#harry is emotionally stunted by trauma

[batwingsrosa]

People don‘t seem to understand what trauma can do to you and how it can have an immense effect on your mental age.

Children and teenagers who experience traumatic events will develope differently than others.

Trauma can‘t just be erased.

I am in my mid twenties and sometimes still feel like i‘m barely eighteen.

That‘s because i didn‘t get to develope right- emotionally- during my childhood and my teenage years.

I was highly effected by my experiences-

mainly bullying and neglect.

I think quite a lot of people who had to experience things like these end up emotionally stunted and don‘t age the same as others.

I know people who come from a healthy family and never had problems due to bullying etc.

And they are a lot younger than me and still act a lot older.

Because they didn‘t have to fight dpression and mental disorders while maturing.

We on the other hand had to pick up the pieces of ourselves while trying to grow up besides others who never had to fight to stay alive.

We were so distracted by our problems that we had to stay behind.

I think this is exactly what happened to Severus.

He was not able to mature like others because of how his trauma affected him.

People tend to forget this and just shrug his experiences off.

Which is pretty horrible, insensitive and disrespectful to other victims of abuse as well if you ask me.

[simon-snowing]

sirius was definitely emotionally stunted by being locked up for 12 years, and i mean i dont blame him but he is somewhat still immature by the way he snapped at harry in order of the phoenix by telling him he isnt similair to james as much as he thought so. Like yeah ofc james was a risk taker and hot headed prick, he never went through childhood trauma that harry did, ofc harry is more cautious and careful and doesnt want you to go back to prison because you want to take an evening stroll in hogsmeade. he wants to keep you safe dude

James had the luxury of taking risks, but Harry at this point does not

[greenerteacups]

If there was one major plot element that you could change in the original canon what would it be?

The Marauders' deaths. With the exception of James, I don't think any of the Marauders die in a way that's narratively suitable — or, to be more particular, they die in a way suitable for a narrative I don't like very much. James is an acceptable (though, obviously, tragic) death to me because it completes his arc: he's an obnoxious, arrogant bully who grows into a selfless soldier on the side of the light, and lays down his life as a final gesture of abnegation. It's not Proust, but it's good, right? His death represents a symbolic triumph over Voldemort because it's something Voldemort would never do.

None of the others make the same kind of sense for their subplots. Sirius dies at the Ministry because Harry fucks up and lets his abandonment issues override his judgment, and while that's a compelling moment for Harry — whose hamartia is a trauma-forged combination of hot-headedness and desperate fear of losing people — it's not for Sirius. Sirius's problem in Book 5 is that he's emotionally stunted by his years of imprisonment and refuses to grow up, because he's clinging to the life he thinks — rightly — he should have gotten to have. This is made painfully clear in the Department of Mysteries, wherein some of his last words to Harry are "Nice one, James!" He refuses to treat Harry like the child he is, and he keeps acting like he's this fun-uncle type, blowing off rules and pissing off Mom (Molly), because that's the dynamic he should have had with Harry if Lily and James had lived. Sirius doesn't want to be Harry's guardian and role model. He wants a brother and a nephew, and he's trying to force Harry to be both, because he's all he has left of that family. His death doesn't tie any of those threads; they're left dangling. That's a valid narrative move — every death cuts a story short, and you can't give everybody an arc — but I loved Sirius. Giving Harry the "grieving loss of a parent" arc that was originally meant for Ron (Arthur was the original Big Death of the OOTP, in JKR's drafts) also means that Ron spends a lot of Book 6 without anything to do, whereas Harry goes through what's essentially a more intense version of the grieving-and-recovery arc he did after Cedric's death.

Remus, on the other hand, is just — first off, a Mess, I agree with so few of the choices made with Remus in the later books, but let's say he's deep in the trauma, the grieving, and whatever living among werewolves as a spy does for your mental health. So he gets into this will-they-won't-they with Tonks, gets married, tries to abandon pregnant wife, then goes back and gets to be with his wife and son for about half a year before dying, with said wife, in battle. Okay. So like:

I think the Remus Weirdness in Book 7 is actually an attempt to close a plot hole, which is that the Horcrux Hunt happens completely without adult supervision, despite the fact that there are lots of adults the Golden Trio could and should ask for help. Harry's insistence that he doesn't want to risk anyone's life except for Ron and Hermione's is, while understandable as a character move, utterly ridiculous, because the other Order members are risking their lives anyway. One of the biggest holes is Remus and Tonks, who are (a) both already targets for Voldemort because of who they are, and so have nothing to lose, but also (b) both care for Harry on a personal level, and would never accept his reasons for pushing them away. So Teddy Lupin is conceived in order to bench Tonks, who's safely out of commission while pregnant. But that leaves Remus, who probably in fact would have super complicated torn-loyalty feelings about the situation, and who is scarred and traumatized and probably has enough abandonment issues to try and walk out, but — in my view — never resolves any of those things. He doesn't suddenly realize that he loves Tonks and wants to be with her, or feel a sense of duty to his son; when Harry's justly furious at Remus abandoning his kid in Harry's name, Remus gets pissy about it and goes "well, if you don't want my help, fine," and leaves. Which is, again, fine, a character flaw, it's childish, he's allowed to be, and he is, in fact, similar to Sirius and James — but it left a bad taste in my mouth, because that's one of the last conversations we get with Remus, and it's such an impoverished vision of his bonds with others. It doesn't delve deeply into why he loves Tonks or Harry, or the substance of his conflict between them; like always with the Marauders, he just invokes James, and Harry throws James's name right back at him, and it ends there.

And then he dies, so that baby Teddy Lupin can be an orphan, and we can do a parallel to baby Harry Potter. Even though we don't see Teddy Lupin on the page ever, so we have no idea what that comparison means, or how their experiences compliment or contrast one another, or literally anything more substantive than the series beginning and ending on the same event. Which: great. Okay. To quote a Roger Ebert review that I think about, on average, once every thirty-six hours:

"J.K. Rowling has learned from better novels that authors sometimes create narrative parallels, but she has not learned why."

