#even Harry doesn't think that way

[thalthanmadanus]

reblogging again to add smtg to my anti James/Draco parallels agenda 🙄

When Harry sees the memory of James bullying Snape, do you know what his first thought?

When he saw what his father did, he didn't think "omg, that's just like Malfoy", instead Draco here is presented as the example of the victim (although a victim deserving to be punished).

I don't understand this Draco hasn't done anything absolutely evil but why does Harry consider him as his archnemesis?

Also, the post about Snape, Marauders, and bullying

Does it mean that what Draco does isn't bullying if Harry and the others fight back?

I'd say the difference between a bully and an enemy is the power dynamic. Enemies have roughly the same amount of power, while a bully has significantly more power then the person they're messing with. Bullies also know that they have more power, and kind of relish throwing their weight around. You can still fight back if you have less power, it just probably isn't going to help much.

Draco actually seems pretty aware of the relative power levels of all the people around him. There is a brief window in Book 1 where he DOES have more power than Harry, just because Harry is SO clueless and so new to everything. For a second, Harry is actually intimidated by Draco.

“Oh, you’re going to fight us, are you?” Malfoy sneered. “Unless you get out now,” said Harry, more bravely than he felt, because Crabbe and Goyle were a lot bigger than him or Ron. “But we don’t feel like leaving, do we, boys? We’ve eaten all our food and you still seem to have some.”

(Draco talks like a baby mobster, I can't even....)

There are also bits like -

Harry didn’t have the faintest idea what a bezoar was. He tried not to look at Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, who were shaking with laughter.

Here, Draco is communicating that HE belongs in this world, and Harry does not (to a comical extent.) Which Harry IS worried about at the beginning of Book 1, so this time the teasing hits.

However... Draco very quickly loses whatever leverage he has. Harry figures out the world pretty fast, does well at Hogwarts, becomes the youngest Seeker in a century, has all this notoriety as "the Boy Who Lived." Draco *tries* to bully him and... fails.

[Malfoy] had tried to get everyone laughing at how a wide-mouthed tree frog would be replacing Harry as Seeker next. Then he’d realized that nobody found this funny, because they were all so impressed [with Harry]

Draco is trying to use his power to make Harry's life more difficult, only to realize that that he can't. He is flailing around, trying to to be intimidating, trying to tease Harry in a way that will actually upset him, and it's not working:

“I do feel so sorry,” said Draco Malfoy, one Potions class, “for all those people who have to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because they’re not wanted at home.” He was looking over at Harry as he spoke. Crabbe and Goyle chuckled.

Swing and a miss. Harry KNOWS the Dursleys don't want him back for Christmas, and is THRILLED about this.

Draco will sometimes tease Harry about his fame, which kind of works. (“'Everyone line up!' Malfoy roared to the crowd. 'Harry Potter’s giving out signed photos! 'No, I’m not,' said Harry angrily, his fists clenching.") BUT, Draco mostly pivots to going after Harry's friends, people with less societal/social power. People Draco CAN bully. So instead of going after Harry directly, we see him mess with Hagrid, Neville, Ron and Hermione. Very good way to get on Harry's bad side.

Harry does seem to have this continuous low-key obsession with Draco though. When nothing else is going on, he snaps back to What Suspicious Thing is Malfoy Doing Now (lets discuss). He goes undercover to spy on Draco during Book 2, in Book 3 he has all kinds of thoughts about what *Draco* might know about Sirius Black, and in Book 6 he gets Kreacher and Dobby to tail him, all while Harry stalking-Draco-via-Map. Ron & Hermione tell him to tone it down.

