Others, whose families had a much more torrid history here, agreed. 

I had to look at myself then. Was I not celebrating the 4th in an attempt to distance myself from the idealized form of American history, or was I trying to get brownie points as an ally? I don’t know, but I do know that, especially with Juneteenth so close, and the conversation about an inclusive holiday to celebrate the end of slavery acknowledged by the US government, that the 4th can serve a similar important purpose. NOT as a replacement, but together, Juneteenth celebrates a moral victory for America, and freedom for much of Black America, while the 4th celebrates the one core value we share as Americans, and a hope to build a better country. 

I’m slowly realizing that there is a middle. Being overly patriotic is problematic, especially given its associations with white supremacy groups and fascism. But being anti-patriotic, maybe that’s a rejection of building something altogether. We can be ashamed of where we came from and still look forward together, in the face of political dichotomies and racism and history. We can acknowledge that past together and build a better future with one simple value in common. Not in the way that weaponizes freedom as the preferences of the majority, but in a unity that acknowledges the tragedies of our past and seeks to build a better future together for all Americans. A place to build a national identity of inclusion, awareness, hope, and growth, to redefine the default identity of American away from the overly patriotic denialist rhetoric that seemingly occupies it. 

I’m still developing my view on this. I’m still conflicted at the red, white, and blue decorations, at the association of the colors with racist agendas and classist oppression, at the ignorance and denial of the tragedies of America. So while we’re in quarantine here, I will cheers you with a cheap champagne and one of those free rocket-pops (I dunno, it’s what we called them), I’ll even stir them together because my sister might be a genius, and watch Hamilton on my sister’s account like the American I am. Because no matter how Dutch or Polish my families were, they shared the American part, and maybe I can celebrate that as a start to something better. 

Thank you, to the resilient, determined, and honest Americans who are pushing to make us better, who are confronting racism and supporting change in BLM, Indigenous rights, and LGBTQ+ policy and civil rights. Cheers to you, thank you for being American.

[daeneryswhitehorse]

I used to ship all the canon couple in Harry Potter as a kid. But in my teenage years, the fandom convinced me  they were not that great, and instead I became a multishiper.

My sextet ships:

Ron and Luna because they’re both brutally honest. And I liked the theory that she had an unrequired crush on him in Ootp..

Neville and Ginny because they had complementary personality. She is a popular tomboy, he is an awkward nerd who get bully and like sensible things. But they both has a trauma around voldemort and the death eater that pushed them to fight in the war in Ootp. I believe Neville saw Ginny more as an equal and a capable fighter than Harry because of their co-leadership of the DA in DH. While Ginny helped Neville to be more confident.

Harry and Hermione. They did live through a lot of emotionally charged moments. Hermione is his voice of reason. But I don't ship it anymore. I think Harry doesn't really like the serious and anxious part of her, or even care about her activism. Plus he tend to be attracted to girl are sporty rather than nerdy. Hermione doesn't deserve this. Harry anger scare her, even if she can handle it.

My Slytherin/Gryffindor ship:

Harry and Astoria, my love for this ship is based on headcanon as we didn't know anything about her. I couldn't picture Harry with a coward who follow their parents blindly.  When I learned there were slytherins who fought in the battle of hogwarts, I’ve headcanon her as part of them, since she was supposed to be the anti-pansy. I’ve even thought she could have served as a spy for the silver trio or something. 

 Dramione. I thought they were both at the top of their class ( we actually don't know if draco was that smart), and both end up prefect. Both were very pridefull at the begin of the story, but Hermione developped more empathy throughout the books. It was believed in TGOF that Draco had try to save her during the attack of death eater at the quidditch world cup. He thought she was pretty at the ball. And she’ve never believe he was guilty of whatever her friends accused him of doing before having enough proof it was true. Despite him being their bully, though she never took him seriously after the slap in TPOA.

My problem with dramione was mostly with the fandom who tried to make Draco Spike from Buffy, and Hermione a purity sue. Or their habit at making Draco racism at the same level as Hermione being judgmental of his racism. And the Weasley bashing in dramione fanfic is very classist.

Luna and Theodore Nott. They both lost their mother as a child, and they can know see thestral because of it. I liked the asthetic of this two character dating each other: the dark and brooding sad boy with the cute cloudcuckoolander blonde. Plus I thought it was more original to have the typical rich supremacist cliché badboy having a change of heart after meeting a weird cryptid hunter that believe in conspiracy theories. It was almost a parody. In Cursed Child, we learned that Theo build a new time turner, and I like to think the mad scientist trope fit well with Luna.

