#but its like the same as when i had my harry potter house crisis back in middle/ high school

[my-strange-attraction]

Toying around with the idea of calling myself queer as my main label rather than aro, ace, or aroace. Like I still identify with my aspec labels but I’m not really vibing with how constrictive they can feel at times, especially when I introduce myself as one of them. Idk I think my journey from demigirl to agender to genderfluid to eventually genderqueer has taught me a lot about the power of labels as a social tool rather than merely as self identification. Both uses of labels are important to recognize, but I think tumblr tends to put a certain emphasis on the latter, and I’m realizing that the former is more important to me as a person than I thought.

[julie1706]

Julie’s incredibly aesthetic incredibly autumny list of movies that she maybe recommends (part 2)

Oh sweet joy! It turns out that there are many more great, fantastic, cosy movies (and tv-series!) just absolutely perfect for autumn. By popular demand, I return with even MORE autumny recommendations, and this time, there might even be spell-checking. (Looking at you, “Silence of the Lamps”) (I won’t edit that, because that’s just funny.) 

Thank you for reading the previous one, and I hope you’ll enjoy this one too! We have some GREAT ones coming up. I hope! Maybe! But what I believe will really perfect this second list, is the fact, that autumn is close to being at its peak right now, with it being October! Woohoo! 

Pumpkins, Jack’o’lanterns, spooky movies, Halloween, tricks and treats, fog, rain, candles lit in the dark, delicious tea, and scarves, because the chill is back in the air! Amazing! The aesthetics are to die for! 

I’m on a small break from university, and have actually been having some allowed free time, to do autumny stuff. By this I mean I can do autumny stuff with my family and friends, and not feel guilty, because this time I’m not procrastinating. Well, I’m a little behind on some books, but it’s not that bad. You’re allowed free time on breaks! They’re supposed to be mostly free time, anyone knows that. I refuse to be a good student on breaks! 

This free time means that I have actually had time to watch some of these movies and tv-shows myself, and so I can feel a little better about recommending most of them, since I’ve actually seen them. Hehe. Still. I do have other, boring stuff to do, like reading for uni, emptying the dishwasher, cooking, vacuuming, etc., so there will be some of these I’m including, I have not watched, and those will be, again, backed by the power of optimism. Yay! Anyway! You’ve read enough not-halloween recommendationing, and is getting bored - Let’s get to it! (Also, these are still in random order, and I will put warnings at the end, again <3)

Coraline

I remember watching Coraline when it came out in theaters, years ago. I also remember that we had a little closet-thing in the wall, small and closed-up, but still very similar to the one she goes into, in the movie. Needless to say, this was not a favorite for little Julie, who was absolutely scared shit-less by this movie. I remember button-eyes, decaying puppets, and a very scary mom. Now, I have not watched the full movie since, but from bits and pieces through the years, I can wholeheartedly recommend this one. It’s stop-motion, the details are incredible, and wow, this movie is great. If you, like me, are no longer 9 years old, watch it! It’s wonderful, and surprisingly, very feel-good in the family aspect. A great movie!

Official synopsis: 

An adventurous 11-year-old girl finds another world that is a strangely idealized version of her frustrating home, but it has sinister secrets.

//Warning: do not watch this, if you are around nine years old. It will absolutely traumatize you about small closets in old houses. If you are not nine years old, I think you’re good! Just the right amount of spookyness, I believe!

Sense and Sensibility

I watched this with a good friend in february, I think. So I’m not sure why I think this has to go on an autumny list, but I stand by it! Maybe it’s the beige and brown, beautiful clothing, the many shots of nature, and the relationships between these characters, that fits very well with the cold and chilling air, we find ourselves in, here in lovely October. I don’t know. Food for thought. But this is a great movie, and I really think you should try watching it under a blanket, with tea and a good friend. We didn’t know the story before we saw it, and it had us guessing! And there is a part my other friend Sif told me, always makes her dad cry, and I think that should be taken as a compliment to this movie! It’s great! Love, sisters, crisis and period drama (and great clothes), this movie has it all! (also - Emma Thompson!)

Official synopsis: 

Rich Mr. Dashwood dies, leaving his second wife and her three daughters poor by the rules of inheritance. The two eldest daughters are the title opposites.

//Warning: It might make you cry. But I promise, it will be a good experience, in the end. It’s not scary, though.

Over the Garden Wall (animated series)

Well, this one, I’ve been dreading to add to my list. Now, you must not misunderstand, it’s not because I don’t like it. It’s because this series is so great, so weird, so beautifully drawn and made, that I’m afraid I could write a whole blog post dedicated only to Otgw, and still not feel that I have done it justice. It's just so good. It’s like the someone just decided one day, to make a series, that absolutely, perfectly encompasses autumn and halloween, and then did just that. The storyline is good, the art is good, the soundtrack is good. God, the soundtrack. I’ve also made sure to listen to this show’s soundtrack, since we left summer behind, and it’s just so good. There’s a reason tumblr went wild, when this show was first released. But since this is an AUTUMNY list, let me focus on those aspects. Big dark woods, scary noises in the dark, red and golden leaves, fantastical beings - this show has it all, and trust me, it WILL get you in the mood for autumn. I almost started puking leaves and pumpkins when I watched this with my friends, that’s how pumped it got me. This show has a special place in my heart, and if you promise not to tell all the other movies and shows on the list, I’ll admit something: this might be a favorite of mine. Maybe THE autumny favorite. 

Official synopsis:

Two brothers find themselves lost in a mysterious land and try to find their way home.

Warning: May be a little spooky, but I have it on good authority from a friend that is a true scaredy-cat, with nerves of whipped cream, that’s it’s fine. She  could handle it, watches it every year, and she’s fine. Good levels of scary.  

Corpse Bride

Believe it or not, that same scaredy-cat of a friend, I just mentioned, actually instructed a musical, based on this story. Is she a horror-fan or not? I have no idea, but her show was so well-done, that it actually made me like this movie a bit better. I have seen it before, but she convinced me, by telling me the original story behind this movie, that it’s pretty great. And by association, this movie became pretty great, too. It’s been some years since I saw this, but it’s a pretty good halloween movie, I think. Dead people tormenting the living. Classic autumn stuff, I would say. And it’s pretty well-made, I think, stop-motion again! I like the aesthetic of a corpse bride, though you have to admit the actual thing is pretty sad. The premise is haunting and scary, but it’s more morose, melancholic and depressing, I think. Poor Emily. But a good movie! Sorry, maybe that wasn’t a very enticing description, but I promise, it will do you more good than bad, to watch it. And then go google the original story, the movie is based on! 

Official synopsis:

When a shy groom practices his wedding vows in the inadvertent presence of a deceased young woman, she rises from the grave assuming he has married her.

//Oops, nearly forgot a warning! Warning: some people are dead, and therefore rotting a bit. If you’re squeamish, don’t watch. If you love sad love stories, definitely watch!

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Yeah, I’m not sure why this has to go on my Autumny List either, sorry. It just has to. I know it takes place over an entire year, but in my head, it jut fits very well with the whole magic, supernatural, foggy halloween times we find ourselves in. I mean, look at the cover! Maybe it’s the iconic scene, right before the troll is discovered in the girls’ bathroom (sorry, spoiler), with the floating jack’o’lanterns, and tables almost crashing undet the weight of candy and cakes, that convinced my brain, that this is a halloween movie. I don’t know. Just trust me on this, and watch the first Harry Potter movie. It’s pretty good. 

Official synopsis: 

An orphaned boy enrolls in a school of wizardry, where he learns the truth about himself, his family and the terrible evil that haunts the magical world.

//Warning: Nah, you’re good ;-)

Little Women (Important: 2019 edition)

Alright girls, we’re hopping genres again! This is another period-drama (sort of), about sisters, and wow, I cried to this. I bawled, I sobbed, I choked on snot, and was a little inconsolable, when I watched it with friends, at the cinema. One of the best experiences this year, and one of the greatest movies I have watched in a long time. I love everything about this movie: the family-bonds, the clothing, the many nature-shots, the developments of characters, (almost) all the characters, and just, wow. No good way to end that sentence, because I want to just keep describing all the good parts of this movie, because it's everything. It’s amazing, and yes, i’m exaggerating, but I can’t help it. I forgot to eat my popcorn or drink my water, when we watched this, that’s how mesmerized I was by this movie. I love Jo, I think I can empathize a lot with her, and if I could talk to her, if she was real, I would thank her for telling her story. This movie is great, you should watch it, because it makes you feel so warm inside. 

Official synopsis:

Jo March reflects back and forth on her life, telling the beloved story of the March sisters - four young women, each determined to live life on her own terms.

//Warning: Might make you break down crying. But in a good way. Very cathartic, actually.

Alien

I watched this for the first time last year, when I decided I was going to watch the classic older horror movies, and not freak the fuck out. I mostly succeed. And this movie was a joy to watch. That’s maybe weird to say about an alien horror movie, but wow I just love Sigourney Weaver, and the aesthetics of this movie. The story is thrilling, and I really did not like most of the characters, I thought they were hysteric and annoying, but I still rooted for them. It’s a different kind of horror movie, that’s for sure! But when I watched it, I totally understood why it has become such a classic.

Official synopsis: 

After a space merchant vessel receives an unknown transmission as a distress call, one of the crew is attacked by a mysterious life form and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.

//Warning: Uh, yeah, Sif, this is not one for you. It’s gross and scary. Malin, I think you’ll like this one! Go ahead! Maybe we should see it together?

Edward Scissorhands

Haven’t seen this one! I want to, though. I think I’ve seen one scene, where this man accidentally pokes a water-bed, and younger me felt that was a very tragic thing, on more levels. Johnny Depp yet again, so it has to be good, right? I know this poor guy, Edward, has it rough, and was given some really not that practical hands. Man, he looks sad, huh? So maybe more sad than scary, yet again. Dont know! But I really do want to watch it. Winona Ryder is in this, too, so really, it’s a no-brainer!

Official synopsis:

An artificial man, who was incompletely constructed and has scissors for hands, leads a solitary life. Then one day, a suburban lady meets him and introduces him to her world.

//Warning: I don’t know? Maybe not that spooky? I think it’s more sad, to be honest.

Pride + Prejudice + Zombies

I mean, why the hell not - right? I love Jane Austen. I love Pride and Prejudice. And I really like halloween, so OF COURSE, I’m including this one. I’ve seen it, too. My friend Malin and I watched it a couple of years ago, and yeah, it’s good. It’s not high cinema, no, but I don’t need that. It was a fun, weird twist, and sometimes, that’s all you need. There is a very interesting scene with a corset, that was NOT in the book, and I think it really added something to this story. And Lily James. Whew. Great movie. Great for autumn. I will be watching this one again.

Official synopsis:

Five sisters in 19th century England must cope with the pressures to marry while protecting themselves from a growing population of zombies.

//Warning: I can’t really remember, but I think there’s some pretty gross scenes with zombies. Rotting flesh is NOT pretty. But just close your eyes for that, and  you’ll be good!

The Haunting of Hill House

I first watched this series when i came out some time ago. I never finished it, I don’t think my heart was in it, but by no fault of the show. Now, that the same creator has made another show, which my mom and I are hooked by, and almost through, I think I’ll be returning to this one - it deserves another chance! A great old house, ghosts, family secrets and INCREDIBLE aesthetics, mean there must be something here! Also, I think it’s based on a novel by Shirley Jackson, and it’s supposed to a classic horror novel, and Stephen King tweeted that he liked it, so yeah, it’s promising! The series I’m watching with my mom is spooky, but tumblr says the Haunting of Hill House is supposed to be much more spooky, terrifying, even, and I really want to find out if that’s true!

Official synopsis:

Flashing between past and present, a fractured family confronts haunting memories of their old home and the terrifying events that drove them from it.

//Warning: Very Scary! Faint of heart - Beware! Just enjoy this beautiful gif of Nell dancing by herself, and move on <3

Psycho

Another old classic! Woo! Have not watched, but really, I feel like that’s almost a crime by now. I HAVE to watch it. Soon, I’m planning to. Sadly, It’s old, and I grew up with the internet, so I’ve been spoiled oh so dreadfully, and knows all the bloody details and plottwists of this oldie but goldie. But I still want to watch it! It must be a classic for a reason - right? Also, I’ve never seen the full version of the famous shower scene, and that’s just embarrassing. Shame on me.

Official synopsis:

A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.

//Warning: It’s a horror classic! It’s gotta be scary. Then again, it DID come out in 1960. Be careful about this one! Sorry, I have no idea, have never watched it.

Hannibal (the TV series)

It’s gross, it’s scary, it’s aesthetic, there is a danish elegant man eating people in snowy Baltimore, and you really shouldn’t pay him to be your psychiatrist. Hannibal! I first watched this as a young, edgy teenager, and all the blood and gore didn't get to me at all - I just enjoyed the cat-and-mouse game between Will Graham, our main character, very mentally unstable, and a dog-lover, and Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a renowned psychiatrist, elegant, high-society - and also, he talks like a mixture of the bible and an old greek sonet. What I'm trying to get at is that this show is weird. Good weird. But also, now no longer an edgy teenager myself, it’s really gross. A man’s leg is cut off and served to himself. That’s gross. I didn’t like that, and I definitely covered my eyes. Other than that, it’s a very vivid show, with great focus on presentation and symbolism. I would love for someone to analyse each episode, because there's so much attention to detail. It’s honestly impressive. And after having watched many, many shows about crime and murders, I must say, this show has THE most buckwild, creative, never seen before ways of killing people. How the hell do you come up with a murderer using people’s different skin colors to make a mural? I don’t know. It’s disgusting, but man is it different. I’m halfway through season two, and there is a lot to unpack! Also, have to mention, very homoerotic - that’s a plus. Don’t think I could’ve stomached all the blood, otherwise. I hate blood, and wow is there blood in this show.

Official synopsis:

Explores the early relationship between renowned psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter, and his patient, a young FBI criminal profiler, who is haunted by his ability to empathize with serial killers.

//Warning: Yeah. You read how many times I wrote ‘gross’. Just trust me on this one, it’s gross. It’s good, but maybe don’t watch it. You don’t need to introduce your brain to this.

The Haunting of Bly Manor

Ooh boy. Ooooh boy. This series is very good. VERY good. I’m watching it with my mom right now, I think we’re at episode 7, and wow are we hooked. It’s spooky, it’s haunting, it’s thrilling, it’s mysterious, and wow is it scary. We both agreed to go together, the first night we watched this, and our dog had to be taken out on his night-walk. She didn’t want to go alone, and i didn’t want to stay back at the house, alone. So we went together, and I was so freaked out that I nearly peed my pants, when some kids screamed in our neighborhood. It’s so very much what I want a ghost-story to be, but it’s also a lot more, and much greater for it. I love all the characters, they’re all so well-rounded, and most of them are good. The big manor is spooky, and the woods surrounding it are foggy and dark, and yes, this is really a great series for autumn and halloween. It’s the second series made by Mike Flanagan. There are some similarities between the two shows, and surprisingly, some of the same actors! I think that’s very interesting, and it also made me very confused, as I watched the first episodes of the Haunting of Bly Manor, and could not, for the life of me, figure out where the hell I had seen these people before. It made it even more eerie in a way, and I appreciate that. I love this show, and I think I’ll be very sad when we’re through with it. I guess the natural thing to do, will be to follow up with Flanagan’s previous horror series, The Haunting of Hill House! Also, there’s lesbians in this one. Very nice. I appreciate that. Also, surprisingly - I love the children! They’re so cool and brave, and it would be very nice if especially Flora could go with me, the next time I’m going to a haunted house. Such a badass.

Official synopsis:

After an au pair’s tragic death, Henry hires a young American nanny to care for his orphaned niece and nephew who reside at Bly Manor with the chef Owen, groundskeeper Jamie and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose.

Warning: It’s spooky. It’s the perfect halloween series, so of course it’s very spooky! This gif I chose is spooky, and I promise the show itself is worse. But if you can handle dead people creepily staring in the background, and maybe has someone to watch it with, I think you’ll be fine!

Alright! We made it! Another spooky, aesthetic, autumny list, for us to enjoy this crispy season! Woohoo! Also, I’m sorry if there’s any spelling mistakes or whatelse, I hope you enjoyed reading anyway! Thank you! Now go drink some tea and relax, you’ve earned it. I recently tried chili-tea, and damn, that’s another recommendation from me! It was amazing!

Hope you have a great Halloween, it’s close now. Watch out for the cold weather, remember to bundle up, and don’t let the impending darkness get you down. Light some candles! And also, watch some of these spooky tv-series and movies with your family and friends! And have a great fall! <3

Love, Julie

[friiday-thirteenth]

hi uhhh people? bro i forgot how to greet you guys for a full second there lmao

disclaimer: I'm literally just giving you a rundown of what I've been doing for an hour.

anyway! instead of sleeping bc I was tired, I did something else bc I also have a brain that like categories for seemingly arbitrary things, such as books.

backstory bc its great: I started moving my room around last night, but i had to stop bc I was taking everything out, vacuuming, then moving my bed and all the shit under it, vacuuming there, and then it was like. 9.30 and i was truly tired. then today I moved my dresser and three bookshelves back in and therein begins the story

so I took everything out of my bookshelves, which are tiny and can hold like. 21 good sized books each, which is pathetic, because I have a ridiculously large amount of books that reside within my room.

I sorted those things into groups of author and uh, "genre" which basically boiled down to fun categories such as

really really big (volume of books big, not fame big) series/authors that're fantasy

anti-capitalist fiction that seems really fucking capitalism

non-fiction/books that feel like non-fiction

that one series that I love beyond measure and is where I took Friday from (Friday Barnes by R.A. Spratt)

fiction/sci-fi that I can just... read

fiction that doesn't feel like fiction/books I love from a younger time (artists are crazy and other stories, my beloved <3)

and then there are the authors/series I've got separate categories for:

Tamora pierce (hnghhhhh I love so much)

Rick Riordan

harry potter (bro I still like the books don't sue me. I'm far more critical of the writing tho lmao)

folk of air

six of crows

his dark materials my absolutely fucking beloved <3

the Medora chronicles

yeah there's more but I cbf ANYWAY

then I went out to the shed (that word is not doing it justice. its literally the size of my house. its a second building of its own right, really.) and sorted through boxes of books that we just chuck out there whenever mum has a crisis over the state of the house, and grabbed so many books. like, heaps.

but the thing is, out there is where the good old books are stored, like a bunch of Eoin Colfer ones (supernaturalists.... the wish list.... airman.... half-moon investigations..... Artemis fowl..... hnghhhhhh), a poetry book I had been reading online bc I didn't know we had it, The Hobbit, a bunch of Nancy Drew, and like. Wuthering heights.

and so I brought those (and more sbfbfv) inside and now I have so many piles, sorted and unsorted, just sitting on my floor. my room consists of a bed, a dresser, a lamp, three tiny bookshelves, and shit tons of books.

oh, plus the boxes filled with all of Charles Dickens work in matching covers, plus the complete works of shakespeare that's formatted like a fucking Bible. same type of paper and everything.

OH, AND I WENT OUTSIDE IN THE M I D D L E O F T H E N I G H T, in the freezing cold (bc its hitting winter here) in shorts and a t-shirt when I went to the shed. like. jfc idiot. then i fumbled around in the dark to find the light switch, as I was listening to the episode of welcome to nightvale where the computer comes to life bc the wallaby's daughter, Meghan, is literally just a man's hand. it's very terrifying to here a weird-ass computer voice just. play creepily through your earbuds, I'll tell you that.

here have some book related anecdotes that don't relate to this post whatsoever apart from the fact that Books

I remember the time it was a really hot day and I sat in the shed and read day of the triffids or whatever the title is. I'm pretty sure people were blinded and this one guy could still see and he got threatened. I was like, ten. I did not read age appropriate things bc I was fucking weird.

life ft. the time me and my friend laughed over the word boob in a book when we were twelve. go us. she's a lesbian now.

i go to second-hand bookstores with my dad whenever we aren't in my hometown, and it's a bad idea because I've come away from those with $50 worth of books before. and there was that one time where dad brought me the entirity of Charles Dickens' books for like, surprisingly cheap.

the Friday Barnes book series I was talking abt is like. it's it's connector between my mum and me bc she got the first one and we'd wait rlly rlly eagerly for the next to be released bc then we could buy it and I'd read it and then she'd read it and I think that's cool.

this has literally been a post about books I hope you have a nice life goodnight for potential reals.

[twoidiotwriters1]

Written In The Stars CV (Harry Potter xF!Oc)

A/N: I’m so lost idk in which day of the week I’m living and the posting schedule for this thing is a mess in wattpad and Ao3 h e l p -Danny

Words: 5,117

Series’ Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

Listen to: ‘I Wanna Get Better’ -By Bleachers

Chapter Three: The Order of the Phoenix.

"Hold it!" Ron stopped them before they could continue their walk towards the kitchen. "They're still in the hall, we might be able to hear something —"

The gloomy hallway below was packed with witches and wizards, including all of Harry's guard. They were whispering excitedly together. In the very centre of the group, Harry saw the dark, greasy-haired head and prominent nose of his least favourite teacher at Hogwarts, Professor Snape. Harry leaned farther over the bannisters. He was very interested in what Snape was doing for the Order of the Phoenix...

A thin piece of flesh-coloured string descended in front of Harry's eyes. Looking up he saw Fred and George on the landing above, cautiously lowering the Extendable Ear toward the dark knot of people below. A moment later, however, they began to move toward the front door and out of sight.

"Dammit," Harry heard Fred whisper, as he hoisted the Extendable Ear back up again.

They heard the front door open and then close.

"Snape never eats here... Thank God. C'mon."

"And don't forget to keep your voice down in the hall, Harry," Hermione whispered.

"We're eating down in the kitchen," Mrs Weasley told them in a hushed voice. "Harry, dear, if you'll just tiptoe across the hall, it's through this door here —"

CRASH.

"Tonks!"

"I'm sorry! It's that stupid umbrella stand, that's the second time I've tripped over —"

"Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers —"

"Ah yes, that's the evening bell to announce dinner," Mel said with an ironic smile.

"Shut up, you horrible old hag, shut up!" Sirius grabbed the curtain and attempted to hide the portrait unsuccessfully.

"Yoooou!" The woman shouted. "Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!"

"I said — shut — UP!"

Lupin grabbed the other end and both men closed it tightly.

"Hello, Harry," Sirius said, more calmly this time. "I see you've met my mother."

"Your— ?"

"My dear old mum, yeah. We've been trying to get her down for a month but we think she put a Permanent Sticking Charm on the back of the canvas. Let's get downstairs, quick, before they all wake up again."

"But what's a portrait of your mother doing here?"

"Hasn't anyone told you? This was my parents' house," said Sirius, looking at Mel briefly. "But I'm the last Black left, so it's mine now. I offered it to Dumbledore for headquarters — about the only useful thing I've been able to do."

It was scarcely less gloomy than the hall above, a cavernous room with rough stone walls. Most of the light was coming from a large fire at the far end of the room. A haze of pipe smoke hung in the air like battle fumes, through which loomed the menacing shapes of heavy iron pots and pans hanging from the dark ceiling. Many chairs had been crammed into the room for the meeting and a long wooden table stood in the middle of the room, littered with rolls of parchment, goblets, empty wine bottles, and a heap of what appeared to be rags. Mr Weasley and his eldest son, Bill, were talking quietly with their heads together at the end of the table.

Mrs Weasley cleared her throat. Her husband, a thin, balding, redhaired man, who wore horn-rimmed glasses, looked around and jumped to his feet.

"Harry! Good to see you!"

"Journey all right, Harry?" Bill called, picking up some parchments before Mel could see what was written in them. "Mad-Eye didn't make you come via Greenland, then?"

"He tried," said Tonks dropping a candle onto the last parchment. "Oh no — sorry —"

"Here, dear," said Mrs Weasley, fixing it quickly. "This sort of thing ought to be cleared away promptly at the end of meetings..."

"Evanesco!" Bill exclaimed, and the papers vanished.

"Sit down, Harry. You've met Mundungus, haven't you?"

"Some'n say m' name? I 'gree with Sirius..." Mundungus mumbled in his sleep.

Mel and Ginny laughed, waking him up.

"The meeting's over, Dung... Harry's arrived."

"Eh? Blimey, so 'e 'as. Yeah... you all right, 'arry?"

"Yeah."

Mundungus fumbled nervously in his pockets, still staring at Harry, and pulled out a grimy black pipe. He stuck it in his mouth, ignited the end of it with his wand, and took a deep pull on it. Great billowing clouds of greenish smoke obscured him in seconds.

"Owe you a 'pology," grunted a voice from the middle of the smelly cloud.

"For the last time, Mundungus," called Mrs Weasley, "will you please not smoke that thing in the kitchen, especially not when we're about to eat!"

"Ah," said Mundungus. "Right. Sorry, Molly."

"Harry!"

Emily rushed over to the boy, smothering him with kisses and trying to brush his hair. Harry blushed furiously and tried to escape from her grip, but she kept him in place.

"You look so skinny! Don't worry, you'll be looking charming as a prince in no time," Emily tugged at his shirt. "We need to fix these– " When Harry stood up again, she gasped. "Merlin, you've grown!"

Harry was looking eye to eye at her for the first time in fifteen years. Least to say Emily didn't take it well.

"My little boy!" She teared up. "Not so little now... even taller than Mel! Oh, you look so much like James!"

"Mothers..." Mel rolled her eyes, but the woman ignored her.

"Never seen her like that before," Sirius whispered to her. "She used to be so tough... now look at her, crying over a kid's height!"

Mel grinned, catching the way Sirius was beaming at her mother.

"Mum, let him breathe," Mel stepped in, pulling her away gently. "I think you need a moment, sit down..."

"If you want dinner before midnight I'll need a hand," Mrs Weasley told them. "No, you can stay where you are, Harry dear, you've had a long journey —"

"What can I do, Molly?" said Tonks.

"Er — no, it's all right, Tonks, you have a rest too, you've done enough today —"

"No, no, I want to help!"

"I'll help, my mum's having a crisis," Mel teased.

As she started to set the plates on the table, she heard the adults continue their talk.

"Had a good summer so far?"

"No, it's been lousy," Harry retorted.

"Don't know what you're complaining about, myself."

"What?"

"Personally, I'd have welcomed a dementor attack. A deadly struggle for my soul would have broken the monotony nicely. You think you've had it bad, at least you've been able to get out and about, stretch your legs, get into a few fights... I've been stuck inside for a month."

"Didn't know my company was such a torment," Mel replied without looking up.

"How come?" Harry asked.