It's not hard at all to take this in a Drarry direction, but even if you don't... yeah, I can see why Draco specifically bothers Harry. Draco is a magical only child, with parents who adore and protect him, who are always writing him letters and sending him care packages. Draco is maybe the closest to what Harry's life would have looked like if James and Lily survived. That the one thing Harry wants more than anything, and Draco didn't do anything to earn all this love and good fortune! Draco sucks! I wouldn't be surprised if young Harry feels he's had to earn *everything.*

[medusaesque]

water, the stuff of life itself

(harry drowned in it. so did lely. kim is pulling harry back into the world with it, but has to grab it for himself. the phasmid walks on water, it's delicate limbs barely touching it)

[coldflash-corner]

Speaking of Barry being able to read Leonard Snart scarily well, imagine that Barry notices how Snart reacts to people Barry knows, and files that away in his opinions of that person

Barry is in the cortex with someone he finds kind of annoying but harmless, Snart walks in for Definitely-Not-Flirting-While-Doing-Business Reasons, and starts lowkey acting like this guy is an Immediate Threat that he's trying to act cool around to not set him off. And Barry immediately knocks like 5 points off of the "how much do i trust this guy" ranking. Subtly starts telling him less things, looks into what he's doing on the downlow, treats him as potentially suspicious And turns out... The guy does have bad intentions

Leonard comes in and meets some of Barry's new friends/coworkers, and clearly seems to mark one of them as more trustworthy/less of a threat than everyone else. And when Barry needs help or someone to confide in, he goes to that person over everyone else

Barry comes in to Saints and Sinners and sees a regular he's run into before, but hasn't seen interact with Snart. He thought the guy might be pretty cool. But today he walks into them talking, and Immediately sees that Snart is closed off, jumpy, does NOT like that guy in his space. And Barry immediately takes cues off of that, turns the guy down when he later asks to have drinks together next time Barry drops by Saints

If Snart seems unnerved by someone Barry knows, Barry trusts his instincts. Even if Leonard never says anything to Barry out loud, he still takes note of that. If Snart likes someone, or just thinks they're reliable, Barry will trust that instinct.

Even if Snart doesn't say his feelings out loud, Barry trusts him so innately that he will listen to Snart's instincts when it's clear he's feeling a type of way

[ialwaysknewyouwerepunk]

the loneliness and sadness that creeps into you in a way that only growing up queer can cause. your parents can accept you and still make you feel like an outsider. your parents can love you and still reject parts of you. that old-fashioned kind of love where they think trying to mold you, make you tough, is better for you. or that quiet status quo where you just don't talk. and where everyone is accepted, though some are more than others. generations and generations it's just been easier to let it slide. to let it be. not cause a fuss. but then we sit there with a knot in our chests all our lives wondering how it got there

[statementlou]

Tbh i am not surprised that a person who openly talked about having drinking problems since 1d days, because of how crazy 1d worked has been agressive. What surprises me is people being surprised (they never seriously saw drunk person?). But i am also confused about this whole book. Apparently Maya said that that book is not fully bout Liam but compilation about her exes and some of the worst parts are not about him. But recently she said that the book is “ofc about him” so what is true then? Or did she meant it that ofc some parts are about him or that whole book is about him?

Sorry, just confused

I also am not surprised- we've learned so much more about the real stories of things and about the guys' actual lives over the last years, and the story that has unfolded around Liam has been totally consistent throughout if you've been following it, and so the information Maya is telling us is shocking and upsetting but not difficult to believe. I got an anon yesterday saying they were worried about getting similar revelations about the other boys, like "if Liam could be doing this we just don't know, any of them could", and while in a way that's always true I guess, anyone could be doing anything in private like... that doesn't really concern me. Because none of these Liam revelations are coming out of nowhere, there have been many MANY steps along the way leading us here if you've been watching, and he has talked openly about both his mental health struggles and his addiction issues. So to answer that anon... to find out something similar about Louis would in contrast contradict everything we know about him and no I'm not worried about it. Is he an abuser or a loose cannon, well that news would truly shock me to my core, I will be honest. But anyway as for the book I don't find it strange that she was nervous when it came out and treading lightly and later decided, fuck it. In the absolutely on point tiktok she dropped today (YES👏GIRL👏FUCKING TELL THEM👏) she even mentions attempts to keep her from publishing the book, presumably by Liam's team, that I am riveted by and cannot WAIT to hear more details about actually- like I said I don't find it at all strange that she was nervous and downplayed it a bit then. But if she says now that it's just about Liam, well, I would say it's been clear from the beginning that the book is their story. Maya herself brought up the parallel of songs being written about stuff and I think it's the same thing; it's true (she was in an abusive relationship that involved certain kinds of events) but maybe not 100% literal (I'm sure details were changed to make the story work, it's not like a word for word timeline of their interactions or whatever).

