#i remember reading a post about how snape works really well with characters that fall into a mother hen role and that is something

[elisedonut]

fuck i'm actually going to end up enjoying Sevpercy huh

maybe in a picky I like them when they are in my head or when I do it kind of way

or in a time travel way because when it comes to Snape I like his teenage self a lot more than his adult self

[sneverussape]

snape fic recs - old magic/epic worldbuilding

related to this post. i decided to dig through my bookmarks and wrack my brain for some of the fics i remember reading that scratched this particular itch. this will have fics that had the characters practice old magic and are more focused on the adults/hogwarts staff rather than the kids, or if the kids would be mentioned they would not be the main povs. these will be multi-chaptered, often long (and obviously au), and some of them have pairings. please heed the tags and warnings that the individual authors would have left; what you consume is your own responsibility. the fics are also listed in no particular order:

In His Name by moira of the mountain -  After the Final Battle, a fallen Snape is hidden, bearing Tom Riddle's last Unforgivable. There are three Secret Keepers and a Muggle healer to protect him, but will it be love - or an obligation - which finally frees him?  - no pairings // kinda brotp between mcgonagall, snape, and hagrid // also unfinished so fair warning. the lore is so rich though, it feels like how magic in hp should have been.

Death’s Dominion by MMADfan - Severus Snape’s life was changed when he was hit by an errant spell, and he comes to a decision that defies Dumbledore’s wishes. Even the fate of the wizarding world is altered by this ill-cast curse and Snape’s subsequent resolve.Long after the spell has dissipated, its effects continue echoing in the lives of Severus, Albus, Minerva, and Hermione, and they bring with them a shadowy figure whom Snape does not trust and whose motivations and influence on Minerva are murky. Not all is as it seems, and conspiracies and schemes swirl around Severus as he continues on his path of deception to his final confrontation with the Dark Lord. A “Light” fic of love, loyalty, and redemption. - mm/ad, ss/hg // this fic. is LEGENDARY. this is one of those fics that require your full attention and will eventually suck you in and spit you back out with your whole life changed. it will take you on a whole rollercoaster of emotions. the mm/ad pairing is quite an obvious one but the ss/hg is a subtle one and it’s more friendship throughout the whole fic than an actual romantic relationship. the ocs (a lot of them minerva’s family) are also SO well-made you’ll forget they’re not canon. 

FALLING FURTHER IN by kaz2 - Hermione begins to learn something of the man behind the dark sarcasms of the classroom. - ss/hg, also features wolfstar, brotp between the faculty and severus // this was one of the fics i had in mind when i did that last post about missing old hp stories. this was started in the early 2000s and the author had free rein on a lot of the material. flitwick and sprout are married here and are the cutest things on earth. it’s also set during the summer leading into harry’s final year so all the teachers are staying at hogwarts and are all good friends with each other. hermione is there as well because her parents had been murdered by death eaters and so she’s spending it with them. the way the ww is written here is so...epic, jkr couldn’t even. snape lives in an invisible tower called serpens tower, the teachers often go to a brothel-which-isn’t-really-a-brothel in hogsmeade, the other teachers often baby severus subtly because he’s the youngest, wolfstar are tolerable and remus actually learns to brew his own damn wolfsbane, etc. the story is in story format until near the end iirc and then the author outlines what happens next rather than writing it out. i can’t blame them; it really is a massive undertaking.

The Crest by sheankalor -  Dumbledore only holds partial say in who the Head of House is. Severus Snape is nominated as the Head of Slytherin, but has to pass a final test. Can he? Does he work well with the other three Heads of House? And just what is The Crest? - no pairings // staff fic // one of the rare one-shots but it’s in an au which feeds into other stories // i loooove the lore in this. it provides an explanation as to how a house head is approved by the school and i’m a sucker for any fic that has the faculty getting along.

Balance by rabbit and -v-Jinx-v - Hogwarts is under siege, and it's going to take everyone to find a way out of danger. - no pairings // brotp minerva and severus, also harry and draco form a friendship // this is one of my personal faves. it’s not only old magics but the entirety of hogwarts come together to battle against dark forces (not even death eaters but...balrogs...and other things). there’s no build-up to it; you enter the story after the battle’s already begun and then you get taken along for the ride. also has a part where the heads of houses meet the founders and there’s this epic dance that’s reminiscent of the danse macabre in The Graveyard Book (if you’ve read that you’d know what i mean).

Another World by Aeryn Alexander - Detention with Snape turns into something of an adventure for Hermione and Ginny, not to mention Professor Lupin, as they all discover that Hogwarts holds a terrible secret that none of them want to learn. - ss/hg, rl/gw // this fic took me by surprise because i didn’t expect it to go the way it did based on the summary lmao. the 4 basically get trapped in a mirror version of hogwarts after a potions accident, and the mirror world has literal demons in it. they have to find a way to get back into the real world while not getting killed at the same time. i actually liked lupin in this one and he and severus form a tenuous friendship. 

In One Spirit by mavidian - Voldemort and Dumbledore prepare for war and survival. Plans go awry, intrigues abound and nothing is what it seems. Snape created the Dark Mark but that mistake may cost him everything. Can Hermione be his saving grace? - ss/hg but it’s such a slow build you barely notice it during even the first 20 or so chapters because he’s his usual asshole self and they’re too busy trying to protect hogwarts // the concept of this fic and the lore it built up...wow. the faculty are all friends and they’re trying very hard to protect hogwarts using their own magics and their own clever schemes (war brooms? battle wands? blessing tree? filch even gets powers!). voldemort is also equally devious here and snape has loving pureblood parents! (not that it matters, he’s still an ass, but then it’s nice to read about him having a nice family for once). neville also steps up as a member of one of the Traditional Families so he’s quite a BAMF here. 

yo pls feel free to add your own recs to this post, i’m pretty sure there are loads more out there!

[harrypotter-imaginess]

Part 1 Here! / <This is part 2!>

Commission info for a Love Letter from a HP character here!

A/N: This part is shorter but deff expect a part 2/3/15/ and 20 lol. If you would like to be added to the tag list, it will be open until tumblr limits my tags, comment that you want to be added!

Also something I forgot to add a lot of the house decision part of this post was inspired by another post I read on tumblr where Harry belongs to all the houses. I couldn’t find it, so if it’s your post (or you know who it is) lmk so I can give you credit!

- “Their mother was in my house-“ McGonagall starts

- “And their father was in mine, I have equal claim” Snape cuts in

- “Let’s not forget that before that, historically, they came from a long line of Ravenclaws” Flitwick adds

- “Oh tosh, this is a kind child if I ever saw one, did you see the way they were reassuring the other children- even Cedric apparently-“ Professor Sprout adds

- So she’s heard about that

- “What has that got to do with anything?” Snape snaps

- You’re not sure what’s weirder

- The fact that the sorting hat couldn’t decide where you belonged

- Or that all the heads of each house are fighting over who gets you

- Honestly with how well the whole situation was handled in front of everyone else you didn’t think something like this would happen

- Dumbledore silenced everyone, and said it would be discussed afterwards

- You watched each child get sorted in their appropriate house

- And afterwards, while everyone was feasting, you were lead away by Dumbledore and his four house heads to his office

- You’re not really sure what’s there to fight about-

- Honestly they should probably be fighting over who has to take you with how much trouble you’ll be.

- “Enough!” Dumbledore shouts and the four are immediately silenced

- And then he looks at you and you feel your hair stand on end

- “I believe it only natural, in this situation, that they get to choose which house they wish to be apart of”

- Snape blanches at the mention

- “But sir-“

- “That is my decision” he says with an air of finality and none of the others protest when his attention sweeps back to you

- “So which will it be?”

- You Blanche

- “Isn’t there some sort of quiz - or test I could take instead headmaster-“

- “There is not”

- You feel yourself sweating

- “Well-“ you start

- Ravenclaw was your initial choice, it’s the safest

- But then, if you were in Gryffindor you could be friends with Fred and George

- And if you went to Slytherin, you might be able to knock some sense into those blood obsessed freaks, not to mention Blaise in there

- But then- Hufflepuff isn’t looking too bad either, and Cedric seems to like you. It would be nice to have someone older looking out for you

- “How am I supposed to decide?”

- The words escape you without realizing and you see all the professors flinch at your words

- “What do you-“ Snape starts with a hiss, but Dumbledore stops him with a wave of a hand

- “And what do you mean by that child?”

- You gulp

- “Well-“

- You take a deep breath looking into his twinkling eyes

- “I want to be brave-“ you see McGonagall swell from the corner of your eye

- “But I also want to to be kind-“ she deflated and professor Sprout stands a bit taller “And wise and ambitious”

- “I want them all, how am I supposed to pick just one trait and make it my defining characteristic? People are nuanced, they’re more than just one thing”

- Everyone in the room stiffens at your words, and feeling as if you might have said something terribly rude you rush to make amends-

- “So if there’s some sort of trial, or-“

- “Alright we’ll do that then” Dumbledore says with an air of finality and you feel baffled

- “Do what sir?”

- “A trial period of course, a month in each house.”

- .

- .....

- .........

- (Y/N).exe is broken

- “Headmaster that’s completely-“

- “What kind of impression will-“

- “-nothing like that is stated in the handbook”

- “Think of the other students Albus!”

- They’re all shouting over each other, but you understand the basic sentiment

- This is pretty out there, even for a magic school

- “I have decided” Dumbledore doesn’t even say it all that loud, but the other four immediately clamor up

- “We’ll start alphabetically, with Gryffindor and work our way through”

- Huh?

- You’re mind is only just start to repair itself, assessing the situation

- Well it’s not exactly a bad deal now is it?