"Because the Ministry of Magic's still after me, and Voldemort will know all about me being an Animagus by now, Wormtail will have told him, so my big disguise is useless. There's not much I can do for the Order of the Phoenix... or so Dumbledore feels– I didn't mean I'm not having fun with you, little Em," He added out loud. "I just... yeah, I know I could be doing more..."

"At least you've known what's been going on."

"Oh yeah! Listening to Snape's reports, having to take all his snide hints that he's out there risking his life while I'm sat on my backside here having a nice comfortable time... asking me how the cleaning's going —"

"Snape's a twat," Mel said as she settled a plate in front of Sirius, "you shouldn't take it personally, it's like hearing a seven-year-old showing off."

"What cleaning?" Harry asked them.

"Trying to make this place fit for human habitation– No one's lived here for ten years, not since my dear mother died, unless you count her old house-elf, and he's gone round the twist, hasn't cleaned anything in ages —"

"Sirius? This solid silver, mate?" Mundungus said, examining a small goblet.

"Ye... Finest fifteenth-century goblin-wrought silver, embossed with the Black family crest."

"That'd come off, though," muttered Mundungus.

"Keep your filthy paws away from it, Dung," Emily kicked him under the table.

"Fred — George — NO, JUST CARRY THEM!"

Harry, Sirius, and Mundungus looked around and, a split second later, dived away from the table. Fred and George had bewitched a large cauldron of stew, an iron flagon of butterbeer, and a heavy wooden breadboard, complete with knife, to hurtle through the air toward them. The stew skidded the length of the table and came to a halt just before the end, leaving a long black burn on the wooden surface, the flagon of butterbeer fell with a crash, spilling its contents everywhere, and the bread knife slipped off the board and landed, point down and quivering ominously, exactly where Sirius's right hand had been seconds before.

Mel managed to retreat barely on time and hissed when the knife touched her skin briefly.

"FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE! THERE WAS NO NEED — I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS — JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE ALLOWED TO USE MAGIC NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO WHIP YOUR WANDS OUT FOR EVERY TINY LITTLE THING!"

"We were just trying to save a bit of time!" said Fred, running into the room and grabbing the knife. "Sorry Sirius, mate — didn't mean to —" He stared at Mel, who was holding the patch of skin where the knife cut.

Emily and Sirius were laughing, not noticing she'd gotten hurt. Mundungus was on the floor. Harry, however, was touching his hand in the exact same place her cut was.

"I'm sorry, Lady!" Fred left the knife on the table and examined her hand. "Blimey– let me see..."

"What happened?" Emily stood up.

"I'm okay," She quickly pushed the boy and her mother out of the way to wash her injury. "Just a scratch..."

"Boys, your mother's right, you're supposed to show a sense of responsibility now that you're—"

"— none of your brothers caused this sort of trouble! Bill didn't feel the need to Apparate every few feet! Charlie didn't Charm everything he met! Percy —"

"Let's eat!" said Bill abruptly.

"It looks wonderful, Molly," said Lupin.

"Let me see, Mel!" Fred insisted.

The girl noticed Harry was staring and turned away hastily.

"I'm fine. Don't worry."

"Tough girl like her mother!" Exclaimed Sirius happily.

"I've been meaning to tell you, there's something trapped in that writing desk in the drawing-room, it keeps rattling and shaking. Of course, it could just be a boggart, but I thought we ought to ask Alastor to have a look at it before we let it out."

"Whatever you like," said Sirius.

"The curtains in there are full of doxies too, I thought we might try and tackle them tomorrow."

"I look forward to it," said Sirius sarcastically. Emily slapped his arm mumbling 'Behave!'

Mel was chatting with Mundungus, the twins, and Ron. Dung wasn't exactly of her liking, but the boys made him tolerable enough.

"...and then, if you'll believe it, 'e says to me, 'e says, ' 'ere, Dung, where didja get all them toads from? 'Cos some son of a Bludger's gone and nicked all mine!' And I says, 'Nicked all your toads, Will, what next? So you'll be wanting some more, then?' And if you'll believe me, lads, the gormless gargoyle buys all 'is own toads back orf me for twice what 'e paid in the first place —"

"I don't think we need to hear any more of your business dealings, thank you very much, Mundungus," said Mrs Weasley over Ron's cackles.

"Beg pardon, Molly, but, you know, Will nicked 'em orf Warty Harris in the first place so I wasn't really doing nothing wrong —"

"I don't know where you learned about right and wrong, Mundungus, but you seem to have missed a few crucial lessons."

Fred and George buried their faces behind their goblets, Mel sent an innocent smile to her mother. She didn't know why, but she was feeling keener to do mischief than years prior. Maybe that was the result of spending so much time around the twins.

"How come you're not all over Harry?" George asked her quietly. "You're sitting with us after so long without hearing from him..."

"Don't nag about that," She rolled her eyes. "Fred already asked me. Stop it or you'll wake up to a dead rat on your pillow."

"I'll stop asking if you promise that I'll wake up to you on my pillow," Fred winked at her, which caused her to blush.

"Don't even think about it," She replied, making a face.

"Nearly time for bed, I think," said Mrs Weasley.

"Not just yet, Molly," Sirius took a deep breath. "You know, I'm surprised at you. I thought the first thing you'd do when you got here would be to start asking questions about Voldemort."

Mel snorted, she felt the sudden change in the room, but she didn't care about being the only one who found it funny.

"You think he didn't? He went mad upstairs!" She exclaimed.

"I did!" said Harry, then threw a grumpy look her way. "Not the part about going mad, but I asked Ron and Hermione, they said we're not allowed in the Order, so —"

"And they're quite right. You're too young." Said Mrs Weasley.

"Since when did someone have to be in the Order of the Phoenix to ask questions? Harry's been trapped in that Muggle house for a month. He's got the right to know what's been happen —"

"Sirius..." Emily started.

"Hang on!" interrupted George.

"How come Harry gets his questions answered?" said Fred.

"We've been trying to get stuff out of you for a month and you haven't told us a single stinking thing!" said George.

"'You're too young, you're not in the Order,'" Fred imitated his mother's voice. "Harry's not even of age!"

Mel looked around the table with disinterest, of course Harry was going to have all the answers he wanted. What was worse, she'd started to realize how much she'd felt his absence. And she hated that, she hadn't understood exactly how badly she was missing her best friend until he was standing in front of her.

"It's not my fault you haven't been told what the Order's doing. That's your parents' decision. Harry, on the other hand —"

"It's not down to you to decide what's good for Harry! You haven't forgotten what Dumbledore said, I suppose?"

"Which bit?"

"The bit about not telling Harry more than he needs to know!"

"I don't intend to tell him more than he needs to know, Molly, but as he was the one who saw Voldemort come back he has more right than most to —"

"He's not a member of the Order of the Phoenix! He's only fifteen and —"

"— and he's dealt with as much as most in the Order, and more than some —"

"No one's denying what he's done! But he's still —"

"He's not a child!"

"He's not an adult either! He's not James, Sirius!"

Mel saw the way her mother's face paled at the remark, that had to be a sensitive subject.

"I'm perfectly clear who he is, thanks, Molly."

"I'm not sure you are! Sometimes, the way you talk about him, it's as though you think you've got your best friend back!"

"What's wrong with that?" Harry pouted.

For the first time in weeks, Mel felt something else besides resentment towards the boy. Harry needed Sirius, he wanted to be as important as his father. She couldn't blame Sirius for seeing James in Harry, not when sometimes she would catch herself thinking of her own father when looking at Sirius.

"What's wrong, Harry, is that you are not your father, however much you might look like him! You are still at school and adults responsible for you should not forget it!"

"Meaning I'm an irresponsible godfather?"

"Meaning you've been known to act rashly, Sirius, which is why Dumbledore keeps reminding you to stay at home and —"

"We'll leave my instructions from Dumbledore out of this, if you please!"

"Arthur! Arthur, back me up!"

"Dumbledore knows the position has changed, Molly. He accepts that Harry will have to be filled in to a certain extent now that he is staying at headquarters —"

"Yes, but there's a difference between that and inviting him to ask whatever he likes! Emily!"

The woman gave a start, but she spoke with confidence.

"Harry is as smart as they make 'em. He's brave and he knows this is not a game. I've seen this kid grow and I like to think I've brought him up a little, I can give you my word that knowing won't put him in danger..."

"Personally," said Lupin, leaning further on his place. "I think it better that Harry gets the facts — not all the facts, Molly, but the general picture — from us, rather than a garbled version from... others. Emily's got a point, she's been with him for the longest time, if there's someone on this table that gets to decide apart from Harry, that's her."

"Well," said Mrs Weasley, positively fuming. "I can see I'm going to be overruled. I'll just say this: Dumbledore must have had his reasons for not wanting Harry to know too much, and speaking as someone who has got Harry's best interests at heart —"

"He's not your son," Sirius mumbled under his breath.

"He's as good as!" Mrs Weasley yelled. "Who else has he got?"

"He's got me! He's got Emily!"

"Yes," said Mrs Weasley. "The thing is, it's been rather difficult for you to look after him while you've been locked up in Azkaban, hasn't it? And not too sound rude, Emily dear, but you had no control over Harry's life when he was a baby and you still have none. You have your hands full with Mel."

Sirius tried to stand up but Emily pulled him back down.

"Molly, you're not the only person at this table who cares about Harry," said Lupin, sounding a bit annoyed. "Sirius, calm down. I think Harry ought to be allowed a say in this, he's old enough to decide for himself."

"I think we've talked enough about him as if he weren't present," Emily nodded.

"I want to know what's been going on," Harry said immediately.

"Very well," said Mrs Weasley. "You six — I want you out of this kitchen, now."

"We're of age!" Fred and George.

"If Harry's allowed, why can't I?" Ron exclaimed.

"Mum, I want to!" Ginny demanded.

Mel and Emily shared a look, the woman knew there was no point attempting to send her daughter away. Mel knew she didn't have to ask.

"NO! I absolutely forbid —"

"Molly, you can't stop Fred and George... They are of age —"

"They're still at school —"

"But they're legally adults now," Arthur said tiredly.

"Mel can stay," Emily replied, then she added coldly. "I don't need to have control over anything my daughter does to know that she'll treat the information with discretion."

"I — oh, all right then, Fred and George can stay, but Ron —"

"Mel and Harry'll tell me and Hermione everything you say anyway!" Ron hesitated, looking at Harry with doubt. "Won't — won't you?"

" 'Course I will," Harry said casually. Mel nodded.

"Fine!" Mrs Weasley put the plates away angrily. "Fine! Ginny — BED!"

After a few minutes of putting everything away, Lupin asked him:

"Okay, Harry... what do you want to know?"

"Where's Voldemort? What's he doing? I've been trying to watch the Muggle news and there hasn't been anything that looks like him yet, no funny deaths or anything —"

"That's because there haven't been any suspicious deaths yet," said Sirius, "not as far as we know, anyway... And we know quite a lot."

"More than he thinks we do anyway," said Lupin.

"How come he's stopped killing people?"

"Because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself at the moment. It would be dangerous for him. His comeback didn't come off quite the way he wanted it to, you see. He messed it up."

"Or rather, you messed it up for him," Lupin smiled a bit.

"How?"

"You weren't supposed to survive! Nobody apart from his Death Eaters was supposed to know he'd come back. But you survived to bear witness."

"And the very last person he wanted alerted to his return the moment he got back was Dumbledore, and you made sure Dumbledore knew at once," Lupin looked at her. "With your help."

Fred and George looked at her without understanding. She hadn't mentioned to any of her friends the lifeline connection, how could she, without giving away the reason for her fight with Harry?

"How has that helped?" Harry asked.

"Are you kidding?" said Bill, answering Harry's question. "Dumbledore was the only one You-Know-Who was ever scared of!"

"Thanks to you, Dumbledore was able to recall the Order of the Phoenix about an hour after Voldemort returned," said Sirius.

"He doesn't know how, but he definitely knows you helped, Mel," Emily's face was grim. "Apparently, there are tons of rumours about you already, some are as far fetched as to say that you're the next Merlin, others just say you were at the right place at the right time– Either way, he knows there's more than one Dumbledore after him, and he thinks you're the easiest target to defeat."

Mel felt the urge to run and hide under her bed, but she remained still, her eyes fixed on her mum. She thought, kind of bitterly, that Harry's attempts to keep her safe were of no use, and taking away the only thing that was making them happy was a huge mistake. But she wasn't going to admit that out loud, she would pretend everything was fine on her side for as long as she could.

"So what's the Order been doing?" said Harry, after a moment of awful silence.

"Working as hard as we can to make sure Voldemort can't carry out his plans," said Sirius.

"How d'you know what his plans are?"

"Dumbledore's got a shrewd idea," said Lupin, "and Dumbledores shrewd ideas normally turn out to be accurate... as we've witnessed more than once."

"So what does Dumbledore reckon he's planning?"

"Well, firstly, he wants to build up his army again, in the old days he had huge numbers at his command; witches and wizards he'd bullied or bewitched into following him, his faithful Death Eaters, a great variety of Dark creatures. You heard him planning to recruit the giants; well, they'll be just one group he's after. He's certainly not going to try and take on the Ministry of Magic with only a dozen Death Eaters."

"So you're trying to stop him getting more followers?"

"We're doing our best," said Lupin.

"How?"

"Well, the main thing is to try and convince as many people as possible that You-Know-Who really has returned, to put them on their guard," said Bill. "It's proving tricky, though."

"Some others have also reached to a different area," Emily smiled at her. "Erick and Eliot have been writing to me, they're doing what they can with the pureblood families they know aren't as keen to see Voldemort's comeback. So far they haven't got lots of people, and of course, Erick tries to talk to the young groups, but they aren't that willing to believe him."

"Why?"

"Because of the Ministry's attitude," said Tonks. "You saw Cornelius Fudge after You-Know-Who came back, Harry. Well, he hasn't shifted his position at all. He's absolutely refusing to believe it's happened."

"But why? Why's he being so stupid? If Dumbledore —"

"Ah, well, you've put your finger on the problem," said Mr Weasley giving her a pointed look. "The Dumbledores."

"Fudge is frightened, you see," said Tonks.

"Frightened of Dumbledore?" said Harry incredulously. "And Mel?"

"Frightened of what they're up to," said Mr Weasley. "You see, Fudge thinks Dumbledore's plotting to overthrow him. He thinks Dumbledore wants to be Minister of Magic."

"But Dumbledore doesn't want —"

"Of course he doesn't– He's never wanted the Minister's job, even though a lot of people wanted him to take it when Millicent Bagnold retired. Fudge came to power instead, but he's never quite forgotten how much popular support Dumbledore had, even though Dumbledore never applied for the job."

"Deep down, Fudge knows Dumbledore's much cleverer than he is, a much more powerful wizard, and in the early days of his Ministry he was forever asking Dumbledore for help and advice," Lupin added. "But it seems that he's become fond of power now, and much more confident. He loves being Minister of Magic, and he's managed to convince himself that he's the clever one and Dumbledore's simply stirring up trouble for the sake of it."

"How can he think that? How can he think Dumbledore would just make it all up — that I'd make it all up?"

"Because accepting that Voldemort's back would mean trouble like the Ministry hasn't had to cope with for nearly fourteen years," said Sirius. "Fudge just can't bring himself to face it. It's so much more comfortable to convince himself Dumbledore's lying to destabilize him. He also somehow found out that Mel was having extra lessons with Dumbledore, though I guess that wasn't a secret. He thinks he's preparing her to be his secret weapon so they can take over."

"You see the problem," said Lupin. "While the Ministry insists there is nothing to fear from Voldemort, it's hard to convince people he's back, especially as they really don't want to believe it in the first place. What's more, the Ministry's leaning heavily on the Daily Prophet not to report any of what they're calling Dumbledore's rumormongering, so most of the Wizarding community are completely unaware anything's happened, and that makes them easy targets for the Death Eaters if they're using the Imperius Curse."

"But you're telling people, aren't you? You're letting people know he's back?"

"Well, as everyone thinks I'm a mad mass murderer and the Ministry's put a ten-thousand-Galleon price on my head, I can hardly stroll up the street and start handing out leaflets, can I?" said Sirius bitterly.

"And I'm not a very popular dinner guest with most of the community," said Lupin. "It's an occupational hazard of being a werewolf."

Emily reached for Lupin's hand and gave a gentle squeeze to it.

"I'm all right, I guess..." She sighed. "But my husband was a Dumbledore, they think I'm just trying to keep his name clean."

"Tonks and Arthur would lose their jobs at the Ministry if they started shooting their mouths off, and it's very important for us to have spies inside the Ministry, because you can bet Voldemort will have them."

"We've managed to convince a couple of people, though. Tonks here, for one — she's too young to have been in the Order of the Phoenix last time, and having Aurors on our side is a huge advantage — Kingsley Shacklebolt's been a real asset too. He's in charge of the hunt for Sirius, so he's been feeding the Ministry information that Sirius is in Tibet."

"But if none of you's putting the news out that Voldemort's back —"

"Who said none of us was putting the news out? Why d'you think Dumbledore's in such trouble?"

"What d'you mean?"

"They're trying to discredit him," said Lupin. "Didn't you see the Daily Prophet last week? They reported that he'd been voted out of the Chairmanship of the International Confederation of Wizards because he's getting old and losing his grip, but it's not true, he was voted out by Ministry wizards after he made a speech announcing Voldemort's return. They've demoted him from Chief Warlock on the Wizengamot — that's the Wizard High Court — and they're talking about taking away his Order of Merlin, First Class, too."

"But Dumbledore says he doesn't care what they do as long as they don't take him off the Chocolate Frog cards," said Bill fondly.

"It's no laughing matter. If he carries on defying the Ministry like this, he could end up in Azkaban and the last thing we want is Dumbledore locked up. While You-Know-Who knows Dumbledore's out there and wise to what he's up to, he's going to go cautiously for a while. If Dumbledore's out of the way — well, You-Know-Who will have a clear field."

"But if Voldemort's trying to recruit more Death Eaters, it's bound to get out that he's come back, isn't it?"

"Voldemort doesn't march up to people's houses and bang on their front doors, Harry. He tricks, jinxes, and blackmails them. He's well-practised at operating in secrecy. In any case, gathering followers is only one thing he's interested in, he's got other plans too, plans he can put into operation very quietly indeed, and he's concentrating on them at the moment."

Voldemort was after her, and Fudge was after her as well? She certainly wasn't afraid of the latter, but it worried her, she didn't like being watched at all times; if her uncle ended locked up in Azkaban, she and Harry would be the next.

Harry was known to be stubborn and unable to shut his mouth whenever he was strongly against something. She couldn't have that, she needed him to follow orders as much as her because if he were to break the rules, people would immediately assume she was doing the same, if she wanted to remain safe for the rest of the year, Mel needed to change that.

"What's he after apart from followers?"

"Stuff he can only get by stealth... Like a weapon. Something he didn't have last time."

"When he was powerful before?"

"Yes."

"Like what kind of weapon? Something worse than the Avada Kedavra — ?"

"That's enough. I want you in bed, now. All of you," Mrs Weasley demanded.

"You can't boss us —"

"Watch me! You've given Harry plenty of information, Sirius. Any more and you might just as well induct him into the Order straightaway."

"Why not? I'll join, I want to join, I want to fight —"

"No," said Lupin and Mel.

Harry stared at her, but Lupin spoke, catching his attention.

"The Order is comprised only of overage wizards– Wizards who have left school. There are dangers involved of which you can have no idea, any of you... I think Molly's right, Sirius– Mily... We've said enough."

"Time's up, kids," Emily stood up. "That's all you'll hear from us."

Next Chapter —>

Taglist.

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[addictedtoeddie]

The full Esquire Spain interview translated from Spanish:  

Eddie Redmayne trial: guilty of being the most talented (and stylish) actor of his generation

The Oscar winner talks about what it means to premiere a film with Aaron Sorkin (The Chicago 7th Trial on Netflix) and filming the new part of the most famous saga of all time under the watchful eye of its author, J.K. Rowling.

By Alba Díaz (text) / JUANKR (photos and video) / Álvaro de Juan (styling) 10/23/2020  

At the Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge, stands alone and leaning on a piano Prometheus, a marble head made by Constantin Brâncusi, and the only piece of art that Eddie Redmayne (London, 1982) would save from possible massive destruction. He tells me about it as he leaves the filming set of the third installment of Fantastic Beasts in the early days of an autumn that, we suspect, we will never forget. It begins to get dark as the actor nods seriously: "I promise to do my best in this interview."

Eddie Redmayne made himself in the theater despite some voices warning him that he could not survive in it. "Many people were in charge to tell me that it would never work, that only extraordinary cases make it and that I would not be able to live from this professionally." Even his father came home one day with a list of statistics on unemployed young actors. Redmayne, who is extremely modest, polite and funny, adds: “But I enjoyed theater so much that I got to the point of thinking that if I could only do one play a year for the rest of my life… I would do it. And that would fill me completely.

Spoiler: since then until today he has participated in many more. He set his first foot in the industry when he debuted at the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and won over critics and audiences. He then landed his first major role in My Week with Marilyn opposite Michelle Williams. And then came one of the roles of his life, the character he wanted to become an actor for, Marius. With him he sang, led a revolution and broke Cosette's heart in Les Miserables. “I found out about the Les Misérables auditions when I was shooting a movie in Illinois. Dressed like a cowboy. I picked up the iPhone and videotaped myself singing the Marius song. I always wanted to be him ”.

Now Redmayne is an Oscar winner - thanks to his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything - and the protagonist of one of the most important sagas in history, Fantastic Beasts. He plays the magizoologist Newt Scamander in it. When I ask him what it means to him to be the protagonist of a magical world that is so important to millions of people, Eddie sighs and takes a few seconds to answer. “I have always loved the Harry Potter universe. Some people like The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars ... But, for me, the idea that there is a magical world that happens right in front of you, that happens without going any further on the streets of London, that. .. That exploded my imagination in another way.

During the quarantine, J. K. Rowling, who has been in charge of the script of the film, sparked a controversy through a series of tweets about transgender women. Redmayne assures that he does not agree with these statements but that it does not approve of the attacks of some people through social networks. The actor was one of the first to position himself against Rowling alongside Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and other protagonists of her films. "Trans women are women, trans men are men, and non-binary identities are valid."

After having spent a while talking, Redmayne confesses to me that he has never been a big dreamer not to maintain certain aspirations that ended up disappointing him. So he has always kept a handful of dreams to himself. One of them was fulfilled just a few weeks ago with the premiere of The Trial of the Chicago 7, a film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin that can already be seen on Netflix and in some - few - cinemas. “I was on vacation with my wife in Morocco and the script arrived. I think I called my agent before I even read it and said yes, I would. She probably thought the obvious, that I'm stupid. After that, of course I read the script, which is about a specific moment in history that I knew very little about. I found it exciting and a very relevant drama in today's times. "

And it is that having a script by Aaron Sorkin in your hands is no small thing. Eddie Redmayne has been a fan of his work ever since he saw The West Wing of the White House. “His scripts have delicious language and dialogue. As an actor, it's fun to play characters that are much smarter than you are in real life. That virtuosity is hard to come by. I really hope that audiences enjoy this movie and feel that there is always hope. " He remembers that since he released The Theory of Everything he has recorded, to a large extent, English period dramas, “and although the new Aaron Sorkin is not strictly contemporary,” says Redmayne, “to be able to wear jeans and shirts and sweaters instead of so much tweed is great ”.

Besides acting, art was the only thing the actor was interested in, so he ended up studying Art History at Cambridge University. “My parents are quite traditional and when I told them I wanted to act they gave me free rein but on the condition that I study a career. And I'm very grateful for that because ... Look, beyond that, when I play a real character I usually go to the National Portrait Gallery in London quite often. There I lock myself up. Now, for Sorkin's film, I went through a lot of photographs and videotapes. Art helps me to be more creative, to get into paper ”. If he were not an actor, he would be, he says decidedly, a historian or perhaps a curator. "Although I think he would be a very bad art curator."

Against all logic, Eddie Redmayne is color blind. But there is a color that you can distinguish anywhere and on any surface: klein blue. He wrote his thesis on the French artist Yves Klein and the only shade of blue he used in his works. He wrote up to 30,000 words talking about that color with which he became obsessed. “It is surprising that a color can be so emotional. One can only hope to achieve that intensity in acting. "

Like his taste for art, which encompasses the refined and compact, Redmayne seems to be in the same balance when it comes to the roles he chooses. When I ask him what aspects a character he wants to play should have, he takes a few seconds again before answering: “I wish I had a more ingenious answer but I will tell you that I know when my belly hurts. It's that feeling that I trust. In my mind I transport him to imagine myself playing that character. When I read a script I have to really enjoy it. You never fully regret those instincts. It's like when you connect with something emotionally. "

So we come to the conclusion that all his characters have some traits in common. "You know what? I never look back, and this is something personal, but I do believe that there is a parallel between Marius in Les Misérables trying to be a revolutionary, someone who is quite prone to being distracted by love but at the same time is willing to die for his cause, and Tom Hayden from The Chicago Trial of the 7 who was a man who had integrity and was passionate and fought for the things he believed in. So I suppose there may also be similarities between a young Stephen Hawking and Newt Scamander. There are traits in common in all of them that I don't really know where they come from ”.

When we talk about the year we are living in, in which it is increasingly difficult to find hope, we both let out a nervous laugh. "There must be," Redmayne says. “There is something very nice that Tom Hayden, the character I play in Sorkin's film, said to his former wife, actress Jane Fonda, just the day before she passed away. He told her that watching people die for their beliefs changed his life forever. In that sense, I also think about what Kennedy Jr. wrote about how democracy is messy, tough and never easy ... As is believing in something to fight for. I look at history and how they were willing to live their lives with that integrity to change the world and I realize that somehow that spirit still remains with us. " We fell silent thinking about it. "There must be hope."

I tell him about my love for Nick Cave's blog, The Red Hand, and one of the posts that I have liked the most in recent weeks. In it, the singer affirms that his response to a crisis has always been to create, an impulse that has saved him many times. For Redmayne there are two activities that can silence noise: drawing and playing the piano. “When you play the piano your concentration is so consumed by trying to hit that note that you can't think of anything else. Similarly, when you draw something, the focus is between the paper and what you are trying to recreate ... There I try to calm my mind.

Before saying goodbye, I drop a question that I thought I knew the answer to, but failed. What work of art would you save from mass destruction? "How difficult! I could name my favorite artists but still couldn't choose a work. Only one piece? Let me think. I am very obsessed with Yves Klein, but I would stick with a work by Brancusi. There is a sculpture of him, a small head called Prometheus, in Cambridge's Kettle’s Yard, on a dark mahogany piano. The truth is that I find it very ... beautiful ”.