[sideprince]

I've been thinking a lot about this incredible meta which I'm linking because it's a long post, that started off examining the scene in the Shrieking Shack in PoA from Snape's perspective (and then went very deep in incredibly, insightful ways - thank you @shakespearean-snape for recommending it! I'm almost done reading it...). The thing I keep coming back to is the way that Snape had no idea that Lupin wasn't in on the prank. Maybe I've just gotten too immersed in discussions around how Sirius used his friend as a weapon without his consent, but the other side of that is that Snape had no way of knowing this, and no reason to think Lupin wasn't in on it, especially as we're given reason to think Lupin had bullied him too, at least up until that point (which I'll get to in a minute). This is shown most clearly through this exchange:

“So that’s why Snape doesn’t like you,’ said Harry slowly, ‘because he thought you were in on the joke?’ ‘That’s right,’ sneered a cold voice from the wall behind Lupin. Severus Snape was pulling off the Invisibility Cloak, his wand pointing directly at Lupin.

Lupin isn't able to get a word in edgewise after that, but when his patience is tested and he finally speaks up, he merely says,

“You fool,’ said Lupin softly. ‘Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?”

triggering Snape by calling him foolish and referring to his trauma as a schoolboy grudge.

We see in SWM that Lupin observes James and Sirius bullying Snape but doesn't actively participate, but we also see in PoA that when Snape tries to work the Marauders' Map, the imprint Lupin left of himself taunts him openly in a direct and personal way:

“Mr Moony presents his compliments to Professor Snape, and begs him to keep his abnormally large nose out of other people’s business.”

It's implied that Lupin contributed to Snape's bullying more actively before the prank and maybe less so after (possibly reasons for this are in the post linked above).

Then there's this exchange between Lupin and Sirius, which takes place after Snape enters the room under the invisibility cloak, but before he reveals himself:

“Sirius here played a trick on [Snape] which nearly killed him, a trick which involved me -‘ Black made a derisive noise. ‘It served him right,’ he sneered. ‘Sneaking around, trying to find out what we were up to … hoping he could get us expelled …”

Whatever excuses antis might make for Black having tried to kill Snape when he was just 16 (or 15?), here he is as a fully grown adult responsible for his actions and well aware of the meaning and horror of death, and yet he's still doubling down and saying that it would have served Snape right, though he was still technically a child, to be killed just because he was nosy. It also underlines Lupin's lack of consent in the prank that he uses a passive voice to describe his own role, ie. that Black was the one to play the "trick" and that it involved him (Lupin), instead of describing it as something they had done together.

I find this to be the biggest contrast between Snape and Sirius - they have both seen darkness and suffered trauma and deep, deep losses as a result of where their lives ended up in ways that run parallel. Both lost their best friends and feel guilty for causing their death. Sirius feels guilt because his choice to abdicate his role as secret keeper resulted in James' death though his intention had been the opposite, and Snape feels guilt because he was the reason Voldemort went targeted and killed Lily, though that had not been his intention. Over a decade later, Snape has become a person who, while emotionally stunted in some ways, has changed his values and ethics and we see him become someone who doesn't harm Sirius even when he's vulnerable and unconscious, and who we later find out values life regardless of whose it is. Sirius, on the other hand, emerges from his own experiences at the same time to a place where he seems to be in a suspended adolescence in most ways and still feels it would be justified to cause Snape's death for being nosy. While it can be argued that Sirius, at this point in PoA is still experiencing his trauma actively as an escaped convict, I think it can also be argued that as someone who has seen and experienced the very real impacts of loss and darkness, it seems petty, vindictive, and skewed for him to still hold a grudge against a former schoolmate with the same intensity as he did before these experiences. ie. that most people, having seen the horrors of war, will think back on their perspectives of death and revenge as their old pre-traumatized self experienced them, and see the naïveté and childishness.

Therefore when Lupin says, "Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?” it feels ironic, given that Snape is acting on the urge to protect Harry and his friends from a man who not only showed his willingness to murder as a child but has doubled down on that choice as an adult just minutes earlier, and a literal werewolf who at no point has defended himself and made clear that he was not actively involved in planning the prank that could have resulted in Snape's death. Sirius, meanwhile, is right there, still immersed in his schoolboy grudge and filled with hatred for Snape who he must know by this point had been a spy for Dumbledore. After all, if he was aware from what he overheard in Azkaban that Peter had been the spy, then he must have also been aware that Snape had been one as well, given that Dumbledore said so openly in a courtroom full of people, including loose-tongued prisoners like Karkaroff.

That scene in the Shrieking Shack is so complex and laden with so much once you know the characters' backstories. There's also an interesting progression in the three times that we know Snape to be in the Shrieking Shack: the first time he nearly dies, the second time he's knocked unconscious, and the third time he does die. As a tragic character who spends much of the story willingly sacrificing himself it's almost as though Rowling is showing Snape to be going towards his death again and again until it's finally time.

[dhr-ao3]

The Bolter

The Bolter https://ift.tt/QpwfYcR by ohthedrarry Draco was nine when he’d fallen from his broom that Christmas morning. Pansy remembered it like it was yesterday – they’d all been gathered on the back terrace of Malfoy Manor watching as Draco showed off his new toy, doing twists and figure-eights that had his mum chewing on her nails. Or: A childhood accident leaves Draco in search of the kind of rush you only feel once, resulting in a path of life-long destruction in his wake. Words: 564, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 8 of the tortured drabble department Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/M Characters: Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy Additional Tags: POV Pansy Parkinson, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Draco Malfoy-centric, Emotionally Stunted Draco Malfoy, Inspired by Taylor Swift, References to childhood trauma via AO3 works tagged 'Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy' https://ift.tt/03mM29A November 05, 2024 at 04:42PM

[sassyfrassboss]

My summation is Harry is a highly damaged emotionally stunted man child who was hoodwinked by Meghan into thinking she was the answer to all his problems when in reality she gaslight him and played on his fears and unresolved trauma from the death of his mother and used it to manipulate him into giving her what she had wanted her whole life....fame and fortune. She is a sick individual and makes Amber Heard look semi normal, mocking the way she curtseyed to the late Queen??? 3 months after her death and 3 weeks before the first Christmas the royals will spend without her?? What a disgrace.

I definitely think she manipulated him and exploited all of his weaknesses but now he is fully cooperating in this mess.

Meghan isn't the only one doing this doc. Plus we still have Harry's book coming up. He is worse in my opinion.

[shae-la-hyene]

Just caught up with that ridiculous cliffhanger.

I don't like this season, it's official.

Apparent the big bad of this season is just Sophie's past ? And like. Eliot's past is full of trauma and interesting. Parker's past shines a lot of light on how she became who she is now. Sophie's past ? It's just a mess best left in the past. Why did they wait all those years to come back to bite her in the ass, just convenient when they were in need for plot ? I don't like it.