- In a way you’ve gotten exactly what you wanted

- But the anxiety of having to make a choice looms over you

- “Well, come now I’ll show you the way-“ and so you chase after the strict lithe woman as you follow her to the Gryffindor Common Room

- The other two shuffle out, but Snape stays

- “You’re just doing this because you’re bored aren’t you?” Snape asks

- Dumbledore shrugs

- “Can you blame me? It’s been so long since anything interesting has happened”

- “You say that like one of the Weasley boys doesn’t cause trouble every other week”

- You follow McGonagall down several poorly lit hallways, making mental note of the a few choice paintings, hoping to remember them for later

- “The password this year is “chartreuse” “ she tells you

- And just like magic the portrait swings open, and several hands emerge from the inky depths to grab onto your arm and pull you inside

- The portrait door shutting close

- McGonagall sighs

- “Children will be children I suppose”

- A small smile curling onto her mouth and walked to her chambers

- You would have half a mind to be afraid, if the second you made it inside you didn’t see fireworks and pert poppers popping

- “Welcome to Gryffindor,” the boy on your right, Fred says

- “We knew you’d end up here” George finishes

- Everyone is i the common room, and they all congratulate you, happy to have you in their house

- The room is as big as a banquet hall, full of dark red rugs and gold tapestry’s

- A little gaudy if you’re being honest

- Like something out of a Harry Potter themed room in a pottery barn catalogue

- But that’s probably the point

- “So how did it all go down?” Fred asks, sitting on your right side on a red couch in front of the fire

- “Did Minnie manage to convince you?”

- “Oi they didn’t need convincin’ Fred, we’re clearly the superior house”

- “Well you see, it’s not quite official”

- They look at you with wide eyes as you recount the tale

- You almost feel bad bursting their bubble, especially when they’re being so nice to you

- But when you’re done they both sport identical grins, twinkles in their eyes

- “That’s wicked” they say in unison

- You grin

- You think you’re going to like it here

- The twins basically monopolize the rest of your night, asking for your input on pranks

- “If it were me-“ you start, their eyes on you with rapt attention

- “I would brew some amortentia and give it to Filch-“

- “And make him fall in love with Snape!” George says like you’ve just said the most brilliant thing

- You shake your head

- “I would give it to the cat- Mrs. Noriss, And make her fall in love with something crazy, like a dog- it’s that subtle annoyance that makes it all the more satisfying”

- The both grin

- “So when are we doing it?” Fred asks

- “Doing what?”

- “Brewing the love potion of course”

- You grin

- Yeah, you’re really going to like it here

Tag List:

@parascape​ @imdoingathingmom​ @smileygirl08​ @awesomebooklover17​ @taferris​

[salty-ironstrange-shipper]

Could you maybe post a long-ass list of good ironstrange fics because at this point, there's nothing else to do and you seem like you have great taste

puppets on a string

Summary: Stephen Strange is a villain. But a hot one.

Words: 103,206 (incomplete)

This fic is courtesy of our very own @funkylittlebidiot​, so definitely give it a read!

Find a Way (to break the fall)

Summary: Stephen didn't think about it anymore. It had been buried deep beneath all the other shit he'd had to live through in the last couple of years and it didn't impact his day to day life in any way whatsoever. Until the day it does.

Words: 2,170

This one is short, but emotional and impactful. Warning for discussions of past rape/non-con.

The Brands We Carry

Summary: Tony Stark is almost thirteen years old when he gets ready to settle down to bed one early-early-morning and happens to look in the mirror on his childhood wall and catches sight of a circular brand on the skin above his heart.

“About fucking time,” Tony mutters, and goes to sleep without bothering to tell anybody he just cussed out a baby that’s only just crying its way into its new life somewhere on the planet.

The date is February 17, 1983. Happy birthday, whoever you are. Took you long enough.

Or: Tony Stark and Stephen Strange are soulmates. You'd think that would mean they would be perfect for each other right from the start, but it turns out that their soulbond is a long path of mutual distrust, dislike, and miscommunication. Just their luck.

Words: 10,497

I love a good soulmate au, and this is a good soulmate au. Very interesting look at both characters and also what happens if someone’s soulmate has  a not insignificant age gap (though they only meet in person for the first time as adults)

A Crown of Thorn and Shadows

Summary: Anthony Stark, King of Blood and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie court, did not expect to find Prince Stephen Strange of the Seelie chained up in his torture chamber, cold iron being driven into his hands. Stephen Strange, a Seelie healer, never dreamed of finding himself in the court of nightmares, being cared for by the king that the Seelie called a monster. They must work together to find the traitors in two Faerie courts that have not spoken in over six hundred years and reclaim Stephen's memories before the courts descend into war once more.

Words: 58,465

Wonderful fantasy au, great worldbuilding and relationship buildup. Lots of fun.

Villain Stephen Strange and His Obsession with Tony Stark

Summary: Just a bunch of prompty oneshots that are partially based but 100% inspired by Tumblr IronStrange Posts. Rated T-M

Words: 1,029

Do I even have to explain it? This is just fun. 

Ten times outta nine, I’m a hand grenade

Summary: Though neither remembered that night, it turns out that Tony Stark and Stephen Strange had first encountered each other years earlier. Unfortunately, that might end up destroying the universe.

Words: 419,141

This is a loooooooooong boi. But oh, it’s a good one. Stephen and Tony basically go back in time, change the universe, and fall in love. It’s everything you could want from them. Complete with romance, angst, drama, and humor.

Where Severus Snape is hot, not a stalker, and somehow gets the girl

Summary: And then, as if he wasn’t already the most embarrassing estranged biological dad ever, Tony stopped in his tracks, raised his sunglasses (because of course he would wear sunglasses inside a lecture hall in April), and gave Professor Strange the most blatant, sustained once-over in the history of fuckboyness.

Then he put down his glasses, shot a winning smile at the teacher, and said, “Well, I’m Tony Stark, of course.”Or: Peter Parker is sick and wants to cut his Neuroscience class. Tony just wants to help (and maybe date his son's hot teacher). Stephen Strange just wants to give his lecture in peace.

Words: 2,387

Stephen is a college professor. Peter is his student. Tony is having too much fun with this.

You Remind Me of a Man

Summary: Tony Stark cannot stand the overly opinionated and egotistical Dr. Strange and the feeling is extremely mutual.

Words: 44,788

Perfect no-powers au for them. They’re assholes who fall in love and see another side to each other. It’s amazing, 10/10 would recommend.

I am here

Summary: There’s a technical reason Stephen must surrender the Time Stone to save Tony’s life. It has to be done, and that’s enough for him to do it. But just in case, the universe decides to give him a personal reason as well.

Words: 11,708

This one is so soft. Basically, while looking through time, Stephen keeps showing up in the past at various points throughout Tony’s life. And then they fall in love! Good for them.

T For Tony

Summary: Your soul mark is the first letter of your soulmate's name. Stephen has an 'A'. But he's in love with Tony. Cue anxiety, jealousy, angst.

Words: 2,794

They’re so stupid in this fic. It’s great. It took them so much effort to remember Anthony starts with an A. (I still think this fic should’ve been titled A For Tony, but I didn’t write it, so)

something taken, something new

Summary: The ChronicConnection implement and app allows a person that lives with chronic or illness-induced pain to transfer their burden temporarily to a willing loved one. Tony and Stephen sign up as beta testers.

Words: 14,541.

I must’ve recced this a thousand times ..... AND I’LL DO IT AGAIN. THIS FIC IS THE PERFECT MIXTURE OF SOFT AND ANGST AND IF YOU DON’T READ IT, YOU’RE WRONG.

15 Million

Summary: For every alternate reality there were ten thousand alternate realities from that. And from those ten thousand more. And then ten thousand more off each of those. And so it goes.

The Avengers win once. There’s ten thousand versions of it. 

Stephen Strange doesn’t know what to make of the fact that Tony Stark seems to be *his* victory.

Words: 2,755

Obligatory “Stephen looks through 15 million possible futures and falls in love with Tony in the process fic”. Can’t have a fic rec list without it.

Hero Swap AU

Summary: It's a boring day for the Avengers until Tony Stark attacks.

Words: 17,391.

Just pure, fun crack.

Only a Matter of Time

Summary: Captured by aliens, mistaken for a mating pair, Tony and Stephen find themselves having the universe’s most awkward honeymoon.

Words: 6,056.

Smut. Good smut, though. 

Sunrise in Exile

Summary: Tony does the math and realizes their best chance to save the universe is by... not confronting Thanos on his own turf. 

So he steals a wizard and a spider and a space ship. And he runs.

(Three humans and an A.I in space, the alien friendships they make along the way, and discovering how science and magic might coexist in a universe where they can be one and the same.)

Words: 352,079 (incomplete, has not been updated in a while)

A long fic set during Infinity War where they just ... run away to space. And it’s great.

Rewriting Icarus

Summary: Stephen and Tony, from the beginning to the end and beyond.

Words: 23,504

Pre-powers AU, except they fall in love then get powers. Sad, angsty, beautiful. 

variations on a theme

Summary: Stephen sees into millions of possibilities and finds only one where they win, but he never expected to end up falling in love with Tony Stark in almost every single one of them.

Words: 5,134

Another Stephen looks through the possible futures and falls in love with Tony? ... Guess you can’t have just one. 

Five’s A Party

Summary: It's an orgy fic, I'm not sure what else to say

Words: 2,639

... Not much I can add to that. Magic smut. 

A Lapse in Judgement

Summary: Stephen, the newly minted Sorcerer Supreme, is strong, powerful, and in control of his life in every micromanaged detail, because failure to do so could result in (another) cataclysmic event within the universe. He is. But then Stephen accepts an off-handed offer to spar from Tony Stark – a man who is Stephen’s non-magical equal, a man who Stephen barely sees outside of bi-weekly meetings and the few and far between fight against a villain – and Stark discovers Stephen’s biggest weakness, his most hateful secret that is a deeply fundamental part of Stephen’s psyche.

Except instead of judgement, and horror, and disgust, Stark meets him halfway, and a lapse in judgement turns into a possibility that could change their lives forever.

Words: 22,694

This is the first of a series which was just updated (haven’t finished reading the new part yet, looking forward to it) and is just a really good, surprisingly soft and emotional BDSM series/fic.

Ironstrange Fics and Ironstrange Cinematic Universe

Oh, how did these get here?

Yes, I’m reccing my own work. I’ve written 29 fics and 377,132 words for this ship, I think I’m entitled.

Ironstrange Fics is a collection of every ironstrange fic I’ve written, short, long, sweet, angst, and everything in between. Ironstrange Cinematic Universe (itself responsible for 49% of those 377k words) is my ironstrange rewrite of the MCU specifically. Please read, enjoy, and leave comments, I’m not updating any fics for a couple of weeks and I need the validation. 

[luthienebonyx]

AO3 tag game

Tagged by @mugenmine

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

150*

2. What’s your current AO3 wordcount?

919,916, though that’s not all the fic I’ve ever written. The true total would be somewhere north of 1m words.

