#i am once again in danger

[saintsenara]

are you still doing ur asks abt the ships? if u are what r ur thoughts on wolfstar? if not have a very good day!

thank you very much for the ask anon - and thank you in particular for leading me into danger...

my answer to this is going to be - and wolfstar shippers keep calm please - similar to my jegulus one. which means the tldr is: write what you want, but i’m unlikely to read it, especially if you don’t acknowledge the difference between canon and fanon.

i have no aversion to wolfstar coming up as a background ship [let them be happy while harry/anyone are having drama, i’m all for it] but i generally don’t search out fics in which wolfstar is [one of] the central pairing(s) and tend only to read wolfstar-centric stuff if it’s written or recommended by someone whose opinion i trust. 

this isn’t because i think the pairing is unfeasible [the canonical sirius and remus very much have the vibes of people who have enjoyed each other’s bodies…] but because the community which has built up around wolfstar, both among "original wolfstar, y’know, like in canon" fans and their sworn enemies"‘marauders fandom, canon who?" fans, largely expects certain tropes and characterisations which divorce the characters from what i personally think is interesting about them.

the most egregious of these tropes, in my opinion, is the fact that wolfstar which purports to be canon-compliant or which follows the canon timeline deals so infrequently with the fact that both remus and sirius have such little trust in each other that they believed utterly sincerely that the other was a death eater.

it’s crucial that we understand the profundity of this suspicion and - therefore - what it says about the fragility of the loyalty between them prior to 1980-81. this is not a brief flash of distrust in a high-pressure couple of days at the end of october. the evidence of canon is that we’re talking about a period of months - if not a full year - in which remus and sirius not only think it justifiable to doubt the other’s loyalties, but also seem to be acting on that doubt to try to get the other in trouble.

harry is born in july 1980, at a point when voldemort has all but won the war. severus snape defects to the order at some point relatively soon after this, when voldemort decides that the potters are the family referred to in the prophecy. peter pettigrew then defects to the death eaters in the autumn of 1980 [which we know because sirius says in prisoner of azkaban that he was spying for a full year before voldemort’s fall].

snape then evidently tells dumbledore that there is a spy in the order - although he clearly doesn’t, despite a common accusation levelled against him, know this is pettigrew, since the voldemort of the first war has apparently heard of operational security, unlike his resurrected counterpart - and this leads dumbledore to demand a restriction on james and lily’s movements until - by august 1981 [the plausible date of lily’s letter to sirius in deathly hallows] - they are basically under house arrest. the implication of canon is that, by this summer at the very latest, james and lily are aware they’re being spied on, from which i think it’s reasonable to infer three things: that dumbledore has begun to suspect that sirius is the spy over the opening half of 1981; that remus, who canonically always trusts dumbledore’s judgements, uses this to confirm his own suspicions about sirius; and that sirius, whose canonical relationship with dumbledore has an undercurrent of unease, especially in order of the phoenix, picks up on this and assumes remus is briefing dumbledore against him. i think it’s also reasonable to infer that the only person convinced there isn’t a spy among his close friends is james.

peter visits the potters’ safe-house and is aware of its address, so we can assume remus and sirius are the same. by october 1981, however, there are clearly concerns that james and lily’s whereabouts are known to the death eaters - perhaps also accompanied by information from snape that voldemort, who loves a bit of symbolism, has selected halloween as the day he will strike - which trigger dumbledore’s advice that they perform the fidelius charm. dumbledore’s unease when james picks sirius as secret keeper is confirmation that he had identified sirius as the spy. that remus is never suggested as a potential candidate is confirmation that sirius believes him to be the spy - and possibly also that james is beginning to think his best friend might be onto something [i always wonder if remus’ bitterness when accusing james of being too trusting in deathly hallows is a flash of self-loathing about the fact that james didn’t trust him]. sirius then persuades james to use peter and, within a week of the charm being performed, james and lily are dead, peter has disappeared, and sirius is in azkaban.