Ginny and Blaise. Both are popular. Both are supposed to be very attractive. Both play chaser in their respective quidditch team. Both are part of the slug club. Their could easly had a steamy romance if jkr wanted to in the sixth book. Plus for what I remember, Blaise was not part of the sacred 28, and while he didn't seem to like bloodtraitor or muggleborn, he didn’t seem to like death eater either. And he was not impressed with Draco. It could be easier for him to change side than other Slytherins. And for what we know of Ginny and Blaise canon relationship in the books, it’s that while they didn't like each other, Blaise still found her attractive. And I think it’s a good start for something more.

Poor Neville and Ron, I’ve never found anyone in Slytherin to ship with them.

Failed canon relationship:

Dean and Ginny. They both come from a large family. Dean is the only brother ans the oldest of his family. While Ginny is the only sister and the youngest of her family. They both love quidditch and play as chaser. Dean is an artist who express himself through painting, and we know ginny express her emotion through writing poems and in her diary. I had a lot of headcannon about their relationship. They could give each other adviced in how to handle their family. Dean could have teach her soccer since she like sport. He could have help her grew more confident in her writing after her experience with Tom’s diary. Plus Dean’s biological father was killed by death eater, he could empathized with some of her trauma.

Victor and Hermione. The hot and athletic boy with the brainy but "ugly" brunette. He came from Durmstrang, a school where dark magic is common practice, and the headmaster was a death eater. And she is from Hogwarts where dark magic is forbidden, and the headmaster is the first opposant to Voldemort. Their school are rivale in the Triwizard Tournament. He is a famous quidditch player at 17, she is the brightest witch of her age at 15. Basically, they are star-crossed lover. And they manage to have a healthy relationship thoughout TGOF. Even when a popular journalist wrote a fake love triangle between Hermione and Harry and Krum, and she  receive death threat and poisonous letter from his fans, they still manage to work it out.

Cho and Harry. I believe they still could have making it work after their break up in OOTP. They just needed to work on their trauma and try to understand each other better. It could have been a good story about forgiveness and redemption, in both side. Unfortunately, Cho became a way for Jkr to prop up Ginny and Harry love story.

Or Harry and Parvati. She has quality that Harry like in a person. She is a pretty popular girl with a powerful reducto spell. She stand up for Neville against Pansy, her childhood friend and main bully of the school with Draco. With her sister, she pranked Umbrage as a sign of resistance.  I'm pretty sure  Lavender and Parvati relationship with Trelawney was parralelled with the trio relationship with Hadgrid. And I’m sure Harry would appreciate Parvati loyality to her friends. She seem too confident to be the jealous type, another thing that Harry would appreciate.  Now if he could endure Parvati love for divination, and she could forgive him for the being the worst date in history, maybe they would make a great couple.

Padma and Ron. We unfortunately don't know much about her, but we can assume she was a smart girl for ending up in ravenclaw, responsible enough to became a prefect, and we know she was as rebellious as parvati. We can assume she share her sister confidence in her feminity. She seem pretty similar to Hermione, ron canon love interest. And if she lack the girl insecurities, which often clash with Ron’s, they could form a more healthy couple than Ronmione. Too bad Ron was such a terrible date. And a terrible dad in CC.

Side character with main pairing:

Luna and George. I think George would find Luna's mind fascinating and inspiring, which is probably something she never experience. They compliment each other: him helping Luna develop a sense of humor, and she helping him with with the lose of Fred. He has a stable job at his shop while she travel all around the world as a magizoologist. It could be good when they start founding a family. Plus I like the aesthetic of the mad hatter meeting willy wonka.

Hermione and Fred. He share a lot of qualities with ron but doesn't have the insecurities that clash with Hermione's. They both weren't above blackmailing to achieve there goals. Fred is the leader in his duo with his george. The twins are ambitious and create their own business really young. Same with Hermione with spew. The twins and Hermione both helped Harry break into Umbrage’s office. And they both hated this woman for different reason and find way to rebel against her. Hermione by creating the DA and taking down the ministry propaganda. The twins by selling they special candies and creating the chaos in hogwarts as they run away. The twins are brillant and lazy but fun personify, and Hermione is a serious perfectionist  who doesn’t know how to losened up. They both respect each other cleverness and are pretty impress with it. Hermione know fred weakness is his mom. Fred would nearly punched draco for insulting her as mudblood. Both relationship with Percy degrade for different reason. Unfortunately Fred died so you have to ignore canon to ship them.