Before leaving, he confesses to me - with a childish and slow voice - that he would like to direct something one day. We said goodbye, saying that we will talk about his next project. Next, the first thing I do is open the Google search engine. "P-r-o-m-e-t-h-e-u-s". Although Eddie Redmayne has trouble distinguishing violet from blue, he doesn't have them when choosing a good piece. He's right, that work deserves to be saved.

* This article appears in the November 2020 issue of Esquire magazine

Source: esquire.com/es/actualidad/cine/a34434114/eddie-redmayne-juicio-7-chicago-netflix-entrevista/

[365days365movies]

April 8, 2021: Swiss Army Man (2016) (Recap: Part Two)

So...is Manny a Horcrux, or...

Look, I have only so much willpower, a Harry Potter joke HAD to get its way in here somewhere, OK? And to be clear, Radcliffe is too talented to be relegated to that as his career highlight in and of itself. He was great in it, sure, but the guy deserves more recognition. All of the Harry Potter cast do, for that matter! They’ve all had careers outside of those films, but it often feels like they’re only relegated to similar roles. 

Worst amongst those is Emma Watson. Like...really Disney? That was your choice for Belle? The most obvious possible choice EVER? Geez, guys, come on. Also, I hate to say it...but she was clearly the wrong choice for that role. Not just in terms of the autotune overload, but also in general. Sorry, but she wasn’t a great casting, and the reasons for the cast are so transparent, that it makes it even worse. Real talk, people have suggested Anna Kendrick for that role, and honestly...YEAH. THAT WOULD’VE BEEN A BETTER CHOICE, and she’s not even my favorite choice!

...Where was I? Oh, right, Swiss Army Man. I should probably get back to that before I start talking about the new Cruella movie, how Emma Stone is NOT a good casting choice, and how ALL of the DIsney remakes need SERIOUS retooling, and WHY THE FUCK IS QUEEN LATIFAH OR A DRAG QUEEN NOT PLAYING URSULA IN THE REMAKE OF THE LITTLE MERMAID SHE’S BASED ON FUCKING DIVINE

....Back to the movie. First part’s here.

Recap (2/2)

So, we’re back on the fake bus, where the two pantomime the interaction on the bus between Manny and the girl on the phone, with Hank narrating the situation, while also playing the girl, and while Manny sings the Jurassic Park theme song in the soundtrack (I LOVE THIS FUCKING SOUNDTRACK). Manny suddenly feels nervous about talking to this girl, and asks what Hank would do in this situation. But, of course, he’s been in this situation before, and never really said anything. Sorry, buddy.

However, living vicariously through Manny’s actions, he helps her talk to the mystery girl on the bus, whom Manny names “Sarah Johnson”. The two hold hands, and their interaction makes him smile, and once again brings him more to life. He also manifests the ability to make fire with his hands, and to propel objects far distances with his mouth. And yes, the soundtrack is BANGIN’. I mean, this is a montage in the film, and the song just shouts “MONTAAAAAGE” during the chorus, and also describes everything happening on screen. I fucking love this soundtrack, and this is now my montage music.

I should mention that, like the song says, they kill a raccoon and some fish, and also go on a fake (?) date between him and “Sarah Johnson”. They learn to use his arm with some karate chop action, have a fake party, take some fake pictures, it’s fucking nuts and its GREAT. What the hell, man?

Well, this soon leads to things getting a little...awkward between the two, and they nearly kiss after their night of reverie. Which, given the whole dead body thing, is definitely pretty goddamn weird. That continues throughout the day, and the emotional and literal tension ramps up as the two cross a rickety bridge of pipes, which collapses, leading to the two hanging high above a river, which legitimately scares Manny for the first time, mostly because he’s afraid of losing his connection with Hank.

The two fall into the river, and in order to save them both (I think), the two kiss beneath the water. I’m fairly certain that this was meant to blow into Manny so that he could propel them both out of the water...but that’s probably not the only reason for it. That will likely be revealed later on, of course. I’ll just wait and see.

They both get out of the river and the situation, and eventually settle down for the night. In the process, Hank shares more feelings about his father, and this includes how to two don’t really talk much. Manny definitely finds this weird, as he’s planning on telling the real Sarah Johnson how much he feels for her every day. I may have forgotten to mention this, but Manny’s impetus for getting them home (and for coming back to life) is to meet Sarah Johnson, whom he believes is from his past life.

However, upon learning that his farts would probably be discouraged in public, Manny wonders why they're returning, as society sounds restrictive. Hank agrees, and suggests that they stay where they are instead. This is a joke...I think...but that becomes moot, as the two are actually right next to a road, and Hank can get service. He goes onto a social media app, and looks at the profile of Sarah Johnson (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), which is...her real name. Huh. Also, she is married with kids. Oh. OH. Fuck.

Hank goes to Manny and finally reveals the truth about Sarah, which upsets Manny enough that he’s unable to use his abilities. Which sucks, because a bear is at their camp! The bear injures Hank, but the two escape when Hank accidentally light one of Manny’s farts, propelling them upwards and out of the dangerous situation like a goddamn rocket.

When they land in the treetops, the very saddened Manny begins to lament life, and to cry for the first time. However, doing so taps into another of his abilities: psychic manipulation and mental inception. Damn. This ability is far too powerful for Hank’s psyche, especially as Manny descends into straight-up depression, which Hank admits that he completely understands. And Hank falls out of the treetops as the two have a heart-to-heart about their shared depression, and the bear drags him away as they have a shared existential crisis. It’s kind of funny, kind of depressing,, weirdly sweet, and oddly poignant.

And weirdly enough, this is also when Manny discovers one last major ability: he learns to move on his own. He falls out of the tree, and stands up for the first time. He falls immediately after that, BUT, he still manages to get up afterwards. He also uses his fire-starting ability to scare away the bear, saving both of them. He also sets himself on fire for a hot sec, but whatever.

The next morning, roles have been reversed, as Manny is now carrying Hank on his back through the woods. And also right to Sarah’s house, oh FUCK. Hank protests this, understandably, and points out that he doesn’t think himself good enough to even talk to Sarah, revealing his own self-hatred. But after he calls himself an “ugly, useless sack of shit”, Manny counters that by basically saying that nobody’s perfect, but there’s still somebody for everyone. Which is quite sweet, despite how exactly he says it.

And that’s when they meet Sarah’s daughter, Crissie (Antonia Ribero), dear Lord. Weirdly enough, she can hear Manny, meaning that...wait, he’s REAL?!? MANNY IS AN ACTUAL TALKING BODY?!? Not that it matters, since he scares Crissie, which gets Sarah’s attention. However, having scared Crissie, Manny’s sadness causes him to once again become completely inanimate.

Sarah calls the authorities, and they come to patch Hank up and take Manny away at the same time. They discover the pictures of Sarah on her phone, which makes them understandably suspicious. Hank’s father (Richard Gross) also arrives, under the mistaken impression that Hank is the dead body. He completely breaks down, revealing his true emotions for his son, which Hank appreciates. However, things come to a head when Hank realizes that Manny will likely go unrecognized and unremembered. So, he does the logical thing.

He steals Manny’s body and runs away.

I mean, to be fair, they’re BOTH screwed. Sarah’s questioning why the hell pictures of her are on Hank’s phone, and Manny’s gonna get completely forgotten. Not to mention that, as the police and Sarah Johnson pursue him as he takes off with Manny, they discover the camp that Hank and Manny had built while stranded in the woods, which includes some unfortunate effigies of Sarah. Which, yeah, is scary as FUCK.

With Hank now seeming pretty obviously insane (which to be fair, he totally might be), and Sarah, the cops, and Hank’s father absolutely horrified, Hank is taken away just before he tells Manny that they have to SHOW them exactly what happened. And he attempts to make amends with Manny by doing something he’d refused to do in front of him previously: he farts. Hank farts. Loudly and proudly.

But Manny’s still inanimate, and led away by the cops...and suddenly...Many farts. And it’s gloriously stupid. A news cameraman films this, and they all watch on, as Manny’s farts propel him across the ocean, with everyone watching. Sarah rightfully says “What the fuck?”. Manny grins back at Hank. And Hank grins back.

That was Swiss Army Man, by far the weirdest movie I’ve see this month...and it’s weirdly kinda great? I’ll elaborate in the Review (I owe you guys a few of those, by the way; THEY’RE COMIN’). See you there!

[inkvvells]

⧼ toby regbo, cis male, he/him/his / quarter-life crisis by judah and the lion + desks piled high with books and materials, always crowded but never messy; guilt and shame that eat away at him with every mention of family moments and memories he chose to not be part of; three cups of black coffee to make it through the day, four if there’s too much that needs done (there’s always too much that needs done). ⧽ ━━ hey, isn’t that PERCY WEASLEY? i read a daily prophet article on them, once ; the TWENTY-NINE year old pure blood WIZARD is a GRYFFINDOR alumnus who has gone on to be a MINISTRY EMPLOYEE. i’ve heard they can be quite DRIVEN & METICULOUS, but i don’t know… they came off very OSTENTATIOUS & NEUROTIC in that interview. it really is hard to know what to believe these days though, isn’t it? — [pinterest]

who ordered a pretentious, family-abandoning guilty nerd? no one?? guess this one is on the house then. i’m???? super inspired in writing this bio and its more of a character analysis than anything else bc he’s an established enough canon that we don’t know much about personally so i went ham but i’m not about to ask y’all to read the mess i’ll inevitablty type up for him, so here are a few brief bullet points for now bc i want this up:

learned that the best way to get praise was to do everything he was told, be as respected as bill and charlie, and look after the younger kids. he took these lessons and ran with them into overdrive because percy only knows two modes: zero or one-hundred. hence how he turned out to be a killjoy

stupidly smart and stupidly ambitious. the sorting hat considered putting him in slytherin and he debated with it until the hat got annoyed with him and gave him gryffindor instead. you can pry that hc out of my cold, dead hands

so much of him is based in guilty: for the fight he had with arthur, for putting up so much distance between him and his family for years, and for not coming back to them until the very last minute. there’s also an immense level of guilt thinking he had a part in fred’s death, because he was there when his brother was killed and he wonders if he hadn’t caused a distraction, if fred might still be alive. he’s never spoken about any of his guilt because he’s about as good at communicating as he is at having any chill (aka, not at all)

after the war (and all of the grief and pain and healing that followed), percy made his primary focus on rebuilding his relationship with his family. it’s not been easy, but if the war taught him anything, it’s that he will not lose even more time

currently employed at the ministry (duh) in the department of magical transportation because jkr said that somewhere, i’m just too tired to cite the source

i’ll make a stats page and link it later along with the rest of the finished bio, thank u and good night

BIO — under co.

Born the third son to Molly and Arthur Weasley, one of the very first lessons Percy learned was that it was easy to get lost in the crowd. In a family that finally tapered off at seven children, there was always someone crying, laughing, or making some sort of racket (sometimes all three at once). It was such a loud environment, and it was clear early on that Percy didn’t like loud. He liked things to be quiet and structured, because that made sense to him.

While all of his brothers were causing chaos, Percy was more likely to be found trailing after their mother. It was the only time when he felt like he got one-on-one time — he’s never been all that great at sharing, you see, even within his family. Even better than the time, he quickly realized that it was the best way to get recognition in a family as big as his. Rather than trying to make the biggest display for reinforcement, Percy learned to set himself apart by doing exactly what he was told. When his older brothers were away at school, and the younger kids were causing Molly to want to tear her hair, there was an overarching, sometimes unspoken (often times not) question of, why can’t you lot be like Percy? Responsible Percy, who completed all of his lessons as soon as possible and made sure to not track mud into the house and make a mess. It didn’t matter that it made him less likable to his siblings. It didn’t matter that that lack of likability sometimes felt like a lack of love, either (not that he would say that out loud). Their family was under enough stress, with seven kids and strained finances. He wouldn’t be the one to add any more stress.

Over time, it became less about being the responsible one for the sake of being good, and more so just... because that’s who Percy was. He could be overbearing to a fault, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that he sucked at communication. Whenever he scolded the younger kids for even the most minute thing, it didn’t come from a place of anger. In Percy’s mind, rules were established to keep you safe, and if his siblings broke any of the his mother’s rules, it meant they were making themselves unsafe. He may have been garbage at showing it, but Percy always has and always will love his family. The thought of something happening to them, especially something he could prevent, was not okay in his book. They needed to listen in order to be safe, and if that meant he had to act like an overbearing mother to guarantee that, then so be it.

While he was his mother’s shadow growing up, there was also a deep respect for his father. That respect greatly shifted as Percy grew up and learned their family’s status in the wizarding world, but as a little kid? He wanted so much to be like Arthur. That’s why his desire to enter the Ministry has existed as long as he can remember. Thus began a serous case of tunnel vision further fueled by Percy’s own ambition. Once he set his mind to something, good luck getting him to change it. And Percy’s mind was set on the best.

One thing Percy has kept to himself for years is something said to him during the sorting ceremony his first day at Hogwarts. Slytherin would suit you. Percy determined that that stupid hat must be broken, and mentally argued with it for a solid minute before it put him in Gryffindor — like his parents, like Bill, and like Charlie. His only real care? That he couldn’t stand to feel more disliked in his family than he already did.

His school years were everything that he needed them to be. By the time he started, he already had everything planned out. Get top marks? Done (friendly reminder that Percy got twelve O.W.L.’s, how tf). Become prefect? Done. Become Head Boy? Check, check, and check. Of course, it was far more than just a bit stressful when the twins started school and his lecturing towards them went into overdrive. Then Ron, who’s life seemed to be put in danger every five seconds after befriending Harry Potter. And then the entire debacle that was Ginny’s first year. Needless to say, Percy got his first grey hair at aged sixteen. But he managed to deal with (read: ignore) all of his stress and worry, and left Hogwarts with Os on all of his N.E.W.T.s and a job offer at the Ministry. Everything was going to according to plan.

Everything did not go as planned. His first year at the Ministry was an absolute disaster, to put it lightly. His boss never learned his name, which was humiliating enough. But Percy knew that what he wanted involved playing along in order to work your way up, so that’s exactly what he did. And it worked! Even when most of his correspondence with Crouch was done through letters, it felt like something. Being asked to carry out Crouch’s role in the Triwizard Tournament felt like a reward. Nevermind that he was 18 at the time and that job should have been done by somebody much more established than him. So when word got out that someone had been Imperio’d for ages by someone, Percy was an easy target to blame for not noticing. He could have bit back that had barely known Crouch beforehand, why was it being put on him? He didn’t fight back though. That wouldn’t do him any good. He took it all in stride, bit his tongue, and did what he’d always done: exactly as he was told.

We don’t discuss the fight and his subsequent abandoning of his family.

Percy doesn’t like to think about the almost three years that followed. Why would he? The first few weeks were spent seething with anger, towards his father and towards himself. After the anger cooled, it was replaced with overwhelming guilt. Not for the doubt that he’d had in his parents’ side, oh no. He was still very adamant that they were delusional for trusting the word of a teenage boy and an old (though arguably respectable) man over the governing forces, those same forces that he’d been in awe of since he was a kid. No, Percy’s guilt lay in the accusations he’d shouted, and the blame he’d placed on his father for their family’s financial state.

listen i’ll elaborate on his time during and after the war later, it’s like 2am and i’ve been fighting with my laptop for hours and this is already sO MUCH THAT NO ONE ASKED FOR, PERCY IS JUST MY CHILD

[highkingfen]

You are so “positive fake”. You say you understand why people are mad yet never address the lgbtqia problem. No wonder since you aren’t in the community anyway. Stop pretending things are perfect your the reason the fandom is bad right now, it’s ok for us to be mad and hate the author. Fuck your fake happiness. Hope you stay in your depression until you realize what you do is wrong

Alright, It took me a moment to answer this because the last sentence you said just broke my heart. Whatever our opinions are, wishing someone to stay in illness is just pure cruelty. We may agree to disagree, but this is going way too far and I think most of my friends here and irl would tell you the same. Please ask yourself why you needed to end your message that way.

Second, this is not fake positive. If you read my blog, you’ll see I post sad things to, I just actively decided not to engage in the fandom debate because I have a different opinion, and also because I don’t think adding my voice will bring something to the conversation. I do talk actively about the season 4 finale, just in private. 

In fact, today I will record a special episode of my podcast Fillorians United with Vanessa Zoltan from Harry Potter and the sacred text and one of our point of discussion will be how to conciliate your love of something while having a problematic author (for her, it is JK latest tweets). I wanted to bring that into the fandom later and hope this will make people heal a bit more. That’s my way of taking care of the fandom. Vanessa is really insightful and her word in private helped me feel better about how I handle The Magicians content, when I will publish the mini-episode, please listen to it. 

Third, I am not vocal about it but I AM in the LGBTQIA+ community. I am a biromantic asexual who is married to a bisexual transgender man. I do not see my sexual identity as my identity as some member of the community may have (i.e my husband is strong in Montreal Queer community and needed to find others like him, I do not carry that wish but respect his and, by being with him, meet a lot of people in the community as well.) I DO understand what you are going through. I DO read a lot about it. But does this mean your voice is more valid than mine?I don’t think so. I think the internet and this fandom is big enough for people to be mad and express it and have people that don’t feel as strongly as you and still want to enjoy doing gifset and writing fics without making it political. Both are ok. I hate seeing people getting angry at actors or lashing at the on twitter like they had a saying in what happened. 

People forgot that most of them learn the true finale 2 days before us and that their job is to act. If they defend the show they are in, most of it is because this is their secure job and they fight for it to stay alive. You don’t like this? Then stop watching instead of being mad at people that are simply the tools of what writers wrote. 

I also want to make a note for anyone that, as someone who studied Public Relation during a crisis, I would have recommended to Sera and John not to talk anymore because whatever they do or say will never be good enough for part of the fandom. Better for them not being attacked for everything they tweet and focusing on their job. They are in a hurricane and, right now, I don’t blame them to need to be in their safe house. When the storm will be calmer, I would tell them to go back on twitter. But right now, whatever they say will not be enough and will just put oil on fire. This is why I do not resent their silence. Even if I wish they’d talk, I understand why they don’t.

Also anon, all of The Magicians isnt hurt and hating the show now. I want to show you how amazing this fandom is

Because of the fandom, my 2nd edition of The Magicians DND book on Kickstarter is 130% funded and If I get 1500$ will be able to afford to take off work for a whole month and work on it, but even if I get 3 weeks it is because fans were willing to give me a bit of their money to say “hey, what you do is cool and I want to encourage you.” In my wildest dream, I’d never believed this could happen. 

I see people doing cosplays and getting ready for ComicCon, encouraging each other, screaming when they see pictures. And I am here for it. I went in so many fandom that was taking apart everything a cosplayer didn’t do instead of adoring the hard work people put into it

There is AT LEAST 5 lets-keep-busy-during-the-hiatus project happening! From The Welter Challenge to a Big Bang to a Queliot or an Alice week! It is WONDERFUL to see that despite it all, some of us stay and don’t want the hiatus to means nothing happens here

people are SO fucking creative! I can’t keep up to ao3 anymore which is AMAZING! When I arrived in the fandom there were 15 fics at most. I see people doing pins and shirt and prints and fan art and gifset and analyzing the clothing and their meaning and I’m just....!!!! I think something becomes meaningful and bigger than itself the moment it makes people create. 

The fact that, while I write this, I have several tweets telling me that I am loved, defended and 98% of people here do not tolerate bullies. We do not gatekeep your ship, or your notp, or if you only participate by reblogging and not doing new stuff. A fan is a fan. But what we gatekeep is hate, is attacking people because you want them to feel as bad as you, is wishing someone depression

See. I was positive. Yet I didn’t talk about the season finale. Because there is 3 season and a half that I FUCKING adore, people that are worth praising and I decided to focus on that. 

Lastly, my choice to be positive is harder than it looks. Sometimes I want to scream too. Or reblog rants. But I try to spin this into my creations and another way to make people smile, feel a bit better and heal. I said it and I will repeat it again, I started to adore Fen when I realized she made the choice of kindness.  And you see her struggle in season 3 because part of her want to cross her arm and let the bad things happen. But Julia reminds her, and me, that hurting doesn’t mean other people are hurt too,

This is why I will finish this with a word of wisdom; If the show hurt you so much that you want to hurt back, maybe its time for you to step away from the fandom for a moment, and ask yourself if it is worth making someone cry while being anonymously mean. 

[belizedeservesbetter]

The Inheritance Isn’t As Good or Important or Meaningful or Deep As It Thinks It Is

the disappointment of the year!

To play off of a quote from the play, one might as well begin with the reviews of the women sitting behind me during Part 1. 

“It thinks it’s Angels in America but has nowhere near the amount of depth Angels has.” 

When talking about The Inheritance, it’s inevitable that Angels in America comes up as well. Both are very very long plays in two parts that are about gay men in New York. Both deal with the AIDS crisis, but while Angels in America takes place in the 80s, The Inheritance takes place in 2016. Angels in America is a modern classic and expertly tackles a multitude of themes in ideas, hence the subtitle of “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” The Inheritance, well, it wants to tackle some issues. 

The Inheritance really really wants to be a big important play. It wants to be the Angels of this generation. You can literally feel how bad playwright Matthew Lopez wants this play to be Meaningful and Deep and Important. However, this play is as deep as the shallow end of a pool. Throughout the play, I kept coming back to a moment in Angels in America where Louis is telling Prior how much he is hurting and how much he loves him and Prior says “he loves, but his love is worth nothing.” Belize has a similar moment with Louis where he tells Louis that he is talking quite a bit but not actually saying anything. 

The Inheritance talks enough to fill six hours but ultimately says absolutely nothing. 

I had read The Inheritance a while back and wasn’t a fan of it but thought that seeing it would be like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which I ended up loving despite not liking it very much when I just read it. 

Alas. 

I think I need to tackle this play in two parts because both plays could easily stand alone and my thoughts on each were a bit different. 

**some spoilers throughout**

Part 1

I actually enjoyed Part One. I enjoyed it in the same way I enjoy Gossip Girl. It’s a bit of a mess but I had a good time. At least Part 1 is coherent. To be honest, Part 1 could’ve been a stand alone play and while it would not have been a great play, it would have been good. Part 2 ruined it BUT we’re not there yet.

It’s hard to explain what The Inheritance is about without getting too spoilery and getting into a long winded ramble but it’s kind of an adaption of Howard’s End in the sense that E.M. Forrester (who other characters call Morgan) is a narrator who narrates sometimes (this is inconsistent) and it kinda follows the plot of the book but the important part is the main characters are Toby Darling and Eric Glass. They’ve been together for 8 years and live in Eric’s awesome rent controlled apartment. They’re kinda sorta close with this gay couple that lives in their building named Henry Wilcox and Walter Poole. They have a close friend group. Toby turns his novel (called Loved Boy) into a play, which stars Toby and Eric’s protege who is a rich kid named Adam. However, as Toby and Adam grow closer, so does Eric and Walter. There aren’t many stakes in this play but I guess drama ensues. 

The play is very oddly hypocritical. The characters are CONSTANTLY talking about wanting to be truthful and authentic and how they hate what is fake. However, this play feels very fake and very inauthentic. Characters go on long diatribes about things that do not matter. There is a very very long scene where a group of characters talk about what it means to be gay in America today and they say nothing new or important, even though they think they are. They talk about things that ultimately mean nothing. They often say “we need to talk about *insert something actually important*” but never actually talk about it. They don’t even argue with each other. Everyone generally agrees with each other and they are mostly speaking to have their voice heard. 

This play does a lot of telling instead of showing. I liked the use of characters talking about things in the third person/narrating themselves (and I liked it a lot less when Morgan did it because I had no idea why he was there but loved when Eric and Toby did it) but they would often tell us things instead of showing us things. For example, we are told like 10 times through Part 1 that Eric is so special and so important and so remarkable. However, I have no idea why. He’s a very nice guy but there is nothing that warrants this level of praise. Likewise, instead of characters actually growing and learning, it’s explained away with narration. Characters even get out of tricky situations simply through Morgan saying that they did. 

Toby Darling writes a play and the reviews for his play are that the acting is amazing but the play itself leaves much to be desired. Crazy how Matthew Lopez reviewed his own play already! 

To put the writing aside for a bit, I thought a lot of the acting was really wonderful. 

The three standouts were Sam Lilja (understudy for Eric Glass), Andrew Burnap (Toby Darling) and Tony Goldwyn (Henry Wilcox).

I thought Sam Lilja was absolutely amazing as Eric and I loved every moment he was onstage. He brought this warmth and care to the role that I really enjoyed. He has an amazing stage presence and even though I have problems with how Eric Glass is written, I loved his performance and thought he was the highlight of the play. His Eric Glass gave love to whoever would have it and you could see his heart absolutely break in two when he (SPOILER) has his big break up with Toby. I’m sad he’s the understudy because he absolutely deserves a Tony nomination for this performance. The way he ends Part 1 was truly beautiful and will stay with me for a while. 

Andrew Burnap was 85% wonderful and 15% Prior Walter impression. I’ll go more into my thoughts on Toby Darling as a character later but for the most part I really loved Burnap’s performance. He has this certain kind of energy that makes the theatre filled with electricity whenever he was onstage. I missed him when he wasn’t there. Toby Darling can very easily be played as a one note kind of person but Burnap gives him layers upon layers. I loved watching him onstage. However, there were also some moments where I could very clearly tell he’s watched the National Theatre Live’s recording of Angels in America too many times and was emulating Andrew Garfield as best as he could. He even does the same voice a couple times. However, overall I thought Burnap was great. 

I had forgotten Tony Goldwyn was in The Inheritance for a while because Henry Wilcox doesn’t show up until the end of Part 1 in a very intense scene so when he did finally appear I was a little shocked to see him and was briefly taken right out of the scene cause in my head I was like “Oh look it’s Tony Goldwyn!” And my brain has a very good reason to have that reaction because he’s great! Henry Wilcox is a tough character because he’s awful but you must root for him. He stands for all that is bad but at the same time you have to like him because (BIG SPOILER) Eric loves him and you trust Eric because Sam Lilja is so good. Somehow Goldwyn balances all of this. His scenes with Lilja and Paul Hilton (Walter Poole/Morgan) were especially good. 