[greenerteacups]

What do you think of jkr as a writer? I for one has always felt like she didn’t treat her female characters well. It felt strange, being critical of her when she was god queen of the earth, and also being 10

I think most of the problems in her books can be chalked up to genre hopping. Books 1-3 are perfectly good and serviceable children's books — great children's books, even! They have compelling, relatable characters and juicy mystery plots. They have problems, sure, but for the first three books someone's ever written — especially someone with little or no background in creative writing — they're really fucking good. So: there's her flowers.

The last four books pivot sharply into much more emotionally complicated and sociopolitically loaded territory, because they're describing a war. And it's hard to write children's books about war. I would venture you can't really do it, at least without dramatically misrepresenting what war is! And so Rowling makes the executive decision somewhere during the writing of Book 4 that she's not going to flinch away from that, she's going to go for dramatic realism, and she kills Cedric Diggory to let us know. People had died in Harry Potter before, of course — Quirrell gets sent to the fucking shadow realm, for example. But children haven't. (It also gives parents who are reading these books with their children a warning shot: shit is about to get significantly more real, think twice before you buy the next one of these for your 10-year-old.) After that, Rowling starts leaning much more into dramatic realism, and the fast-paced mystery-novel plotting of the first few books is replaced by a slow, simmering political conflict that unfurls over the course of about a million words.

The problem — besides the fact that she's picking one of the hardest things to write about, like, in all of literature, war is really insanely complicated and emotionally intense and hard to portray well — is that she's now trying to use characters, plot points, and technologies she developed for a children's series to enact a sprawling war drama among teenagers and adults. So Hermione, who was a reasonably precocious snobby eleven-year-old, becomes this sort of encyclopedic all-knowing savant of the wizarding world, who somehow remains functional and mostly even-headed despite her identity being the chief target of a prolifically murderous terrorist group. Draco Malfoy, a schoolyard bully whose primary tools included 1. namecalling and 2. telling teacher, JOINS said terrorist group (and admittedly does react reasonably, i.e., has a total crashout and takes to sobbing in a girls' bathroom whenever he gets a free minute). Dumbledore, who starts out as "whimsical friendly winky-wink trustworthy grandfather type", ends up being Magical Winston Churchill in a violent game of spycraft and espionage, eventually revealing he's only been keeping Harry at all these seven years because he wants to KILL him! And like, maybe really good technical writing could smooth out these transitions and make the first-order dramatic choices seem more natural, but Rowling is like, a Fine Writer, technically speaking. meaning she's reasonably consistent in characterization, her plotting is well-paced and believable, she has a clear authorial voice, and her prose is readable. personally, that's not enough to get me to buy into some of the changes that happen in the later books, and because she stuffs these things so full with new elements every installment, a lot of stuff ends up getting glossed over.

And like, I still love the books. I think they're wonderful, and they taught me how to read. but i can say that and also say that Rowling probably did herself a disservice by trying to write four giant war novels as sequels to her first three mystery children's books.

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

What if Christos Lawton is the one responsible for putting I Say A Little Prayer For You on the official George Hodgson playlist. What then. On the one hand I would have to set myself on fire but on the other hand it would be FANTASTIC news for whoever authored my all time favorite post on the Cold Boys Kink Meme

[apple-spider-vinegar]

Many of us saw the Raimi trilogy as kids and so the main characters were just put in the mental category of "adults," but growing up and realizing Peter, Harry and MJ were all in their late teens/early 20s gives their behavior a lot of much needed context, actually.