All their stunts are more about ridiculous and comedy than it's about being impressive and smart. Even the flashbacks to show off what they did, they are no longer a whole other plan waiting to unravel, just convenient stuff to put into loopholes.

And Sophie's mess is just an excuse to pull Harry out of his own redemption path, as a good lawyer who helps people with what he knows best. He's a mediocre grifter at best and even if the Leverage team is more efficient and fast than what he does, what he does is important, and works at his redemption in a way healthier way. Itns fully him, it's what he chooses to do to make things better, it's not him being forcibly roped in something else.

Sophie is still a mess from Nate's death which is not a very healthy sign for what their relationship was. In the last season of Leverage, they had a very healthy balance and relationship despite being messes both. It was actually fucking great. Her not being able to move on says that relationship wasn't fulfilling to her and it was just a cane so she stays upright. Considering all the years she pursued Nate when he made it very clear he wasn't ready for it goes in that sense too, to be fair...

But now she's completely emotionally dependent on Harry in a way that is frankly toxic. I like him but he seems like a peculiar choice for that role. When there is the trio that has known her for years and is ready to help her. Instead she keeps secrets from them and put the weight of keeping her in check on Harry.

Again. Harry seems pretty balanced and stable emotionally and he's doing a great job of it. But he's processing through his own shit and he never really agreed to be her crutch.

I just don't like this season...

I hope I'm not gonna be the black sheep for it...

[denimbex1986]

'The new film from British auteur Andrew Haigh ("Weekend," "45 Years," "Looking"), "All of Us Strangers" (Searchlight Pictures), is not only timely, but a cause for celebration, because it examines the main character's queer identity in relation to his parents.

This cinematic achievement is even more remarkable because the movie deals with such dour topics as grief, loneliness, alienation, regret, abandonment, and emotional pain yet ultimately is heart-mending and healing by affirming the power of love.

Adam (Andrew Scott, the hot priest in "Fleabag" and Moriarity in "Sherlock Holmes") is a lonely, depressed, and creatively stunted screenwriter supposedly working on a new script, but is living and loafing in a near empty high-rise tower complex in London.

He's interrupted one night by a younger drunken resident, Harry (Paul Mescal, "Afternoon Sun," "Normal People") carrying a Japanese whiskey bottle (a sly allusion to the 1987 Japanese novel "Strangers" by Taichi Yamada, on which the film is based). He propositions Adam, "If not a drink, for whatever else you might want." Out of fear or shyness, Adam declines his offer.

The next day he visits his unoccupied childhood home in Croydon. He finds the ghosts of his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell), who were killed in a Christmastime car crash when Adam was almost 12 years old in 1987, a life-altering loss for him. They are the age when they died, marooned in that era.

They ask him questions about his adult life. When Adam returns to London, he sees Harry again and they have sex, beginning an affair. Their almost 20-year generational divide is amusingly displayed by Adam's resistance to the use of queer, while Harry derides the gay term.

Family ties

Adam returns to his home (filmed at Haigh's actual boyhood house) and comes out to his mother as gay. She's rather shocked, wondering if he will lead a lonely life and/or get AIDS. Still he gets to reveal his life to her and she expresses regret, "I hate we weren't around when you needed us most."

On the next visit, he will meet his father, who is more accepting of his sexuality, apologizing for ignoring the crying in his room due to the bullying Adam faced as a child. Bell's willingness to show affection toward Adam is powerful.

It seems only when Adam getting to be a child again, has been embraced by his parents, relishing the acceptance he never found as a boy, and revealed his true self, can he be free to love another man. Having rid himself of any shame, humiliation, or hesitation, letting his guard down, Adam can commit more deeply into his relationship with Harry, to forge a connection in a cold and impersonal world (represented by the tower complex).

Harry admits his own family hasn't really embraced him, that he feels like a stranger to them, part of the reason he drinks and takes drugs to mask loneliness and hurt, hiding behind being sexy, flirtatious, and fun. Both men are wounded, unhappy, vulnerable, and emotionally damaged, but their relationship becomes a lifeline as they each process queer dislocation (the difficulty of still being gay and an outsider) and past trauma.

Adam will meet his parents once more in his favorite childhood restaurant, which will be consequential for all of them. There is a shocking, ambiguous, surreal ending involving Harry, which won't be spoiled here.

Ghost of a chance

We use the term ghost (and we refer not to scary specters but ghosts of memory) not mentioned in the film, but it is but one possible explanation. Adam's reunion could also be an exercise in the power of memory to trap us in its recesses but also help us overcome grief.

Perhaps it is the plot of the screenplay he's writing, a waking dream (or that liminal space before you fall asleep), an out-of-body experience occurring at a "thin" place, or, the Croydon train rides into another dimension through a magic portal or rabbit hole. One of the film's charms is to let audiences read into the film whatever they want, and like Adam commence the process of healing inner wounds.

Certainly the movie's biggest impact will be on those who lost a parent at a young age, but also if you were rejected by your parents for being LGBTQ, or it shut out any possibility of sharing any emotional intimacy with them.

This film is blessed with four fantastic performances, especially Andrew Scott. Scott is understated to the point of heartbreaking, where in the beginning of the movie he seems numb, stunted, too scared to let anyone into his life, not saying much because he has trouble expressing himself.

He then undergoes leaps of emotion as he feels accepted, liberated, and finally surrendering his isolation, yearns to connect with another person (in the E.M. Forster sense). Scott masterfully conveys the full range of emotions, especially sadness, torment, and loss, through his eyes.

Scott has the tricky task of revealing the character's internal psychology yet still maintaining Adam's role as an observer. If there's any justice, Scott will be nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor, though the competition is steep this year.

Affable passion

Mescal is open-hearted, able to project the pain underneath the fun, swagger, and camaraderie he emanates. There's an electric charge to their combustible yet warmly affirming passion, but it's totally believable, because Scott can relate as a gay man and can coax (or provide a safe space) the straight Mescal to indulge that eroticism so their connection seems authentic.

Foy is terrific in displaying concern tinged with some disappointment despite being governed by 1980s attitudes about gay men, but she ultimately expresses unwavering love and a willingness to meet Harry.

This is one of those movies that shouldn't be seen alone. Bring a family member or friend, since the film raises many issues as well as varying interpretations. "All of Us Strangers" invokes conversation and questions, almost forcing viewers to reflect on how the issues and emotions (particularly tears) invoked by the film impact on them.