[maxdibert]

Why do you think Sirius gave up on his family? Do you think he thought they would forgive him for becoming friends with a blood traitor so he just did what he wanted but as the war progressed he realized he has to actually make a choice? Like he took it as a rebellion and angst at the beginning and only later realized how real the pressure was? Did he not love them enough? What was the deal there? (I know you are a Snape account but I love your takes on other characters as well that's why I'm asking for your opinion on this. Btw I read your fic and I love the way you write Snape's internal dilemas)

Well, you can ask me about any character—I don’t exclusively talk about Severus hahaha and i love to rant about things so... Also, Sirius? Can’t stand him. But I like him as a character because I find him so cynical and hypocritical that he’s absolutely fascinating. I’ve always had this love-hate relationship with rich kids from ultra-conservative families who play at being progressives and think they’re these righteous justice warriors but, at the end of the day, are still just privileged kids with privileged prejudices and privileged habits. And I mean that sincerely—no irony intended. I’ve met plenty of people like that in my life, and I think Sirius is a very realistic representation of the cognitive dissonance that people like this tend to have.

That said, here’s something I’ve always thought. Obviously, this is a personal headcanon based on my own experiences with people who fit his profile, but I think it holds water. Usually, people like this—those who grow up in oppressive environments and eventually become atheist anti-religion types, join the communist party to scandalize their ultra-right-wing parents, or turn into crypto bros after ditching the vegan hippie commune their parents raised them in—do this stuff in late adolescence, almost as adults. But Sirius? He starts rebelling really early, as a kid. By the time he’s 11, he already feels the need to rebel against his family.

It happens the moment he meets James, when James establishes that Slytherin is the worst. Sirius comments—offhandedly, without any resentment or anger—that his whole family’s been in Slytherin. He doesn’t seem like he’s at war with them yet, but you can tell he kind of likes the idea of not being in Slytherin just to piss them off. Add to that the fact that he hints in OotP that his dad was a pushover and calls Regulus an idiot—like he was just a fool—but he doesn’t seem truly resentful toward either of them. Sure, they didn’t have a great relationship, but when he talks about them, it’s more with antipathy than hatred. All of this leads me to the same conclusion: mommy issues.

Sirius had major mommy issues—or at least, that’s how I see it. Rich boys with daddy issues rebel by trying to become powerful men, detached from the arena where their fathers succeeded, but determined to surpass them. Rich boys with mommy issues? They turn into psychos. Seriously, that’s just how it works—I don’t make the rules. I think Sirius always clashed hard with Walburga because (and this is my favorite part, because this isn’t just a headcanon; I’m absolutely convinced of this from the little we see of their interactions—or of him with the portrait—in the books) they had the same shitty personality.

Walburga was a dominant, explosive woman with an imposing, even despotic, character. It’s very reminiscent of Bellatrix and, by extension, very much like Sirius. I think Regulus and Orion had similar personalities—the same kind Narcissa shows: arrogant, smug, classist, but restrained and composed. Egocentric, but calm. Walburga, Sirius, and Bellatrix are the other side of that aristocratic coin: the type who believe they’re entitled to everything and everyone, the kind who bulldoze over everything in their path. They’re wild and uncontrollable personalities, especially if someone tries to rein them in.

In my mind, Sirius took after his mom, and Walburga couldn’t stand having someone so much like her constantly challenging her authority. Sirius, meanwhile, couldn’t stand her trying to control him. So at age 11, his rebellion was probably just a tantrum aimed at his mom, a way to piss her off as much as possible. From there—and thanks to James’s influence, as well as the credit Sirius gave James because, spoiler-not-spoiler, James was also a rich pureblood wizard like him—he started adopting James’s worldview. Not because it was rooted in firm beliefs or clear reasoning, but because James had a family that wasn’t insane, so he was probably right. And if parroting James’s ideas at home gave his mom a few gray hairs, all the better.

It snowballed and escalated until the relationship was unsalvageable. James offered him a place to stay if he wanted to leave, and Sirius moved out. But the start of it all? A tantrum aimed at mommy. Sirius has some massive mommy issues he just can’t handle. And the funniest part? He’ll do anything to avoid being like her. He’ll go to any length to do the exact opposite of what she would do. But in the end, because they share the same awful personality, he behaves in the same violent, despotic, narcissistic way she did—just with different victims: Kreacher or Severus, for example.

It’s a brilliant little Oedipal case study.