Oh, they're indecisive and riddled with insecurity? Their love lives are a complete mess? They think one mistake or setback means their life is over? Well, no wonder! They haven't even beat the 25 allegations yet.

[the-acid-pear]

Y'know I really feel like Harry and Dave's relationship goes highly unexplored which is a shame because there IS quite a bit to explore, ESPECIALLY if you care about shipping. But as the game stands I mean, they must be aware of each other. Harry in fact definitely knows about Dave. I don't think he'd tell the fucking weird rotten bunny his terrible boss brought in IS the number one threat against Freddy's since day 1 but even so. Dave I don't think would see Harry as much more than A Phoney™ though, which is always more of an obstacle and way less of a person. Which is usually opposite of how Jack sees his often sole employee. Like, you get what I mean? It's almost similar to 2 with the main opposing routes being Peter and Dave except the stakes are arguably way lower now.

[nana-glass-chillhop-radio-hour]

Ok sorry I’m long overdue for a follow up of these tags I left on your post lol. Here goes: In my brain, the role of a cop is a very masculine one. Like obviously there are female cops but whenever they appear in media ( at the ones I’ve seen) they always are very masculine. So with Hayward whole thing about performing the role of a standard cop I think he was also performing masculinity in a very standard way. His whole arc in season 2 has also been about learning who he is outside of that performance so he I think he can also start to experiment with gender and get silly with it. I think that’d be good for him. maybe this only makes sense to me but thank you for the space to expand upon me ideas.

This is paige and Hayward season three. my final message

I just saw this response omg loving where you head is at... gotta get this out on the record before s3e3

[cyanide-sippy-cup]

All I've seen on the left this election has been a loop of

"I'm not voting Harris cause she's pro-genocide"

"But then you're letting Trump into power! It'll be on you when trans kids die!"

and

"I'm voting Harris cause I don't want Hitler Jr in charge again"

"So Palestine doesn't matter to you? Someone finally showed their true colors!"

I feel like we're saying the same things here. Some coordination would be nice, people.

[pynkhues]

I liked Wicked I really did but my thought half way through Better Man was that Better Man is a superior musical and the best Musical I have seen of the year. It does hit the usual beats of a biopics but I didnt mind it because with some very creative direction, choreo, music arrangement etc. It took those beats and made it not to sound corny but about the 'truth' of those moments, not just a series of facts presented as images in a fast transition.

I heard that they decided to use a monkey because they felt it was harder to make a monkey taking cocaine look glamorous and i think they were really cooking with this idea. A cgi monkey as lead character allowed them to really play with how they represented moments and feelings in his story.

Without a doubt one of my faves this year, was really a 'this is why i go to the cinema' moment. I hope that it gets regonized refreshing the genre a bit. I'd love for creative risks to be rewarded esp. when executed so well.

Actually I had an idea that it was going to be good and I was going to like it just because it's the first time in ages a biopic tries something different but i for some reason didnt clock it was going to be a musical and did not expect it to be executed so well.

Hope it inspires future biopics to mess with the forumal a bit, time, space, presentation and so on. No need to reinvent the wheel but some sincerity counts for a lot.

(x)

I liked Wicked too, but actually had the same thought about halfway through Better Man that it was a better musical. I wonder if it is because Wicked carries so much history with it as a show in and of itself, but then, for a lot of people, Robbie Williams does too, and yet this film just felt so fresh and mmm, I guess the word I'd use is raw? Sincere is definitely a good one too though, anon.

The monkey works on so many levels - I'd read that interview too where the director talked about it being more confronting for an audience to watch a chimp snort lines of coke than a man, and I've seen him talk too about Robbie having seen himself as a performing monkey, and the metaphor for addiction as being the monkey-on-his-back, so it feels like it's been really thought-out as a creative decision. I also love what The LA Times critic said about him being a monkey making her feel both protective of him and cautious of him, because I think that's really true too. His otherness as the only animal is only seen by himself and us as the audience, but it really lends itself both to his naked vulnerability and his unpredictability and destructiveness. It's really good, creative filmmaking, and I feel like it's going to be ripe for film analysis long into the future.