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Game of Thrones (TV) (40)

Stargate Atlantis (29)

Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (28)

Once Upon a Time (TV) (15)

Pet Shop of Horrors (5)

Lewis (TV) (4)

HEYER Georgette - Works (4)

A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin (3)

Friday's Child - Georgette Heyer (3)

Doctor Who (3)

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (3)

A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms (3)

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (2)

Hawaii Five-0 (2010) (2)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies) (2)

Angel: the Series (2)

James Bond (Craig Movies) (2)

Battlestar Galactica (1978) (1)

First Monday (TV 2002) (1)

The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner (1)

The Good Wife (TV) (1)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) (1)

Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch (1)

The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien (1)

Hornblower (TV) (1)

Frederica - Georgette Heyer (1)

A Countess Below Stairs - Eva Ibbotson (1)

The Devil Wears Prada (2006) (1)

Xena: Warrior Princess (1)

Which comes to 29 all up, but getting rid of a couple of the umbrella ones, I make it 26 actual fandoms.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Personal Touch (Game of Thrones, Jaime/Brienne) A Fine Romance (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Newt/Tina) A Night to Remember (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Phryne/Jack) In Whisky Veritas (Harry Potter, Snape/Hermione) More Than a Memory (Game of Thrones, Jaime/Brienne)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not.

Nearly always. I view fic as part of the fannish conversation, and comments are a response to the conversation about the characters that I’ve started by writing and posting the fic, so of course I want to continue that exchange by responding. Occasionally comments get away from me because of stuff going on in my life, or I just don’t know how to reply to them so they go unreplied-to, but only very occasionally.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Of those that are still online, I’d say The Rain Keeps Falling, which is a HP story about a lot of strong emotions, including grief, and features a major character death. The angstiest ending I’ve written recently would be We seek him here, we seek him there..., which is a JB Scarlet Pimpernel AU that I should probably write a follow-up to at some point.

7. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve ever written?

I was going to say that I don’t - and then I remembered that actually I have. (What can I say? I’ve been writing for a long time, and things slip my mind. 😂) Probably the most unexpected was a pair of drabbles featuring Willy Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Count D from Pet Shop of Horrors. 

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Once or twice, but very rarely in 22 years of writing and posting fic. The most memorable was the vague death threat I got - probably from a fourteen-year-old who didn’t realise that phrasing their displeasure that way wasn’t the best idea - for a very silly HP fic that was written for the blame someone else challenge, and, well, they blamed me. 😂

9. Do you write smut?

I’ve been writing smut since my first fanfic in 1999. At first, I didn’t realise that writing non-smut was an option, and by the time I learned otherwise, it was too late. 

But yeah, I do like using smut to dig down into the characters and find out what makes them tick, in all sorts of ways. You never know what a character might reveal without meaning to in the course of a sex scene.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

A couple of times. I’ve had multiple fics reposted without permission by an automated fic harvesting site that was trying to monetise fic and took a whole lot of fic by many people. I had to send them a C & D letter. 

I’ve also had a story stolen by another fan and reposted as their own work. I think in that case they thought the story was old and obscure and so no one would notice, but it was actually old and well-known and people noticed immediately. Very luckily for me, other people went after that one and yelled at the ‘author’ as soon as they saw it, and it was taken down before I had to do anything.

11. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No, I haven’t, actually! Maybe, one day, with the right person.

12. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Weeeell, the problem I have in answering this question is that I don’t really have favourite ships. I have favourite characters, and then I have the ship that works best for me with whichever character is my favourite. I guess Jaime/Brienne is my favourite in the sense that, unusually for me, my love for both characters is almost equal.

13. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Xena: Warrior Princess. I stumbled into fandom completely by accident, spent a few months reading and lurking, and then decided “I could do that.” So I did.

14. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

If I’d been asked that question a year ago, I would have had a hard time answering. But now I actually do have a favourite fic of my own. It’s That Greek Thing, the fandom is Friday’s Child - Georgette Heyer, and I wrote it for Yuletide last year.

I’d been talking about writing a fic for those characters for about twenty years, but I never quite reached the point of actually writing it. I first read Heyer when I was thirteen and she was very formative for me in certain important ways. I didn’t want to try to write in her world if I didn’t think I could do it justice. So this fic was a VERY long time coming, and when I finally wrote it, it turned out to be sort of the ultimate fanfic for me. It was VERY hard to let go after it was done. It’s exactly the story that I so wished someone would write for those characters - which is really why I write fanfic at all, when it comes right down to it.

* The font is huge without the asterisk. I don’t understand this hell site.

Tagging: @samirant @robotsdance @firesign23 @albatrossisland @schweetheart @blatheringbluejay @woodelf68 and anyone else who wants to do it

[yourfinalbow]

hi lol this is totally random but based on a harry potter post you just reblogged and you can completely ignore me if you want, but do you think snape deserved better, or are you a quote unquote "snape apologist"? I'm genuinely curious cuz I've come across a lot of different opinions on severus. Again, feel free to ignore :)

This ended up way longer than it needed to be, and I apologize for that lmao.

Hi! Hmmm I have many mixed opinions on this. First we have to talk about which Snape. Book!Snape is actually kind of an asshole, and not in the fun way. (Way more than I remembered.) But but but Alan Rickman!Snape I like a lot.

And no I'm not mentioning Snape from TCC. That was not Snape and that world was not Harry Potter.

Snape is an interesting character because of how flawed and layered he is.

(Putting a cut because it's so long, and tw for non-detailed mentions/reference to abuse, as well as both trauma and death.)

He wasn't born in a very good household, which I can definitely see as being a reason for why he is who he is. (A reason, not an excuse. Those are two extremely different things.) You look at Sirius, who also came from a horrible household, yet he managed to dig himself out of the mud and make his own path for himself. (Though I have many angsty headcanons for the thoughts he has and being afraid of what he will do and in turn his own mind. WolfStar solidarity. Neither one of them know what they are truly capable of, and both are completely afraid to find out.

Ahem sorry I got a little distracted there.

During the Marauder's era, Snape wasn't a good person in general, but he tried to be nice to Lily. (One of the only exceptions he made.) That being said, (sorry, going on a tangent again), it does not excuse what the Marauders did. As much as they are, in my humble opinion, JK's greatest creation, they should be held accountable for both the prank, and dangling Snape upside down. (Though Remus does make a few good points in their defense later, it's still not an excuse.) Two wrongs never make a right.

Snape doesn't deny Lily's claims at him wanting to join a supremacy group, nor does he say he isn't friends with Death Eaters.

It's clear through the flashbacks we're given that Snape is apathetic in the face of innocent people dying, but once again Lily is the exception.

Dumbledore defends Snape by saying it wasn't his fault that Harry's parents are dead. I actually semi-agree with this. On one hand, he was directly at fault, but on the other hand he had no way of knowing. As a severe Loki apologist, I do not blame Loki for Frigga's death. He may have led the dark elves to her, but he didn't know it was her she was sending them to. That's the comparison I make in my mind, and so I don't completely blame him like other people do. (One could also make the argument that Sirius is to blame. Sirius, who is 100% my favorite character in the entire franchise, gave the secret keeper job to Peter, thinking it would be safer with him. However, he had no ill will or malicious intentions towards Lily, James, and Harry, so I don't blame him.)

All that being said, Snape not only would have been fine with random people dying, he also didn't care whether or not James and Harry lived.

For context:

(Dumbledore is speaking, right after Snape comes to him for help.)

"You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child?" They can die, as long as you have what you want?"

Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore.

He has a strange relationship with Lily. He obviously loves her, but not enough to want to stop Voldemort from killing the two things that bring her the most amount of happiness. It's clear he doesn't care about anyone except for Lily. Which on some level, I can understand why. When people have traumatic childhoods, they tend to hold on to a person that was there for them. Sometimes it can be the hands of the person who caused them pain in the first place, but other times it is another person who was there for him. He holds Lily's opinions of himself higher than anybody else, and he holds Lily above anybody else, and I think this can be attributed to some sort of trauma response, which is why his love for her is so unusual. That doesn't mean I think he should be fine with killing innocent people.

On the topic of trauma, I think joining the Death Eaters was another response to this, as well as a result of what kind of family he had.

Similar to both Harry and Voldemort, Snape much preferred Hogwarts to where he lived, and such the castle became his home more than his house ever was.

The Death Eaters could offer him something he had never been offered before. He belonged to something. In his own, twisted, traumatic mindset, he might have even almost seen the Death Eaters as a family. Not consciously of course, but there was definitely a feeling of belonging they gave him.

And there's something to be said about the fact that many serial killers in real life come from an abusive family. I don't pretend to understand the minds of someone who can do something so vile, but I have watched enough Criminal Minds episodes to know what they long for is control.

So being apart of this supremacy group, even though he was a half-blood himself and undoubtedly didn't entirely share Voldermort's racist beliefs, gave him both control and something he belonged to.

It's not an excuse, but it's a reason.

Alternatively, you can look at it through a quote from the most recent episode of Loki.

"It's part of the illusion. It's a cruel, elaborate trick conjured by the weak to inspire fear."

So it's also possible that when he was a kid, he thought being a villain was the only way to prevent others from being one to him.

Ok sorry, back on the chronological track.

So he agrees to change sides and work with Dumbledore. (Who must see just how distraught Snape was over Lily's death, to trust him immediately.)

Snape spends most of Harry's time at Hogwarts humiliating his own students. He particularly calls out Harry and his friends a lot, but I can definitely see this being a defence mechanism. He assumes Harry is James and reverts back to what we talked about earlier. (Becoming the villain so nobody else has a chance.)

But but but, he does a lot of good throughout the books. Snape mutters the countercurse, saving Harry from Quirrell during the Quidditch match. He then actually referees at the next match, preventing anything from happening altogether.

In retrospective, we see that he spends most of the first book helping Dumbledore by protecting the stone, and helping Lily by protecting Harry.

Now I could go through and list the goods and the bads of Snape throughout the entire series, but I have neither the time nor the patience, and I think you get the point.

(Except I would like the mention that Snape becomes a double agent for Dumbledore in book four, and risks his life every single day by constantly betraying Voldermort, and never once does he use this as a way to double cross Dumbledore. This was actually probably really hard on him. You can assume that having to pretend to be a Death Eater means he had to do some despicable things just so he didn't blow his cover. If he really has changed by this time, which I would like to think he has, is a lot of added guilt to live with.)