[threewaysdivided]

I appreciate the response. Yeah, among other adjustments, had the plot been handled a little differently, I feel like Sam’s relationship with her parents could have evolved into something like that of Danny and Jazz and their parents. And don’t get me wrong; I still like Sam, too.

(In reference to this post and follow-up ask.)

Good to hear from you again 😊

I think there were a lot of things across the board that could have been tweaked or edited to improve the integrity of the series.  If I had to boil down the problem with DP to a single point I’d probably say it’s that the most interesting parts of the show are the characters/world/implications but the writers (or some of them anyway - I suspect there might have been some conflict between Hartman, the lead writers and the execs’) wanted certain plots, aesops and gags, and chose to brute-force them in regardless of whether they actually worked with what was already there.  Basically, it lacks consistency and internal logic.

For Sam in particular I think there are a few things that could have been handled better:

First one’s more a general complaint at the show and might light a fire under my notes but heck lets go there anyway but the writing has kind of a sexist bent that really doesn’t fit the characters or need to be there. Considering how much Danny and Jack are shown to love and respect Maddie and Jazz there’s no way they’d call their involvement in Genius Magazine “the swimsuit edition”.  Paulina might be traditionally feminine but “She surrendered her individuality for a boy! I’m so proud of her!” is not a line that any human girl in the history of human girls would say unironically.  There’s also a few too many jokes that basically boil down to “male character is emasculated/ vulnerable/ likes feminine-coded things, hyuk hyuk hyuk”.

I’m bringing this up not just because they’re gross cheap gags but because for Sam specifically, this pervasive low-key contempt for women and femininity in the writing, especially the tendency to portray almost every non-sympathetic girl her age as one-note, brainless boy-crazy cliches that she can’t connect with, really does not help her character.  I would have loved to see more genuine interaction between Sam and the other girls, even if it most of it was Kim Possible-Bonnie Rockwaller style antagonistic rapport.  We could have seen her develop some kind of tenuous connection with one of the A-listers, or even just have a secondary-female-character to be cordial towards - kind of like Mikey is for Danny and Tucker.  Hold up, outside of Valerie, Star and Paulina are there any named secondary girls at Casper High?  Sam doesn’t seem to have a single female friend in the show and considering how vocally judgemental she is, it can almost read like she’s rejecting them outright for being girls, which really undercuts attempts to make her seem feminist. (I mentioned it in a past tag but this feels like an early-2000s-male-writer mistake of equating Female Empowerment™ with the ability to tear down other women and belittle traditional femininity - which isn’t so much Feminism as it is Internalised Misogyny.)  Even just mixing up the pairings to put her with Star instead of Kwan in Lucky in Love would have helped.

I’d have also liked to see more awareness of and consistency in the conflict between her activism and her wealth.  It kind of undercuts the significance of her activism when you realise that she’s wealthy enough to make these choices with little cost to herself; it’s much easier to go vegan or buy renewable/ recyclable /sustainable /fair-trade when price isn’t an issue, especially if you also have serving staff to offset the time cost.  Once you notice this it makes her activism feel more tokenistic, and also like she doesn’t really understand her own privilege when she tries to push her agendas onto the school/ her classmates without considering why they mightn’t be able to do so as easily.  It’s also weird because the source of her family’s wealth is a cellophane-toothpick-wrapper (i.e. something that basically produces litter) but she still seems very comfortable enjoying the material benefits despite her pro-eco anti-consumerism sentiments.  It’s bizarre that she’s more concerned with the social consequence of ‘fake friends’ than the ethics of capitalism.  It can come off a bit “do as I say, not as I do”. 

It would have been nice for the show to give more screen time to reinforcing that Sam is aware of that conflict and is making an active effort to hold to her principles even at the cost of personal comfort; maybe showing some unease at the source of her wealth, trying to live below her means and only spend up on ethical/ eco-friendly/ sustainable products, op-shopping or hand-making her goth accessories, going out of her way to re-use or re-purpose things even if buying a new one would be ‘better’, actually showing or referencing her doing substantial hands-on activities (e.g. going off-screen or taking the boys to do tree-planting, litter pickups, soup kitchens, animal-shelter work etc).  Just something to help make it clearer that she genuinely cares and isn’t just doing the low-mess lip-service activities because she enjoys indulging in the image of Wokeness™.