Speaking of Walter, there are two very great parts in Part 1 that are probably the parts you keep hearing about if you’ve looked into this play in any capacity. There’s a moment about halfway through Part 1 and then at the end of Part 1 that are very truly beautiful moments that have to do with Eric and, to an extent, Walter Poole. At the top of the play, Walter is Henry’s partner who becomes good friends with Eric and teaches him about what it was like to be gay in the 80s and how he owns this big house upstate where he (SPOILER) housed people dying of AIDS and took care of them and essentially ruined his relationship with Henry because of it. There’s a moment where Eric makes a comment about how he has no idea what living through the AIDS crisis must have been like and the following moment that ensues is one of the highlights of the play. I’m not going to say anything else about that because it’s heartbreaking and really takes you by surprise. The other great moment ends Part One and again, this is the moment you’ve probably already heard of because it’s the moment people seem to be talking about the most. I will say, Beautiful Theatrical Thing That Occurs At The End aside, this scene is sold on Eric’s reaction to it. And again, because I feel like this review is turning into me talking about how great Sam Lilja was, his acting in this moment was super lovely. 

Stephen Daldry’s directing was... interesting, I guess. I liked its simplicity and all but there were times that it felt kind of haphazard. I don’t really understand why no one wore shoes. I’m sure there’s a great explanation for it but for the life of me I couldn’t understand why. Henry Wilcox wore shoes. Walter Poole/Morgan wore shoes. In Part 2, Lois Smith’s character wears shoes. Even Eric wears shoes for a bit in Part 2 before taking them off again at the end. When Eric did it  I knew they were ~ symbolic ~ of something but i just couldn’t get it. I did like how simple the staging was. There’s a lot of plot going on so I appreciated a very straightforward approach to the staging. There were some neat stage pictures too. The monologues in this play are very long but they were staged in a way that I was with them through it. 

There is only one directing bit that I took real issue with (and I’m putting this on the writing too) but there’s a part towards the beginning of the play where Eric wants to have sex with Toby to avoid bringing up an issue with his apartment and Morgan will not let the audience see the explicit details, resulting in a really weird dance that is played entirely for laughs. For example, they do squats and twirls around each other and fake moan and whatnot. In a play that wants to be groundbreaking and important, why not let your characters actually be intimate with each other? Plays with straight characters do it all the time! Take Linda Vista for example! And it doesn’t even have to be as wildly explicit as Linda Vista’s sex scenes were! The weird sex dance was honestly really offputting and I heard many “what?” and “what is happening?” complaints from the audience. A lot of moments that had any emotional weight were quickly played off for a laugh, but this was the one that made me cringe. 

So in all, I liked Part 1. I really like Toby and Eric and for the most part their scenes were the best parts of the play. Part 1 ends in a very nice and emotional way that’s a bit emotionally manipulative but ultimately felt like a true ending and I was emotionally satisfied. There’s some truly beautiful moments in Part 1 and a semi-clear focus that kept me engaged and liking the characters for the full three hours and fifteen minutes. Again, as I’ve said before time and time again, I really loved Sam Lilja and thought his performance was marvelous. He also looks strikingly like Rhea Butcher. Take that as you will. 

To go briefly into the ticket logistics: I got to the box office at around 12 on a Friday and there was no line and they had plenty of rush tickets available. I had a wonderful front row side seat with a lot of leg room. The theatre wasn’t terribly full. I didn’t stage door but someone I was talking to after the show said most everyone comes out and signs. 

Part 2

Oh boy.

I really didn’t like Part 2. 

Like I didn’t like Part 2 so much that it almost ruined the entire play for me. 

This is going to be a lot of spoilers because I have no other way to process the mess that was Part 2 of The Inheritance.

I was talking to the guy at the box office and he was telling me how Part 2 sells a lot better than Part 1 because they do Part 1 five times a week while they only do Part 2 three times a week. They do Part 1 Wednesdays - Sundays, but Part 2 only on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Thursdays and Fridays are both Part 1. I wondered why they didn’t have a system in place like Angels in America had, until I saw Part 2 of The Inheritance and understood why the producers want to do Part 2 as little as possible.

Guys, Part 2 of The Inheritance is really really bad. 

All the heavy handed writing in Part 1 that I was willing to forgive just becomes even more heavy handed and even more cliche. The whole play feels completely different, partly because they mostly give up on the E.M. Forrester as a character bit until one random scene towards the end where he returns. Even the characters have given up on Howard’s End! Where in Part 1 the characters constantly talk about Howard’s End, which I guess makes sense because the entire play is an adaptation on it, in Part 2 they strictly talk about Maurice. And that is the least of my problems with Part 2! 

Part 2′s fatal flaw is that the play suddenly becomes about a boy named Leo. Who is Leo? Well, to talk about Leo we first need to backtrack to Part 1 to a boy named Adam. 

As I briefly touched on before, Adam is an actor (with a very privileged background) who Toby meets and puts in his play. SPOILERS but Toby falls in love with Adam. Adam has these monologues about how he was adopted when he was two weeks old by billionaire parents so he knows what real struggle is. This bit of character info is often repeated and it becomes more and more laughable but the play took this very seriously, which was strange. Adam has this other monologue about hooking up with a lot of men in a bathhouse in Prague and almost getting HIV. Bigger Spoiler but this monologue has a moment where the actor playing Adam (Samuel H. Levine) reaches into his underwear and when he pulls out his hand, it’s covered in blood and he tells Toby about how he had sex with so many men that his ass was bleeding. 

Leo has a very similar monologue, bloody hand and all. He’s even HIV positive. Check out Louis Peitzman’s article which I have linked at the end with more on that. 

Anyways, Adam won’t sleep with Toby so Toby self-destructs and ruins the one good thing he has aka his relationship with Eric and hires a prostitute named Leo who looks EXACTLY like Adam. He looks so much like Adam that Samuel H. Levine also plays Leo. Leo is in exactly one scene in Part 1 and it works because it ends Toby’s arc in how he can’t what is real (he thinks it’s Adam but it’s actually Eric) so he chooses to live in what is fake (drugs, alcohol and Adam’s prostitute doppleganger). This is messy and not handled that well but at least I see where the dots connect. 

However, in Part 2, Adam basically disappears and the play very suddenly becomes all about Leo.

And it is so horribly handled.

Adam is very rich and stands very tall and talks very confidently. Leo, on the other hand, is very poor and stands hunched over and talks like he’s constantly crying. There’s a very strange amount of poverty porn going on in Part 2. We are constantly hearing about how poor Leo is and all the things he’s had to do for food, shelter and drugs. There’s a moment where he’d huddled on the ground and eating peanut butter out of a jar while the ensemble tells you for like the tenth time how destitute he is. 

Oh yeah and there’s a scene between Adam and Leo that is staged so oddly I have no idea how it made it past previews. It’s as horribly handled as you think it is - with Levine going from standing up straight to hunched over repeatedly for like five minutes. 

The worst part of the play is the weird scene where Leo meets Morgan in a dream and tells him to become a writer and then at the end Leo reveals that the play you’ve been watching is a book he wrote called, you guessed it, The Inheritance. 

Yikes.

Also, for some reason Leo talks like he’s ten years old. There’s actually this strange recurring theme in Part 2 where Matthew Lopez thinks the next generation doesn’t know what AIDS is. There’s a whole moment where a doctor has to explain to Leo what HIV is. Eric also explains it again to Leo for good measure. Likewise, there is a scene where Eric has all of his friends over and his friend/boss Jasper brings his young artist boyfriend and the topic of the AIDS crisis comes up and Jasper’s boyfriend talks about how he doesn’t know what that is and how he doesn’t know what T cells are. Tristan, who is literally The Inheritance’s version of Belize (same mannerisms and one-liners, basically the only person of color in the play and a doctor to boot), then explains it to him. However, Jasper’s boyfriend not knowing literally anything is purely there so Lopez can make a long winded analogy about America being a body, democracy being T cells and Donald Trump being an embodiment of AIDS. Does Matthew Lopez think this next generation doesn’t know what AIDS is? It’s so condescendingly explained and it seems that any character under thirty doesn’t know what it is, when, in an age of smart phones with limitless information, it seems like more people would know what it is now than ever.

But I digress.

Somewhere in all this Eric’s plot line goes down the drain because he decides to marry Henry Wilcox. This could have worked if Henry wasn’t a billionaire republican who is friends with Trump and if the play didn’t so heavily establish that Eric works for a social justice nonprofit and is a passionate activist. There is no chance in hell someone like Eric would so willingly marry someone who is literal friends with a literal demon. He marries Henry because the play tells him he has to. And again, much like in Part 1, we hear so often from various narration about how wonderful and important and remarkable Eric is, without giving us any reason why.

Much like Part 1, there aren’t any real stakes in this play and no sense of any ticking clock or whatnot. Things just kinda happen at the pace they do because the various narrators (and Morgan in Part 1) say they do. 

There’s one good scene in Part 2 when Toby shows up at Eric’s wedding and tries to save him from Henry and Eric has a breakdown and yells and yells at Toby about all the terrible things Toby has done and put him through and it’s a really delicious moment that I wish the play had more of. 

From there to the end, the play horribly mishandles each of its characters. However, Part 2 of The Inheritance could have been very good. The solutions to all the bad things in the play could very easily have been implemented, but, instead, the play just spirals. So I want to go into that for a bit, because the rest of the play is a shit storm. 

For starters, Leo needs to go because his plot just doesn’t work. At all. The play was originally about Eric and Toby, and, to a lesser extent, Walter and Henry. With Walter (spoilers) dead, the play does shift more of its focus to Henry, who I’ll start with first. 

Henry Wilcox’s big problem is that he refuses to let go of his past. He pushed Walter away because he couldn’t deal with the AIDS crisis. He shut down and focused on his work, which made him bitter and jaded and warped his sense of love. The past haunts him so much that he refuses to sleep with his HUSBAND Eric because of it. That’s not a good reason and the fact that he expects Eric to deal with a sexless marriage is one of the more wildly unrealistic parts of the play. But you know what, this is a play so I’ll roll with it for a bit. Henry’s problem is the most clearly defined and has the clearest solution. He needs to move on from his past. This play talks constantly about needing to move on from the past. What happens is Eric and Henry get divorced and the ghost of Walter tells Henry to live before they walk off into a ghostly sunrise. That isn’t a solution. A ghost cannot tell you to be better and then you suddenly become better. Eric needs to help him through this, as well as Walter’s big house upstate. The best physical representation of Henry finally being able to move on from his past would be him sleeping with Eric. If Stephen Daldry wants to continue with this weird dance combo being the equivalent of sex, then they can do this beautiful waltz. You can even have Toby narrate it, especially because the Henry/Eric relationship hurts him the most. Henry and Eric don’t even need to ultimately stay together - and they shouldn’t - but Henry cannot finally move on from his past in the literal last minute of the play because a ghost magically cured him. The easiest solution was literally sitting right there. Literally. Eric sits next to him a lot. 

This play has a big Toby Darling problem that it loses its grip on and lets flop on the floor like a fish. Toby has a big personality and a nasty self-destructive streak. The foundations for Toby are fantastic. He’s flawed yet funny and breaks Eric heart while simultaneously breaking his own. Toby, like just about every other character in this play, needs to move on from his past. Toby’s past is one he keeps close to his chest and is so unrealistically traumatic that it doesn’t even make sense. But again, this is a play and not the real world so let’s just accept this for a moment. Toby is constantly talking about how he wants to be loved. He is, by both Eric and Leo, but of course he doesn’t see that. He thinks Adam is the answer to all of his problems. Toby knows how “fake” he is and thinks he can bury that feeling with Adam and fame and fortune and all the drugs in the world. 

However, and this is the biggest SPOILER of them all, when he is finally forced to confront his past, he decides he cannot do it and kills himself by driving into a concrete wall. This is shown onstage with Toby standing in a spotlight while the little kid version of himself jumps into his arms. The beautiful way this is staged gives off the idea that Toby made the right decision when this is not only the most unsatisfying way to end Toby’s arc but also the laziest. And, of course, a really disturbing message to send to your audience. You cannot have a six hour play with a static main character! You cannot have a six hour play where said character kills himself and have the scene immediately after be Walter telling Henry he must live. Toby’s death is also super jarring because it very much feels like he died because the playwright wanted him to die. Going back to Toby’s desire to be loved and how that’s connected to his past, I think he needed to realize that the way to move on from his past is be better than his past. He wants to be loved, and he is loved, but he needs to give love as well. Eric very clearly loved Toby, but he didn’t often feel like Toby loved him as much as he did. We know from Toby’s narration how that isn’t the case and Eric meant so much to him. The Inheritance as a whole has a scene towards the beginning where Eric proposes to Toby and Toby says yes but it isn’t all that romantic, with Toby later telling Eric that he was purposely trying to trap him. In my opinion, I think The Inheritance needs to end with Toby making a grand romantic gesture towards Eric. We don’t even need to see if Eric accepts it or not. It’s better if we don’t. We just need to see that Toby has changed, or at least is trying to. It’d be better than the terrible ending we got anyways. 

Toby can’t just die without any change or even an attempt at change (writing a sequel to his play doesn’t count) because it’s a six and a half hour long play. If it was a simple 90 minutes, I could accept that more but if you’re writing a two part epic, you need to give the audience a reason to be there. 

Interestingly enough, Andrew Burnap keeps playing Toby like Prior when he’s really a Louis. 

On to Eric, who, as we are told in every other scene, is just so remarkable and special and important. Why? I guess because he’s a nice person. I still don’t know why this information is so often repeated to us. Something else that was strange was that we found out the intimate details of everyone’s past, except for Eric. We know that he’s on good terms with his parents and he lives in his grandmother’s rent controlled apartment and that’s about it. Eric isn’t really given any flaws. On paper, he’s perfect. Luckily, in performance, Sam Lilja gives him more layers than that. 

Eric is given the worst ending of all, and by that I mean in an extended narration sequence/epilogue, he is quickly married off to a nameless/faceless character we have not seen and is told he lives happily ever after. The fact that Eric is married off to someone we’ve never even heard of doesn’t fly with me. This is a long play and for Eric’s entire life to be wrapped up into a neat little bow in the epilogue was the most unsatisfying way for this play to end. Leo had a similar ending - becoming a writer and marrying a nameless/faceless character we’ve never seen. For this six hour long play to end with a quick and easy narrated monologue wrapping up literally every plot point was one of the most disappointing endings to a play I have ever seen. Everything was resolved with a quick wave of a hand because the characters say so. 

Ultimately, this play says absolutely nothing new or important. It briefly starts conversations on a lot of interesting themes and ideas but never explores them in any meaningful way. There are tear-jerker moments for the sake of wanting the audience to cry because there isn’t a single organic thing about this play that otherwise would. Likewise, for a play that keeps talking about putting the past behind you, it is utterly obsessed with the past and not moving forward from it. The cognitive dissonance in this play was astounding. 

The most compelling story in The Inheritance is between Eric and Toby and yet Matthew Lopez suddenly turns it into a play about Leo. These characters are constantly circling each other, both metaphorically and physically. The dynamic between the two of them is where the play feels its most honest. How they both grow and change in each other’s orbit is where the play has the strongest legs. If only Matthew Lopez let it walk. 

But the real problem is, The Inheritance really believes it’s saying important and meaningful things and there is no moving past that. 

I made a separate post about this but I’ll bring it up here too but every main character is played by a straight person. The actors who play Eric Glass, Toby Darling, Adam/Leo, Walter Poole/Morgan and Henry Wilcox are all straight. I get it, you cannot ask someone if they’re gay during the audition because that can easily lead into a Lee Pace situation where someone is forcibly outed when they don’t want to be. I get that.

However, this is a play about gay men in NYC with a cast of actors who are not particularly famous. This is also New York City. It’s not like there’s a lack of talented gay actors out there. I know that Andrew Burnap is friends with Matthew Lopez and you often cast the actors you work with a lot in your work, but really not a single gay actor amongst your primary characters? As much as I loved Tony Goldwyn, he was certainly cast with the hopes of bringing in a bigger audience and they could have easily cast a well known older gay actor. The Boys in the Band did it, so why not The Inheritance? 

Anyways that was a review almost as long as the play itself (if anyone actually reads this whole thing I will be shocked) and I still feel like I haven’t sorted out all my feelings on the play. So I guess the thought I’ll end on is I was really disappointed in this play as a whole. I wanted to see something very profound and important. I so badly wanted this play filled with gay characters and huge hype from London to be really outstanding. 

I like these reviews too so I’ll link them below is you want to check them out: 

Kyle Turner

Louis Peitzman

Isaac Butler (who thinks the play is about Eric but honestly after Part 2 I don’t think so)

**part of me wants to go see Part 1 again (with that ridiculously easy rush) just to see Kyle Soller, who is the main guy who plays Eric Glass because if Sam Lilja was so good, imagine how good Kyle Soller is! But there’s no way I’ll sit through Part 2 again.

[writsgrimmyblog]

Rec List #1 Theme: 2018 Favourites

One of my fandom resolutions is to rec more in 2019. I’m going to post rec lists for some of my favourite Nick fics divided up by theme/content/ship or whatever I fancy throughout the year. It seems fitting that my first rec post of 2019 should be my favourite Nick Fics of 2018. If you’re interested in my Harry Potter themed recs, you can find them over on my other blog @writcraft under the tag #writ recs where I’m undertaking the same initiative.

This is by no means an exhaustive list - I’m limiting myself to ten recs per list and it is very difficult, I could have recced many more. I’ve read and enjoyed a whole raft of terrific stories and this rec list is simply based on my personal tastes which may not be everybody else’s cuppa. Please heed the content warnings the author has flagged on AO3 in each case, none of my recs include the content tags.

#1. Ten Track Sophomore Album by @junkshop-disco​ 

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles | 4,228

Nick has always lived in noise, been the cause of a lot of it, but one day a boy writes him into a pop song and the whole world dissolves into static.

It doesn’t happen like that, not that easy, not that linear, but that’s the heart of it, the soul, if these things have such a thing.

My Rec: The Nick fic of 2018 is undoubtedly the final installment of junkshop-disco’s incredible Doodle of a Surface Life but that has quite rightly garnered so many recs by now if any Gryles reader hasn’t yet indulged, run, quick, what are you waiting for? I love DOASL with all of my heart, but I’m also a sucker for angst and I wanted to highlight this equally terrific fic in my rec list. The structure of this story, in which Nick loses his ability to hear music, is so cleverly done. It’s a very skilled writer that can create an entire fic around sound and make it come alive, and junkshop-disco manages it brilliantly. The fic reads like music, even as it describes the absence of it and it’s a stunning piece of writing. If you like your Gryles contemplative and angsty with confident, lyrical prose, this is the one for you. Junkshop-disco has such a terrific way with words I highly recommend reading all the works by this author. Every single one. But when you do make sure you take a moment to stop by this beautiful story and leave it all the love it deserves.

#2. Tell Me It’s The Strongest Shape by @louandhazaf

Nick Grimshaw/Elgar Johnson/Louis Tomlinson | 73,224

Nick and Elgar have it all. They’re famous, successful, and engaged to be married—and sometimes they play with others.

When uni student Louis gets street cast by Elgar for a GQ photoshoot, he's drawn into Nick and Elgar’s complicated relationship.

They've always invited mates into their bed. It doesn’t ever mean anything. Until… it does.

My Rec: This is such a great exploration of polyamory and the complexities of open relationships, and the author took a great deal of time developing the relationships between the characters and really working on highlighting some of those difficulties. I tend to gravitate towards fanfic where I care deeply about the characters, and although Elgar seems terrific I don’t have the same fannish relationship to him as I do to Nick and Louis so I was curious to know how I would respond to this fic. Basically, the author killed it. I felt such a deep investment in Elgar, Nick and Louis throughout and everything just flew by as I was reading. It’s also really fucking hot. Like, REALLY. Brilliantly done. I loved it. 

#3. Let The Boys All Sing And The Boys All Shout For Tomorrow by @lunarrua​

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles | 18,429

It's February 1988. Thatcher is in power. There's a new drug sweeping through the clubbing scene. In Manchester, it's the eve of a major protest and a new musical movement. And when Nick finds Harry looking lost outside his favourite chip shop, it's the start of a weekend that will leave an indelible mark on both their lives.

My Rec: I saw the summary for this fic and actually yelled at my screen when it popped into my inbox. Gryles, set in Manchester in the 80s? Hell yes. The fic itself certainly didn’t disappoint, it’s absolutely beautiful. The author writes a well-researched, confident piece and the result is stunning. The atmosphere of the whole story is captivating and you can feel yourself transported to the heady days before the Manchester music scene shifted, the anxieties of the AIDS crisis and the fragility of the relationships formed during that period. The Harry of this fic has a transient quality which evokes the nostalgic reflection on a different time in our not so distant past. A real triumph. I loved this story with my whole heart. 

#4. Séjour by @silveredsound

Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson | 6,288

It is so quiet, which should be conducive to concentration, but Nick is bored and listless and lonely. He’s been there for two days and wants to know where the helpful lady is who’ll deliver him a gamine but takes-no-shit housekeeper who he can fall in love with without words. Words are not his friend.

“Where is my Love Actually moment?” he asks the ceramic kitchen sink as he pokes holes in the cover of one of the M&S ready meals he brought over with him.

«≠»

Nick’s got writer's block. Louis is a master of distraction.

My Rec: I’ve loved a number of stories by Silv this year and I was swinging back and forth between this and others, but there’s something about this little fic that has wormed its way into my heart and has taken hold so this is the one I’m choosing. As I said in my earlier reblog rec, this has such lush, evocative prose it perfectly captures the sense of a fleeting summer. There’s a seductive quietness to it, and a lovely unfolding of the story through snippets of tasting notes left by Louis on bottles of wine and Nick feeling a little bit lost and searching for words as he struggles with writer’s block. Two boys find one another in the warmth of a sleepy French town and it’s beautiful. Really wonderfully done.

#5. Fists & Flowers ‘Verse by @jiksax

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles | 1,613 (Make It Worse) and 2,322 (I’ll Do What You Like (If You Stay The Night)

He’s looking at Nick with that soft, terrible look in his eyes, the look that tells Nick the two of them are probably something.

My Rec: If anyone other than Jiksa had told me they were planning an angsty fisting fic series I would have been like umm really? But of course, it’s Jiksa, so naturally I found myself sobbing at the raw, devastating intensity of the story. Jiksa deftly weaves the intensity of the physical act itself into the emotional tumult of Harry and Nick’s relationship in a way that’s incredibly beautiful. A bold, brave, superb piece of hot, confident writing, rich with emotional complexity. Gorgeous.

#6. Constantly on the Cusp by @shiftylinguini

Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson | 6169

It’s 5 in the morning, and Nick’s got an alarm going off, an unexpected bed full of pop star, and a nation to wake up.

It’s far too fucking early for this.

My Rec: UNFFFFF. I love Shifty’s writing. Like, an obsessive amount. I was so thrilled when Shifty started writing Tomlinshaw I didn’t know quite what to do with myself. It’s actually hard to believe this was Shifty’s first Tomlinshaw, because everything about the fic felt like they have been writing them for years. Louis is sleepy, horny and pissed off, Nick is awake, horny and wondering what it all means, and together they have this scorching hot, sexy moment. Nick’s internal monologue  gives us so much insight into their relationship and the fic offers a lovely, warm, hopeful moment at the end. Fantastically written and a sexy delight from start to finish. Loved it!

#7. this cookie’s baking by @disgruntledkittenface 

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles (Genderswap Femslash) | 8,148

Harry’s eyes flicker between Nick’s eyes and lips. “I just want to be your–”

“Baby,” Nick says softly, cupping Harry’s jaw, “you already are.”

Nick and Harry have a long-overdue conversation.

My Rec: This was the first genderswap Gryles fic I have read and I absolutely loved it. The relationship between Nick and Harry feels so perfectly them and there’s a lovely warmth to the whole story. It’s light and funny but also contains moments of real emotional depth and those first time explorations and the hesitancy of admitting to being something more than friends is handled in such a terrific way. It’s a gorgeous story with wonderful writing and I loved every minute of reading it.

#8. let’s make some new rules by @camiii 

Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson | 12,743

A coffee shop, a Christmas party & a fake date to make sure no one gets laid at the end of the night.

My Rec: This was such an enjoyable read. I love camiii’s Tomlinshaw, and seeing this pop up was a wonderful surprise. Barista Louis agrees to be Nick’s fake boyfriend as he pines over an ex that definitely isn’t worth his time, and they become closer in the process. The pace of the story is wonderful, the flirting is brilliant and despite some misunderstandings and Nick’s no good ex trying to fuck things up, the ending is warm and hopeful. A lovely story, full of festive cheer. Thoroughly enjoyable.

#9. I’ll be seeing you by @daretomarvel​ / renlyne

Nick Grimshaw/Harry Styles | 11,481

It’s 2028, and Nick’s bought a house.

My Rec: I love Ren’s writing and this Notebook inspired Gryles is a beautiful treat of a story, in which Nick starts buying little bits for his dream house. It’s hard to believe this story is just over 11,000 words because the world the author creates is so rich, detailed, layered and complex. The relationship between Nick and Harry has all of these gorgeous details and nuggets of history as it grows and develops, seedling-like, into something that might just be everything they’ve both been searching for. It’s a warm, hopeful, beautiful story but as it’s Ren, it manages to still tug at the heartstrings in the best kind of way. I read this again as I was putting my rec list together and did so with a lump in my throat, full of feels for the Nick and Harry of Ren’s universe. Gorgeous writing with bags of emotional intensity. I loved it.

#10. All I’ve ever had are love songs by @candybarrnerd / icarusinflight

Nick Grimshaw/Louis Tomlinson | 21,688

Things are finally coming together for Nick.

Nick is the DJ of his uni's radio stations, and he passively aggressively dedicates a song to Louis.

My Rec: Icarusinflight is another author who was already on my periphery from Harry Potter fandom who wrote their first Tomlinshaw fic this year and I was so thrilled to see them writing in this fandom and I’m very excited about their upcoming 2019 projects which also includes fics featuring the 1D boys in various ship combos. I love uni AUs and I hadn't read one for a while, so this was such a treat. I loved how Louis is sharp, sassy and confident but with niggling insecurities. Harry was so affectionately humorous in this story and Nick’s voice is wonderful. This is a really well-paced, enjoyable story with a hot af first kiss that deserves a mention all of its own. The music references, the tea and the cameos from various 1D members are all terrific and the writing is brilliant. Can’t wait for more from this author this year.

Bonus Rec: I was meant to limit this to just 10 recs but I also wanted to give a quick shout out to @nightwideopen. I’ve said this in previous rec lists before, but I am constantly impressed by the quality of @nightwideopen‘s writing and the way they explore things such as asexuality and gender dysphoria which can be harder to find in a relatively small fandom. I’d particularly rec so far (it’s alright) and i’ve been thinking lots about your mouth from this year, both Tomlinshaw.