"All of Us Strangers" is mesmerizing, evoking an ethereal (yet not spooky) quality. The film wants to show how you integrate emotional pain into your life, so you can move forward and relieve that sense of alienation most LGBTQ people experience.

The movie leaves it up to the audience to fill in any narrative gaps or provide explanations that square with their own experiences. Those uncomfortable with ambiguity will probably find the film a bit of a trial and the shocking ending will be disconcerting to some viewers.

Still, this is intelligent, punch-in-the-gut filmmaking at its finest. "All of Us Strangers" is easily one of the best films of 2023 and while you might feel emotionally devastated, such catharsis could be as healing as it is for the movie's characters. Despite challenging and disturbing audiences, missing "All of Us Strangers" would be a grave mistake.'

[queen-beefcake-sqx]

no, no everyone shut up and listen to me. I got a perfect score on my AP English test because I wrote a massive convincing essay that A Christmas Carol is a type of Bildungsroman (because I literally forgot everything else we read #UndiagnosedADHDProblems) and I am here now to say Disco Elysium is absolutely a bildungsroman about Harry Du Bois.

A bildungsroman is a type of coming of age story focused on one’s formative years — usually, childhood into adulthood. There’s an emphasis on psychological and spiritual/moral growth in them. There’s classics like Great Expectations and Jane Eyre and Little Women, but there’s also Dune? Ender’s Game???? Fucking NARUTO????? Like it’s still a genre that’s really relevant because that transition into adulthood is always a nightmare and we humans love shared experiences. You’ve probably read one at some point.

So Disco Elysium hands us Harry, a man who is described as very literally out dated and out of time, still stuck in the disco age where he grew up. His past self before his apocalyptic bender is emotionally unstable, fluctuating wildly between moods. Mental illness, sure, but also just emotionally he seems childish! he cannot let go of or move on from this romance of his glory years, the loss of which sends him on a depressive spiral. All of this from a man who has a SINGULAR memory I can find of any kind of parental figure, implying they either died when he was young or just weren’t present (or he mind wiped them on a different apocalyptic bender, but then loop back to the “unstable” point).

But his childishness isn’t just from his negative traits. He’s full of wonder. He has no concept of social norms. He asks every damn question that comes to mind. The world is new and unfamiliar and wonderful and terrifying to him. And as the game progresses he becomes more confident — new responses open up and he listens and learns and finds his footing.

I really feel if you’re playing the game with the drive to have Harry be as good a person as he can be, circumstances willing, that you’re playing his growth into adulthood. Because here’s the thing, here’s the thing — trauma stunts growth. it messes with your ability to store memories and emotionally regulate. it makes you see ghosts in things you should know are safe. it forces you back into a state of childlike helplessness. And overcoming that trauma and coming out the other side of it live and breathing and better that you were before… that’s our coming of age. That’s our brains catching up to where our bodies are, where our years have gone.

So it MAKES SENSE the people who give Harry the benefit of the doubt or engage with him the most willingly all worked with kids!!! They know how to treat someone who is learning how to be an adult!!!! How to be a decent human being!!!! And nobody come into my dms saying it’s bad I’m comparing him to a child because you’re missing the ENTIRE point if you do

hey. hey everyone. isn’t it kind of interesting that pretty much all of the characters who are outright friendly and empathetic toward Harry either have kids (Trant, Lilienne, Joyce) OR worked extensively with kids (Kim). Isn’t it interesting that Dora implied she had an abortion or miscarriage by mentioning her and Harry’s unborn daughters. Isn’t it interesting how Jean talks down to Harry and calls him “shitkid”. Hey is anyone else thinking about this????

[archionblu]

For the ship bingo: harry/hermione

[the-warmesthello]

owen's family/siblings hcs

a couple of hcs about owen's family bc im sick and need to write these down before the delirium fades and i completely forget all of this.

PRE-POSTING EDIT: i'm better now. i did, in fact, forget all of this and am piecing it back together. this isn't fully sick me's vision, but it is what i think.

PRE-POSTING EDIT EDIT: wow this is so fucking long why am i incapable of being normal about this. btw just realised that these r ocs. im making ocs. i didn't think of them as ocs up until now, just as literally what his family's like the same way canon is what his adult life's like, but i made spies are forever ocs and you will hear about them. this message brought to you by me a week after i started making this post.

this is the springboard for all my stuff about owen's family. in this post i'm only focussing on childhood except where i think i might forget. my barb-owen lavender marriage au is based on inheritance fraud regarding these specific people. i might contradict myself later, but probably not.

trigger warnings: emotionally abusive family, ableism, parent death, traumatic/accidental death, trauma and its aftermath, child labour exploitation i think?, war undertones, abusive school experiences, one mention of anti-welsh sentiment, implied antisemitism. if you want to skip the worst of the death bit, skip the 3rd point under C.

very long also putting in bigger tags so don't want to force people to see triggering stuff, so it's under a read more.

parents

father's (b. 1895) side of the family is old money. very proudly welsh in the way of language and history, but they're politically aligned with the crown. all tories, except for a cousin that started voting plaid cymru in 1927 and was disowned. father has a strong desire for a well-rounded, educated, "manly gentleman" for a son, the same as what his father wanted. lineage is everything for the carvours. that's how it's always been.

mother (1904-1942) was jewish. her family immigrated to swansea when her parents were both children ('they met on the boat over, and it was love at first sight', mother would tell them). they integrated and became comfortably wealthy, though by what means mother never told. when she told her parents she wanted to marry a goy who wouldn't consider conversion, they fought, and even though they made up, the relationship stayed stunted.

sibling intro

owen had 3 siblings growing up: an older brother (by 6 years, A), a younger sister (by 4 years, B), and a younger brother (by 10 years, C).

someone help me with their names i'm tired. some ideas i have: - A (edit: alan reese carvour) i want to be a name that i would associate with an older guy, with fewer spelling-related ties to welsh than his younger siblings. alan, reese, trevor/trev, gavin, brian, edwin/ed - B (edit: catrin avalon carvour) i want to be similar to the name owen, one that's clearly welsh/a welsh variant if you think about it but enough of a common name that it's not super obvious to foreigners. gwen, catrin/cadi, megan, nia, enid, avalon/ava, rhiannon (cant use gwen unless owen's trans and he chose a name similar to his sister's on purpose) - C (edit: dafydd arthur carvour) i want to have a welsh spelling of a name that could be anglicised easily, should he wish. dafydd/dai, gwilym, arthur, daryn, harri