These things would have helped regardless of how her family was written but let’s hop back on topic and talk about them.  I don’t have any prescriptive preference but let’s spitball a few different options and how they could have played:

#1 Sam’s parents don’t respect her interests and want her to fit a mold

In this case I’d make it that they don’t really pay attention or show much caring for who Sam really is as a person; their image of and interactions with her are more of a fantasised version of the ‘perfect’ daughter they want, they make very little effort to encourage her actual interests and are perhaps restrictive about what they let her do in the few moments when they do bother paying close attention (you might compare to some versions of Tim Drake’s Parents from DC Comics).  Classist, overly image-conscious, snobby and superficial.  

This would be the most sympathetic portrayal of her character without changing it very far from how it is in DP canon - helping contextualise why Sam is so fiercely defensive of her autonomy, why she pushes so hard when trying to get her opinions across and why she’s so judgemental of rich people and disdainful towards classic femininity - even possibly explaining her more hypocritical/ manipulative/ entitled traits as learned behaviours.  It would also give her more legitimate reason to be less empathetic towards others - after all even if they have struggles and family troubles it’s still better than what she’s dealing with (Danny’s parents may not be attentive but hey, at least they love him for himself, right?)

For this version I’d probably put her arc around growing past the “suffering olympics” model of viewing other people’s pain, but also in her finding family in Danny/Tucker/her Grandmother’s circle of connections, learning how to have healthy power-balance and communication in her relationships with others (aka: getting over her hypocrisy and realising that assertiveness is about communicating that “I matter, and so do you”) and pulling away from her parents’ influence - maybe even living with Ida a lot of the time.

#2 Sam’s parents are well-intentioned but overbearing

For this one, Sam’s parents would genuinely want the best for her… only they have an overly old-fashioned and restrictive view of what “the best” is and are a bit set-in-their-ways.  They’d probably view “hippies” and “goth” stuff as “dangerously rebellious hooligan-activities” and likely to be somewhat patronising about Sam’s passion for it being “just a phase”.   They’d be worried about her hanging around “the Fenton Kid” and “the Foley Kid” both because Danny’s parents are kind of irresponsible screwballs about safety but also because they put a lot of value in image due to their belief in social connections being the way to get ahead.  Them pushing Sam towards classic femininity and specific activities would be less about disrespecting her identity and more about their overly narrow view of “success” and worrying that she’s going to end up losing valuable opportunities and “wasting her life” if she keeps on down her current path.

This would still give Sam more sympathetic context for her views on femininity and pushiness about self-expression. 

Personally I think the arc I’d like to see here is one themed around responsible/considerate assertiveness and valuing alternative perspectives.  Sam coming to realise her own hypocrisy - that she can’t push her views onto others while complaining about her parents doing the same - developing more sympathy for Danny as she realises that he’s in a similar position with Jack’s insistence that he’ll inherent Fentonworks and his parents’ narrow-mindedness about ghosts, interacting with other girls and seeing their perspective, learning how to assert her opinion while making allowances for others’ (maybe an alternative version where she connects with Star in Lucky in Love and, after Aragon’s defeat in Beauty Marked, Sam still says she personally thinks it’s dumb but then steps down and lets Star win because she understands that Star values it), and getting her Grandma’s help in convincing her parents to widen their perspective while still responding to their concerns.

(This one has the overall kindest message and I think I like it best).

#3 Sam’s parents are trying and Sam’s actually the problem 

This one is the one that’s the least sympathetic to Sam.  Her parents still don’t get the Goth/Activist thing and they have some concerns about safety but they understand that it makes her happy and they’re okay with it so long as she’s not getting into trouble or mixing up with anyone that could hurt her.  Them pushing her towards more feminine/optimistic things is less pushing and more trying to encourage some hobbies that offer a bit more common ground.  They might have reservations, and they might not always have time, but they would like to be part of their daughter’s life… except for the problem that Sam has wrapped herself up in a teen-drama persecution complex and got it into her head that they “won’t accept her” are “pushing her to be someone else” and “don’t understand” so there’s no point even trying to explain or connect.  In this one Ida isn’t taking sides on purpose but she ends up accidentally enabling Sam a little because Sam reminds her of her younger days and she likes spoiling her granddaughter (and doesn’t much care for her daughter-in-law).

In this case Sam’s flaws would be framed much more as flaws born of her making superficial snap judgements, thinking she knows better and being too proud to admit she’s wrong.  There would definitely be moments of her coming across as an entitled, privileged holier-than-thou brat who invents problems because she likes feeling sorry for herself, especially early in her arc.

This version of the story would go the hardest on Sam with the general lesson being “you need to respect that other people are people who have their own problems, feelings and needs that are as real and valid as yours”.  She’d still have good qualities and Danny and Tucker would still obviously like and value her but there’d also be times of strain where they don’t want to hurt her feelings but are clearly getting worn out with the nonsense.  At its worst, maybe a “you’re like mustard. Great in small quantities, but a lot of you is…a lot” type confrontation.