[4jimin]

change my mind | 2

pairing: jeon jungkook and park jimin; jikook/kookmin

genre: fluff (a lot), college au, friends to lovers

length: 9k words| crossposted on ao3

summary: 

“i don’t do relationships,” jimin spills in the fresh air of the fast food – a mixed smell of hamburgers, ketchup and french fries surrounding them. “i enjoy the conquest and the flirting part better. relationships are always so boring and predictable. not to mention most of the times fake.”

jungkook rolls his eyes and laughs, pretending he doesn’t feel his heart clench and slightly sink inside his chest.

“you’re helpless.”

jimin smiles at him, and it’s almost unfair. “call me realistic.” he corrects, taking a greasy thumb till his lips to clean it out of the oil of the food. he repeats the same action with the rest of his fingers. jungkook has to divert his gaze, scared he might end up staring too hard.

he snorts with a made up irritation.

“i call you a pain in the ass.“

chapter 1

“So, what do you say?” Jungkook asks again, after throwing at Jimin one of the hardest ‘would you rather’s question he has ever heard. He narrows his eyes in deep thought.

They’re walking side by side, probably just five or six minutes away from the mall now. The sun is mercilessly burning in the cloudless sky, but Jimin is relieved the high buildings alongside the sidewalk are providing shadows long enough to shelter them from the scorching heat. Yet, even so, Jimin can still feel a ghostly sensation of a droplet of sweat running down the back of his neck. He wipes it with his palm, taking the chance to look up at Jungkook.

“This is seriously so hard, how did you come up with that?”

The younger shrugs. “It was one of the questions on Pottermore.”

Jimin frowns. “Pottermore?”

Jungkook looks at him as if he just asked “Ocean? What is that?”

“Yes, Pottermore. The official website every kid went to, to find out which Hogwarts’ house they belong to?”

Jimin chuckles, shaking his head in amusement. “Oh my god, you’re such a nerd.”

“Hey! I call that being highly open minded to every movie genre. In fact!” he raises a finger, taking two steps larger than Jimin to get in front of him and fully face the older boy “I say we should do a Harry Potter’s marathon to educate you.”

Jimin licks his lips in order to moist them from the dryness the hot weather is providing. “I say no, thanks. And stop walking backwards, you’re gonna get hurt!”

Jungkook rolls his eyes, but listens to the other’s words anyway, getting back on his place by Jimin’s side. “We’re so doing this marathon, you don’t get a word on this.”

Jimin scoffs. “Excuse me? I don’t?”

“No, you don’t. And stop dodging the question! You’re standing in the middle of a room on fire. You can either save the baby who is in there or the last magic potion able to cure one thousand people with a deadly disease. What do you do?”

Jimin snorts. He refuses to answer a simple “I don’t know”, because somehow he feels like that would mean disappointing Jungkook and he doesn’t really want that to happen? He doesn’t know what to do with that information, though.

“The baby, I guess? I mean, if I choose the potion, then I leave that baby to die, isn’t that almost… murder?”

Jungkook smiles. “Well, yes, but you can use that same logic with the potion and the sick people. You’re also letting them to die.”

Jimin bites his lip, analyzing the new point of view. “Okay, yes, but it’s a baby. I mean, I could be saving a bunch of criminals, for what I know.”

“Are you saying criminals don’t deserve to live?” Jungkook pushes, clearly amused, poking Jimin on the ribs with his elbow.

“No, but I mean– I’d rather save a baby than them.”

“Well, I see, but from what you know you could also be saving one thousand babies.”

At that, Jimin scratches his nape frustrated. “God, why is this so hard?! I mean– Okay, no, I’m not changing my mind, I’m saving the baby.” Jimin says with confidence, stopping beneath the semaphore when they reach the street they need to cross. The mall is right on the other side, standing tall and big with all its glass windows reflecting the sunlight almost blindly.

“Good.” Jungkook nods. “But, you know, as far as you know, you could be saving Lord Voldemort.”

Jimin genuinely frowns, shooting puzzled eyes at Jungkook . “Who?”

“Oh god. Like– You could be saving Hitler.”

“Oh.” he exclaims, the younger’s new perspective sinking in him; then, he releases a deep breath. “This is, like, pointless. Whatever my answer is you’re going to find a way to make it seem wrong!” he accuses, right at the same time the red light brightens in the semaphore. “Come.” he starts walking, aware of the cars coming to a stop by their right side and keeping an eye on them with his peripheral, just in case. Jungkook follows close behind him.

“I’m not making it seem wrong!” he goes defensive, “I’m just telling you all the possibilities.” and then, reasons, as if he really wasn’t arguing with every single response Jimin gave, just to tease.

“Right.” Jimin smiles, climbing the steps that leads to the courtyard of the mall. It’s large, and mainly paved, but in the corners some trees make their existence known by portraying a vivid green that catches the peripheral vision’s attention. “What did you choose anyway?”

���Me? The potion.”

Jimin looks back at him. “Seriously? Why?”

“It’s math.” he puts his hand with the palms up in front of him, representing a metaphorical balance. “One thousand people, only one person…” he takes his left hand down to express the bigger weight a thousand means. Jimin shrugs.

“I bet in the real situation you’d save the baby.” he confidently lets slip from his mouth, and he doesn’t understand exactly why. He doesn’t even know Jungkook that much to be making this kind of assumption. “You’re too soft.” He mentally reprimands himself for not using “you seem too soft”, hoping Jungkook didn’t take it as an offense.

They finally reach the entrance’s door, the motion sensor attached to it making it automatically slide open for them. The inner air conditioner blows cold breaths to the back of Jimin’s warm neck as soon as he steps inside the mall, providing a soft chill to run down his arms due to the slight termic change.

“I like to think I’m the type of logical and reasonable person.” Comes Jungkook’s reply, responsible for Jimin’s little chuckles.

“Sure you are.” He teases, looking around the place only to come to the sense he has no idea what they’re up to. “Um, Jungkook?” the younger raises his eyebrows at him, “What are we doing now?”

“Oh.” He looks around as if he had just realized they walked 15 minutes to end up in the middle of the mall, clueless where to go from there. “Right. Guess we… walk around to find your perfect match for a first date?”

“Oh.” Jimin almost forgot the whole purpose of they going out together. “Right.”

“Okay, let’s go grab some ice cream and then we can eat it at the food court while we analyze the guys around us.”

Jimin has to force himself not to cringe much apparently. “This sounds so awkward.” He states, following Jungkook till the escalator on the other side of the place. “It’s like a real life tinder. A terrible idea, if you want my opinion.”

He hears Jungkook laughing and the sound stirs something inside him.

It’s a… a nice sound.

“Come on, let’s give it a shot.” Jungkook steps aside to allow Jimin to go up the stair first. He hides the blush the action causes on him by scratching his cheek and diverting his gaze.

“Ah!” Jimin exclaims and points to the bowling place he spots while trying not to get all red. “Look, look! Oh, wehave to go!” he hears Jungkook’s giggle and turns around to face the boy, but if regret killed he’d sure have a heart attack and pass out right away, cause Jungkook’s face is so close to his that he can feel all his effort to not blush seconds ago jumping right off the window. He has to hold all the air into his lungs in order to not let a pathetic squeak escape his mouth.

Jungkook is standing on the lower step, so that creates a height difference in which Jimin is taller and, somehow, this stirs inside him the desire to wrap his hands around Jungkook’s neck and pull him closer for a kiss. He wants to feel Jungkook’s hands squeezing his waist, and then his strong arms encircling his body so there’s not an inch of space between them.

I’m losing it, I’m definitely losing it. What the hell is happening?!

“Jimin?”

Taehyung told me about this once. He said when the attraction is too strong we call it infatuation. This is what this is. Infatuation.

“Um, Jimin?”

I fucking hate infatuation.

He’s so pretty.

“Jimin, oh my god!”

Jimin belatedly realizes with a pinch of panic that they reached the top of the stair while he was in the middle of his existential crisis, and, as he is facing Jungkook – consequently with his back to the front of the stair –, his feet collides with the edge of the last step, getting him to lose balance. His ass is most definitely meant to find the ground with all its gravity’s force, but Jungkook is the one by his side – the one trying to defy everything Jimin ever believed in his entire life –, so of course Jungkook is going to catch him right before he falls, with his arms completely wrapped around Jimin’s waist, their chests gluing for a second way too long, because he has to get in the way of normalcy, he has to make Jimin feel like he’s into the most cliché drama, he has to make Jimin want to punch him all over just so he can kiss it better later.

“Ah, sorry.” He pulls away embarrassed the instant he regains his balance – stepping firmly on the ground –, and starts to walk so they don’t block the way.

The younger smiles and follows beside him. “It’s nothing, don’t worry.” Jimin scrunches his nose in pre-discomfort for the question he knows it is to come. “But what were you thinking about? I mean, I called you twice, you were totally not hearing me.”

“Bowling.” Jimin straightforward lies. “I was thinking how cool would be to beat you up.”

Jungkook scoffs in fake offense and thankfully doesn’t realize Jimin’s nervousness. “As if. And for your information, I was just telling you on that stairs when you were not listening to me,” he pinpoints, getting Jimin to roll his eyes, “that you’re lucky I have no money right now, because I’d definitely take you and kick your ass in that bowling alley if I did.”

“Well, I’d love to see you try to do that.”

Jungkook stops on his track, forcing Jimin to do the same, so he can look back at the older with a pair of false shocked eyes. “Are you challenging me?”

Jimin smiles mischievously. “I don’t know. Am I?”

“Okay, you’re asking for it. We’ll come back here next week, and then, I’m going to show you I don’t joke around in service.”

“Good.” Jimin shrugs and smirks. “Neither do I, beautiful.”

He smiles when he sees pink dust reddening Jungkook’s cheeks at the pet name. As if he’s going to let this nerd turn him into a bubbling, gushy mess and detach himself from his flirting manners. He has a reputation to keep up with and he is so very much pleased to go and do just that.

“Good. It’s a deal, then.” Jungkook playfully extends a hand for Jimin to shake. And that’s how they end up holding hands in the most natural way. “Now let’s find you a date. But first, where do you wanna have ice cream?”

Jimin looks around, pursing his lips while he analyzes each shop. “Oh!” he spots a particular one that catches his attention and points “There! It’s a ice cream shop, isn’t it?” The name looks German, Jimin has never seen it before.

Jungkook looks back at him shocked, “What, there?! Are you rich or you truly don’t feel sorry for your poor limited money as an university student?”

“What, why?!” Jimin pouts. “The logo looks cute…”

“Yeah, I bet they’ll charge you at least 22000 won just for walking around with their cute logo.” Jimin sticks his tongue out at the mockery. “Okay, here are your options. Burger King or McDonald’s?”

“Ew.” He scowls and restarts to walk. “McDonald’s, obviously.”

Jungkook laughs.

“What’s the problem with Burger King’s ice cream?”

Jimin stares at him as if he just asked why chocolate tastes so good.

“Because it sucks.” He says plainly, with a straight face.

“Jimin.” Jungkook pauses. “It tastes exactly the same.”

The older fleers sarcastically. “It so does not.” They stop in front of the counter of the fast food, and as it is a week day, they don’t have to wait in line. “I’m going to show you. I’m buying mine here and you’re buying yours there.” Jungkook shrugs with indifference. “You’re so going to want to have half of mine after I prove I’m right.” Jimin insists stubbornly and turns to face the cashier, putting a sympathetic smile on his face right away. “Hello, good afternoon.” He bows slightly. Jungkook doesn’t miss how the man behind the counter blushes faintly.

“Good afternoon. May I take your order?”

“Ah, yes. I’ll want a McFlurry. The one with oreo.”

“Sure. Money or card?”

Jimin is about to answer he is paying with money when he feels one of Jungkook’s hand curl around the curve on the left side of his waist, his chin coming to softly rest on his shoulder.

“Ah… Sorry, money.” He finally answers after snapping out of his mild state of sudden awareness. What is he doing?

He handles the cashier the notes while Jungkook snuggles closer to him, which gets him wondering if the boy is trying to bring his heart to a stop or something. “You’re warm.” Jimin hears his murmur. “’m tired.” Oh. Right. Of course. Why else he’d half backhug him in public? Still, his back kind of tingles from where it touches Jungkook’s chest. He’s caught between hating it and loving it. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“It’s okay.” Jimin reassures him. After all, he is feeling the butterflies on his stomach and that’s what he is always looking for, right?

So why the fuck it feels so uncomfortable?

The cashier hands Jimin his change after typing his order on the computer screen, together with his invoice. He thanks the man and walks to the counter part where he is supposed to wait for his ice cream. Jungkook doesn’t let go of him. Instead, he places the hand he had hanging in the air on the other side of Jimin’s waist, sliding them to the front of his belly, so he’s wrapping him in a full backhug now. He doesn’t resist the urge to take his hand to Jungkook’s forearm and caress it with his thumb – it’s almost like an instinctive response, and it scares him how familiar, yet new, it feels. They stay like that for some more time, until a girl approaches them from behind the counter with Jimin’s order in hands. He thanks her with a bow and takes it.

“Um, Jungkook?” he calls when the boy doesn’t mention to move from his spot behind him.

“Mhm?”

“You kinda need to let me go if we want to go order yours.”

Jimin hears the boy murmur something on his shoulder that sounds a lot like “don’t wanna”.

“What?” he asks in order to know if he heard right.

“Don’t wanna move, let’s just order mine here too.”

Jimin smirks in victory. “So you admit I won and that the ice cream here tastes best?”

But the way Jungkook nuzzles against his neck and whispers a soft ‘sure’ against his skin actually has his heart skipping a beat instead of warming up in pleasure at the self gain for his competitive ass. He allows a waverly “okay” to slip from his throat and calls the attendant again.

It’s so fucking hard to deal with Jungkook. If he was blatantly flirting with Jimin, having a smirk adorning his lips and an ambiguous tone in his voice, it’d make everything a million times easier. Jimin would respond with the same intentions, they would hook up and that was that. But no. Fucking no. Jeon Jungkook has to be the softest boy Jimin has ever known, he has to be so genuine to the point Jimin doesn’t know if he’s hitting on him or just being himself. How can he be sure Jungkook doesn’t backhug and nuzzle against the neck of all of his friends this casually? It probably means nothing to him, yet here it is Jimin doing an analysis out of such a stupid and simple thing. How pathetic, really.

“It’s going to melt all over the cup if you don’t eat it.” Jungkook says when he realizes Jimin hasn’t even touched his ice cream yet.

“Oh. Right.” He ignores the spoon placed on the side and licks the top, having the sweet taste of vanilla overwhelming his senses for a second. God, he really likes sweet things. “Ah, it’s so good.” he comments, “I haven’t eaten ice cream in a while.”

Jungkook doesn’t say anything, just hums to express he heard and moves closer to Jimin to find a better position for his face on his shoulder. Jimin is scared the boy might drift off to sleep, so he turns his head to see if his eyes are closed and is surprised to find the younger’s gaze laying over him. He is quick to look away.

“Ah, sorry, I… I wasn’t staring, I just… Your cheek looks soft.”

Jimin fights a smile when he spots Jungkook’s skin reddening. He detaches from the boy just enough to fully face him. “What?” he asks, and hears a stupid smile on his voice. He sounds more amused than he should be. And he actually is.

Jungkook doesn’t meet his eyes, instead he keeps wandering with them everywhere but Jimin’s face. “You… you had a thing on your cheek, but then I thought it looked soft, that’s all.” He tries to explain, but Jimin’s enjoying it all too much already.

He nods cynically, and diverts his eyes from the boy’s face, just at the time the attendant comes again with Jungkook’s order. Jungkook takes it and lets go of Jimin, so they can walk to a table.

“Yeah, right, you can just say you were mesmerized by my pretty face, there’s no problem in it.” He jokes and takes a mouthful of ice cream till his lips with the plastic spoon.

Jimin can’t help but feel rather empty and cold where Jungkook’s body was glued to his – yet, he shoves down the feeling somewhere deep into his gut. Maybe that’ll stop his stomach from unreasonably acting like a starving jellyfish, all bubbly and soft.

Jungkook scoffs besides him. “Gahah!” he mocks childishly and Jimin fails to keep the endearing glow away from his eyes, so he just focuses on watching the people around him instead, “You wish…” The younger mutters while stuffing a spoon of ice cream on his mouth. Jimin wants to ask how old is he and pinch his cheeks just for the pleasure to rile him up more, but he also doesn’t want to stretch the subject too much, so he lets it die with a low hum.

They find a place to sit soon after, and it’s actually one of the furthest tables from where people is hanging out. Jimin thinks the choice is weird if they’re going to try and find him a date, but he doesn’t comment on it.

“So? How is it?” he asks when they settle on a pair of chairs next to each other.

“Good.” Jungkook leans towards him. “Let me taste yours.” He opens his mouth, waiting for Jimin to feed him like a child.

“How old are you?” Jimin chuckles, taking a spoon to the younger’s mouth nonetheless.

Sulky, Jungkook frowns. “Have you never heard the saying that says someone else’s food always tastes better? Huh, huh?” he questions, mouth full. “And I’m twenty, for your information.”

Jimin is unable to contain the smile on his lips. He is sure twenty years’ olders shouldn’t sulk in the middle of the day with vanilla’s broth of the ice cream they’re messily eating sliding down their lips, but, perhaps, in Jungkook’s conception they do.

“Sure you are.” He says, bringing his thumb to wipe the mess Jungkook made over his lips, unconsciously taking the finger to his own mouth afterwards. He belatedly realizes how intimate the act is, but pretends it’s not a big deal by pointing at a random guy in front of them with his chin, so he can try and not die of embarrassment.

Jungkook is confused at first, still startled by the sudden display of intimacy. “What?”

“Him. For my date.” Jimin babbles the first thing on his mind. “What do you think?”

“Oh…” Jungkook exclaims, his eyes drifting to the guy again. He’s tall – taller than Jimin, at least, but it’s not like this is immensely hard –, has a shiny black hair that has Jungkook uncomfortably ruffling his own opaque one, is handsome and he is definitely gay. Well, if he is not, he would definitely be for Jimin.

“Not that one, he’s not gay.” Jungkook refuses right away.

“Really?” Jimin looks back at Jungkook surprised.

“Really.”

“But I was so sure… I’ve always thought I was very good at this.”

Jungkook shakes his head without a tip of blame on his blatant lie.

“No, I’m the best on this, trust me, he’s not.”

Jimin narrows his eyes, suspicious. “Why are you the best? You don’t seem the type to approach the guys you’re interested in to be the best at knowing this.”

Jungkook laughs, pulling a facade of confidence he has never used before. “Please. I’m definitely this type.”

He’s such a bad liar.

Jimin places the cup of ice cream on the table and crosses his arms to completely face Jungkook, not seeming the least convinced. “Liar.”

“It’s true! I hit on guys all the time! And always on the right ones.” Jungkook nods with a cocked eyebrow and a smug demeanour that he prays is enough to convince Jimin. But apparently it is not.

“I don’t believe you.” He, then, uncrosses his arms and pulls one leg up the chair to turn his body fully to Jungkook. “Hit on me.”

Jungkook almost chokes halfway his spoon of ice cream. He looks at Jimin with wide eyes. “What?!”

“Come on, flirt with me. I’m the type who always waits for guys to approach me in the club, so I’m a pretty good judge whether the flirting is good or not. I’ve got a lot of experience.” He reasons, for validation.

Jungkook swallows, completely taken off guard. “Ah… Ah, um, okay.” He nervously looks at Jimin’s face clueless of what to do next. Jimin quirks an eyebrow at him in response and Jungkook rolls his eyes.

“Come on, you flirty monster. Show me what you got.” He teases him, clearly amused by the situation.

But Jeon Jungkook never loses. Or so he tells himself. Either way, that’s what impells him to take a deep breath, calming his nerves, so he can cup Jimin’s jawline with one hand and slide it to the back of his neck  to bring the boy closer and not allow him to focus on anything else.

Jimin’s heart stops on his track. His breath catches on his throat and he’s scared his expression is giving away how fucking nervous he suddenly is. Jungkook is so close, and his cold hand slightly caressing his nape is doing nothing to ease the urge on his gut to grab the younger by the shoulders and kiss him breathless right there. Jimin can’t help but allow his eyes to drop and stare at Jungkook’s lips for an instant. They shine so red and seem so soft it’s physically painful for him to stay in that position. He bites the inner part of his bottom lip to remain with the plain expression.

“Hey there beautiful.” Jungkook murmurs, but if Jimin is being completely honest, he seems just as stunned as he himself is.

“Hey.” He responds, a lot more weakly than he intended.

Then, Jungkook goes silent. He goes silent and stares at Jimin as if he’s seeing his favorite flower for the first time – Jimin could risk to say the boy is in awe, but he thinks that would be pushing too hard; and a little bit of an overstatement too. So he settles for the most reasonable option that is Jungkook realizing he has no flirting skills or whatsoever and finding himself in the middle of a mental breakdown with no pick up line to use on Jimin. That could only be it. Jimin is halfway the process of convincing himself when Jungkook’s grip on his nape tighten just the slightest and his lips part, but no sound falls out of it. He watches intently as the younger’s mouth open and close in the most delicate of ways, trying to find the sentences he’s probably mustering in his mind. Jimin is almost entranced, so that’s why when Jungkook speaks it takes so long for the words to sink in him.

“You… you have the most beautiful eyes.”

Jimin blinks once. He blinks twice. And then all the nervousness bubbling inside his stomach exposes its ugly face by urging him to laugh out loud and he completely hates it, but he can’t stop himself. He’s so nervous his fingertips are tingling and he doesn’t know exactly how to act from there. No one has ever complimented his eyes, much less told him they were the most beautiful.

“What’s funny?” Jungkook asks. Jimin spares him a glance and is thankful to find out the boy doesn’t seem hurt or annoyed, just genuinely confused.

He tries to find his better way out of the situation. “Nothing, just… Are you trying to get laid or find a boyfriend?”

At that, Jungkook flushes. He mutters under his breath, “Who knows…”

Jimin looks at him startled. “What?!”

“What?!” Jungkook repeats on the same tone getting Jimin to lightly punch him on the shoulder.

“Brat.”

The boy scratches the back of his neck and looks away. Jimin doesn’t put much analysis into it. He follows the younger’s gaze until it stops at one boy a few tables across from them.

“There. Your guy.” Jungkook says all of a sudden.

Jimin acknowledges they’re not going to comment on Jungkook’s failed attempt to hit on him by an unspoken and mutual agreement. The moment was weird enough, despite Jimin’s laugher having eased the mood naturally. They didn’t need to stretch the matter for more awkward topics to surge from it. Maybe it also got Jungkook nervous – but for all the different reasons, Jimin supposes.

“What? Him?” he questions, in disbelief. “Jungkook, that guy is not gay.“

“He is.”

“He is not!”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“To be honest?”

“Okay, don’t answer that.”

Jimin shakes his head as laugher spills past his lips. He eyes the stranger Jungkook wants him to approach one more time. He’s relatively shorter than the first guy Jimin picked – totally not his type, but he has an open mind towards that –, has a dark blond hair that looks pretty good on him and an expression that definitely says “don’t come near me unless you want to be kicked”.

“Yeah, I’m not going there.”

Jungkook snorts beside him, but he doesn’t look exactly frustrated.

“Why not? He’s cute.”

“Yeah…” That wasn’t the word Jimin would use to describe the guy. “He’s not my type.”

“What?” Jungkook turns his body to completely face him. “You’re too picky!”

Jimin absorbs the sight in front of him for an instant – Jungkook has an arm resting on the backrest of the chair and the other placed on the table’s surface in a way it has all his muscles flexing. He bites his lips and diverts his gaze. Fuck, it all would be so much easier if Jungkook just wanted to fuck him. He was so hot.

“I’m not picky… I just have a type I prefer. I bet you do too.”

Jungkook doesn’t answer, just smirks as if he knows something Jimin doesn’t. “Okay, so apparently we won’t get anything here, let’s walk around.”

Jimin already feels all his force leaving him, because has he really just heard the word walk?

“Why do you hate me…” he whines and pouts. “We just walked a thousand miles to get here and you already want to walk again!”

Jungkook fucking laughs and pinches his cheeks. “Ah, cute.”

Jimin slaps his hand away, flushing. “Yah!”

“Ah, come on, hyung…” the younger pleas, and Jimin pulls out his best puppy eyes in order to convince him to remain where they are, comfortably sitting on those cozy chairs – they’re not cozy really, but after walking that long distance for twenty minutes under the scorching sun any object with a slightly fluffy surface is synonymous to coziest place to sit. “Please?”

Jimin snorts. Unbelievable. “Fine.” He says in between his teeth. Blame his weakness on Jungkook’s sparkling eyes. What the hell? By any chance, has he the universe hidden in them or something? “But I'mma finish my ice cream first.”

Jungkook smiles the brightest smile of the day.

“Okay!”

The mall was oddly empty for a friday afternoon, but thanks to that it was possible for the boys to absorb every detail of the deserted corridors. They found out some shops they didn’t even know it existed until today. Jungkook was watching everything with no particular interest – for God’s sake Jimin was right there by his side –, but Jimin was watching everything as if he had never been to a mall before.

“What is that?” Jimin points to a particular facade that catches the attention for the dark colors and creepy decoration.

Jungkook frows before it comes to him.

“Oh. It’s a haunted house.”

Jimin mouth drops. “No way.”

“What?”

“I’ve always wanted to go to a haunted house!” he slightly jumps in excitement by Jungkook’s side.

“Have you never been to a mall before?” Jungkook voices his genuine curiosity.

Jimin blushes and his eyes fall to the ground as if he was cut off in the middle of a speech about a thing he loves too dearly. Jungkook instantly regrets the question, his chest constricting at the sight of the embarrassed boy.

“I have, but… This feels different… somehow.”

Jungkook’s heart loses no time at responding to Jimin’s phrase, racing as if the older had just kissed him on the forehead. He wants to ask why it feels different, but he thinks he has intruded too much already.

“I’m sorry, that was rude to ask.”

“No, it wasn’t, it’s okay.” Jimin smiles his characteristic smile.

They fall silent for a moment and Jungkook hates himself even before the words get out of his mouth.

“Why does it feels different?”

Jimin is visibly flustered; caught off guard by a question he apparently doesn’t have the answer. He doesn’t look Jungkook in the eyes, blushing so hard the pink spreads to his ears.