[as an aside here, i don’t love the amount of dumbledore bashing in wolfstar, and i think it’s worth doing some dumbledore defence: sirius’ internment in azkaban without trial - a reference to an actual historical event, if you were thinking it sounded far-fetched - is not dumbledore’s fault. the wizengamot acts on dumbledore’s credible belief that sirius was the secret keeper, while sirius - who is cackling his head off the whole time - refuses to speak in his own defence. similarly, dumbledore does not deny sirius access to harry (via hagrid) when he arrives, distraught, in godric’s hollow because he’s contrived a machiavellian plan to keep harry alone and unloved with the dursleys instead of with his true family, but because all the evidence he has available to him is that harry’s life is in danger at sirius’ hands.]

so sirius spends the next twelve years in azkaban, with remus clearly nowhere near his mind. that he stays in prison, and only escapes when he has an unimpeachable chance to get his revenge and protect harry, is because he - like his narrative mirror, snape - is so haunted by his role [indirect, but he canonically thinks that he essentially cast the killing curse himself] in the death of someone he fiercely loved that he considers azkaban a punishment he deserves. 

this links to the next issue i have with a lot of wolfstar: that the defining force in both remus and sirius’ lives is james, not each other.

the dynamic of the marauders is frequently reduced to the following: wolfstar, who are best friends and lovers it would take the heat-death of the universe to pull apart; james and whichever romantic partner the story wishes to pair him with, who are the same; and peter, who is either there and completely futile, or is replaced with a fanonised female character [dorcas, marlene, alice etc. - none of whom, may i say, it makes sense to have in the same school year as the marauders, dumbledore is not actually running the order as a gang of child soldiers] or a woobiefied death eater [regulus black, barty crouch jr., evan rosier etc.].

but in canon, a different dynamic is clear. james is the lynchpin of the marauders’ world, the anchoring point to all their senses of self; and the moment he is out of the picture no bonds of loyalty remain among the other three. [it’s tempting to imagine that remus always harbours a belief that sirius is innocent, but i think that this would be less due to an unconditional affection for his friend and more due to the fact that his own self-loathing needs to believe that he couldn’t have stopped james and lily dying; which he should have done if sirius really was the culprit, since he clearly suspected he was a death eater]. 

if you asked remus, sirius, and peter, clearly each of them would describe james as their best friend [even though james’ eyes are only for sirius - he only has one best man, and harry only has one godfather], but their relationships with each other outside of james are less clearly defined, at least before sirius and remus are the only two left.

this doesn’t prevent pre-1981 [or james lives au] wolfstar - your boyfriend and your best friend being different people is fine, obviously - but it is going to change the dynamic between them in ways i think are significant and which i would like to see explored more, particularly in fics which acknowledge that - for remus and sirius - this dynamic might not lead to the healthiest relationship…

for example, during their schooldays, wolfstar are likely to talk to each other through james, rather than james being surplus to the flirtatious dynamic between them; remus is likely to feel awkward or insecure about the fact that sirius - whose personality is closer to james’ than his - is so happy and gregarious in james’ company; sirius is likely to resent remus’ tendency to stay out of the action, since the fact that he and james mutually encourage each other in their exploits is key to their relationship; remus is likely to resent the fact that sirius is treated by the potters as a second son, while he isn’t, and so on.

during the first war, even if we remove the fact they suspect each other of spying from the equation, they will clash over how to protect james - and remus will undoubtedly take this to mean that sirius cares more for james than for him. during the second war, the long shadow of james - so painful that remus can still barely talk about him, while sirius wants to do nothing but - will hover over everything.

and this leads on to the third reason i generally don’t enjoy wolfstar: that the complicated threads of their canon personalities are removed or reduced to irrelevance to make them fit fanon which has no basis in the books.

now, i’m not going to get into appearance discourse here, although yes, i prefer a tall sirius who tends to wear wizarding clothing and has never heard a single cool piece of muggle music in his life, and i prefer a hollowed and world-weary remus who doesn’t have visible scars. i think background discourse is slightly more important: a great deal of sirius is lost if he is turned into someone who likes being pureblood, who feels more comfortable around his "own kind", or who aspires to sit on the hereditary wizengamot; a great deal of remus is lost if he is turned into someone who didn’t grow up in a loving home with parents who did their best, but whose inability to give him the childhood he really deserved in the face of the prejudice against werewolves in the wizarding world encouraged his absurd gratitude towards anyone who made even a half-hearted effort to act in his interests.