A

A was born in the may of 1924 while the carvours were still living in london. mother and father had recently married, and mother was young and didn't have very much support outside of her in-laws, who resented her for reasons A will never understand.

he'd always been kind of a troublemaker, throwing things and screaming and colouring all over the nursery wall, but his father didn't bother trying to fix any of it because 'boys will be boys', and his mother used to try but gave up easily when he preferred his father to her because 'forcing someone to like you better never works'.

due to this, he never really learned how to cope with emotions in a healthy way and often "embarrassed" his parents with his public emotional outbursts. only then did his father care how he acted, but the sudden rule change didn't make sense. he picked up on that shame and internalised it deeply, becoming defensive whenever someone suggested another idea to him.

probably has some kind of undiagnosed thing, but nobody ever took him to be tested when he was young, by the time he was old enough to communicate that it was a problem he didn't like either, everyone had already written him off as manipulative and beyond saving.

so he stopped caring. if he did something wrong, he was a horrible little brat. if he tried to do what people asked, they said he was trying to get something out of them.

eventually, his parents (or at least his mother) improved somewhat, but at that point he wanted nothing to do with them and was grateful that he only had to see them on school holidays. their attempts were too little, too late.

resents owen for being the 'better son', but very protective of his other siblings.

found a healthy coping mechanism in lifting heavy things when he was tasked with digging anderson shelters for everyone and felt the weight of his frustration being thrown away behind him with the soil.

this became his go-to calming method, even if it meant father screamed at him.

after 1942, he didn't dig any more holes. it was too much to bear.

so he turned his escapism into perfectionism and channelled his athleticism into boxing. he dropped out of college, got a promoter, and spent every waking moment counting out money, considering the odds of each fight, and training.

it was overwhelming, but that's what he wanted it to be.

eventually got disowned for leftism crimes. (good for him)

owen

yes i'm gonna make one of these for him too.

born in november 1930 in aberystwyth. parents' marriage more established, but not strictly happy. owen picked up on clear ideological differences between his parents at a young age, but both were raising their children under their model of success.

an 'odd' child, but in a way that was less of an inconvenience to adults so was never reprimanded for it.

he didn't really understand why people liked some behaviours better than others, but knew that when he did the right things, people were nicer to him, and sometimes even gave him things, so he learned to play the game.

honestly, as an adult he finds it funny that A was always seen as manipulative when really out of anyone in the family it was himself. i mean, like, he knew that sucked for A, but he wasn't gonna say anything about it.

since he was the "smart one", he became the de facto eldest son, and was given a much more thorough education in languages, music, and science.

played the cello, first because father told him to, then because he liked it. he liked the way it could sway with him and how deep it sounded.

father liked how there were no frets forcing one in line, like a guitar, but one still had to follow the rules or it would sound bad.

when war broke out, owen was introduced to a family that had recently moved in. his father said that he should get to know the children, they were his age. they could be friends.

after dinner that evening, his father invited him to his office, a rare honour. a machine was already set up, and owen watched the wheels rotate as he answered question after question about the neighbours' children's lives.

where are they from? have you been able to see anything in that room no child is allowed into? what did that note slipped under the front door say? can you draw it? what have they overheard about the move? what did they say their parents' jobs were? what is... who did... where... thank you, owen, that's all. you may go to your room now, there's something there for you. think of it as a token of gratitude for your trouble.

this continued for a few months, all the way up until the family disappeared. owen thought it was odd that they hadn't brought their things.

either way, the conversations stopped after that, until the next time. and the next.

when he decided to join mi6's training program, he couldn't help but notice that his file was already several pages thick on his first day.

way back in 1942, he was the first to hear the siren. the sound made him feel sick for the rest of his life.

B

born in july 1934. with the 'heir and a spare' out of the way, the pressure on mother to produce another son was gone, and both parents welcomed a baby girl.

spoiled by her father with material goods, but she could sense that it was to set her up for something, and there was less emotion behind it than a plan, though for what she couldn't know.

had a knack for cheering people up, even father. she could sing, and dance around a room, and perform a smile to make it all better for a moment.

she loved her siblings. if father was treating A unfairly, she would mediate. if owen was cracking under the weight of his schoolwork, languages, music lessons, the now mandatory play sessions with the neighbours, readings, and shooting practice, she would sneak into his room and offer to help cover for him.

great tree-climber. sometimes would go up and wouldn't get down unless there was food waiting for her.

some days, mother would take her into a secret room off one of the corridors nobody went through, and in there were candlesticks, both straight and tree shaped, and a cup that looked older than even mother, and a cloth that mother taught her to put on her head with a song in a language she didn't understand. there was a little metal canister on the doorframe, and when she was very little mother would lift her up so she could touch it whenever she went in or out.

mother used to say, 'this is where we come from. remember that.' and 'this is precious, and secret, and only for us to know. we can't tell father.' and it was only when B was grown, and had her own husband, and her own children, that she understood.

loved painting. mostly her dreams, which she could remember as vividly as any other memory.

what happened that night in 1942 was only 4 hours after she blew her eight birthday candles out. every year hearing the birthday song would bring it back.

talking about mother hurt after that, so she didn't.

her paintings became more focused, more like the dreams she had in the few years after that night, even when her dreams moved on somewhat. the current dream paintings were private, only shared with her family and close friends.

the ones she shared were precipices, a candle being snatched by the darkness of a tunnel, mother telling her that she was sorry for leaving while sitting with B in a sunny field, on a train, in the secret room.

after her death, the moderate number of people in the art world who know her work will wonder who the woman in her work is.

some say a reflection of herself, some a recurring character living a full life, some later on suggest a lover. the truth was that B never fully moved on from what happened, even though her life did.

C

born during the war in january of 1941. both mother and he had almost died, and he was sick for a month following his birth.

has no memories of mother, but always thought that she looked very pretty in pictures.