“Well… Um, I don’t know? Like… just… different.” He bites his bottom lip, aware he didn’t answer Jungkook’s question: why? “Um… I… I… I don’t know, maybe because, like, I have never walked around like this, or… talked so much even while eating or… I don’t know, it just feels different, and I really really want to go to that haunted house, let’s go.” he grabs Jungkook’s hands in hurry, walking fast and pulling the younger with him.

Jungkook has to contain his smile, so he doesn’t get too obvious – or delusional. He doesn’t want to presume things just to find himself wrong in the end, but it’s kinda hard when Jimin gets so flustered at a simple question and so desperate to change subjects. Jungkook watches the tensioned boy’s back in front of him, covered by a loose white t-shirt, giving the illusion his shoulders are even smaller. Jungkook loves it. He watches his nape, almost entirely covered by long strands of black hair and feels nothing but the urge to run with his lips over its soft skin, observe as Jimin’s arm hairs bristle at the touch, how his breath will probably catch in his throat and how he’ll melt when Jungkook encircles his waist with his arms, bringing him closer. He know he will. He is sure Jimin’s attracted to him too. The problem is, that’s not the only thing Jungkook wants. He wants to kiss Jimin breathless, take off his clothes and fuck the breath out of him, of course he wants, but he also wants to kiss him dearly, spend an entire night talking over the phone, nevermind the morning classes. He wants to feel what all the cliché stories tell, wants to cuddle under a warm blanket because they turned the ac to its maximum, watching some poor show Netflix decided to produce. He wants it all and not just because he is desperate for a love story. He wants it all because he is desperate for Jimin. He doesn’t know if that should scare him, but it doesn’t. Maybe he is insane, completely infatuated for a boy that is not really a boy, but an angel; or Jimin is the Romilda Vane of this story and made him drink a love potion – in any of the ways, he can’t fight the truth. He is head over heels for a sweet smile, loving eyes and a melodic laugh that keeps ringing on his ears even in the quiet. He is head over heels for the plump lips, the tiny nose and the chubby fingers.

He is completely fucked up. He knows. Falling for a boy who doesn’t do relationships. Who has only done one night stands all his life; attached to the feelings, but not to the people.

What the hell is he supposed to do?

“Two tickets, please.” Jimin’s voice draws him out of his reveries.

“Are we really going?” he asks surprised. For what he knows about Jimin, the boy can’t even watch some horror movie without shrinking every ten seconds.

Jimin stares back at him as if the question was a challenge.

“Duh? Of course.”

The man inside the decorated cabin smiles creepily at them accordingly to his character – as he is supposed to do working on a haunted house. Talking about character, Jungkook is not entirely sure about what the man is disguised as. His face is painted completely white with a mix of black and red paint around his eyes. For a child, it’d look very terrifying, like someone had tried to rip his eyes off and failed, so just the dry blood and black bruises remained – for Jungkook (and he considers himself an adult) it just looks like a very very very bad makeup. He doesn’t flinch when the man murmurs “Are you sure?” for Jimin’s request of tickets, but the older takes a step back, hitting Jungkook’s chest behind him. Enjoying the situation, he laughs.

“You okay there, hyung?”

Jimin gulps. “Shut up.” he redirects himself to the man in front of him, “And yes, I’m sure. Two tickets, please.” he repeats more confidently.

Jungkook smiles softly and places his hand over Jimin’s lower back, absently drawing patterns on it with his thumb. The air that enters his lungs is filled with the scent of Jimin’s shampoo and he feels completely intoxicated by it. It gets his heart fluttering, squeezing in a manner that’s way too familiar inside his chest. He breathes in one more time. And another. Suddenly, an addict. He wants to feel it glued to his pillows, to his clothes. Maybe he’s overreacting. He feels like he is, but he also doesn’t give a single shit, because right now Jimin is staring with loving eyes straight to his face and Jungkook swears he could kiss him right there with no hesitation or whatsoever.

“Jungkook!” Jimin stomps his feet and calls him in a tone that’s supposed to sound annoyed – but he’s giggling, so it sounds just as adorable. Jungkook feels like it’s the third time his name is being called. He smiles.

“Yes?”

“What’s gotten you so into yourself?! Let’s go!”

Jimin grabs his forearm and starts walking towards the entrance. Jungkook is glad he didn’t wait for an answer, because he had any other apart from the truth. He allows himself to be guided, whilst his palm itches to be pulled up so it can hold Jimin’s hand, but he stops midway the action – he wants to see if Jimin is going to do it by himself.

It’s not an attitude out of pride or pettiness. Jungkook is just genuinely curious about how mutual his feelings are – if it’s any.

However, he finds himself licking his lips in anticipation, heart squeezing inside his chest when time enough passes and Jimin’s hand remains firm and still on his forearm. He has to disguise the disappointment on his face, so it doesn’t become perceptible and ruin the mood.

As they walk further into the house, the lights start to vanish more and more, until Jungkook can only make out the outline of Jimin’s profile in the dark. It’s unsettling – he has to admit –, someone could easily slip behind his back and stab him in this darkness, so his sensors get him on alert mode.

Eventually, Jimin lets go of his arm, but his body continues glued by his side. He gulps down the bad taste on his tongue – it wasn’t mutual after all. Jungkook was sure their tones had always been provocative enough to be considered casual, but he should have known Jimin was a natural – flirting was just like an involuntary action for him, it didn’t mean anything further from that. He should have known he was the only one affecting. God. How stupid.

“Jungkookie?” comes Jimin’s whisper. Jungkook only then realizes the quietness of the place – Jimin’s voice sounded so loud it seemed like he had just screamed.

“Yes?”

“I think I’m regretting this, I wanna go back.” he keeps whispering, sounding frightened to the bones. Jungkook feels Jimin’s hand searching for his in the dark, so he pulls back in a quick motion and scratches his nape.

Jimin turns around to look at him and he can’t actually make out the other’s expression in the shadows, but something inside him tells Jimin looks caught between being surprised and hurt. Jungkook averts his gaze, even though there’s nowhere else to look.

“Okay. Let’s go back.”

Jimin is about to say something, when they hear nails scratching a near wall and Jungkook actually cringes. What a motherfucking sound, it hurts his ears.

He starts to walk back to the entrance, Jimin’s steps following suit behind him. It’s not long after that he hits a wall he’s sure it’s not supposed to be there since they only walked forward, not having taken any curve or whatsoever.

“Uh, hyung?”

“What is it, what’s this?” Jimin asks with a trembling voice and Jungkook’s hearts aches with need to hold him into his arms. He sighs.

“I think they locked the entrance. We can’t go back unless we reach the end.”

“ What?! They fucking did what?!”

“Well, guess you shouldn’t have chosen the ‘most scary, don’t pee in your pants’ option.”

“I… I…” Jimin ducks his head and he seems so small. “I’m sorry.”

Jungkook sighs once again, looking away. “It’s okay. We just gotta get to the end. Let’s go.”

Jimin fiddles with his shirt before he decides to move, letting out a weak “okay” from his lips.

A tiny bit of what it seems like a guilty feeling sets inside Jungkook’s stomach, but he ignores it and keeps walking. He has nothing to be guilty for, if Jimin doesn’t feel the same he does, then he has no business in comforting him, right?

But he regrets the thoughts the moment they are born in his mind, and asks himself when he became so selfish and self-centered he can’t even take an unrequited crush without turning into a bitter 14 year old.

“Are the boys scared?” comes a weird voice out of nowhere and it resonates through the whole place. “Come, walk to me.”

Jimin jumps on his place. “Shit.” he has a hand over his chest.

Jungkook looks around to search the source of the voice, but finds no one. Of course he doesn’t, he can’t see shit.

“Here, hyung.” he swallows his pride. “Hold my hand.”

However Jimin walks straight up his extended fingers. “No, thanks.”

His words are harsh, but he sounds more pouty than anything else.

“Why not?” Jungkook follows him and tries not to sound offended.

“If you didn’t want to hold it before, I don’t want you to hold it out of pity now.”

Jungkook closes his eyes and allows himself to feel bad. He is seriously so stupid. What is he supposed to say? “I didn’t want to hold it, because you didn’t hold before and I assumed that because of that you didn’t like me the way I do”?

God, it sounds even more stupid when he puts it into actual words.

“What you talking about…” he says instead, but he sounds way too guilty to not know what he’s talking about, so he adds. “I just went to scratch my neck, it was itching.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Jimin mumbles while still walking ahead of him.

Jungkook grabs his arm so he can stop and look at him. “Are you seriously going to be mad at me because of this?” Closer like this, and after being on the darkness for a while, Jungkook can see Jimin’s face better. He senses a faint smile coming to claim his lips when he sees the older’s cute frown, so he fights it. “Don’t give me that face…” he can’t resist the urge to caress the boy’s cheeks with a thumb.

“m’ not mad.”

Jungkook straightforward smiles this time.

“Then why you pouting?”

“m’ not pouting either.”

“Sure, you’re not.” he chuckles, all of his worries suddenly erased by round pink cheeks.

“Why you laughing? I’m really not mad so let’s go.” Jimin grabs Jungkook’s hand on his face and pulls him forward with him.

“Thought you didn’t want to hold my hand…” Jungkook mutters teasingly, just to be slapped on the arm afterwards.

“Shut up.” he returns his focus to the front, body still stiff. “Bet the ghosts took advantage of we arguing to hide better.” he whispers. “Yah!” he suddenly yells at the nothing. “Where you assholes at?! Show up already, we paid you!”

“Hyung, you know they’re not real ghosts, right?”

“Of fucking course. This tension is killing me. Where’s the end of this shit.”

Jungkook laughs. “You swear a lot more when you’re scared.”

Jimin looks back at him with an insulted air. “Who’s scared here– AH!” he jolts and goes to hind behind the younger while frantically trying to wipe something off his nape, startling Jungkook. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck–”

“What, what?” he asks, trying to help him with the thing on his neck, but when he passes with his palm over it, it’s clean and dry. “What is it?”

“Just felt a cold breath on it, what the fuck.” he stops rubbing at the skin to look back. “Who’s there, you fuckin’ dipshit, what the fuck! Touch me and you’re dead, I'mma deck you right in the fucking face!”

Jungkook throws his head back and doesn’t hold his laugh. “Hyung, oh my god, calm down. You’re actually paying them to scare you.” Jimin doesn’t seem to care, still trying to find out who supposedly blown a breath on his neck. “And with whom you’re talking to, oh god.”

“These fuckers… They playin’ me.”

Jungkook doubles over, still laughing in the dead silent place. “Oh my god… I so wasn’t expecting this kind of reaction.”

Jimin blatantly ignores him, too focused on his pissed state of mind to hear, “Come.” he says and takes Jungkook’s hands, stomping down towards the end of the place.

But nearly a second after, someone hidden in the shadows grabs Jimin’s shin and climbs his leg by gripping his thigh with long and disgusting nails. Jungkook only has the time to look down and see a fake ass zombie makeup before Jimin as much as sinkshis knee on the guy’s face. A whimper of pain is heard throughout the entire place followed by the man falling down on the ground covering his nose.

“Oh my god?!” Jungkook gasps, utterly shocked. “Jimin!”

“Oh my god!” Jimin echoes him when reality crashes upon him and he realizes he had just kicked an employee on the face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry–” he kneels before the guy, trying to take his hands away from his face so they can know the damage done. “Please, I’m so sorry, let me see how bad it is.” his voice is full of concern, and no matter how serious the situation is, Jungkook can’t help but be filled with an absurd want to laugh. Seriously, what the fuck. Who in the world pays to go into a haunted house and straightforward kicks someone in the face when getting scared?! Jungkook shakes his head watching the scene. He sure as hell got himself into a lot of trouble, so he doesn’t know how to explain why he is smiling.

•••

“I’d call that iconic. What about you?” Jungkook has been teasing Jimin for the past 20 minutes about his sudden outburst of violence in the haunted house.

“Shut up.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re changing the ‘most scary, don’t pee in your pants’ to ‘most scary, don’t kick us in the face’.”

Jimin huffs with something that Jungkook doesn’t distinguishes as a cry or a chuckle. Maybe both. When he looks back, the older has his face covered by tiny hands. “I’m so awful. Someone should prohibit me from walking out of home. I’m a threat.”

Jungkook giggles, taking the boy’s wrists on his hands and delicately pulling them down. “Believe me, you’re anything but a threat.”

Jimin scoffs, offended. “I just kicked a innocent on the face! I almost broke his nose. God, I’m lucky they didn’t call the cops or something.” he cries.

“Jimin.” Jungkook laughs in endearment. “It’s not that serious. He’s okay. You’re okay. Everyone’s okay. No need to suffer.”

“But–” the guy sulks, and for some reason Jungkook can’t explain he presses his thumb over his mouth. The sensation of Jimin’s lips against his skin tickles and burns, but he does his best not to show. Jimin looks up at him with big eyes that seem to reflect all the lights around them. He’s in a loss for words, suddenly aware of how close they are. He tries to inhale as much air as he can without being noticed and slides his thumb over Jimin’s entire lips’ length, back and forth.

“No pouting.” he whispers, letting his hand fall to Jimin’s shoulder.

“No pouting.” the older repeats. “Why not?”

Too cute for me to resist.

“You’re prettier smiling.” he lies. Jimin’s beautiful in every single way.

“You calling me ugly when pouting?!”

“No, just– Prettier. I said prettier!”

“So, you calling me beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, absolutely mesmerizing, that takes your breath away?” he dramatizes with a giggle, but Jungkook is unable to deny.

“Yes.”

At that, Jimin falls silent – his smile disappearing in tune with his cheeks reddening.

Jungkook bites his lower lip, hearing his heart beat on his throat, and takes the hand on Jimin’s shoulder to the back of his neck. He curls his fingers on the boy’s hair resting there and feels slightly overwhelmed by the softness of it. Jimin is watching him with parted red lips and a pair of rosy cheeks that gets Jungkook closing the distance between them in a second. But before their lips can touch, he hears Taehyung’s deep voice screaming his name resound through the entire place. Jungkook all but jumps on his spot, jolting Jimin too, who instantly detaches himself from his arms. Jungkook pretend the action doesn’t hurt him like a punch in the gut. When he looks back, Taehyung is bouncing his way till them while waving like an excited child – big smile glued to his lips. Jungkook feels his cheeks heating and scratches his nape, not throwing a single glance towards Jimin.

“Jungkookie! Oh. And Jiminie too, what a meeting!” he reaches them and it’s only then Jungkook realizes he’s got company.

“Hey!” he forces a smile into him he sure as hell doesn’t want to give. Actually, he could pretty much just happily pretend Taehyung’s face is a  ball and offer it to the World Cup to play its matches with it. For free. But he’s a polite man – as polite as burping in public is considered –, so he just tilts his head to the other man by Taehyung’s side and doesn’t let his smile falter before his beauty. It never faltered beside Jimin, so it shouldn’t now. “Hello you.”

The blonde guy ducks his head in greeting. “Hello, I’m Taemin, a friend of Taehyung’s friend.” he chuckles, “I just moved into the town, nice to meet you!” his smile is so sweet Jungkook’s bitterness for the interruption almost melts.

“Ah! Nice to meet you, I’m Jungkook!”

“I know, Taehyung has only been talking ‘bout you all day.”

“He can’t help it, he’s head over heels for me.”

Taehyung scoffs. They both laugh and Taemin redirects his gaze to Jimin. “And you must be Jimin… Taehyung should have told me he had a friend this gorgeous.”

Jungkook frowns, offended, but looks away so no one notices.

“Ah, thank you.” Jimin says in that flushed tone he uses when Jungkook makes him embarrassed. It’s awkward to see it directed to someone else. “It’s nice to meet you, Taemin-ssi.”

They exchange smiles for way too long to be casual in Jungkook’s opinion, until Taehyung interrupts:

“So? Are you two on a date?”

Taemin seems suddenly taken aback by this question, and, somehow, this just makes Jungkook more pissed – the clear interest of Taemin in Jimin, for some reason, making him feel extremely uncomfortable on his own skin. Maybe is because Taemin is too pretty.

He doesn’t know what gets into him. He wants more than ever to confirm, to say that yes, they are on a date.But, perhaps he’s too scared to hear Jimin’s voice denying it. It may hurt more than he expects. So instead he just shifts his gaze to the ground and mutters:

“As if.”

By the way Jimin’s posture changes beside him, it seems like he’s offended – maybe even hurt –, but Jungkook doesn’t have the heart to look him in the face, so he remains on his position and waits for the older to say something.

“Ah…” his voice seems small, “Yes,” but it quickly lights up again as its usual, “Jungkook was just trying to be my cupid, but I think we got too lost in the wonders of the mall.” he giggles cutely and Jungkook all but instantly feels guilty about his previous answer. A simple ‘no, we’re not’ would have done it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Cupid?” Taehyung’s voice peaks with interest. “What do you mean?”

Jungkook tries to make it up for his harsh tone before and answers softly:

“Jimin has never gone to a date before. So I was trying to set him up with someone to prove a point.”

“Which is?” Taemin takes part in the conversation, and it doesn’t matter how much he wants to, Jungkook can’t bring himself to talk dryly at him. His features are too nice. And even though he knows he shouldn’t let himself be swept away for a cute face so easily, he was never able to help it.

“That dates are cool.”

Taemin nods in agreement. “Oh, yeah, dates are cool.”

“See?!” Jungkook takes the chance to reafirm his point, to which Jimin just roll his eyes.

“But are you sure you two weren’t on a date? Looking by far, I’d say you two were pretty close to not be on a date.” Taehyung insists.

Jimin ducks his head, cheeks pink, and it falls on Jungkook to come up with a lie. He doesn’t even know why he’s lying to begin with. But still.

“Told you we’re not.” Jungkook stutters, when he remembers in which position Taehyung found them, but then he reassures himself it’s all good by also remembering that 1: he and Taemin were distant from them and 2: they could only see his back by that angle. So okay, they were good. “I was just taking a thing out of his eyes.”

“Yeah, sure.” Taehyung mocks. “I’ll ask you to take a thing out of my eye later night.” That meant when they got home he’d pester Jungkook until he told him everything.

Jungkook notices Jimin’s eyes widening a bit, but the boy soon finds his composure, fixing his hair and focusing his attention on something else.

“Didn’t know you guys had this close of a friendship.” Taemin joins Taehyung’s play and looks all but too pleased, if the glow in his eyes is to say anything.

Jungkook watches Jimin’s reaction closely, but the boy is still avoiding eye contact, expression unreadable.

“He’s my best company on lonely nights.” Taehyung adds in a dreamy tone, so Jungkook kicks him.

“Aish, enough already.”

Ever so maturely, Taehyung sticks out his tongue, a smirk hidden in the corner of his lips he makes sure his best friend sees. Jungkook rolls his eyes at that.

“Okay, enough, but, if you two aren’t on a date…” he regains Jimin’s attention with these words, “and apparently haven’t found a date for Jiminie yet…” Oh no – Jungkook knows what’s to come. He shoots bullets with his eyes at the stupid dumbass, but it’s useless. “Why don’t he go out with Taemin-hyung? It’s a double-kill – hyung gets to meet the city and go out with Jiminie and Jimin gets to go on a date! Perfect!”

Yeah, except that no.

Taehyung gets so much on Jungkook’s nerves sometimes, because he’s got this silly personality, so it makes everyone think he’s as thick as walls, but he’s actually so observant it’d shock them all to the core. It is why Jungkook is getting so pissed. Taehyung knows pretty damn well his intentions and yet, he’s still in front of him trying to set a date between Taemin and Jimin as if it’s fucking nothing. Jungkook decides to not talk with him for the rest of the day. And he means it.

He remains quiet overall. He doesn’t want to seem like he’s in too deep just to scare Jimin away. So against all the cells in his body in alert mode, begging for him to step in – even if it’s just to crack a joke and make it all seem funny –, he doesn’t. Perhaps he’s also curious about Jimin’s reaction, so there’s that. He searches for the older’s eyes and is caught by surprise at the realization that the boy is watching him.

Jungkook wonders if he’s also waiting for a reaction. He wants to express one. He wants so bad. He’s about to, when Taemin smiles the brightest smile and lights up the entire place.

“Oh! That sounds like a plan. I like it! What about you, Jimin? Would you like to go on a date with me?” from the moment the first word slips out of Taemin’s mouth Jungkook already knows it’s a lost case. It just needs a quick glance to his sparkly expression to understand a “no” isn’t in the list of options for Jimin’s answers. Jungkook lowers his gaze and tries to block the sound of Jimin’s voice when he accepts it. It kinda hurts his chest. He ignores the entire conversation from that point forward. He doesn’t want to listen any of it.

The four of them walk home together – Jungkook drowning in silence while he texts Namjoon all the way back and pretends it’s the most interesting thing he’s done all day. He doesn’t look up to see Jimin’s face when they say goodbye.

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Posting news early today

Too big to fail or to read (The Week) Members of Congress faced a "familiar year-end conundrum" on Monday, The Associated Press reports: "A bill too big to fail, and also too big to read." First the House, then the Senate passed a $900 billion coronavirus pandemic relief bill and $1.4 trillion omnibus spending package with large majorities Monday night, just hours after the legislation was released. "Delivering virus aid to the country required a leap of faith for lawmakers as they cast their votes, practically sight unseen," for a monster 5,593-page bill that the Senate Historical Office says is the longest successful piece of legislation they could find on record, AP notes. "I think if we provide everyone a paper copy we would have to destroy an entire forest," quipped House Rules Committee Chair James McGovern (D-Mass.). That may be a slight exaggeration, but Politico's Kyle Cheney found a way to drive home just how long the legislation is, in terms many Americans will understand: “Entire Harry Potter series? 4,224 pages. Just-released $2.3 trillion bill being passed tonight? 5,593 pages.” What's in the colossal bill? A lot. Throwing everything in a year-end package has become an annual holiday tradition in Congress—“it's why such bills are often called 'Christmas trees,' trimmed with legislative ornaments,” AP explains.

Surprise Medical Bills Cost Americans Millions. Congress Finally Banned Most of Them. (NYT) After years of being stymied by well-funded interests, Congress has agreed to ban one of the most costly and exasperating practices in medicine: surprise medical bills. Surprise bills happen when an out-of-network provider is unexpectedly involved in a patient’s care. Patients go to a hospital that accepts their insurance, for example, but get treated there by an emergency room physician who doesn’t. Such doctors often bill those patients for large fees, far higher than what health plans typically pay. Language included in the $900 billion spending deal that passed both chambers Monday will make those bills illegal. Instead of charging patients, health providers will now have to work with insurers to settle on a fair price. The new changes will take effect in 2022, and will apply to doctors, hospitals and air ambulances, though not ground ambulances. Academic researchers have found that millions of Americans receive these types of surprise bills each year, with as many as one in five emergency room visits resulting in such a charge. The bills most commonly come from health providers that patients are not able to select, such as emergency room physicians, anesthesiologists and ambulances. The average surprise charge for an emergency room visit is just above $600, but patients have received bills larger than $100,000 from out-of-network providers they did not select.

US public school enrollment dips as virus disrupts education (AP) Fearful of sending her two children back to school as the coronavirus pandemic raged in Mississippi, Angela Atkins decided to give virtual learning a chance this fall. Almost immediately, it was a struggle. Their district in Lafayette County didn’t offer live instruction to remote learners, and Atkins’ fourth grader became frustrated with doing worksheets all day and missed interacting with teachers and peers. Her seventh grader didn’t receive the extra support he did at school through his special education plan—and started getting failing grades. After nine weeks, Atkins switched to home schooling. “It got to the point where it felt like there was no other choice to make,” she said. “I was worried for my kids’ mental health.” By taking her children off the public school rolls, Atkins joined an exodus that one state schools chief has warned could become a national crisis. An analysis of data from 33 states obtained by Chalkbeat and The Associated Press shows that public K-12 enrollment this fall has dropped across those states by more than 500,000 students, or 2%, since the same time last year. And the decline is only likely to become more pronounced, as several large states have yet to release information. The decline that could eventually have dire consequences for school budgets that are based on headcounts.

U.S. issues additional visa restrictions on Chinese officials (Reuters) The United States on Monday imposed additional visa restrictions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses, taking further action against China in the final month of U.S. President Donald Trump’s term. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the restrictions affected officials believed to be responsible for or complicit in repressing religious practitioners, ethnic minority groups, dissidents and others. U.S.-China relations have plunged to their worst level in decades as the world’s top two economies spar over issues ranging from the coronavirus outbreak, Beijing’s national security law for Hong Kong, trade and espionage. Also on Monday, U.S. Department of Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf said it was looking at further restrictions on China, which he called an ever-increasing threat to the United States.

California desperately searches for more nurses and doctors (AP) Since the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S., Sara Houze has been on the road—going from one hospital to another to care for COVID-19 patients on the brink of death. A cardiac intensive care nurse from Washington, D.C., her skills are in great demand as infections and hospitalizations skyrocket nationwide. Houze is among more than 500 nurses, doctors and other medical staff California has brought in and deployed to hospitals that are running out of capacity to treat the most severe COVID-19 cases. Much of California has exhausted its usual ability to staff intensive care beds, and the nation’s most populated state is desperately searching for 3,000 temporary medical workers to meet demand. State officials are reaching out to foreign partners in places like Australia and Taiwan amid a shortage of temporary medical workers in the U.S., particularly nurses trained in critical care.

Kilauea Volcano Erupts in Hawaii, Prompting Warning to Stay Inside (NYT) The Kilauea volcano in Hawaii erupted overnight Sunday, prompting the authorities to warn residents to shelter from ash driven by the wind, but there were no immediate concerns about evacuations or threats to life. Kilauea lies in the southeast corner of the Big Island, where its continuous, decades-long activity has been punctuated by sequences of eruptions. It is considered one of the most active in the world. The eruption occurred at the Halema’uma’u crater of the volcano, to the west at Kilauea’s summit, according to the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency, citing the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. The agency said trade winds would propel ash toward the southwest, placing several communities in the path of the fallout. “Stay indoors to avoid exposure to ash,” the agency said. All of the lava was contained in the Halema’uma’u crater, according to the agency.

Concerns About Coronavirus Variant Cut Off U.K. From Europe (NYT) Britain was all but cut off from the rest of Europe on Monday, with flights and trains banned by some 40 countries and freight deliveries halted at French ports, as its neighbors tried desperately to stop a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus from leaping across the English Channel. The sudden disruption left Britain isolated and unnerved, its people stranded at airports or quarantined at home. It aroused fears of panic buying in British supermarkets, as a nation already rattled by a mysterious new strain of the virus now had to worry about running out of fresh food in the days before Christmas. It all added up to a chilling preview, a mere 10 days before the deadline to negotiate a post-Brexit trade agreement between Britain and the European Union, of what a chaotic rupture between the two sides might actually look like.