And I hope it gets rewarded too! I feel like it should at least get some VFX noms, but I'd love it to get some recognition in editing and cinematography at the very least too, because I think some of the work there was astonishing (that sequence when he drives his car into the water in Come Undone where the electric eels become paparazzi camera flashes is honestly brilliant visual storytelling).

It's so inventive and such a risk that I'm so thrilled Paramount was willing to back, and I really hope it opens up the genre too.

[punmster]

Sorry if this ends up overwhelming you and if it does, feel free to ignore them. I’m just bored and curious. 👉👈😅

Which character do you think had the most potential in the Harry Potter series and do you plan on implementing any of your ideas into them?

If DSMSG Draco was locked in a room with Umbridge, Lockhart, and Voldemort and had a gun with two bullets, who would he choose to shoot?(totally not stolen from The Office)

I think you may or may have not mentioned this earlier and feel free to ignore this question if it’s a spoiler, but when does Harry begin having feelings for Draco/act on them?

no worries, i wanted a distraction from my work anyway lol

In terms of potential, I'm not quite sure. My first thought was Draco (Duh) mostly because I wish so badly that they kept the scene in the final movie where he threw his wand to Harry. That alone would probably do so much for his character, and I am very likely going to do something with it in the fic. Plus the whole really weird hug with Voldy thing, kinda seems like Voldy is trying to have a relationship with him that parallels Harry and Dumbledore's. Anyway, Draco's SO uncomfortable all the time in 7th, it makes me very excited to get to it :) I also think Narcissa is pretty interesting since she kinda parallels Lily, and the fact she lied to the Dark Lord TO HIS FACE and protected Harry...I know I make Narcissa out to be just a very overbearing mother (and bad cook) but I hope to make Draco see the other sides to her later on, when he gets his head out of his ass. For now, she's sort of just comic relief, but there are some things set up in the very first years that will come back in the later years.

(also i REALLY need to add neville in some more--thematically he's super important, but he just doesn't get that much screen time yet. I'll have to think more about how to integrate him, but definitely he will appear more in 3rd w/ other characters. Other characters I plan to include are Cedric, Luna, maybe Cho? Marietta, probably, for the whole traitor thing in the 5th book, and ofc Pansy and Zabini, though those two are the flattest in the books so I'm gonna have to make up a lot of stuff lol. gotta add in sirius obvs [he's actually my favorite, which was why he was not-malfoy's fave in the old version], and remus [also we gotta discuss the werewolf in the room, with the whole snape prank thing...])

Draco would probably blackmail Lockhart into taking the gun and shooting Umbridge twice. He isn't stupid enough to try to kill Voldemort with a gun (are the horcruxes around in this hypothetical?also Voldy lived in like. WWII? Although he's ignorant of love magic stuff, he is probably deeply aware of the dangers of Muggle weapons, which maybe relates to his desire to conquer them) but Draco would love Umbridge dead, and he'd want more blackmail on Lockhart lol. The man's main fear is losing his reputation so that's probably a better punishment than death. If it's sixth year Draco he might just shoot himself though

I have mentioned that Draco doesn't want to date as a minor or date minors even if physically the same age due to the weird age gap/time question thing (a really big issue in isekai/transmigration imo, and the bit of this fic that makes me want to just make it platonic--seriously. I read one where this grown man DATED A SEVEN YEAR OLD B/C HE WAS IN A CHILD'S BODY??) but Harry will obviously not be thinking about that since for all he knows, they're both normal kids. You can probably safely assume he starts thinking of romance at the same time as in the books, though obviously his friendship w/ Draco and the whole "it's the nineties and I think I'm gay?!" thing would make him not as proactive about it for a while

[actual-corpse]

Watching Avatar the Last Airbender...