C was only 18 months old when the siren went off. mother had lifted him out of his cot while the whole family and staff filed out of their rooms to the shelters. it had been dark, and mother was shaking so much, the way she always did when this happened, and she must have missed a step on the way down. she had twisted backwards to protect him the only way she could.

father never let him forget that it was his fault.

growing up, owen and B were the only people in the house who wanted to take care of him, and they tried their best.

but C was... different. more delicate. he seemed to get sick if someone across the house shut a door too loudly. he had no interest in climbing trees or playing the cello. he seemed almost like a rabbit, always looking around, scared that something was going to get him at any moment.

the only thing he seemed to like doing was reading. he learned at what might've been a remarkably young age, but must not have been, because father never said anything. owen told him later that they'd learned to read at the same age, and he was told that it was early, so C must also have been a quick learner.

owen helped with his learning as much as he could, but support from father was impossible and textbooks were so much more difficult than fiction. in fiction he could go wherever he wanted.

his favourites were a little princess, the naughtiest girl in the school, and trixie belden mysteries.

father tried to take them away, said they were too girly, but B always managed to sneak them back. she recommended more grown up mysteries, like poirot and father brown, for when he needed a 'boyish enough' story. but it was always the boarding school stories he liked best.

so he was excited to see what adventures would await him when he finally got to go himself.

it didn't go well.

(he'd one day find that most things never do go the way they are in stories.)

the school he went to was english, and the boys all made fun of his name and how his chin jutted out when he was nervous and the way he talked, as well as everything his father had.

he spelled his name differently when they said it made him look stupid for 'spelling it wrong'.

the teachers criticised his posture and his handwriting and how he undermined their authority, though he didn't mean to, really he didn't, it was an accident.

the teachers said that if it happened this many times it couldn't have been an accident.

when he turned 21, he changed his uni major (then dropped out altogether), changed his attitude, changed his clothes. became a writer/producer as part of a travelling theatre company. all for the sake of being free.

some would say he went too far in that.

[celestemagnoliathewriter]

Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?*

This one's easy. Wolfstar. I only BroTP Remus and Sirius. I think there was too much trauma in their school years and first war to make this ship sailable. Remus hates himself so much that even if Sirius bent over backwards to love him (and Sirius is emotionally stunted as is) that I think getting over the "prank" from their fifth year, combined with the suspicion Sirius had over Remus in the first war, is just too much. Remus deserved a fresh start and that's what he got with Tonks.

The other is probably Harry/Hermione (Harmony). They're friends. When I was a teen I really wanted Harry/Hermione to be together because I identified with Hermione. Now that I'm an adult it makes so much more sense for Harry to be with Ginny because that's the kind of girl he found attractive. Hermione is cool and all but she's his sister, not his lover.

[nikialexx]

Happy to explain! Sirius and Snape have very different outward personalities but very similar arcs- both growing up in abusive households, latching onto one particular friend, both being emotionally stunted in adulthood due to trauma and making much of their decisions around that aforementioned friend. Both are petty, hold grudges, loyal, brave, vindictive. They both treat Harry based on how they feel about his parents. They both die never truly having fully lived their life.

(i actually wrote the entire response to this earlier and then lost it and i have never wanted to fling myself into the sun more than i did in that moment) but hi anon! so sorry this took a while. I'll continue under the cut cause my reply got kinda long😅

also general disclaimer that we're not going to be unnecessarily rude about either of these characters here, since i know a lot of people are very passionate about them one way or the other :)

Yeah, anon, I totally get where you're coming from here. I actually have very vague recollections of having had this conversation before but I don't remember where?? So this probably isn't the first time I'm comparing Sirius to Snape but I'm glad you gave me an opportunity to do it again.

I think those differences in their outward personalities is actually a nature vs nurture type situation. I've always said that Slytherin kids aren't immediately inherently evil (obviously), but rather victims of a larger system that actively works against them. You take a bunch of kids in their most important formative years and tell them they're destined to be evil and awful and essentially give every non-slytherin student a free pass to target them while even some of the teachers encourage these biases, and really, who wouldn't have this as their villain origin story?

Sirius and Snape both came from abusive households so Hogwarts was their only chance at getting away from that, and in that case, Snape was doomed from the very beginning. Sirius, comparatively, basically had the entirety of Gryffindor house to combat his more unsavory traits. He had friends who were good and kind and amazing and genuinely cared about his wellbeing, so he, in turn, grew to be a good and kind person. That's what he was surrounded by for like... 9 out of 12 months in the year. Snape went from one bad situation to another, continuously surrounded by people who were equally petty and vindictive and often cruel. What else was he supposed to become?

And I can hear you saying: but what about Lily?

Lily was only one person and I think it's a bit unfair to expect her to single-handedly combat the entire system that is House Prejudice and Rivalry at Hogwarts. Lily and Snape being placed in different houses, not to mention two houses with a personal history of being very anti each other, immediately drew a wall between them.

And then, what did the 'good' side ever really offer Snape? Sirius found happiness with the good guys, but Snape? Aside from literally only Lily, they all hated him and bullied him relentlessly. From his perspective, the supposed bad guys were the only ones offering him anything worthwhile or seeing any actual value in him.

So yeah, i see it. Two characters who are really similar in a lot of ways but had drastically different experiences that shaped who they would become.

(And it's also interesting how you laid out their non-personality similarities in the way their story arcs parallel each other almost exactly. I don't think I've ever really paid attention to that before.)

This was a fun little thought exercise lol thank you for this anon and im sorry again for taking so long to reply <3

[vivithefolle]

What is your opinion on the parallels between Ron and Neville, especially considering that they both suffer from drastically low self-esteem? People often draw similarities between their arcs, but it seems to me that as the book series went on, Neville gained confidence while Ron lost confidence. Am I missing something?

I think you pretty much summed it up.

You could say that Neville’s self-esteem was inversely proportional to Ron’s.

When Ron comes at Hogwarts, he’s feeling a bit defeated already, but his successes in the first book (where he kinda carries the team) and the second (where he gets a Special Award For Services To The School along with Harry) serve to build up his confidence, culminating with him getting his own wand in the third. Meanwhile poor Neville, while he stands up to Grabbe and Coyle and later to his own friends, is still seen bumbling around and being generally a laughing stock.

After the third book it’s kind of a turning point. Ron doubts Harry openly, makes a fool of himself due to Fleur’s Veela glamour and is pretty much getting slapped in the face by the narration. Neville however doesn’t get humiliated as much, and even gets to go to the Yule Ball without being publically humiliated.

In OOTP the chasm deepens. Ron is bullied horribly... and no one does a thing. Neville, meanwhile, gets McGonagall telling him he’s a great wizard and a promise of her standing up to his grandmother. OOTP ends with Neville having gotten his own wand, and Ron’s triumph over his bullies is eclipsed by his defeat at the DOM.

HBP pretty much spits on every character, even uses Luna Lovegood to convince us to feel sorry for Hermione who has assaulted her friend, and Neville is pretty much the only one to come out unscathed, because he was relegated to the background. He makes a comic relief appearance at Slughorn’s party and that’s all; he’s then here and present when it comes to fighting the Death Eaters during the battle of the Astronomy Tower. Ron is also there, but people seem to forget that Hermione and Luna did not participate much in that fight...