I’d also give the secondary cast the most fleshing out, agency and sympathetic-ness here, and have beats where Sam has to realise that they’re lot more complex than her 2D stereotyped view of them and are dealing with actual serious problems to which hers are largely non-issues by comparison.  I’d probably play Dash and Paulina similar to in the fic Alibi (go read it, it’s good) - Dash being gay and performing aggression because toxic masculinity, insecurity, and being terrified of anyone outside the A-listers finding out (still not okay that he’s a bully but at least more understandable), while Paulina is hiding high emotional perceptiveness behind her pretty face and deliberately bearding for him to keep bigoted parents/ teachers off his back.  I’d also probably have a subplot in an alternate Life Lessons where Sam follows Valerie around because jealous/possessive and, like Danny, ends up realising that she’s working two jobs to help her Dad with their financial problems.  Basically she’d be getting hit with the Reality Stick a lot.

There’d also be more instances of Sam getting directly called out by the other girls. Fleshing them out as people and showing that their dislike is less superficiality and more because she unfairly judges and antagonises them all the time.  Giving them more agency in Beauty Marked and have them be direct about “we know you’re just here to be smug about how much ‘Better’ you are but have you considered that we’re doing this for ourselves and actually enjoy it?”.  Having Paulina be less “tee hee I am indeed a Witch” in Parental Bonding and more “Ugh fine, fine, I don’t really like him that much but you were being so obviously Jealous and Judge-y and I figured if I played a little you might actually step up.  But fine, if you’re sure.  Here’s your necklace back, I’ll let your dorky ‘friend’ down tomorrow.  But pro-tip?  You like someone you gotta go for it - otherwise don’t complain when your boy-toy gets taken by someone who actually means it.”  (Still petty, but emotionally intelligent pettiness, which… not really much better, but at least more interesting.)  A lot more of Sam realising that she’s not a particularly good feminist and that she’s no more entitled to Danny’s affections than anyone else.

To be honest, while I could say the most about this version and there’s a lot of potential drama there it’s the one I like the least because it means canonising my least favourite proto-abusive bad-faith narcissistic reading of Sam, casting her as an almost-villain and essentially punishing her over and over until she character develops into a decent human being.  Sure it’s an important message about how you treat others but it’s not a very nice or kind story and while there might be the odd fic that makes it cathartic I can’t say I’m a huge fan.

Again, if I had to pick, I’d probably go with something like #2. 

But there we go.  Another thrilling instalment in the “overly long posts about Sam Manson” saga.  

Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for stopping by!

[dadbodbobby]

Kate Bishop Erasure

Alright, so the title is speaking more about Tonky stans than the MCU.

The movies have shown Tony Stark as being selfish, condescending, not considerate of what consequences his actions have on others, (Revealing his exact address on the news and revealing the existence of the Barton fam, (still pissed that little plot thread never went anywhere),), etc. They also show that he doesn’t help others with his money and his genius, even AFTER he stops selling WMD’s to the military, (SHIELD and the Avengers don’t count. Nor do those Harvard students or the ‘civilian guiding robot thingies’ in AOU, seriously, what were those things?), and he’s also shown to be racist, or at the very least xenophobic, sexist, and classist. (Is that the correct word? Think of him dumping on Peter for all of his not so nice things in CW). But the stand constantly produce these headcanon like, “Tony donates to 12 different charities! Tony packs lunches for his adopted kids! Tony volunteers at orphanages! Tony throws blank checks to the poor! He is such a generous billionaire!” The closest the movies get to showing this is him building the advanced braces to help Rhodey walk again, donating to the Harvard grads, and donating paintings to the Boy Scouts. But all of these actions DO sound like another rich (possibly billionaire) character. These sound like some of the character traits of Hawkeye. More specifically, Kate Bishop. Admittedly, this is from the most basic internet research, but I figure at least SOME of the information I found is correct. Right? Like how she saves a woman from being raped by two frat boys, how she donates her time by volunteering at a soup kitchen, just little things like that. It seems like they’re taking Bishops qualities and projecting them onto Stark. I don’t know. If someone who’s more knowledgeable about these characters could add to this, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks! @toenail-stink-hate-echo-chamber @tonyantiaging @antitonystarkbitch @antitonystarkmemes @anti-stark @anti-tony-god @antitoniestank