Politely reminded of the time people wanted my head because I said that ATLA ruined storytelling because some people can't fucking think critically of media before trying to tell you what's so good about it.

I LOVE AtLA! Adore it! But like.... A majority of people watched Zuko switch sides and said, "Damn... What if we redeemed ALL the villains?" Without realizing Zuko wasn't a true villain in need of redemption.

But... The Redemption Game isn't truly JUST the fault of AtLA... There was a shift in the Moral of the Story. Idk how to explain it bc I'm half asleep, but like...

[greenerteacups]

thoughts on Ginny and Harry as a couple?

There are a lot of people who find their romance in HBP forced. I don't think it's forced so much as underwritten, and the books don't get the chemistry quite right (though the movies certainly don't, either). There's potential, but they just don't get enough actual scenes of substance (besides Harry thinking she's pretty or feeling jealous of Dean) for a lot of readers to buy that they're not only in love, but deeply enough in love to break up, get back together, and wind up married.

That's not to say I don't see the appeal. There's a very cool scene in Book 5 where Harry's doing a woe-is-me-Chosen-One act, and Ginny effortlessly puts him in his place about it by reminding him that she was possessed by Voldemort at eleven, which is a rare glimpse into her character and also a great synecdoche for their relationship — Ginny is a grounding presence who, like Ron and Hermione, isn't going to be awed by his past adventures because she knew him before they happened. In that respect, Ginny's probably one of the few women Harry could feasibly wind up with, because he only ever seems comfortable around people (let alone girls) who can see past the Chosen-One schtick and treat him like a normo (see: Ron, Hermione, the Weasleys, Luna, Hagrid). True to type, he doesn't get interested in Ginny at all until she's ditched her celebrity crush and ceased to view him as an idol, because in his heart of hearts, Harry wants to be a normal boy, and it's stressed over and over that part of what he likes about his relationship with Ginny is how normal it feels. He kind of has a horribly supercharged version the celebrity dating problem: after the Battle of Hogwarts, anyone he meets is going to know him first as Harry Potter, Chosen One, Boy Who Lived, and Actually Fucking Resurrected Messiah of the Wizarding World, which is... I mean, it's possible that there are witches out there who could get over that, but Harry's not an extroverted guy, and I'm not sure how he'd go about finding them. Ginny's the one who's been there since the beginning, doesn't need anything about him or his past explained to her, and actually likes him for who he is.

When you look at it that way, it's not surprising he married his high school girlfriend. She's one of the few people still alive who doesn't see him as a demigod.

[naivety]

kamalaheads love to say it's "mostly virtue-signaling white people" who don't want to vote for harris due to the two party backed genocide happening in gaza and then proceed to equate doing so with not giving a shit about "queer people, Jewish people, women, the elderly, people of color, the disabled, and any other group all across the country and the planet who aren't straight white (male) Christians" while conveniently ignoring the people not included in their proposed "mostly" who happen to be incredibly prominent palestinians on this website that thousands of people followed to learn more about palestine in the first place who have been campaigning to help actual gazans survive on a daily basis for more than a year now, and the second they're like hm not super excited about promoting the party that actively sent bombs to help kill 40,000+ people, i won't do that actually, americans who are more scared of trump than their democratic president sponsored bombs because they know it won't be their houses they're dropped on have the fucking gall to reduce it to oh so you don't care about disabled americans? so you want queer americans to have no rights? well well well!!!!! i will call out all the white american voters who happen to agree with you while conveniently never meaningfully engaging with you, an actual palestinian, about this wider topic on how even the "lesser of two evils" version of american democracy affects other countries across the globe against their will in escalated ways that now and actually often include literal genocide that the average american voter won't lift a finger about as soon as election season is over, nor care to challenge the cultural and societal icebergs including so-called "american democracy" that belie this normalized trend the second it inconveniences their version of a better life as an american 👍