And DH... well, no possibility to see Neville bumbling at Hogwarts in DH now that we aren’t at Hogwarts, is there? But we are given first-seats to see Ron be moody and angry and a general ass... which anyone would be in the situation he’s in (as in, having your family/little sister liable to be executed at any moment by a corrupt government, being anaemic, and being led on a wild goose chase by an asshole who doesn’t seem to care at all about the fact that YOUR FAMILY MAY DIE THE LONGER THIS DRAGS ON), but somehow JKR insists that it’s Ron and only Ron being an asshole, case in point:

This was their first encounter with the fact that a full stomach meant good spirits; an empty one, bickering and gloom. Harry was least surprised by this, because he had suffered periods of near starvation at the Dursleys’. Hermione bore up reasonably well on those nights when they managed to scavenge nothing but berries or stale biscuits, her temper perhaps a little shorter than usual and her silences rather dour. Ron, however, had always been used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the Hogwarts house-elves, and hunger made him both unreasonable and irascible. Whenever lack of food coincided with Ron’s turn to wear the Horcrux, he became downright unpleasant. - Deathly Hallows

So we have

Ron, however, had always been used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of his mother or of the Hogwarts house-elves 

... but, um, Hermione too is used to three delicious meals a day, courtesy of her parents and the Hogwarts house-elves -

Hermione bore up reasonably well [...], her temper perhaps a little shorter than usual and her silences rather dour

Nevermind, Perfect Goddess Sue is perfect.

At the end of DH, we still remember that Ron behaved badly in the Horcrux Hunt because blah blah symbolism blah blah poor wee Harry blah blah catholicism parallels with St Peter denying knowing Jesus blah blah blah.

While Neville’s appearance as the fearless, epic Hogwarts leader is still a shock, but also a satisfying moment, especially when he gets his epic speech to tell Voldemort to go fuck himself.

... which leads many to forget that Ron did it before Neville (not that Neville’s speech wasn’t an epic, well-deserved moment of pure badassery).

"You see?" said Voldemort, and Harry felt him striding backward and forward right beside the place where he lay. "Harry Potter is dead! Do you understand now, deluded ones? He was nothing, ever, but a boy who relied on others to sacrifice themselves for him!" "He beat you!" yelled Ron, and the charm broke, and the defenders of Hogwarts were shouting and screaming again until a second, more powerful bang extinguished their voices once more. - Deathly Hallows

But people will mostly recall Neville’s speech. Because it lasts longer than Ron’s simple “he beat you” and Voldemort actually reacts to it, actually holds a conversation with Neville, while Ron’s scream is... mostly ignored. Even his breaking of Voldemort’s Silencing Charm doesn’t impact much, because another, stronger Charm is immediately put in place moments after.

The way Neville and Ron kill their respective Horcruxes is very different, too... Neville does it in an epic moment of badassery, set on fire and everything, and takes the sword from the Hat itself, mimicking Harry’s actions in Chamber of Secrets. It’s a pure, unadulterated moment of epicness, and nothing can taint its sheer badassery (especially if, like the rest of us intellectuals, you ignore everything JKR has tried to establish as canon after DH). Ron, however, kills his affiliated Horcrux as an act of... eugh... redemption over leaving Harry’s side (even though it was clearly the smartest thing to do since the dumbass didn’t even manage to destroy the Horcrux while Ron was gone, so here’s your proof that Harry and Hermione absolutely do need Ron because they’re incompetent nincompoops). Ron killing the Horcrux can’t be called triumphant or a victory, no matter what idiots blabbering about symbolically destroying his inferiority complex try to say - because yeah, symbolism is nice and all, but it’s not because Ron gets a symbolic victory that he’s miraculously cured of it, but hey who cares Ron can’t possibly have a mental illness cuz he’s not Harry haha!!

... Excuse me. I’m still bitter over... things.

Ron’s defeat of the Horcrux isn’t a triumph like Neville decapitating Nagini is. He’s humiliated in front of his best friend, whose opinion he bases most of his self-esteem upon. His dirty laundry is aired for Harry to see. And finally, when he destroys the Horcrux, he is left crying in the snow with Mr Emotionally Stunted for company.

How. The fuck. Do you call that. A victory.

Ron’s killing of the Horcrux is bittersweet. It’s only Harry and Ron, isolated in a small clearing, in the snow. Ron doesn’t get the sword from the Sorting Hat itself, which may make some people think it hasn’t been won properly, even though Ron displayed bravery (jumping into a frozen pond in the middle of winter) and chivalry (rescuing Harry) to obtain it, and Ron pretty much spends the whole time being terrified (of the thing that psychologically tortured him but hey, since when do we care about Ron’s feelings) then apologizing to Harry for leaving (and Harry accepting those apologies when HE TOO OWED RON SOME FUCKING APOLOGIES BUT NAH HARRY POTTER IS TOO SPECIAL FOR THAT).

While Neville’s killing of Nagini is nothing but badass, badass, and re-badass, with loads of people to witness it. It’s epic. Neville obtains Gryffindor’s sword “”“properly”““, by taking it from the Sorting Hat. And naturally, there’s nothing about Neville “redeeming himself for his betrayal of Our Lord And Saviour Harry Potter” to taint that success.

Yeah... at the end of it all, Ron is... not fine. Him “symbolically destroying his inferiority complex” is just fucking that, a symbol. But it doesn’t mean he’s miraculously cured his insecurities and all. It doesn’t mean he’s stopped being horribly fucking depressed. It doesn’t mean he’s not traumatized. But I forgot only Harry’s traumas matter (and Hermione’s, to a lesser extent... what am I saying, Hermione doesn’t get trauma, trauma is for losers, like Harry).

Neville is slowly but steadily built up in the background through the series (huh, kinda like Ginny... wonder why more people won’t point that out). His failures are so commonplace, and usually more in the realms of “accidental fuck-up” than “feeling offended and fucking up because of it”, that it’s hard to be angry at him. Meanwhile Ron’s failures feel more personal, because he’s so important to Harry and Harry takes Ron’s disagreements with him as personal attacks like the idiot fuck he is.

So, while Neville gradually gets stronger in the background, Rowling brings Ron down a little more in every book, because as the books go on she can’t bear to have Harry and Hermione fuck up, so Ron has to do all the fucking up so she can pretend the other two are perfect instead.