(I would also mention that he tried to save Sirius in book five, but... *falls on floor dramatically* I don't want to think about it.)

Severus Snape's time comes to the end in book seven. At the hands of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, his death is a valiant act of sacrifice. Protecting the living and defending the honour of the fallen.

So, he has done a lot of bad in his lifetime, but by the time we as readers get to know him, his fundamental set of beliefs have begun to change. Through the eyes of what started as an eleven year old boy, you can definitely see that even after this he wasn't necessarily a good person.

And that's because his good is behind the scenes. He's good on a larger scale. He's chosen the light over darkness, but in his everyday life he's still the scared, traumatized little kid he's always been.

And him being this way has reasons, but these reasons are not excuses.

Sorry anon, this kind of turned into a long winded review of the entire character. I know that's not really what you asked, so I'll sum it up in a final few sentences sentence.

Yes. I wish Snape had gotten to live. Not because I'm necessarily a "Snape apologist", but because I find his character interesting, and seeing his reaction to his sacrifice could have been a really good read. Also Harry coming up and thanking him would have been really touching, and as a cherry on top maybe we could have gotten to read Harry apologizing for his father. Maybe even Snape sharing memories of Lily?! (Sorry that might have gotten a little to fanfic-y.)

That being said, his death being a final sacrifice towards the good of everyone, and a final testimony to his change of heart, was -- and I'll give JK credit just this once -- good storytelling, and a good way to end it.

Also I like movie!Snape because fuck yeah he's just so awesome.

If anyone has anything to add/take away, or they just want to discuss the wonder that was Alan Rickman, let me know! (Ask/Comment/Reblog/Etc.)

[retrogamingyiz]

You’re illiterate, Harry!

Its finally almost Fall! The summer this year in Tennessee was harsh, but soon the leaves will be changing and the seasonal decor that I adore so much will be in full force. There are quite a few things that immediately put me in the fall/Halloween mood like Medievil for PS1, Nightmare on Elm St., Hocus Pocus (The DOS game not the movie), and of course: Harry Potter novels, I’m sorry but as much as I love Alan Rickman as Snape. The movies are complete garbage to me. Which is kind of funny, because Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone movie from 2001 was my very first taste of the cult phenomenal series that has absolutely has delighted people of various ages since the late 90s. I had heard there were books, my behavior mod teacher had offered to read Sorcerer’s Stone to me due to the fact that well...in third grade I couldn’t read, at all! I have mentioned some of my rough childhood before in my recent posts on this still very new blog, but maybe I should elaborate on what caused this lack of literacy at nine years of age. So, my mom was kind of a free spirit and my dad didn’t know how to dad (he too was also kind of for a lack of a nicer word, very very dumb to boot.) The thing is, before I had started school my mom had lost both of her parents and it had left her emotionally broken and distraught to the point she had begun to, what I would learn years later: Abusing her xanax, something she would do for years and years. Only letting up enough to become aware of herself and us when I had become thirteen years old. Thankfully, with her passing in 2019 I did not experience the same reaction to her death as she had her parents. As I learned what happened all those years ago, I would come to completely disagree with how she handled her grief, which was at a detriment to me and my brother. However, I completely understood. I digress on this situation though. So in 2001, because of the situation at home. I couldn’t read, this was a really rough con for me because it affected me in many ways. I couldn’t get very far in video games that had clues for gameplay that you had to read, I couldn’t follow written directions because, you guessed it: I couldn’t read them. It was a very difficult time for me. Enter my elementary school Behavioral Mod teacher, Mrs. Lisa. This was one of several women who filled in as ‘mom’ in my life, several of them being teachers and two of those teacher’s names being some variation of Lisa/Lesa! Anyways, in third grade Mrs. Lisa went to work getting me to read. She would pull me up to the side of her desk and teach me bit by bit. I will be honest with you that thats pretty much all that I remember, the most vivid memory I have is what it led to. On a Wednesday in October of 2002, which was library day and the day I was recommended by Mrs. Lisa to check out Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The adventure of a lifetime is what ensued for me. As I went through the book, I found myself being drawn more and more into the lore, the world, the characters, the adventure of a lifetime. In our special ed classroom there was a padded room in the very back next to the lockers. Usually it was utilized when one of the rougher kids was having a melt down or hissy fit. Me on the other hand? Once I finished my work, I would voluntarily request to use the room as a sort of reading nook because it was quiet and honestly quite comfortable. Eventually, I would move on to middle school and would say farewell to Mrs. Lisa and was introduced to Mr. Moffet who was to me at the time: A dickhead. It took me sometime to realize I didn’t like change and was rebelling due to puberty, which affected how I felt about Mr. Moffet who I would realize years later was a kind, patient man and I wish I could apologize now for how I treated him back then. Going back to Harry Potter, I actually attended middle school the year Half Blood Prince was released and I managed to strike up a deal with the librarian that if I reread all the Harry Potter books before Halfblood came out, I could check out the single copy they had preordered first and I would get an awesome order of the phoenix leather book mark. The catch? I only had a month to read 5 books, with the last two big T H I C C. Yet, I pulled through, got the awesome book mark and was the first to check out Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince. Which apparently, I had pissed off an honor student who was given the same goal. Nice. Fall would always be special to me, because of Harry Potter. Because of the neighborhood I grew up in that was more like a congregation of family than just neighbors, because of Mrs. Lisa and those years at Westhills Elementary, because all those dear precious moments that I will always wish to relive, but that can only be granted in my dreams and every now and then my wish is granted. Fall and Halloween will always be special to me because of this long gone days, when a little boy who couldn’t read was given something that would stick with him for years to come. I would come back into contact with Mrs. Lisa years later on Facebook and I told her something that I feel the need to say again. Thank you Mrs. Lisa, I know it was just your job but what you taught me meant the world to that little illiterate boy. Thank you... This is Yisreald, signing off.

[bush-viper-cutie]

“Back to Normal” || YEAR 3 – Ch.18 (HP au)

                              Chapter List

<-- Last Chapter                          Next Chapter -->

Day posted: 9/9/2020

Word count: 3, 395

Relationship: EVENTUAL severus X oc (slow burn)

Rating: E for everyone

Warnings: none

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A/N: This is my first fan fic I’m writing mainly as a way to practice. This is a retelling of the hp books with an inserted character. Although most every character will be written about, this is mostly for the pro snape fandom. Please do not fear, although this is a severus x oc story, it is an incredibly slow burn as I do not intend for them to get together at all until after the final book events. Chapters will be posted twice a week.

This derivative work follows the events of the Harry Potter books by Jk Rowling and is intended as a fun way to practice my writing. Thank you for reading :D

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Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall set Harry down on a bed and went to talk to Madam Pomphrey. He still hadn’t stirred the whole way up the lawn or at any point through the castle. Heather, Hermione, and Ron had followed close behind, holding back tears.

They took their seats next to Harry’s bed and sat there as Madam Pomphrey mumbled angrily under her breath as she looked him over.

“ – Should have canceled that match – Like I had said – but no – ” She pushed the sheets up to Harry’s shoulders. “I’ll be back with my wand. He’s fine,” she assured them.

Ron gave Heather an arm squeeze and she nodded, taking in what she said. Harry was fine. He’s been through worse… it was only a fifty-foot drop or so.

Professor McGonagall had left with Professor Dumbledore and come back with a bundle under a grey wool blanket. She gave it to Heather and sighed heavily before walking away.

Ron checked what it was and squeaked. “It was a good broom… The best.”

“They must have canceled the match after this, wouldn’t they? How many players can you have before the game has to be canceled?” Hermione looked out the window at the storm clouds nervously.

Her question wasn’t answered until twenty minutes later when the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, all muddy and sore, came rushing into the hospital wing looking for Harry. Fred and George sat on the bed on the other side of him, joined by the three chasers, Alicia, Katie, and Angelina.

“How is he?” Fred looked at Ron for answers, seeing as Hermione was still staring out the window, avoiding looking at Harry, and Heather couldn’t do anything but stare at Harry.

Ron nodded, “He’s fine. Just knocked cold. Madam Pomphrey already went over him and gave him some kind of goo,” he made a face. “Didn’t look edible.”

“He was real lucky the ground was so soft. All that mud broke his fall,” Fred nudged George.

George sighed, “Was really worried. We thought he was dead.”

“Wood even called for a reschedule – too bad we didn’t get one,” Alicia shook her head. “Poor Harry.”

Heather had been staring at Harry’s face when she saw his eyes squeeze. She stood and got on the bed next to him, “Harry?”

His eyes fluttered open. “Ow.” He rubbed his head and winced, “Everything hurts.”

“Well you did fall from the sky, Harry,” Hermione sniffled.

“How’re you feeling, Harry?” Fred asked, leaning in closer. “You gave George quite a fright.”

George hit his arm, “I wasn’t the one shaking on my broom.”

“What happened?” Harry sat up suddenly, looking at all their faces.

“You fell. From VERY high, so lay back down.” Heather pushed him back.

“We thought… We thought you’d died,” Katie was shaking under Angelina’s arm.

Hermione sniffed again.

“Yeah, I remember that. I mean the match! What happened? Did we win?” He stared at Fred and George but they looked away, rubbing their necks. “We LOST?”

“Right after you fell, Diggory got the Snitch. He hadn’t realized what was happening below and caught it while you fell – ”

“He wanted a rematch, though. Him and Wood argued with Madam Hooch the rest of the time we were out there, but according to the rules, it’s fair – ”

“Even Wood agreed in the end.”

Harry looked around. “Where is Wood?”

“Still in the showers,” Angelina said.

Fred leaned in again, “We think he’s trying to drown himself in there.”

Fred and George laughed but Harry pressed his hands to his face and shook his head. Heather looked at them and frowned.

“It’s alright, Harry!” Fred shook his shoulder.

“You’ve never missed the Snitch before,” George reminded him.

“There had to be at least one time you did.”

Heather pulled Harry’s hands away, “You can make it up against Ravenclaw. Right?”

“Yeah!” Fred shook his shoulder again. “We lost by a hundred points so Hufflepuff just needs to lose to Ravenclaw and we have to beat both Ravenclaw and Slytherin!”

“’Cept Hufflepuff never lose to Ravenclaw…”

“Well if Hufflepuff loses to Slytherin – ”

“Sure, that’ll happen for sure but Slytherin won’t be losing to Ravenclaw so our match – ”

“You could throw it for Harry, couldn’t you. Humble Malfoy a bit –”

“Ron!” Heather glared at him.