Two Vatican cardinals, papal aides, test positive for coronavirus (Reuters) Two Vatican cardinals, including one who spends most of his time helping Rome’s homeless, have tested positive for the coronavirus, a Vatican source said on Tuesday. Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, 57, a Pole who manages Pope Francis’ charities and has the title of the Vatican’s almoner, was hospitalised for treatment of the onset of pneumonia. Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, 78, the governor of Vatican City, tested positive and is believed to be in self-isolation in his home in the Vatican, the source said. Krajewski spends much of this time on the streets outside Vatican City helping Rome’s homeless population. At the request of the pope, he has set up a clinic, bathing facilities and other services for the homeless just off St. Peter’s Square. He is also very active with Italian charities that help the poor and homeless throughout Italy.

Conversations with a killer? (Foreign Policy) Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny appears to have outed one of his poisoners in audacious fashion, by getting a member of Russia’s security services to admit to the act in a recorded phone conversation. Navalny is reported to have spoofed his phone number so a call to FSB agent Konstantin Kudryavtsev appeared to come from an internal FSB landline, and impersonated a senior official. Kudryavtsev then proceeded to tell Navalny the details of the botched poisoning, including a trip to the Siberian town of Omsk to treat Navalny’s clothes so that the nerve agent Novichok would not be detected.

Thai Travel Industry Faces ‘Nail in Coffin’ After New Outbreak (Bloomberg) As Phuket and other Thai tourist destinations prepare for a slight bump in business from the countdown to 2021, a new virus outbreak among seafood factory workers near Bangkok couldn’t come at a worse time. Thailand discovered a record cluster of infections in Samut Sakhon province last week, prompting a 14-day lockdown of the industrial district. The government is mulling whether curbs need to be expanded to other locales. Another nationwide lockdown or restrictions on domestic travel could be the “nail in the coffin” for many tourism-related companies, according to Phuket Hotel Association President Anthony Lark. “Everyone’s losing money and just trying to break even,” Lark said by phone Monday. “If the government can’t control the virus, and any domestic air travel or inter-provincial travel restrictions are introduced, then you will absolutely see hotel, restaurant and boat owners mothball their businesses.”

A Brazen Police Shooting Caught on Video Sparks Anger in the Philippines (NYT) A video of a police officer shooting a woman and her adult son at close range on Sunday has spread rapidly across social media in the Philippines, provoking a wave of outrage directed at the government and a police force that many say acts with impunity. The shootings are the latest in a series of killings involving the Philippines National Police, which is currently the focus of an international investigation. The International Criminal Court said last week it believed that there was evidence to support claims that the authorities had committed crimes against humanity as part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs in the Philippines. Interior Secretary Eduardo Año condemned the killings and stressed that they were isolated incidents that should not reflect on the Philippine National Police.

Israeli government on the verge of collapse after lawmakers fail to reach budget compromise (Washington Post) Bitterly divided Israeli lawmakers failed to agree on a key budget vote early Tuesday, marking the likely end to the 8-month-old coalition government and setting the country on path for its fourth round of national elections in less than two years. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has until midnight Tuesday to pass a 2020 budget, one of the many basic acts of lawmaking that have gone unfinished under the fractious power-sharing agreement between right-wing and centrist parties that have battled each other since forming their unity government in April. But the failure to extend that deadline by another 10 days signaled the likely final collapse of attempts to broker a deal. With no action, the government will dissolve at the end of Tuesday and elections will automatically be set for March 23, plunging the nation back into the stalemated political crisis that has plagued it since the end of 2018.

‘Charlie Brown’ Christmas trees lift school, spirits (AP) rank Pichel’s Christmas trees will probably never be chosen to light up New York’s Rockefeller Center. They look more like the droopy, pitiful tree made famous in the 1965 children’s animated classic, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” But his trees have been flying off a tiny neighborhood lot since he started selling them last month to raise money for a private middle school that provides scholarships for students from an impoverished area of Richmond. He cut down some of the gangly Virginia pine trees that grow wild on a 66-acre (27-hectare) plot of land he owns about two hours west of Richmond, selling them from a small grassy lot he rented for $1 from two generous owners who wanted to help. He was stunned by the response. He sold 180 trees in three weekends, raising a total of $5,554 for the school. He let people set their own prices; most paid $20 to $50 for a tree. Rei Alvarez, an illustrator and musician, said he and his wife loved the nostalgia and “Charlie Brown aesthetic” of Pichel’s trees. He said buying a less-than-perfect tree fits with his desire to avoid the commercialism of Christmas and to teach his 2-year-old son to appreciate the simpler things in life. “As an artist, I know it’s not what you have, it’s what you do with it,” he said. “You give the few branches you have a little love.” … “Maybe all of us are feeling a little bit like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, given 2020. I don’t think we’re all feeling like robust, well-proportioned trees. We’re all kind of bruised.”

[emmatrustsno-one]

Brace yourselves A very long essay (like, a thesis) on the British class system with references to Harry Potter Part 2

Let’s continue. Have another comedy clip showcasing how stupid the upper-class is meant to be, to get you going:

A side point: almost all the British actors celebrated by Tumblr went to private or public school and are upper-class, or upper middle-class.Here’s a buzzfeed quiz to give your brain bracing time for part 2. I got it right for the exact same reason the top commenter did! Have a look once you’ve done it! That’s another blog post in itself!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/hattiesoykan/which-of-these-british-actors-didnt-go-to-a-private-school?utm_term=.ylwEEKxnDN#.mfyBBg7oQx

Food and diet

As I mentioned in my post about food in Harry Potter, food is intricately bound up with class. Working-class people have tradtionally had a poor diet, through poverty and lack of education, and also because of the impact of the Second World War, when food was very scarce. Where I am from people were still dying of malnutrition when my dad was teenager, so in the late 1960s. Working-class people then used to cook with beef dripping as they couldn’t afford other fats, and everyone on his street shared the same pan of dripping. I am from a former industrial town with two-up, two-down terraced workers’ houses, just like Snape, so we can assume that when Snape was a child he experienced similar levels of malnutrition around him.

Things are much better now, but in the last century people used to grow a lot of their own food if they had outdoor space, steal or not eat. They could afford to buy very little and then only the cheapest foods, which are often the least nutritious. It meant that they didn’t eat big or regular meals and that there was very little variety in their diets, and no treats. JKR has a story about trying to buy a tin of baked beans, and nothing else, from the supermarket, for her daughter’s meal, and having to put it back because she didn’t have enough money. Then, tins of beans were like 10p.

When my parents were at school, all kids used to get a small carton of milk for free at breaktime to make sure they were getting enough calcium. In the 70s, Thatcher (may she rot in hell) was education secretary (this was before she was prime minister) and she stopped the milk provision, which meant that many working-class kids stopped getting a key part of their nutrition. She was too disconnected from working-class people to understand, or care, that she was taking away critical nutrition. It was a political and social scandal and she got the nickname ‘Thatcher the milk snatcher’.

Best ever comment about that evil bitch is from the comedian Frankie Boyle, who had much to say about her, but the best was on the subject of her funeral: “give everyone is Scotland a shovel and we’ll dig a hole so deep we’ll deliver her to satan personally.”

Since we don’t finish school here until after 3, schools provide a lunch, which most people have to pay for (or you can take your own). The canteens in secondary schools are usually far too small and, certainly until very recently, when Jamie Oliver started a war on school food, served repetitive, low nutrient, processed rubbish. Until the turn of the century you would be lucky to get anything other than hot dogs, turkey twizzlers, chicken nuggets, chips and pizza, and when I say pizza, I mean a square chunk of dense bread with cheese and tomato purée on it. And cake. Now schools usually do at least pasta, salad and sandwiches as well. The main problem is budget. These schools are state-maintained and are given an allowance to spend on each thing. When Jamie Oliver started his campaign against poor quality school food, the school he worked with had a budget of 13p for every child. The ‘better’ the school the better the food: public schools, whose budget comes from fees, serve the kind of food Hogwarts did. Some kids, i.e. those from very low income families, are allowed a free school meal, and for many it is their only meal of the day, even now. I work in a working-class school and trust me, at least half never get a breakfast, and many have a sandwich for the evening meal. I know one boy who is given a Nutella sandwich every evening and that is all. Theresa May, who is a wannabe Thatcher, just announced recently that she is thinking of scrapping the free school meals program. It would be a disaster for the poorest kids.

Buying cheap food isn’t the only issue. Since working-class people work so much they are too tired and busy to cook proper meals, so they often settle for ready-meals, fast-food and takeaways. Lack of education has an impact as well. People eat food for taste and convenience alone, not fully grasping that they need to eat certain things to be healthy, and as a result many go under-nourished or become obese.

There is also the issue of how to cook things – not just in terms of lack of education, but in lack of facilities. Some people don’t have a hob, or an oven, maybe even just a microwave.

Hydration is an issue as well. A lot of working-class people don’t realise how much water they need to drink to be healthy, so they are dehydrated, and their kids are as well, so they don’t have very good concentration, so they don’t do as well at school, and the cycle of lack of education continues. 

Middle and upper-class people have the money, time and mental space to buy and make, or have made for them, varied, healthy foods. They have the education to eat and drink the right things. This means they are healthy and can concentrate at school or at other things and become successful.

Housing and class

Where you live is defined by, and indicative of, class. I am simplifying here, but in a nutshell, the north of England and a lot of Scotland and Wales is predominantly working-class. The further south you go, the higher the dominant class. This is because it was in the north that mills and factories were built in the Industrial Revolution, and because coal mines were up here. Many towns were built purposely to house workers of a certain factory, mill or mine. They all look the same, just with different bricks: terraced rows of small, dark houses with 2 rooms upstairs and 2 downstairs. Many have since been extended by owners to include an indoor bathroom, which would originally have been outside in an outhouse. A few people still had outdoor toilets in the 90s. The film Billy Elliot is an excellent overview of such towns and housing. If you haven’t seen it and you are interested in class, you should definitely watch it. Later on, social housing was built in the form of semi-detached houses and large blocks of flats, but detached houses have only recently become a thing for anyone other than the upper-class.

Working-class people end up living in the worst housing. Many of them rent rather than own, and that’s not as good here as in the rest of Europe. Tenants don’t have many rights and there is little regulation on landlords. Many people, right now, are living in slum housing. I am talking no flooring, unpainted walls, no heating, filth everywhere. You can either rent from a private landlord, who can do as little as he likes to make you comfortable, pretty much, or you can rent from your local council. Council housing is usually either semi-detached houses or in bigger cities flats in large blocks. The abysmal state of blocks of flats has recently been all over the news in the form of the Grenfell Tower block fire, where many people died and have had to be rehomed, simply because cheap cladding had been used on the outside of the building and the fire travelled up it like it was tissue paper. Many blocks have this same cladding on. The residents there had complained about safety many times but had been ignored. To make matters worse, there is a serious shortage of council housing across the country because fucking Thatcher (again) introduced a scheme where council tenants could buy their home if they lived in it for so long, and they could buy it for a crazily cheap price. Loads of people took advantage of it by buying their home for next to nothing, waiting a few years then selling it on for a massive profit, but of course that meant all the fucking social housing disappeared. My sister-in-law got divorced around 12 years ago and she went to the council to put her name on the list to get somewhere to live and the list was so long it took 5 years to offer her anything, and then it was the shittiest house imaginable, because that’s all they’ve got left.

They also ruin what little housing is left by a) putting loads of criminals and drug dealers etc in one place, so you end up with some estate from hell and b) putting foreign immigrants all in one place, so you end up with people who came here for asylum from either side of a civil war living next to each other, or ghettoising them so that they are abandoned and lost.

In Scotland working-class housing was, until very recently, tenement buildings, which were sort of communal flats. Families had their own rooms but had to share some of them. The stairs and communal areas were like something out of a Victorian workhouse. Slums. Here are some pictures, with info, of working-class housing in Glasgow between the 40s and 60s. Glasgow is especially woeful. I actually love the place, but there’s no denying it has been hell on earth for much of its history. I remember doing a geography project at school (mid 90s) and discovering that the life expectancy in the most working-class part of Glasgow was 54. It has gone up since, but is still below the national average: all the factors I have discussed combine to literally knock years off people’s lives.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/hilarywardle/glasgow-housing-crisis?utm_term=.apNOODpKkJ#.wn3BBNXxK4

Regarding the rows of terraces built to house industrial workers I mentioned earlier, this is exactly the sort of place Snape grew up. Here’s an example. They would have had a sitting room and kitchen downstairs and 2 bedrooms upstairs, with an outside toilet, while he was a child, and certainly no plumbed in bath or shower.

Upper-class people live in detached houses, usually historic ones like castles and former estates. They usually have multiple houses.

Middle-class housing is varied depending on whereabouts on the continuum people are. It ranges from townhouses, to large, nicer semi-detached houses, to detached houses to mansions. A key point I want to make here is that it is totally normal to have the lowliest of working-class housing, such as in the picture, and then a few minutes’ walk away, a middle-class area. Upper-class housing is always considerably separate from the other two, but working and middle are near each other. I saw a ridiculous post a few weeks ago claiming that Lily must have been poor because she lived close enough to Snape that Petunia knew who he was, but that is utter rubbish – that person can’t have been British. Nearly all towns have slummy areas and middle-class areas, and our towns are small. Also, he was doing that accidental wandless magic kids do, so no doubt he had a reputation for being a weirdo.

The mere fact that Petunia criticises Snape’s clothes proves beyond doubt that she wasn’t working-class, as in those days, everybody working-class was wearing hand-me-down clothes like that, therefore another “poor” person wouldn’t have noticed/mentioned. The punk movement’s fashion of safety pins in the 70s came about due to the simple fact that the working-class were wearing such old clothes that they were falling apart and they could only fix them with safety pins. As Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols said, “we had to use them – the arse was hanging off your jeans so you just had to shove a few safety pins in it.” So Petunia wasn’t poor or she would have empathised with Snape, not criticised him.

It crops up everywhere and all the time

By complete coincidence yesterday I saw a review on Amazon that completely illustrates how notions of class pervade our conscious in Britain. It was a review for a book about Freud and feminism, an academic work. It was the only negative review amongst quite a few positive ones. I’ll let you read it then I’ll discuss:

I bought a copy for a penny on Amazon and that was over spending. I have worked in the mental health field for over thirty years and have trained as a psychotherapist and am very well acquainted with Freud's work. I was shocked by how badly this author described his ideas. If I didn't already know what she was talking about I wouldn't have had a clue about what she was saying. She really seems to be someone who wants to make a somewhat complicated subject even more complicated. I stopped at the end of her second chapter as I just couldn't take anymore. I wouldn't describe her as providing the reader with an explanation, in fact one could be forgiven for viewing her writing as an attempt at deliberate confusion or if not confusion an attempt to make what Freud had written about sexuality as even more difficult to understand than it was. Perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised by this. The author is essentially taking a Lacanian position towards Freud, a position that upper middle class complicated academics have taken up. Unfortunately these are people who really don't want to accept what Freud actually wrote and instead want to impose on his writings their own wishes for what they would have preferred him to write i.e. that the unconscious is structured like a language and that word representations exist at this level, despite Freud's own writing that this isn't so. What amuses me is that author purports to be a Marxist. Given the way she writes it's clear enough that she wants to keep the uneducated working class at quite a distance. This book is in my opinion pretentious upper middle class trash. I'm giving my copy to Oxfam.

Firstly, the fact that it’s a stream of consciousness rant should tell you enough to know that it’s not trustworthy. The most important thing, though, is the linking of academic analysis with being upper middle-class. The reviewer has taken a stance on psychoanalytical ideas that is typical of the science side of the discipline. They clearly think it’s a waste of time to look for meaning beyond practical application, e.g. for literary analysis, and something only someone with time and money would do.

It goes deeper than that as well. There’s a clear derogatory link between academia and being upper middle-class and the reviewer is offended because, as a result of their lower class, they don’t understand the book. They have tried to blame the author, by throwing around intellectual names like Lacan and Marx, and showing that they are the sort of high-standing citizen that gives to charity, but ultimately, the subject matter of the book is beyond them. They have taken this to be a result of class hindrances, which it probably is. The reviewer isn’t educated or cultured enough to understand the book. This annoys them and so they are attacking those who are.

There is a perception, which is hard to explain, that the most difficult and annoying class is the middle-class. Part of this arises out of the fact that the middle-class is such a long continuum. People who are middle-class often have delusions of being very high class, even though they probably started as working-class. They are constantly competing with each other within the class. This review is, to me, a good example of that, because it’s obvious that the reviewer is lower middle-class themselves. They have a profession, they are educated at higher education level and they are reading books about Freud for fun. They are proud to be middle-class. But then this book comes along and makes them feel alienated from their own demographic. It makes them feel like an outsider; they don’t have the power to understand the book. So they attack the author for daring to show that they aren’t so high up after all.

The perception of middle-class people of being stuck-up also links to a perception that some upper-class people are easy-going and easier to get on with for working-class people than the middle-classes. The idea being, no doubt, that the upper and working classes both understand their place, they are content with who they are. But the middle-classes are always wanting to keep with the Joneses, to get better, to compete with you. Here are 3 comedy clips that illustrate my point. The first is stand-up comedy by Billy Connolly, who’s about as working-class as you can get (it’s just audio), and the others are from a 90s sketch show (bonus: the second one has the actor who plays Mr Weasley in it!)

I always felt like Gryffindor was a bit like the annoying middle-class guy comparing you to him. I can just hear Gryffindors saying “I couldn’t help but notice that I am considerably more perfect/popular than yooouuuuwww”!

In conclusion, feel free to dislike Severus all you want, but if you could stop calling him racist I would really appreciate it.

To finish (at last, I hear you cry) here is a Brief suggested watch/listen list if you interested in representations of class. They should all be accessible online.I am happy to answer questions about any of them.

TV-

Blackadder, but only series 2-4, 1 is shit (Rowan Atkinson plays a middle-class man stuck between the stupid working and upper-classes)

Harry Enfield and Chums, Little Britain (both sketch shows attacking all classes)

Only fools and horses (2 working-class brothers try to make a living by selling dodgy goods at the market)

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (you will need subtitles – it’s about a group of guest workers in Germany and the main characters are geordies, which means from Newcastle)

The fact that these are all comedies says it all about our views of the situation.

Films – Billy Elliot (2000)

Pride (2014) (both are about the miners’ strike in the 80s, which is the most important event in recent working-class history, and both deal with LGBT themes)

East in East (1999) (about the added struggles for working-class immigrants)

The Full Monty (1997) (about unemployed working-class men stripping for money – it’s a comedy!)

Music – the album ‘Different class’ by Pulp, a band from Sheffield, a very working-class city (which I happen to love as I went to university there) which suffered terribly from the collapse of British industry since basically all the steel was made there. The film ‘The Full Monty’ is set there.

Other – any stand-up comedy (the working-class art) by the comedians Peter Kay or (pre-2000s) Billy Connolly.

Thank you and I apologise for the length!

[youre-on-a-starship]

11 Questions (Now with 22 Bonus Questions)

Rules

1. Always post these rules

2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you

3. Write 11 questions of your own

4. Tag 11 people

I was tagged by @outside-the-government, @kaitymccoy123, AND @enterprisewriting I’m doing all of their sets of questions in one post because I’m just that great (I also don’t want to come up with 33 new questions)

Jules’ 11 Questions

If you had the power to eliminate any one single form of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, etc), which would it be and why? Oh god... um... this is a really tough question because I feel like I have to choose who stays marginalized. God... I think I’d go with racism because... well it’s a problem. I can’t really explain this one better than that.

If you could live in any one make-believe land or universe, which would it be and why? I’d live in the Star Trek universe, hands down. I feel so at home there, it would be just so comfortable for me.

If you were an animal, what animal would you be and why? I am basically a cat. I just want sleep, occasional snuggles, and lots of sun.

Which of your teachers (in any level of education) had the greatest impact on you - how and why? Oh God... It’s somewhere between my 7th grade English Language Arts teacher and my creative writing professor from 4th year. On one hand, my 7th grade ELA teacher taught me how to read effectively and how to record what I read so that I could learn from it (and she was also one of the only ones who could be arsed to teach us grammar). But Aritha van Herk... she elevated my writing and taught me how to really be critical of my work. That is so valuable to me.

If your closest loved one came down with some awful, painful, incurable illness and you could save them in one of two ways, which of these would you pick and why: 1) you can cure them instantly, but the second you do they forget you ever existed and you must live your lives apart, or 2) you can cure them instantly, but you die in their place and they have to live forever without you. I’d pick option 1 because either way they’re going to have to live without me, and least it won’t hurt them if they think they never knew me to begin with.

What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done to impress someone? *sigh* I don’t know. I spent so many years embarrassing myself trying to impress people (read: boys) that I just... I repress those memories because the person doing that wasn’t really me. I suppose the craziest thing that *stuck* with me was my love of hockey. I tried to get into it to impress this guy and if I hadn’t been a moody teenager... well. Anyway, I really like hockey now, anyway. I actually went into the competitive stream in jr high gym for floor hockey (note: that was super dangerous for someone with my condition) just so I could play with him and show off.

How good are you at facing your fears? Honest to God, I keep sticking myself in situations where I have to deal with that a lot. I just give it a good push because I have to, and I make it work.

What characteristic do you value the most in friends and why? I value honesty. When a friend tells me that they don’t want to hang out because they’re having a bad mental health day, that means I know we’ve really made it as friends because they don’t feel the need to impress me or make excuses. And that means I’m allowed to do the same thing, which is super relaxing.

If you could wake up tomorrow and suddenly be the world’s best at something, what would it be and why? I’d be the world’s best writer so I could get all my stories picked up by peeps in Hollywood and have them made into movies so I could meet all these amazing people I want to meet.

What’s the worst injury you’ve ever gotten and how? Er... how do I pick the *worst*? THIS IS GOING TO BE GRAPHIC! I think... when I was 7 I jumped off a wall unit and broke my tib/fib just below the knee. I was in hospital for 3 days because they needed to do something fancy to get it back in line and I had a cast nearly up to my crotch to keep everything still while it healed. The alternative is when I broke my own arm kinda-sorta-not-really on purpose when I was 12. I lashed out at my brother because he was being annoying and I ended up twisting my arm while we were fighting (please note I am having horrible flashbacks while I’m writing this and I’m literally gagging at the memory), and I snapped my ulna right in two, twisting it completely out of place. I was given local anesthesia so that they could set my arm, but they gave me the wrong kind of meds and I had something akin to an LSD trip during which I verbally abused my entire family and became super afraid of narcotics. They fixed my arm, though. I’ve got 13 other stories where those came from, hit me up, I dare you.

Name one random fact that you know that people are always surprised to learn when you tell them. I’m a bellydancer. Not professionally or anything, but I’m actually really good at it and it makes me happy that I can do something beautiful with my body even during times when I don’t like my body that much.

Kaity’s 11 Questions:

What person do you most look up to in the world and why? Does Kathryn Janeway count? I honestly can never think of anyone else when I’m asked a question like this. I just aspire to be as badass as her.

What book really spoke to you, maybe even changed your view on things, and how did it do that? I want to talk about a book by Aritha van Herk for a moment. Restlessness. This book is set in my home city, for one, and it was written by my creative writing teacher. It’s about a woman who is so tired of being busy that she hires an assassin to kill her. Then they spend the evening together just talking before she makes the final call. It’s an amazing exploration of good writing, my wonderful city, the nature of being a woman, the nature of being a working woman, work interspersed with pleasure, and how to find balance. It’s amazing, please go read it.

If you could spend the afternoon snuggled on a couch watching a movie with a fictional character, who would it be? Holy... this is a really specific instance. I think my answer would be... probably Jim Kirk, actually. He just looks like a really nice guy to cuddle with, you know? It’s the strong arms. And he just looks like he’d be warm?

If you are in a bad mood, do you prefer to be left alone or have someone to cheer you up? I wanna be left the hell alone. I wanna listen to music and write and brood.

Do you judge a book by it’s cover (literally or figuratively)? It often influences whether or not I pick it up off the shelf, yeah. I ultimately *judge* a book by its contents.

What’s the one thing that people always misunderstand about you? I’m not horrendously awkward, I just don’t get my words right the first time sometimes.

What is your Harry Potter house and do you feel you were sorted correctly? Ravenclaw and fuck yes.

Do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert? It depends, but on the whole I’m an introvert.

What is your favourite colour?  Why? I like navy because it’s less harsh than black (says the girl who owns a metric fuckload of black), and it looks great with almost everything. It feels like a really mature colour.

What’s your most listened to song? Right now? That’s a really good question; I’ve had “Rhinestone Eyes” by the Gorillaz on repeat lately.

What celebrity would you trade lives with? Trade lives with? Oh hell, I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to saddle anyone with my life, I guess. Maybe... you know what, Margaret Atwood. She’s bomb, her work is bomb, and I want to be her someday.

Taal’s 11 questions

1. if you could travel anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? I really want to go to Germany and just live amongst my people and practice my language for a while. 2. what would you want your tombstone to say and why? Literally anything BUT “RIP.” 3. how do you feel about astrology? I take it into account, but I don’t let it govern my actions. For instance, Aries and Virgo aren’t supposed to go well together apparently but most of my friends and my partner are Virgos and here we are. 4. what is the most irritating, borderline trash ass fashion trend you’ve ever encountered? Crocs? 5. how long do you think you would last as a vegan? Maybe 45 minutes? 6. if you were to own an airline company, what would you name it and what would the slogan be?  This is the coolest question. I’d call it HobbitAir and the slogan would be “There and back again.” I’m not that creative. 7. which fictional character would you like to switch lives with and why? Can I be Lieutenant Romaine so that Scotty will look at me the way he does in TOS? 8. what subject did you despise the most throughout your education? Fucking Chemistry. Fuck. Chemistry. I just... I don’t... how can I understand something so well and still fucking fail, like I don’t even. (I didn’t actually fail chem, but I came damn close) 9. are you a smoothie person or a milkshake person? Depends on the day. In Calgary we’ve got a place called Peter’s Drive-in and there’s nothing quite like a Peter’s shake. Coffee-oreo-marshmallow, baby. 10. are you able to tell when someone is flirting with you or are you of the oblivious type? I think everyone’s flirting with me, but literally only one person has ever bothered to act on it and I had to break the ice first. So I guess it’s just wishful thinking. 11. name 11 things about yourself that you love and/or want to learn to love. N’awww I love this question ^^ I love: 1. my smile 2. my eyes 3. my crazy hips 4. my capacity for love and compassion 5. my ability to come alive in crisis 6. my intelligence and I want to learn to love 7. my creativity 8. my overactive imagination 9. my impulsiveness 10. my voice (that’s probably on everyone’s list XD) and 11. my disability.