[zeleniafic]

📚 + Rigel Malfoy (something thats changed about them since their conception) - lorettastwilight <3

@lorettastwilight I am here with an obscenely late response to this ahahahaha.... ha...😅

----

Something different about Rigel since I first thought of her... honestly, how sad she and her story are right now? When I first began plotting her story in my head, she was full of spunk and life and she had the same deep-seated insecurity stemming from her family situation, but it was buried deep down.

But then I started actually WRITING the story, and it got a lot sadder than it was intended to. In SF right now she's very guarded, very defensive and lashes out when she perceives any kind of threat especially from adults, and she's only just begun to relax a little. I think because I'm fully writing year one out and not just summarizing it or jumping to Rigel in her later years, it's impossible not to see and fully acknowledge how damaged her behavior is. She goes from an emotionally stunted family background to Hogwarts, where the circumstances of her arrival and the inter house tension paint a target on her back and ostracize her completely.

Idk, I can't figure out how to phrase what I'm trying to say here, but basically... the reality of her situation became much more stark as I began writing, if that makes sense? It wasn't just "yeah she's got a bad home life" and then that only comes up again when it's plot relevant, because you can TELL. Kind of like how in canon, the Dursleys' treatment of Harry was overtly abusive, and while that doesn't often come up directly when he's away from them... if you know or if you've lived that, you can absolutely see the echo of it in the way Harry behaves. Similarly, the way Rigel was raised is written all over her responses to how other people act around her now at school — she's deeply jaded and suspicious, she's defensive and flighty around all authority figures, assumes the worst pretty much all the time, etc etc. She's incredibly emotionally stunted and having to sit in that and watch her start to grow away from it a bit has highlighted how sad it was that that's where she started, which definitely changed the tone of the story's start.

Which, to be honest, I wasn't expecting but it absolutely stemmed from projecting. Rigel and I are very different but our home situation as a child shares lots of similarities (minus the filthy rich aspect lmfao) and I've learned so much as an adult about WHY I was the way I was as a child, that I ended up acknowledging it in her story because I was simply incapable of ignoring it. I wasn't really intending to dive so deep into it, but the more I wrote for her the more I was like... this type of shit leaves a MARK on children, it's gonna impact her personality, you know? So I'm trying to write it that way. Familial trauma isn't the main point of this story, but it IS a fundamental aspect of why Rigel behaves the way she does. I can't write characters into situations like that without also including the ways that the situation shaped who they are, if that makes sense? That's kind of become an important thing for me.

[denimbex1986]

'Over the last two decades, filmmaker Andrew Haigh has solidified himself as a prominent queer voice within film and television. From his 2011 romantic drama Weekend to his work behind HBO’s cult hit series Looking, spanning two seasons and one feature-length special. Haigh further establishes this acclaimed body of queer media with All of Us Strangers, an adaptation of the novel Strangers by Taichi Yamada, that employs enough elements of fantasy, death and graphic sex to put Game of Thrones to shame.

The film plays as a fantastical but gut-wrenching ‘what-if’, following the isolated and emotionally stunted Adam (Andrew Scott), shaped as such by the trauma of losing his parents at age 12 in a fatal car crash. A death which he deems “not the most original” in his own words. This isolation is demonstrated through the empty and eerily silent tower block in which he lives. Adam is frequently shown looking down over the city of London through his large voyeuristic windows, locking himself away as the cliché tortured writer that he is.

His internal struggle with loneliness also stems from his feelings of being a social outsider as a gay man, which prevents him from forming any real emotional connections and rejecting those who try. Amongst these is Harry (Paul Mescal), the only other resident of the building who drunkenly turns up on his doorstep with an offer of some company. As Adam learns to accept his vulnerability and let people in, he sparks a passionate, loving relationship with Harry (cue intimate sex scenes galore). Alongside this, he opens his buried traumatic past through the fantastical, ‘what-if’ reunion that he is granted with his deceased parents.

Claire Foy and Jamie Bell deliver two equally incredible performances as Adam’s parents, both trapped within the 1980s of Adam’s childhood memories, yet somewhat aware of their tragic fates in a very dark exploration of death and lost parental love.

All of Us Strangers is nuanced in its undefined and abstract approach to these encounters, they are seemingly both a figment of his imagination as well as more than just memories. They almost haunt the in-between of dream and reality, for which they push Adam to just be grateful for instead of questioning why.

Two particularly poignant scenes come in the moments that Adam shares with each parent individually, finally coming out to his mother which is something he was robbed of, as well as his emotionally raw conversation with his father about the unspoken bullying he suffered as a child. It’s a moment that touches upon the masculinity and shame that links to his identity as a gay man.

The two scenes speak to the huge developments in gay rights, activism and social change made in Britain since the 1980s. In particular, the effect that growing up gay during the AIDs epidemic has had on a generation of men producing forms of heavy shame and alienation that persist today. The way the film connects Adam’s queer identity to themes of familial relations and childhood trauma is a testament to Haigh’s skills as a writer. I implore people to watch All of Us Strangers, even just to experience the scene in which Jamie Bell breaks Andrew Scott (and the audience) by saying: “I’m sorry I never came into your room when I heard you crying.”

Scott’s leading role is one deserving of so much recognition, but with the way award season seems to be going, we may have to settle for the masses of unanimously positive Letterboxd reviews. He so sensitively embodies the emotions and fears of 12-year-old Adam, unlocking them through the flicker of an eyelid or the waiver of his voice, carrying the emotional weight of the film confidently on his shoulders.

Mescal, the internet’s newest obsession, also delivers a standout performance, especially going off his countless nominations and BAFTA recognition for the role. Nevertheless, his northern accent does leave something to be desired. He seems to shift between multiple regions, landing somewhere between Yorkshire and Manchester before letting his own Irish accent slip through, made worse by his attempts at a flirtatious ‘gay voice’ for lack of better words.

However, it’s undeniable that despite this, he delivers a powerfully tragic performance in the final moments of All of Us Strangers as a part of its M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist, somewhat selling an ending that otherwise may have fallen short.

The four lead performers each take turns of equal responsibility in making the film what it is, a genuinely nuanced journey of grief and loss. All of Us Strangers earnestly explores the ways in which choosing to express and voice forms of love can help to heal even the most unreachable parts of yourself, a message set to the striking melody and lyrics of the 1984 classic ‘The Power of Love’.

5/5'