“You don’t need to throw the match,” George reassured them. “A hundred point margin could go either way, really.”

“Doesn’t really matter yet, if you think about it,” Fred agreed.

The team left and it was just Heather, Hermione, and Ron left by Harry’s side as he stared vacantly at the ceiling above.

“Did you see Dumbledore on his way out?” Hermione was asking them. “He seemed deadly angry.”

Ron nodded. “Never seen him so mad.” He looked back at Harry, “Furious the dementors had come onto the grounds.”

They all stared at Harry, who still hadn’t moved since finding out Gryffindor had lost.

He turned to them, as if realizing they were still there. He looked around. “Did… someone get my Nimbus?”

They looked at the pile of snapped wood on the far chair.

“Well…” Heather looked at Ron.

“I-it… Broke. Snapped in half, actually.”

“What?” Harry sat up again and was pushed back down by Hermione.

“When you fell the winds carried it and… dropped it off on the Whomping Willow.” Hermione kept her hand on Harry’s shoulder, preventing him from bolting up again.

“In half? How will I play!”

“Alright, visiting time’s over.”

They were glad for Madam Pomphrey’s interruption. Heather wasn’t sure how to answer his question just yet. It seemed like they had the money for another Nimbus Two-Thousand, but how they’d get to Diagon Alley in London and purchase it before his next match was the real problem, especially if they couldn’t even go to the village just below the castle gates.

They left him to rest and while Ron and Hermione went to Hogsmeade that weekend for more candy, Heather stayed by Harry’s side, studying and playing wizard chess with him. Neither of them where any good so she spent most of the time studying and Harry sleeping.

Lots of people came by on Saturday. Hagrid brought huge yellow flowers the size of Heather’s whole head, Ginny brought a get-well card she made herself – handing it over with a furious blush, and all of the team came by again with Wood.

“Don’t blame you, Harry. It was those dementors that ruined the game,” he had said. They could tell he was telling the truth, despite his sullen face and angry eyes.

On Sunday, Harry was finally feeling better enough to sit up and talk. They were on their third attempt of wizard chess when he paused and looked at her, opening his mouth to say something and then didn’t.

“What is it Harry?”

He crossed his arms and looked down at his feet under the white sheets. “I-I saw the… grim. Again. Right before I fell.”

Heather bit her lip. She really shouldn’t be encouraging this but… “I saw it too! In the sky! Right before you fell. I couldn’t believe the clouds had really formed – ”

“It wasn’t just the clouds, Heather! The grim was actually there. In the stadium, a few seats above you.”

She stared at him. “Harry… The grim is an omen, a symbol… Not an actual living thing.”

He frowned. “But the dog, just before I almost got run over by the Knight Bus! It was there again!”

“Harry. The same thing being used as an omen makes it seem like the grim is a creature. The book says the death omen shows up in many places – it never mentions any creature actually BEING the grim.”

He raised his brow, “You’ve been doing research?”

She blushed. Just because it was ridiculous to think that Professor Trelawney was right about the grim didn’t mean she shouldn’t be studying it on her own just to be sure. Especially if it had to do with Harry and the fact that every year something horrible happens.

“I’ve been reading our textbook. So what? You should try it some time.”

Monday morning felt like the world was back to normal again. Harry was back and even Draco had ditched his sling once again. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except for Draco doing constant imitations and impersonations of dementors and Harry when he fell off his broom. Of course, it had been raining so hard that he wouldn’t have been able to see anything but a falling red streak, but everyone around him still laughed anyways.

Every chance Draco had to show off his horrible acting skills, he took. During potions he had decided that the best use of his time after he’d turned in his potion was to close his robes up all the way with the hood up and go around their table booing like a ghost.

“Shove off,” Ron pushed Draco back.

Draco laughed and went back to his seat.

“Why isn’t he doing anything?” Hermione was glaring at Professor Snape for letting Draco run around like that. “If that were me – ”

“Gryffindors would be at negative five-hundred points,” Harry rolled his eyes. “He’s a Slytherin though, so – ”

Heather scoffed. “Excuse me. But if that were ME I’d be serving detention for life. And I’m a Slytherin.”

“Well I’M not looking at any progress here and if I were you, I’d stop this bickering and get back to work.” Professor Snape narrowed his eyes at them. He looked down at Heather’s potion and tisked, “Done, I presume?”

Heather nodded and ladled her potion into her jar. “It looks like Malfoy’s… Doesn’t it?”

Professor Snape chuckled and snatched the jar from her hand, stalking away. She sighed and took out her potions guide and textbook, wondering where she was going wrong.

“OOOO!” Draco was back with his arms outstretched at Harry, bobbing up and down under his black robes.

“We said quit it!” Ron picked up the crocodile heart he’d accidently left out of his potion and threw it at Draco.

It smacked him right in the face and he stumbled back, holding his cheek. “Ow! Weasley!” he growled.

“Enough! Draco, back to your seat. Weasley,” Professor Snape glared at him, “Fifty points from Gryffindor. There will be no throwing – any – potions ingredients in my classroom. Get a mop and wipe that blood before someone slips on it.”

Ron nodded and ran out of the room for a mop.

“Only Gryffindor gets points taken away?” Hermione hadn’t even bothered to raise her hand.

Professor Snape made a growling sort of noise and looked away, sitting back at his desk with his arms crossed.

The bells rang and they packed up, walking out of the class in a hurry and stopped at a suit of armor just before the Defense classroom. They waited, looking down the corridor at everyone who walked by or walked into the classroom.

“No sign of Snape.”

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t in there. Hermione, you check.”

Hermione walked over to the door and opened it a crack, peering inside. She gave them a thumbs up and walked in.

Professor Lupin was back behind his desk, looking more worn out than when they had first met him on the train. His clothes hung off him more loosely and he had deep grey circles under his eyes. Heather wondered how bad his cold had gotten since they talked. He hadn’t been in the hospital wing so he must have been in bed all weekend.

She opened her textbook as he asked the class how Friday’s lesson was and saw her essay on werewolves.

The class erupted and started calling out everything that had gone wrong that lesson.

“He gave us homework even though he was only filling in!”

“Two parchments? On werewolves? We don’t know anything about them!”

“ – TWO rolls – ”

Professor Lupin frowned. “Did you tell him we were on hinkypunks?”

“Yes, but he insisted!”

“ – And he said we were really behind – ”

“Well you can forget about the essays. I’ll speak to Professor Snape about all this. On to our lesson. Hinkypunks.” He pulled the cover off the tank on his desk to reveal a one-legged creature holding out what looked like a lantern.

There was smoke and mist floating all around the creature and only the lantern was crisply visible. Professor Lupin shut the windows and in the darkness they could make out the shape of it better, seeing that the hand holding the lantern had long claws and it’s pale eyes were glaring at everyone, watching them all carefully behind the glass as the yellow lantern light reflected dimly off its eyes.

“Tricky creatures, Hinkypunks,” Professor Lupin started the lecture and they began taking notes. “They lure people into bogs with the lantern. They follow the light into its den and then – ”

The Hinkypunk thumped against the glass and scratched with his caws. He tried biting his way free and ended up making a disgusting squelching noise, similar to that of a dead bloated mouse being stepped on.

The bells rang and Professor Lupin covered the Hinkypunk up again. They packed up and before Harry was out the door, Professor Lupin called him back. Heather, Hermione, and Ron left with everyone else, who seemed infinitely more happy about this lesson than the one from Friday with Professor Snape.

“Wait for me,” Ron headed to the boy’s bathrooms down a passageway.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t turn in the essay. I finished it Friday night.”

“I did too.” Heather added quickly.

“Well maybe Professor Snape will take it anyways,” Hermione turned to leave and Heather pulled her back.

“Are you mad? He’ll take more points off your house if you go talk to him now. I wouldn’t even try it after today’s lesson, and he doesn’t hate me as much as he hates you guys.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, “He asked us to do this work. He HAS to give me points for it somehow.” She turned and left down the stairs.

Heather shook her head. Was Hermione hoping he’d include it in the grades for potions? She sighed and headed back to the Defense classroom, poking her head inside.

“Why were they at the match?”

Professor Lupin closed his briefcase, “They’re just hungry. And you were all a giant bowl of food for them to feast on.”

Heather let the door shut behind her. “The dementors?”

Harry nodded.

“Don’t worry, Professor Dumbledore won’t let them on the grounds again. They only came on because they’re supply of human prey has been taken away from them and with all the excitement on the Quidditch field – well – it was sort of like a feast, just waiting for them.” Professor Lupin leaned on his desk. “Professor Dumbledore wasn’t joking when he said they were dangerous.”

“How did Sirius Black escape them then?” Heather looked at Professor Lupin and noticed he seemed extra distant.

After a moment he responded. “Well, to begin with, the fortress is on a tiny island out in the middle of the ocean. But that’s not what keeps the prisoners stuck there. No. The walls and ocean isn’t even what I’d consider the prison to be. Azkaban is only the place that holds all those criminals locked inside their heads, unable to escape the misery inside their minds. Weeks, months, years… without a single happy thought… They’re all mad there. And defenseless. See, if you’re left too long at a dementor’s whim, they drain your magical powers…”

He hadn’t answered her question but the picture he had painted them in their heads was enough to stop her from asking again. It was all over wizard news about how dangerous Sirius Black is… and now she knew why. No wonder everyone at school always talked about how scary it was that he had escaped. And now he was after Harry, angry that Harry had defeated his master… She shuddered.

“But you made the dementor on the train go away… and Ron said Professor Dumbledore made them leave the field – ”

“There are defense spells to use against them… but the more there are… It was incredible hearing about how many Professor Dumbledore had been able to expel with only one use of it.” He stroked his chin, “Really wish I could have been there to see that.”

“Teach me?”

“Teach us,” Heather corrected. “Will it be part of this year’s lessons?”

“No – I’m no expert in fighting them, really. One on a train is the most – ” he looked at them and sighed. “If you really wanted to learn to fight dementors you should actually ask – ”

“I don’t need to learn to fight a whole bunch… just maybe one or two. If they show up on the quidditch field again… and come near me…”

“Who should we ask instead?” Heather was desperate to know who Professor Lupin thought was an expert in dealing with dementors.