Alex’s Questions

If you could go on a week-long camping trip with three people, real, fictional, or both, who would you go with?

If you could instantly master one physical skill, what would it be?

You’ve got a half hour to kill before your appointment and your phone’s dead. What do you do?

What’s your alignment in DnD terms (Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic Good/Neutral/Evil)? What do you wish it was?

What’s that one weird film you watched on repeat when you were a kid?

What’s your go-to style?

Do it for the vine. What’s the craziest thing you’ve done just to do it?

What never fails to put a smile on your face?

Who’s you’re favourite author and why?

What book actually changed your life?

What’s the last fanfic you read? Link it maybe?

And now I gotta tag 11 of you fine folks. @fandomheadrush, @starshiphufflebadger, @star-trekkin-across-theuniverse, @trekken81, @spacethewritingfrontier, @rae723 (hey, gurl), @schatten88 (do it, I dare you), @fanscribbling, @imaginestartrek, @imaginenterprise, aaaaaaaand @distinguishedqueenofbooks 

Can’t wait to see what y’all say!!

[quitbeingbanished]

Changing my genre (Charlie x Jo)

Title: Changing my genre

Pairing: Charlie x Jo

Prompt: Songfic for #kimsbirthdaychallenge @ilostmyshoe-79

word count: 1215

warnings: AU where Jo is an edgy larp girl and Charlie is normally not into that, Larping, Charlie being awkward and adorable

song: Changing my Major from Fun Home OST

a/n: I had two other fic idea I tried to do with this but...this happened. this is my first wlw fic I’ve written since I came out as trans. I did have my lovely assistant @becomingmyinnerdemons help me make sure it wasn’t uncomfortable. As such pretty rated G and kinda fluffy.

tagging: @brewsthespirit-blog , @smallreferencepools​

Charlie totally loved LARP. She considered herself a bit of a larping queen actually. But she preferred high Fantasy, elves, dragons and magic. She felt comfortable in that setting. She could min-max her way to being the baddest bitch on the game floor. She read books like Harry Potter and the Hobbit. She liked fantasy, it was a happy place where the heroes always won—well, except for Song of Ice and Fire. It was an escape, a warm blanket of an escape. She liked fantasy. She had no interest in dark and gritty settings. Comics in the 90’s had been terrible. Batman was overrated.

She’d seen the source material a few times in her local game store. Books that were marked ADULT as if somehow playing vampires or werewolves were the mature thing to do. Charlie had plenty of adult encounters while in Middle-earth, thank you very much. But when there had been a flyer in her local gamer den for a new larp on the local college campus? Yeah, Charlie had decided to give it a go. Not because she was interested in this pretentious system but because her main game was in its offseason.

Sometimes a girl just needs a larp fix, regardless of the genre.

   She had sent an email to the contact on the flyer for the online group for the game. Roads Not Taken was a silly name for a campaign but Charlie had once been in a D&D game called Elf Quest so who was she to judge? She joined the topic for new players where the Story Teller--how weird was that to call your game master?-- that told her the system was just humans who got tapped with powers to fight monsters. It didn’t sound as goth as she had been expecting.

  Charlie was wowed by just how normal and geeky everyone had seemed. Just normal geeks who were planning on starting a larp about hunting monsters. One of the other players offered to help her build a character for the system. Charlie was fairly sure she could figure out how to build a character by herself but the offer game with the chance to actually know someone before hitting the game floor so she’d agreed.

  They had chatted privately for a couple days before agreeing on a time to meet up before the game to go over the basics. Charlie learned her real name was Jo. Charlie loved talking to her if she was honest. She learned Jo had an older taste in music. She worked with her mom at a bar not too far away. Jo had a wicked sense of humor. Jo also apparently was super well versed in the system. She had pdf copies of all the books for the system that she had emailed to Charlie through an encrypted server. It wasn’t the first time Charlie had gotten a crush on a girl across the internet but she was falling hard for her.

  Charlie felt comfortable enough to talk about her own life. How she worked in IT. What her favorite books and tv shows were and how much she really missed having a game that ran on a set schedule. How her Hogwarts house was Gryffindor and Hermione was her favorite character. 

  Jo said that was adorable. Charlie had screenshot that exchanges to her phone and stared at it sometimes feeling her face go red every time.

  Her favorite character from Harry Potter was Ron. She considered herself to by a Gryffindor as well but Pottermore had sorted her into Slytherin of all things. Jo talked about her collection of fantasy swords as well as just knives in general. She mentioned her favorite shows were a little more mystery than fantasy. She liked terrible B horror movies as well as good horror.

  Jo even made Hunter the Reckoning seem interesting and three dimensional. Jo made it a very human story. How people could just be going about their lives when suddenly the powers that be pulled back the curtain and revealed the monsters that existed in the world. Jo made the dark and gritty world of darkness even seem kind of cool.

  Charlie learned from talking with Jo on her skype that Jo was in at least 3 other larps in the city. Charlie got to learn all the drama of the intersecting Organizations of larps, two vampires and one werewolf. She got to hear some off-topic stories about how her friend Dean was constantly in some new crisis in a game because he couldn’t ignore or not take the bait for a plot. She heard about how the politics of one vampire game screwed up all her fun in the other one.

  Jo even asked for her facebook. Charlie had been hesitant to give it at first, it was full of some memes and her different cosplay pictures. But she gave it anyway. She liked Jo. Jo seemed like a good person. Jo was gorgeous. Her smile in her photos was infectious. Charlie found herself smiling every time she got a text or IM from Jo anyways but now she had a face to go with it.

    Through facebook, she also got to put other faces to names. Jo started a small group chat with some of the other players going to the hunter game to have a slight chance at building a group that sort of knew each other. Charlie found she liked most of them thought Sam and Dean seemed to be constantly getting each other off track. Adam normally only seemed to communicate with memes. Castiel was the assistant Storyteller for the game and seemed to be trying to keep Dean from getting too out there. Charlie was falling in love with Jo’s friends too.

  The only thing Charlie couldn’t seem to ask was whether Jo felt the same way about how they were getting along. They were talking all the time now. Once facebook had been exchanged then Instagram and twitter followed. Charlie wondered if she had a Tumblr but was afraid to ask, her Tumblr was overflowing with personal posts gushing about how much she liked Jo, it seemed a bad plan to open that door right now.

  So when are we meeting tomorrow? Charlie texted Jo.

  Want to catch coffee tomorrow before game? I want to see if the Unicorn thing is as bad as everyone says. Jo responded.

  It’s a date. Charlie had responded without thinking.

  Hope that means you’re paying ;) Jo had texted back.

  Charlie had to lay on the bed and remember how to breathe.

   Charlie totally hadn’t driven herself crazy with what to wear to meet Jo for the first time. She wasn’t sure if it was a date-date or just a ‘gals being pals’ event. That would have been insane to hyper stress about what to wear. She had stuffed her character clothes in her bag and showed up fifteen minutes early to the coffee shop and tried to calm her breathing.

  When Jo walked in with a t-shirt of Captain America’s shield colored in the bisexual flag Charlie was sure she’d died and gone to heaven.

  “Cute shirt.” Charlie has said waving Jo over.

  “thanks. I only save it for first dates with cute girls.” Jo had grinned.

[dralentines-day]

Gift #20, @shelielaff

Shelie? She doesn’t lie when she says this gift to you, it’s really a blessing to us all. Happy Dralentine’s, @shelielaff! 

Our gifter says:  

“Hey, giftee! I'm so excited to be back for another round of Dralentine's Day! I hope you like firstie antics and Draco blushes just as much as I do! Also, big thanks to our wonderful mods!”

For The Slytherin Within - After watching the new Slytherin first-years be met with scorn during their Sorting, Harry takes a stand and re-Sorts himself into Slytherin to prove there's no shame in being a snake. Along the way, he befriends the first-years who make it their personal mission to help him find love on Valentine's Day. 8k.

Tags: no smut, does contain a description of some injuries sustained after a beating, but no descriptions of the event. Also bad poetry. 

Harry lay back on his bed, listening to the familiar creaks and groans of the castle around him and absorbing the much newer, and admittedly much stranger, sensation of the castle’s emotions. After working all summer on restoring the school, Harry had learned the castle was sentinent. He had thought himself off his rocker until Headmistress McGonagall and Dumbledore’s portrait finally explained that although typically only the headmaster or headmistress experienced the castle’s emotions, they theorized that he had given so much of himself to the school that it was giving some of itself back. Harry had felt Hogwarts’s joy as it was announced it would be able to open as normal on September first, its happiness as repairs were completed, and its sadness at the state of itself where the repairs had not yet been completed. Currently, it was nervous about tomorrow’s returning students.

After the battle, Harry just had not been able to face leaving the castle. So, he had stayed, only leaving a few times to testify at trials or to visit his godson Teddy. McGonagall had welcomed him to join the repairs, but even though the repairs crew was staffed only by professionals, Harry still attracted attention. Therefore, Harry tended to work by himself, exploring the castle and repairing whatever section struck his fancy. While the others came and went, Harry stayed, dedicating himself to rebuilding his home. Harry hadn’t felt like he belonged anywhere else after the war, not at the Weasley’s, who were mourning Fred as a family he wasn’t truly a part of, and not all alone at 12 Grimmauld Place. Hogwarts was his only home.

Like Hogwarts itself, Harry was also nervous about the upcoming school year. As much as the repairs crew and himself had tried, the school was not yet completely restored. Most notably, Gryffindor Tower was still unusable. Many of the towers, especially Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Towers, had sustained heavy damage during the battle, and the repairs planning committee had decided to repair the least-damaged tower and then move the other dormitory into the moderately-damaged East Tower. Therefore, Ravenclaw Tower had been repaired and the Gryffindor dorms had been moved into the repaired East Tower until repairs resumed next summer. While the crew had done their best to make the new tower like Gryffindor, it just wasn’t the same. Harry wasn’t sure yet how he felt about it. Throughout the repairs, he had been staying in the Slytherin dorms. Again, he had wanted to get away from the rest of the crew, which stayed in the only other undamaged dorms, the Hufflepuff dorms, during the week.

Harry had grown oddly fond of the Slytherin dorms during these past months. He enjoyed the fireplaces in the dormitories, the nicer bathrooms, and the windows that looked out into the lake. He felt safe and secure in the underground dormitory in a way he was starting to realize he never had in Gryffindor Tower. He enjoyed the gentle way the waves of the lake hit the dormitory windows and walls as he was trying to sleep. He was also fond of the water serpent, who he had yet to name, but who told amazing stories. Harry wasn’t sure he would be able to face going back to the not-really-Gryffindor-Tower after his quick adaption to the calming green and silver atmosphere of the dungeon.

Not to mention, it would just be him and Hermione this year, as Ron had decided to stay in London with George to help him run the shop. While Harry knew this was the best decision for him, he couldn’t help but resent him a bit. School just wouldn’t be the same without him, although Harry felt he had somewhat gotten used to it these past months while Ron and Hermione had been in Australia restoring Hermione’s parents’ memories. Still, Harry had decided to come back and finish his education despite being offered a spot in this year’s Auror Training Programme. After being told he would amount to nothing more than a secondary-school dropout his entire childhood, finishing his education was important to him, just to prove to himself that he could do it. Plus, he didn’t want to have positions handed to him because of his name; he wanted to earn them just like everyone else.

So, even though parts of the castle were still in disrepair and Harry was having a bit of a crisis about whether he was ready to face the fake Gryffindor tower without Ron by his side, the Welcoming Feast was fast approaching. Thankfully, Disillusionment Charms had been performed on the exterior of the castle to hide the damaged parts and avoid upsetting the new and returning students. Interior parts were simply warded off. Sighing, Harry got up and began dressing in his student robes, making sure everything was packed as the elves would move his belongings back up to Gryffindor during the feast.

In the Great Hall, Harry was shocked at how normal everything seemed. Of course, the student body was noticeably smaller and considerably less boisterous this term than usual, but there was the same anticipation in the air as always. Harry watched as McGonagall led in the new first years, an usually large class as this year’s bunch included the Muggleborns who had been excluded last year. He couldn’t remember them ever looking quite so small or vulnerable before. Then, the Sorting Hat began to sing;

Although the toil is over,

Do not let yourselves rest

For though the strife is finished

You have yet to face the test.

Do not divide amongst yourselves

For that way leads to strife

Instead befriend your enemies

And protect them with your life

For though I may be just a hat

I really am quite wise

Trust me, you will surely regret

If you do not heed my advice

Harry was vaguely disturbed by the Sorting Hat’s song, but was quickly distracted by the Sorting. As the children were Sorted, Harry noticed a rather disturbing trend. Although the new Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw students were met with cheers and enthusiasm by the Hall, the new Slytherins were met with scorn. The last student to be sorted, a Gavin Goyle, had even been met with jeering. As the ceremony went on, and he watched two young girls burst into tears upon reaching their new house table, Harry was furious. This is not what he had fought the war for. He hadn’t battled against discrimination of Muggleborns just so discrimination against Slytherins could take its place! Even worse, he felt the anger of Hogwarts itself as its youngest students were being shamed and humiliated.

Harry was abruptly yanked from his brewing rage when Hermione nudged him and whispered, “You’re about to do something, aren’t you?” “Promise you won’t be mad?” Harry asked her, his plan formulating in his head. Hermione smiled and shook her head, “Just stop this, and we’ll discuss the consequences later.” Harry smiled at the typical Hermione answer, and stood up. Abruptly, the whole Great Hall turned and stared at him as he made his way up to McGonagall.

“What the fuck is Potter doing?” whispered Pansy in his ear. Draco elegantly shrugged one shoulder, truly confused at what Potter was doing interrupting the ceremony like this. He looked down at the new Slytherins, huddled miserably at the end of the table and felt enraged at the treatment they were receiving. Although there wasn’t much the older Slytherins could do, they would protect the younger snakes within their walls as much as they could.

Draco was distracted from his thoughts by Potter whispering to McGonagall. The Headmistress sighed, shaking her head fondly before going to sit down. Astonished, Draco listened as Potter began to speak. “I must admit,” Potter began, “that I am very disappointed in you all. We just fought a war. A war to end bigotry and discrimination. And three months later, you feel it’s appropriate to boo and mock eleven-year old children for where they’re Sorted. I know what you’ll say; they deserve it because they’re just Slytherins. What good have Slytherins ever done? Well, let me tell you something. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for Slytherins. The war wouldn’t have been won if it weren’t for Slytherins. Some of the bravest people I ever knew have been Slytherins, and the biggest coward I ever knew, the man responsible for the return of Voldemort, was a Gryffindor. My life has been saved, multiple times might I add, by Slytherins. One of them is sitting at the Slytherin table today,” at this, Potter winked at him, causing Draco to turn bright red from embarrassment while Pansy and Blaise snickered.

“So you see, this kind of thinking that all Slytherins are bad or evil is simply ridiculous. It needs to stop. In fact, I let myself be scared by all the negative things people had to say about Slytherin during my Sorting. I begged the Hat not to put me there. Now, I feel that in order to show everyone that there is no shame in being a Slytherin, I will have the Hat place me where it wanted to all along. I expect all the new Slytherin students Sorted from here on out will be treated with the same courtesies the rest of the new students receive.”

And with that, Potter jammed the Sorting Hat on his atrociously messy head. After a few seconds, much to everyone’s shock, it screamed, “Slytherin!” Potter smiled, walking to his new table amid the sounds of total chaos all around him.

“What the actual fuck just happened?” asked Blaise dazedly. Draco could sympathize, as he wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, but he had just had the uncomfortable realization that a ranting Potter was kind of hot.

The three of them looked down the table towards where Potter was sitting with the Firsties, and it was clear his tie and Head Boy badge had already changed to accommodate his new colors. Draco abruptly realized he was not prepared to deal with how good Potter looked in green. He was speaking earnestly to Alexandra Moon and April Hopkins, conjuring up handkerchiefs and saying something that made the girls smile shyly at him.

As the rest of the students were Sorted, the new Slytherins were met with much less contempt than before. Draco and his friends ate without incident, catching up and discussing what having Harry Potter amongst them would be like. As the desserts were cleared, McGonagall gave her usual start-of-term speech, this time outlining the areas of the castle that were out-of-bounds due to ongoing repairs. Then, she mentioned Potter. “One of our audience has gone above and beyond this summer to help restore this castle to its former glory. He has poured his time, his magic, and his love into the school. I am told he has even built a new secret passageway.” At this, she looked disapprovingly at Potter before continuing, “His hard work and dedication is the reason the Hogwarts Board of Governors has decided to award Harry Potter with an award for Special Services to the School. On behalf of all of Hogwarts, thank you Mr. Potter.” At this, the Hall burst into applause while Potter looked embarrassed.

Although Draco had expected to need to lead Potter and the Firsties to the dorms, Potter led them down to the stretch of stone wall that contained the entrance to Slytherin House. After giving the correct password, Draco started to suspect this wasn’t Potter’s first time in the dungeons, which made sense given his work over the summer.

Later that night, Draco was still surprised to learn that Potter had been staying in the Slytherin dorms all summer. He was even more surprised when Potter spoke to Balthazar, the sea serpent who frequented the big window in the common room, delighting the first years. It was clear that Potter had known exactly what he was doing by coming to Slytherin.

As the school year wore on, Harry began to settle into life in Slytherin. He was glad he was able to stay in the dorms he had grown to love. He could feel Hogwarts pride at the decision he had made, which had more than made up for the outcry after the Prophet’s headline: Bad Boy Hero Harry Potter Goes Slytherin. He still visited his friends in Gryffindor often, and though most of them thought him crazy for being a snake, they still accepted him. Harry spent most of his time in Slytherin with the Firsties, or the baby snakes as they were often called. Unfortunately, they were still having a hard time and dealing with some scorn from their classmates.

Of the nine baby snakes, there were five boys and four girls. Harry got along great with April Hopkins, younger sister of his Hufflepuff yearmate Wayne Hopkins, Felix Fernandez, Li Na Zhang, Alexandra Moon, younger sister of his Slytherin yearmate Lily Moon, Devin Wilkes, and Abel Rosier. He was having trouble reaching two, Gavin Goyle, younger brother to his yearmate and Death Eater Gregory Goyle, and Evan Nott, cousin to his Slytherin yearmate Theodore Nott. Harry understood their reluctance to befriend him, as he had heard Goyle had been imprisoned after incriminating himself on several charges in court and Nott was of course arrested in the Department of Mysteries. Harry was still determined, nonetheless.

He had quickly discovered that the baby snakes were fascinated by all things Muggle, as nearly all of them were Pureblood or at least raised entirely in the Wizarding World. Harry had Apparated to London one weekend and loaded up on Muggle sweeties and fizzy drinks, not to mention tabloids. Harry had been utterly charmed by their fascination with the non-moving pictures and their delight at tasting a Coke for the first time. They also enjoyed spending time with Teddy, who came to visit Harry on Saturdays.

One afternoon in November, the snakes came running to him upon his entrance to the common room. “What’s wrong?” Harry asked, worry sinking his stomach as he noticed the hysteria on their faces. “It’s Gavin!” the generally shy Felix shouted. “We can’t find him anywhere! We haven’t seen him for hours!” said Alexandra, barely coherent through her tears. “We told Draco, and he said he’d find him, but he hasn’t come back either! He told us to stay here!” the leader, Devin said.

“Okay, okay, calm down. Draco’s right, you need to say here. Don’t worry, I’ve got a plan,” he soothed, silently summoning the Marauder’s Map. He ran out of the Common Room, opening the map as he went, before stopping to scan for Gavin. After a tense minute of searching, he finally found him alone on the third floor. Harry stuffed the map in his back pocket and took his new secret passageway, which took him to the second floor. He ran up the stairs to alcove that Gavin was in before looking around blankly, not seeing anything. Cautiously, he approached the alcove, eventually coming into contact with the Disillusioned child. He canceled the spell, anger bubbling up when he saw the state the child was in. Gavin had bruises on his face, his right arm was at an awkward angle suggesting it was broken, and that was just what Harry could see.

Harry cast an Ennervate, watching as Gavin opened his eyes before gasping in pain and tearing up. “Shh, mate, it’s alright, I’m here,” Harry soothed, as he Immobilized the boy’s arm so he could transport him to the hospital. “Harry?” Evan asked feebly. “Yeah, it’s me, mate,” Harry replied. “My leg,” Evan moaned as he began to cry in pain. Harry tamped down the fury building in him as he Immobilized both of Gavin’s legs, just to be safe, before casting a Feather-Light Charm on Gavin and gently picking him up. “C’mon mate, let’s get you to the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey will have you fixed right up, you know she will,” Harry said as they slowly began to make their way to the fourth floor, casting a Patronus while he walked to let Malfoy know the search was over and that he was taking Gavin to the hospital wing.

Draco waited impatiently at the doors to the hospital wing for Potter to show up with Gavin. Here he was, not even able to find the boy after an hour of searching, yet of course Potter had managed. All that Draco really cared about was Greg’s brother being hurt. Draco had been trying to look out for him this year, but it wasn’t easy as Gavin seemed to resent him for being free while Greg was in jail. Draco was shocked as Potter came around the corner, a crying Gavin in his arms. It was clear that the boy had been badly beaten, and Potter was trying to soothe him. “Look mate, we’re almost here. Everything’s going to be alright; we’ll get you fixed up, I promise. Madame Pomfrey’s seen much worse. You’re alright, trust me. C’mon now, here we are.”

Draco and Potter refused to leave Gavin’s side as he was treated, even though Potter had almost been kicked out after he became so upset at Gavin’s injuries the beds began to shake. Draco had to admit, the way he cared about the baby snakes was kind of attractive. Not only did the git have to vanquish Dark Lords and grace magazine covers wearing nothing but his Slytherin tie as the “Bad Boy Hero”, he had to love kids as well. It was honestly too much.

Several days later, Gavin had made a full recovery and now had a special bond with Harry. Unfortunately, Gavin had not been able to remember who had beaten him, so Harry had created a buddy-system where the baby snakes were never to be alone out of the Common Room, especially Gavin and Evan. That plan had been so successful that no more Slytherins had been harmed since its implementation, and the verbal abuse had also decreased.

For Christmas, Harry had gotten the Firsties all loads of Muggle sweeties and different Muggle books he thought they would like based on their personality. They had gotten him a photo strip of them all making various faces in each of the three photos and his very own pet snake, which was named Neiko. Harry had embraced his Parseltongue more since living in Slytherin, as he enjoyed talking to Balthazar the water serpent, but it was still strange to have his own snake. Nonetheless, Harry quickly adapted to being a snake-owned as Neiko was very amusing.

Draco, on the other hand, could hardly deal with it. Harry talking to Balthazar was one thing. Harry wearing a snake around his neck was practically every Slytherin’s wet dream. The way he spoke Parseltongue, with amusement and happiness in his voice, was so different to the Dark Lord that it fascinated Draco in a way he couldn’t really describe. He just knew he wanted to hear more. It was clear Potter was a natural Slytherin. Draco didn’t know how he had ever missed it, except the blinding hatred he had felt towards Potter the last few years. After the events of last year, especially after Potter saved him from the Fiendfyre, it was clear there was nothing there for Draco to hate. In fact, he suspected he was feeling rather the opposite towards Potter these days, much to his mortification. It was a secret he would take to the grave, however, as he would never have the courage to tell Potter how he felt.

For Valentine’s Day, the baby snakes were determined to do something nice for Harry. During their brainstorming meeting, Li Na had said he seemed lonely. The others had agreed. Abel, the most quiet and observant of the bunch, had remarked upon Draco’s constant staring in Harry’s direction. Alexandra and April had then decided Draco was in love with Harry and would be the answer to Harry’s loneliness, if only they could find a way. “We could send him a Valentine,” Felix replied. “That’s stupid,” said Evan, “he’ll know it isn’t Draco’s handwriting.” Devin then brought up the idea of finding a spell to mimic someone’s handwriting, which is why they were currently searching the library during their free time.

After a few weeks of searching, Abel finally found a charm that would be able to change whatever they wrote into Draco’s exact handwriting. Devin, the most devious of their group, had stolen a marked assignment of Draco’s earlier for a sample for the spell. All that was left to do was write the letter, which they had decided to leave up to their resident romance experts, Alexandra and April.

On Valentine’s Day, they had waited to send the letter off until that evening. After all, Harry would be receiving a lot of Valentines, and they didn’t want theirs to get lost, otherwise Harry would never find happiness. So, they waited in the Common Room as Harry’s owl flew in, dropping the letter in his hands before flying off again. They watched eagerly as Harry opened his letter and heart-shaped confetti of all colors exploded out of the envelope. They watched Harry’s facial expressions change from exasperation to disbelief to warm amusement. Alexandra and April squealed as Harry got up from his seat and approached Draco.

Draco was shocked when Potter approached him randomly on Valentine’s Day night, holding an opened Valentine in his hand. He was even more surprised when he said, a cheeky grin on his face, “I suppose I should thank you for this?”

“What? I-I didn’t. Potter,” Draco stuttered, his usual self-composure deserting itself in the face of Potter’s pure attractiveness and absurd accusations.

“Are you trying to tell me you didn’t write me this lovely Valentine? My favorite part is;

‘Roses are red

Violets are blue

I really like

To stare at you.’”

Draco just stared dumbly while Potter grinned at him before continuing, “Although there’s another great rhyme in there about daffodils being yellow and you thinking I’m a very handsome fellow. It really was very nice of you.”

Draco finally found his voice and replied, “You can’t seriously think I wrote that?”

Potter laughed, “Of course not. You wouldn’t spell Hogsmeade wrong. I think it’s pretty clear the firsties wrote it. Why, I have no idea, but just play along with it. They’ve had a pretty rough time of it this year.”

“You spoil them! I would have never dared to pull a stunt like this on an upperclassman as a firstie. You’re ruining them, Potter.”

“Am I? So you don’t think I’m handsome then? Or want to go to Hogsmeade with me? That’s all just the spoiled firsties talking?”

Draco could feel himself turning red before he even had the chance to reply. Harry smiled at him in satisfaction and said, “Good. Let’s go this Friday, then.”

Draco nodded stupidly, still unsure what was really happening, before Harry leaned down to kiss him chastely on the lips. “I look forward to it,” he whispered in Draco’s ear, which he could barely hear above the sounds of the baby snakes cheering in the background.

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