all of my preferred aspects of characterisation are canon-compliant. but deviating from canon is not a moral failing. the term is more flexible than many of its defenders acknowledge, and people are at perfect liberty to imagine that characters look, identify, or behave differently than they do in the canon narrative without that automatically bringing accusations of writing them out-of-character [after all, it’s clear in the books that both harry and hermione are white, but art and fics which portray them as a different race can still meaningfully be described as canon-compliant if that's an aim they're written to have].

similarly, rejecting canon compliance entirely is just as fine - i think you should indicate to your readers if you’re doing that, but i’m capable of using the back button and moving on with my life if you don’t.

the only hard and fast rule is don’t seek out people who do things differently to you and insult them directly, although i would also suggest that it’s worthwhile to spend a bit of time in introspection about how lots of popular wolfstar and the fandom around it - like the fandom around all slash ships - portrays queerness in ways which are heteronormative [i.e. exclusively equating bottoming with femininity] and portrays women in ways which are misogynistic [i.e. how tonks is often treated in wolfstar discourse].

however, with this said, i think there is a difference between rejecting canon compliance and yet still writing the characters in ways which feel connected in interesting ways to their complex canon selves, and just writing original characters named sirius black and remus lupin. 

because i just cannot get on board with a remus who is written as the cleverest one of the four, as assertive and direct instead of avoidant and passive-aggressive, as anything other than incredibly selfish, as anything other than an extreme people-pleaser, as being soft and sensitive [his mild manner hides the fact that he is incredibly cold and calculating - this is a man who is prepared to execute wormtail in front of three children mere minutes after learning he’s still alive], as majorly regretting the snape-versus-werewolf incident [he loves it! snape is terrified of him! he downplays it constantly!], or as functioning as the moral heart of the marauders [when sirius says in order of the phoenix that remus tried to restrain their bullying of snape, he is doing it to make remus - who is incapable of self-criticism - feel better in the face of harry’s anger] when he is in fact quite morally cowardly.

and i cannot get on board with a sirius who is written as a goofy himbo, as a constant flirt and womaniser [more grey-ace sirius, i would like to see it], as the world’s wokest king [a man who’s upset his slave isn’t sufficiently deferential to him isn’t someone who’s going to speak in queer theory buzzwords - this, of course, doesn’t prevent sirius being written as queer, non-binary, trans, femme, and so on, it just means that authors have to deal with the fact that sirius’ way of existing as any of these things will be human, rather than perfect], as a small bean unable to take care of himself [he escapes from prison and swims across the north sea! he charges into danger at the drop of a hat!], as anything other than incandescently loyal to james and harry, as - after james’ death - anything other than completely wrecked by guilt over the fact he caused it, as best friends with his brother and his gang of slytherins, or as lacking the fundamental arrogance and cruelty which make him so interesting.

and wolfstar can work, absolutely, when these things are taken into account. i find the idea of second war remus and sirius, stuck in grimmauld place together, buying harry a joint christmas present, the last survivors in a generation completely hollowed out by loss, incredibly moving. remus' choice to self-destruct in half-blood prince - having lost sirius so soon after having found him again - does, i think, justifiably indicate a change in their relationship during order of the phoenix which can be seen as romantic. i find the idea of first war remus and sirius, each in love with a man they think is a spy, wonderfully bittersweet. i find the idea of school-aged remus pining desperately for a friend who is head-over-heels in love with james to be, quite frankly, canon. 

and i also think that two original characters called sirius black and remus lupin can do whatever they want - i’ll just be closing my eyes, pretending i cannot see, and leaving them to it.

[inkskinned]

im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:

videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.

and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.

this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.

there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.

there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.

for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.

i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.

here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."

eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.

we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.