“I don’t want anyone else to know about… what we talked about. Could you just show us? Just enough to do what you did? So that I could do that?” Harry cut Professor Lupin off before he could even speak.

Professor Lupin chuckled at the look of determination on Harry’s face. “If… you insist… I’ll help you two learn it – But these lessons will have to start next term, after the holidays. I’m hoping Professor Snape can tweak the potion just enough to have a stronger effect… so that I can recover from this illness quicker. Wizard colds can be real tricky sometimes,” he laughed.

Heather gave Harry a look and he groaned, keeping his mouth shut. “Alright then. After Christmas?”

Professor Lupin smiled, “Alright.”

They left the classroom to find Ron leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.

“What part of ‘Wait for me’ did no one understand? Where’s Hermione?”

Heather sighed, “Probably off getting more points removed from – ”

“I’m right here.”

They all jumped and turned behind them to see Hermione walking out of the ancient runes classrooms down the corridor.

“I just needed to ask my teacher a question.”

“Did you talk to Professor Snape?”

“Snape? We’re already down a hundred-fifty, please tell me – ”

“He took my essay and gave Gryffindor back a single point. Happy?” She crossed her arms. “ONE point? For two rolls?”

Heather couldn’t help but laugh. If Hermione got a point, then she was sure she could get Slytherin at least double. They headed down to the library to study, and after lunch she went down to Professor Snape’s office.

She knocked on the door three times and waited. The door swung open and she stepped in, her essay in hand. He was sitting at his desk grading papers when he looked up and rolled his eyes.

“Let me guess… The werewolf essay.” He stared at her as she approached and stuck out his hand for it, snatching it from her hand. He looked through it quickly and handed it back. “A point to Slytherin.”

“Just one?” She looked over her essay and frowned. “Was it worse than Hermione’s?”

“They were both awful, but at least yours was more concise. Yes. A point. What more do you want for doing your homework? Applause?”

She blushed and looked away, frowning. “Do I leave it here or…”

Professor Snape leaned back and curled a finger to his lips, tapping them as he thought. “Keep it,” he said slowly. “You never know when… it’ll come in handy.”

“But all this is in the textbook anyways.”

He rolled his eyes and leaned forward, looking annoyed. “But I doubt Professor Lupin will manage to cover that this year.”

Heather nodded and walked out of his office, closing the door behind her. “We’re not THAT behind.” If he thought he could a better Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher why wasn’t he one already. She headed back to the common room and stuffed the two rolls in her trunk.

She looked around and closed the door, making sure Pansy and her other dormmates were not in sight. She very rarely got a chance to open up the books she had taken from the library. She picked up the transfiguration one and started a new section in her art journal. “‘Chapter one: Thirty supervise-required spells’.”

~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~

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[bave-de-crapaud]

The Darkness Within...

CHAPTER THREE

Request by: lovely @belladonnarey  A/N: very much enjoyed writing this. enjoy my loves, and as always, comments most welcome xx

Sirius x reader Older Sirius Sirius lives/ Post Azkaban Slow burn and eventual smut

Word count: +2800 Disclaimer:  all characters are assumed 18+ Warnings: light smut, NSFW, 18+,

———

Sirius POV

Sirius stood frozen as the door of Grimmauld Place closed in front of him and Remus had turned to the kitchen.

What the fuck just happened? In the space of seven hours, he had gone from excited, to tortured, to fearful, to confused and then what? A quiet admiration? All towards one person.

Sirius was a reckless man yes, but he did not let people or a person get under his skin so much. He had learnt the hard way to push down his feelings to survive, first in his family and second in Azkaban.

Yet he was at a loss for the multiple emotions swirling around his head. He tried to focus on the strongest feelings, process those and move on but the foremost emotions battling around his brain were amazement and shock, followed by a warm light tingling sensation he hadn’t had in a long time and did not want to deal with right now.

Sirius sighed and looked up at his mother’s portrait. A crooked smile played on his features as the curtains, still smoking from Y/N’s fire, fluttered almost angrily at him.

Scratching his jaw and exhaling softly, Sirius headed down the hall, calling out to Remus to pour him a drink as well. They had many things to discuss.

———

Over at your place, things weren’t as calm. You had managed to apparate onto your doorstep, landing slightly unceremoniously on a pot of ivy. The pain was increasing. It wasn’t as bad as you had anticipated, certainly not the same level as the cruciatus curse. This meant the worst was still to come. You shuddered at the thought.

Fumbling with the lock on your front door you stumbled into your apartment, legs refusing to cooperate.

“Quill, quill, parchment…” You mumbled to yourself, eyesight blurred as you struggled to glance around your living room.

On the windowsill was a strip of parchment; on top of it a quill. “Accio parchment!” It soared through the air, hitting you on the head as your reflexes failed you, falling to the floor at your feet.

Holding your temple, you gasped as your legs gave way and you dropped to the floor. You felt an out of body experience as the curse blew through you. Still you were expecting far worse than this. Reaching for your quill you tried in vain to scribble a coherent sentence your bones aching and muscles pinching you holding your movements back.

A thud behind your eyes was growing, beating a constant tattoo behind your eyelids. It made seeing what you were doing impossible.

You couldn’t move your arms to hold your head which was still smarting from the knock caused by Remus earlier. You closed your eyes and curled up in a ball, and as the tears started rolling down your cheeks the pain reached a crescendo, everything went black, and you remembered no more.

————

“We are going to want more than tea, Moony.” Sirius reentered the kitchen of Grimmauld Place addressing Remus who stood with two mugs of tea, pouring hot water from the kettle.

He looked up at Sirius and frowned before comprehension dawned on his face.

“You split Y/N’s curse didn’t you?” Sirius nodded.

“Bloody heck Sirius, you could have warned me!”

“I’m warning you now, mate. Firewhiskey’s on the top shelf over there.” Sirius pointed to a cabinet above the stove.

Remus sighed and looked at his friend, half exasperated and half proud. “So instead of doing what Y/N suggested you half cursed her, siphoning off the rest of the side effects to you and I?” “Not half.” Sirius corrected. “It still needs to be enough pain to knock her out and convince the Death Eaters she really was cursed but she won’t be out for days, more likely 10 hours as we’ll get some of the pain, minimising hers.” “Where did you learn to do that? I have read about it but heard it takes um… practice” Remus asked carefully. “My mother used to make me practise curses on animals, I didn’t want to but if I didn’t she would curse them and it would be much worse. I found the charm to measure and siphon off part or all of the curse and used to do that, pretending to curse things but really feeling it myself.”

Remus, looked down and nodded at this. Every now and then Sirius would surprise him by highlighting he wasn’t just an arrogant prankster but a kind and noble man. Deep down.

“Well I’m impressed Padfoot.” Said Remus handing Sirius a bottle of Firewhiskey and two tumblers. “Not to sound like an arsehole, but why did you drag me into this - couldn’t you have taken it by yourself?”

Knowing he was joking Sirius laughed before adding, “You sort of owe her, Moony.” “Remus stared at him. “What for?”

“She lost her dog protecting you mate! Her dog!”

“Oh I knew you would bring that up, always sensitive about the dog.” Remus smiled before a somber look took over his features. “I do feel terrible about that so fair enough.” He accepted the now full glass proffered by Sirius, but paused before taking a sip.

“So tell me, what are we in for?”

Sirius gave Remus a side smile, pointing at the glass in his hand. “Let’s just say we need to get drunk…”

————

“Ow, fuck Moony! That was a bad one!” Sirius clutched his stomach as a piercing cramp rolled through his abdomen.

Beer bottles and firewhisky littered the kitchen table where the two men had sat for the past three hours getting steadily and steadily more pissed as they waited for the phantom pains to pass.

“Sssseriously, Siriusssslllly aha Moony.” Grinned Sirius. “Thiss has gotta be worse than con-contractions!”

“Don’t say that in front of Wolly Measley!” Remus and Sirius both giggled, and then very quickly groaned aloud holding various parts of their bodies as the curse delivered more pain.

“WHEN WILL IT END?!” “You bloody made the curse Footpad. Hoo-You tell me?” Remus scoffed at his friend. “It is easing off now though, I’d hizzzard a gas mmmmm two hours left!”

“You are tobably, protally right as usssual Mooooons.”

Remus waved his hands in front of him like an orchestra conductor and took a bow. Unfortunately forgetting he was sitting and hitting his forehead on the table as he bent forward far too low.

Sirius roared with laughter, as Remus rubbed his sore furrowed brow, chuckling alongside Sirius.

They were still giggling as the flames in Sirius kitchen fireplace gleamed green and Madeye Moody stepped out.

Eying both men and the table full of booze, Moody shook his head.

“We’re fit-shaced!” Sirius exclaimed happily. “I can see that.” Moody replied as Remus tried and failed to make an inconspicuous ‘shussing’ gesture at Sirius behind his hand.

“They’ve found her.” Moody continued.

“Oh YYYY-YAY!” Remus hiccuped.

“The ‘Death Eaters’ found her.” Moody emphasised.

“Oh, so not yay.” Remus corrected himself.

“Isssshe good all? I mean all good?” Slurred Sirius

“She managed to get in her front door and look like she was trying to send a message before she passed out. I watched her house myself and saw the aftermath.”

He paused, waiting to see if Sirius and Remus were keeping up in their drunk states.

“They believe she was cursed at any rate and are on the hunt for Macnair as it became clear he hadn’t delivered her Voldemort’s parcel. Dumbledore is going to keep an eye out. She is recovering at her house now. So, congratulations on performing a convincing cover story.”

“Sold you I could to it…do it!” Cheered Sirius while Remus placed one hand over his chest, the other still rubbing his forehead.

“Huurumph.” Moody turned and stalked back to the fire place calling over his shoulder.

“The next time, don’t siphon off the curse, Sirius. I have had a headache for four hours.”

Remus, who had been attempting to take a sip of beer, choked at Moody’s words. Mouth agape and beer dripping down his chin, he pointed at Sirius who giggled sending them both into crackling laughter as Moody whooshed away into the floo.

———-

Several hours later Sirius lifted his head from the kitchen table. From the look of the light outside it was mid-morning. He groaned and pushed himself up blinking heavily.

Remus was nowhere to be seen, likely he put himself to bed after Sirius had passed out. Funny, Sirius could have sworn they moved into the living room after Moody’s visit.

He stepped over to one of his kitchen cabinets, pulled the door open and fumbled inside until his hands grasped the bottle he had been searching for; the Hangover Draught.

He quickly gulped it down and lent against the bench, head hanging low while he waited for the potion to take affect.

It had been a strange night as he and Remus had grappled with the offset of his curse.

Remus had probed into Sirius’ motivations for sharing Y/N’s pain in the first place.

Not being able to give Remus a satisfactory answer, Sirius was subject to what he used to call ‘The Moony Prefect Stare’ - an annoying smug look Remus would save for him and James at school when Remus knew they were hiding something and had a good idea of what that something was.

In all honesty Sirius didn’t know why he had decided to help Y/N. Perhaps it was somewhere in between the 5th question of her veritiserum trial and the look on her face when he read her runes.

She seemed familiar somehow and he couldn’t help but feel for her situation.

“You believe her but you still don’t trust Snape.” Remus had questioned him.

“Snape started out wanting to be a Death Eater, and I noticed no-one has asked him to take a truth potion.” Sirius snapped back.

“Fair enough.” Remus nodded in reply. “He’s a Potion Master though isn’t he - he’d see it coming anyway so regardless, we’d never know if it worked. We’ll just have to take Dumbledore’s word for it.” Sirius had snorted in a dissatisfied manner.

Did he trust Y/N though?

~Yes~ a voice in the back of his head answered.

Shaking his head he had taken a shot of fire whisky and changed the subject.

That’s how the rest of the evening passed for Remus and Sirius, pleasant laughs of nostalgia and light anecdotes punctuated by bouts of phantom pain from the curse and varying degrees of sobriety.

Something had stayed in the back of Sirius’ mind all night though, and he wasn’t sure if it was welcome.

Pushing himself off the kitchen bench, feeling marginally better, Sirius made his way down the hallway and up the staircase to bed. On his way he noticed that someone had changed the colour of his carpet to gold. Must have been Remus on his way to bed. Sirius shrugged his shoulders to no-one muttering to himself that it made a nice change from the dull blue his mother had chosen.

He reached his room but couldn’t find the doorknob to open the bedroom door. Frowning to himself and thinking perhaps he was still drunk he looked down to see the handle sitting on the opposite side of the door than it should have been.

As he reached for it, it moved up to the top of the door frame. Several moments of Sirius getting increasingly more impatient chasing his door knob all over the door he finally managed to grab it and force it to turn.

“Very funny Moony.” Sirius barked out to the door opposite his room.

He pushed the door roughly and entered his room.

Sirius had never put his shirt back on from last night so he only had to kick off his trousers but they were tight and he was having difficulty.

“Need a hand?” A voice purred from over by his bed.

Sirius started, one foot in the air trying to pull his pants off his ankles.

“What the?!”

“I’d love to help but I’m a little tied up…”

Speechless Sirius looked at his bed. There, sprawled naked, was Y/N, hands tied to his head board by his Gryffindor tie.

Sirius toppled over in surprise. Quickly recovering himself, removing the last inch of his trouser leg he stepped towards his bed.

“Y/N! What are you doing here?”

She was gorgeous. Laid out in front of him like some debaucherous smorgasbord of desire.

Beads of sweat dripping down her smooth skin. Her breasts were plump and supple, her hair strewn across his pillow added to her wanton air as she looked up at him bitting her lip and squeezing her legs together.

Sirius had mentally clocked her figure as she left headquarters last night, he had helped her up of course from her fall and felt the curves of her waist beneath his hand. Not noticing at the time he watched her until she disapparated…hang on? Something clicked.

“Y/N aren’t you suppose to be recovering still? I know I didn’t use the strongest curse on you but how did you get here?”

“You tell me Sirius.” She bit her lip again and looked at him longingly.

Sirius was sweating, barely aware he was only in his underwear.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Y/N.” He licked his lips anxiously. Oh mother of Morgana he was turned on.

“Really? Your body language doesn’t seem to agree with you.” Y/N looked down indicating to a growing bulge in his briefs.

Sirius, never one to be shy about sex, simply placed one hand over himself and ran the other through his hair smiling slightly as he tried to control his thoughts into some semblance of order.

Was this a bad idea?

“Y/N we barely know each other.”

“That’s never stopped you before.” She winked.

“True” He smiled at her, pausing before speaking what was in his head. “A few hours ago we were cursing each other. This is rather fast don’t you think?”

“I know but I really, really want you Sirius.” She sounded pained.

Y/N tilted her head back and closed her eyes. “Please Sirius, just touch me. I need you to touch me.”

Sirius’ cock twitched under his hand. He hadn’t felt this desired in a long time. Bursts of excitement were sparking up and down his body.

“Y/N…” he growled.

“Sirius.”

He walked forward until he was right next to the bed.

“Sirius.” She was getting louder in her pleas rubbing her thighs together, squirming where she was feeling the heat the most.

“Y/N” Sirius growled again. He reached out to run the tips of his fingers down her side, brushing across her nipples. She strained against the ties and arched up into him.

“Oh my Godric.” He was aching now.

He gently placed his hands either side of her head and lay on top of her, leaning closer to her swollen lips, they were brushing against his. He ground his hips down into hers and she moaned.

Sirius closed his eyes ecstasy and tried to calm his breathing. It had been a while but he still wanted to control himself and ensure she had just as good a time.

“SIRIUS!” She was chanting his name over and over.

As his lips descended on hers he felt a sudden sharp blow to his temple.

Surprised he looked down at Y/N but she was gone. He could hear her calling to him but he couldn’t see where she was. He blinked several times, the room began swirling before him.

“Wha-whats happening Y/N?”

“SIRIUS!”

“Y/N?”

“SIRIUS MATE, WAKE UP!”

Sirius’ vision stopped swimming in front of him, he opened his eyes to see Remus spread over the living room floor, holding various objects ready to lob them at him were he lay, face flat on the living room couch.

“What the fuck Moony, I was asleep!” Sirius muffled into the couch cushions.

“I know and moaning Y/N’s name over and over, it was a bit off putting mate.”

So it was merely a dream. Of course. That explained the different coloured carpet, his changing door handle and Y/N on his…he shuddered, a thrill pulsed through him.

“Anything you want to talk about Padfoot?” Remus could barely contain his laughter.

Sirius threw the book Remus had tossed at him and gave him a wry smile.

“i’m going to make some coffee, want some?”

Remus yawned and nodded.

“Got any hangover potion? I feel rotten.” Sirius smirked, stood up and heading back to the kitchen.

It was full of bottles, cigarette butts, and a half cooked pizza.

He searched through the kitchen cabinets for the Hangover Draught feeling a vague sense of déjà vu. Was he stuck in a dream loop? He would be up for that especially if waiting for him in his bedroom was Y/N.

Alas, Sirius shook his head. He wasn’t dreaming anymore he was sure of it. For one thing, there was no hangover potion left which was typical and the carpet, he had noticed, was back to it’s normal shade of dreary blue.

--

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[hillnerd]

Hello hillnerd! I've read more than one of your interesting analysis, so I was wondering, if/when you'll have the time could you explain why/how Ron's character was mistreated by the movies? We all know what a terrible portrait of Ginny they've done, but I've always felt like they did a worst job with Harry than with Ron. Thank you very much, and if you've already spoken more deeply about, don't you worry about it ^^

Aw thanks so much! I’m glad you find my extra long rants interesting! ;)

So! Ron Weasley is my favorite character in the HP series. I found myself continually getting more and more disappointed with his portrayal as the movie series progressed, and have had lots to say on it over the years, but don’t believe I’ve ever had one semi-cohesive long post about it. Here we go, kids!

I have explored this when I went into classism and how it plays into Ron, and the Weasleys, portrayal in the films. This, I feel, is key to understanding how perverse the changes ended up being in the films. To me it’s not just about the character of Ron not being portrayed accurately, but rather an all-around disdain for poverty/working class people.

I won’t repeat what I said in my other essay- but please do read it to get a fuller picture of my issues with Ron’s portrayal. To sum it up, classist tropes of poor people being stupid, lazy, unloyal, and fearful is what Steve Kloves reduced the Weasleys to. 

I also am not a huge fan of the movies, so have not given many of them a lot of rewatches- nor will I for this- so it might get hard for me to remember all issues, and I’m sure I’ll miss a lot of them.

HOW RON WEASLEY WAS RUINED IN THE MOVIES:

When people watch the films they come away from them having some understanding of who the characters are in the books. Harry might come across as more serious in the movies- but his bravery, his dedication, his self-sacrifice, and even at times his sarcasm- are still there. Hermione and her whip-smart intelligence are not just present- they are upped to the point of ridiculous at times- they also went on to make her even more empathetic, friendly and kind than she was in the books (she’s more of a prickly little thing- but they portray her as this sensitive empathic character who never puts a step wrong in the movies… ) and made her more physically capable than in the books too. (punching malfoy, able to physically lift Harry into the air when being swung around on the whomping willow, dueling capabilities etc)

Then there is Ron. Most people come away thinking Ron is a coward, or stupid- at best they find him amusing. The movies seemed to go out of their way to wipe away all of Ron’s positive attributes and replace them with problematic behaviors that were completely antithetical to who Ron was, and even change scenes so that he did the exact opposite actions as well. They robbed him of almost every act of intelligence, kindness, wit, heart and bravery from the books. I’m fine with changes from the book as far as scenes- but I am not ok with them completely altering his character to make him selfish, unkind, cowardly, stupid etc. The movies didn’t just ruin Ron Weasley in them- they created a legacy of suck. I mean, that’s why  there are video essays titled ‘is Ron useless’ on youtube where they have to do a breakdown of the character, in the newest HP phone game Ron isn’t featured like Harry and Hermione and is worth less points, in the play he’s portrayed as a dingus who can’t point a wand in the right direction… People fundamentally don’t know Ron, and that’s due to the movies (and their influence - even on how people interpret his character when they read the books, imo.)

Let’s get into it though!

This started with the first film:

the one film that was truest to who Ron was in the books.

The Devil’s Snare

Let’s compare the scenes:

Now, they had to cut one of Hermione’s feats in order to streamline the journey to the stone. The riddle with the potions would be a lot harder to make interesting in film, so having her shining moment be the Devil’s Snare makes absolute sense. 

As it was her one moment of glory, it also made sense for her to get to stay calm. I can’t begrudge that change.