"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"

thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.

it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.

an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.

and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."

[princessefemmelesbian]

Transandrophobia truthers are so damn racist and white oh my fucking god y'all actually piss me the fuck off every time you tokenize Black and brown men for your stupid as fuck "mra but make it trans-inclusive" ideology created by a creepy guy with a corrective rape fetish(something I'll never let up on for as long as I live, btw). If I ever see another one of y'all say "Black and brown men face discrimination because they're seen as overly masculine and that's why masculinity in men is oppressed in this society" I will literally kill myself. Stop using Black and brown men as brownie points for your bullshit arguments about misandry being real when you don't have the slightest idea how racialized oppression works. White boys are so annoying and dumb istfg.

@punkeropercyjackson @punknicodiangelo @pinkpinkstarlet

[http-byler]

☆ paint & kisses ☆

[beeg-bark]

girls with swords and murder in their eyes who pin you against the wall and put the blade to your throat and use it to tilt your chin up and uhhhhhh

[nanihirunkits]

DANGEROUS ROMANCE | EP11

[sunburstsky]

So in this last episode we had confirmed:

1. Indri, who 2/3rds of the party is infatuated with, is Big BAD Lady in a very real way and can call down the memories of stars, including the ones shining into her library

2. If you “flee” (and i just feel that the definition of that might be a little squishy in this specific scenario) *within a mile* of Grimore, you are as good as dead

oh this is DELICIOUS

[kazscrows]

Whatever you do don’t imagine years in the future, after they’ve worked through their traumas, and both have healed together, Kaz and Inej lying by each other, and definitely don’t think about Kaz waking up in the mornings and the first thing he sees is Inej and he smiles, because she’s there with him, and they’re safe and happy. There’s no gloves, no extra layers, no knives, or tightly coiled hair. The armor has been removed. It’s just them. Some days are still hard, but it’s okay, because they have each other to bring the other back when one of them is drowning.. vanishing.. the other lifts them up, reminds them who they are. Don’t imagine Kaz mumbling her name, in the softest voice, because he’s still half asleep, so it comes out just as ‘…Nej’ and don’t imagine Inej stirring at the familiar sound of his voice, meeting his eyes, and smiling so brightly that Kaz’s breath catches, just like it does each and every time. Don’t imagine him making her laugh as they lie there, and he hears the sound of it and marvels that there’s once again magic in his life, because he’s with her and she’s with him, and all is right in their world. Don’t you dare.

[emmavakarian-theirin]

"god had to nerf me because i was too powerful" - gale dekarios

[ask-scribblesentinel]

[[ just got off the horn with my sibling and she was severely surprised that I haven't made a single decepticon ask blog lmao. ]]

[sysig]

VUXPet (Patreon)

[lotus-duckies]

This scene really does it for me

Firstly, the display of the turtles' different fighting styles, with Mikey and Donnie throwing and hitting the kraangdroids, Raph forcing them down and stabbing them in an unusually quick and painless process, and Leo slicing them open.

And it's not only that. He radiates this sense of a controlled threat, a beautiful lethality to his movements. You really get the idea that swordfighting is an art form from Leo.

He cuts men down with an untold grace while their blood splatters across the floor, staining the perfection and beauty with the reality of his carnage

There's a reason he was the one to kill Shredder.

[nei-ning]

Drawing Big Sukuna (his final form) is such a delight and joy! I'm trying to draw him serious / furious but all what he gives me is CUTE expressions! Like :3

Sukuna, darling, I want to draw you as a furious killer pile of muscles who's about to run someone's ass over if they won't get out of your way!

[ereh-emanresu-tresni]

.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Better Left Buried

sapphic YA thriller

on the way to their vacation, a girl’s private detective mother gets a call and they stop off at a small Appalachian town - and find the dead body of the patriarch of a local rich family at the abandoned amusement park he owned

she finds out her mother grew up there and is desperate to find out more about her past, and help find the murderer - along with a local girl who’s a suspect, because of her own past with the rich family.

[dewgongs]

ughh why do i have to have njghtmares about them