What I DO have issue is, Kloves decided to sacrifice Ron’s character in order to bolster Hermione. He made Ron become completely irrational and panicky, while cool calm Harry and Hermione looked on with amusement and derision. 

He could have easily had both the boys unable to keep from wiggling- or had Hermione just crawl off in time like in the book- but no. 

This was the beginning of a pattern we continue to see throughout the movies.

They kept feeding the notion that in order to make Harry and Hermione looks cool’/brave- they needed to have Ron cowering beside them- when that is the exact opposite of who he is as a character. 

We also have another moment earlier in the book/film that undercuts Ron in order to bolster Harry.

_________________________________________________

Their first quidditch lesson:

BOOK

MOVIE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ix0BhYSZBg

Ron’s been flying a broom since he was a kid. Yet he’s struggling to get the broom to go up while most of the class succeeds, and then it strikes him in the face? Really? Neville is already about to have an accident with the broom and made a lot more sense for this piece of physical comedy- but they did it to Ron… 

In this film it’s not that big of a deal- after all he has loads of great moments- but it goes to show that Kloves doesn’t understand Ron’s role in the series for Harry- beyond being his best friend, he’s also a knowledgeable guide to the wizarding world. They almost completely remove this from Ron, and give almost all exposition to Hermione or Hagrid. Ron’s essential function is removed. This is just a tiny example. It gets worse as the films continue.

   ————————————————————————————————

THE TROLL

In the book he is very capable and is able to do Wingardium Leviosa to save Hermione WITHOUT her coaching him in the bathroom. But he can’t have his moment without Hermione teaching him in the movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxMy9T49fM

    ————————————————————————————————

Chamber of Secrets

This is it. The film where Ron is firmly established as a coward.

He is moaning, squeeking, shaking, crying, and all around acting a total miserable coward in scene after scene. Again this is the exact opposite of who Ron is as person. In the books he’s this fiery tempered guy who is ready to first fight/duel any ahole who crosses his path- but in the movies, he’s this:

FOLLOW THE SPIDERS

In the books he never is falling apart like that, even when facing the spiders- his biggest fear. (He is literally phobic of them, but this is now shown in the films.) Harry is stoic, to the point of ridiculously stoic, during these moments- while Ron practically crying. Now I’m fine with Ron being show afraid in this particular scene- my issue is how it’s played for comedy, how they add in moments of ‘now can we panic,’ and have Harry show about as much emotion as a door knob the whole scene.  

If this were the one scene where Ron acts like this, hey I’d let it pass.

Nope. It’s become his entire personality. He is in the same state CONSTANTLY in this film. Dignity? Ron does’t get to have a moment of that. He’s constantly making this face:

When in the car, when near his mum, when being yelled at by the howler, when being yelled at by moaning myrtle, when Harry is injured etc.

If his excessive fear weren’t the only big problem that’d be one thing- but no.

He is also striped of his purpose in being a guide to the wIzarding world.

—————————————-

MUDBLOOD AND SLUGS

When Hermione is called a Mudblood in the books she has no clue what that means. Ron is the one who, rather eloquently, explains it.

This is instead given to Hagrid and Hermione. While Ron pitifully barfs int he corner only able to add a feeble ‘it’s sickening’ for laughs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpj3krxJtNU

——————————————————————-

PRISONER OF AZKABAN

They continue to make Ron a coward, but also erode his friendship with Harry and Hermione, and make him ‘irresponsible’ on top of it.

INSUFFERABLE KNOW-IT-ALL

Ron gets detention from Snape for defending Hermione against him.

In the films he agrees with Snape’s bullying comment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjxZyljxrxE

——-

SCABBERS

Ron’s concern about Scabber’s health is made into a one-off sort of joke in the films, and for some reason a narrative of ‘Ron keeps losing Scabbers and is an irresponsible pet owner’ is established in the films. 

Molly has to chase him with Scabbers and shouts ‘DON’T LOSE HIM!’ and then later the cat/rat fight is reduced to a ‘Ron’s lost Scabbers’ instead of it being a clear case of ‘the rat is dead, most liekyl because of her cat.’

Again we see Ron being shown as inferior (dumb ron unable to keep up with pets), while Hermione is built up ad able to talk down to Ron. (Ronald has lost him again!) (Also, anyone else HATE that they did this with the Ronald bit with Hermione and Ron?) Even Hagrid condescends to Ron when he finds the rat (and Hagrid is shown as quite clueless, but apparently not as clueless as Ron now….)

——-

There’s a moment added to the films where Harry goes to return the crystal ball to Trelawney and asks if Ron wants to come with him— Ron, a bit rudely, says no. This was used as a way to get Harry alone with Trelawney for the professor to give her prophecy- but why did they have to do it at the expense of Ron?

—————

THE SHRIEKING SHACK

Ron on multiple occassions in the book goes out of his way to attempt to save Harry. ALL of these are cut.

Ron literally put himself between Harry and danger. Instead in the films he’s stupidly sitting beside the whomping willow,

 then he’s  just screaming, terrified, as he’s dragged away.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhi1bOuIj0E

Then Ron, with a severely broken leg, stands on it to confront a murderer while Hermione scaredly whispering.

Instead they give this line to HERMIONE, while Ron incoherently whimpers on the ground like a coward. 

They knew Hermione had a TON of ‘moments’ in this film already- why did they need to give one of Ron’s ONLY moments to her???????? She had just punched Malfoy (instead of slapped him), literally had the strength of a grown weight lifter to lift Harry by the shirt into the air as they fought the whomping willow and will go on to the have the time adventure… yet, here we are- She has this line as well.

Ron is robbed of every ounce of dignity and gumption and self-actualization he HAS.

————————

Then at the end of the time adventure they have Harry and Hermione laughing at Ron as he, again, incoherently babbles and makes this face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OavYqCjM45k

Oh ahahah! It’s DUMB OLD RON! XD

Everything valuable he brings to his friendship with Harry and Hermione is cut- and replaced with this garbage.

—————————————————————————————————-

GOBLET OF FIRE

Again all nuance for Ron’s character is lost- and he’s demonized while Harry and Hermione are lifted up. They also, throughout the movies, have done a pretty crap job of showing Ron’s place in the wizarding world when it comes to wealth and when it comes to how he’s treated and what he goes through. His lack of money is treated as a joke with his robes, and in general is not taken seriously beyond a a few Lucius is a bad guy scenes and the first movie.

HARRY AND RON’S FIGHT

In the books Ron and Harry’s fight leaves Harry devastated- and Ron’s behavior doesn’t come out of nowhere either. They establish that Harry and He had an agreement to go into the tourney  together if they could- but it looks like Harry did it without him. [the post by @owlpostagain does a brilliant analysis of it]

Ron does not come into their fight angry- in fact he’s trying (And failing) to be positive for Harry.

Ron brings NO ANGER to this exchange. HARRY DOES, though:

In the books Harry isn’t reasonable when he tries to explain this to Ron- he’s angry and insults Ron. Of course in the films, they make Harry ever so reasonable and Ron just a moody whiny asshole who is purely angry and spiteful in this exchange.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an7WWOY94Qs

The utter misery Harry experiences while he and Ron are on the outs is cut (I mean, at this point, why would he be miserable? Ron is a pretty awful friend in the films.) Best explored in a post I can’t find now- just go and reread how miserable Harry is. (eta: FOUND THE POST!!! Thanks @vivithefolle​!)

[This post] by @purpleklimt​  PERFECTLY sums up all the part in GOF where Harry is desperately missing Ron

He then goes on to attack Ron a SECOND time in the books

They leave out Harry’s part in this fight- and make it solely Ron’s fault in the films.

When they make up in the books Harry is SO relieved he won’t even let Ron apologize. He starts off cold- but immediately turns it around with relief.

But in the movie he’s angry and condescending to Ron (after having a SUPER out of character ‘everyone look at me, who wants me to open the egg!!!’ scene) and continues acting so AFTER they’ve ‘made up’? It’s not a happy reunion. And Ron is acting… really stupid :P For no reason

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s_dukNgLPg

————-

TRAINING

Ron goes on to help Harry train for the next task in the books, letting him practice hexes on him. Ron does nothing at all to help Harry in the films. Literally nothing.

———

YULE BRAWL

Again Ron is shown as angry- but they have to up the ante don’t they- where he literally makes Hermione have a breakdown in tears saying he’s ‘ruined everything’- when she had a great time at the ball in the books :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bynhxDUqqgU

Where as in the books they are having a fight of equals:

————-

They also add in a lot of scenes where Hermione is like, a rock for Harry emotionally (which she has never been in the books at all. The closest was in book 7 at the graveyard at xmas.)

————————————————————————————

ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

This is the ONLY movie after the 1st one to show Ron’s true friendship for Harry.

It’s not a coincidence that it’s the only film NOT written by Kloves. Here he is defending Harry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktfsgXyRbuc

Ron is a bit of a non-entity in this movie in general, but he’s a good supportive friend, and even has his cleverness pointed out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_p6j28GC3A

I guess they had to when they cut out him being prefect :P

They do a minor bit of Hermione getting Ron’s lines when Harry meets up with them at Grimauld place:

Ron: We told Dumbledore we wanted to tell you what was going on. We did, mate. But he’s really busy now, we’ve only seen him twice since we came here and he didn’t have much time, he just made us swear not to tell you important stuff when we wrote, he said the owls might be intercepted.

Movie:

Harry: You couldn’t have put this in a letter, I suppose. I’ve gone all summer without a scrap of news.Ron: We wanted to tell you, mate. Really, we did. Only –Hermione: Only Dumbledore made us swear that we wouldn’t tell you anything.

But it’s not the worst infraction. It does cut into Ron and Harry’s bond though in order to bolster Harry and Hermione’s. :P

————————————————————-

HALF-BLOOD PRINCE

Steve Kloves is back- and he seems determined to undermine Harry and Ron’s friendship, bolster Harry and Hermione’s, and generally cut out anything but buffoonery from Ron’s stories.

He has Ron kissing Lavender for seemingly no reason, has Ron looking like a moron as he does quidditch (The helmet… ) and just in general doesn’t give Ron any dignity.

When Ron is poisoned- a VERY SERIOUS incident- Ron immediately goes from dying to sitting up to make a joke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK3K8XmZX3Q

The MOST EGREGIOUS one, though, is THE ENDING OF THE MOVIE

First let’s look at what we find in the books

They are a TRIO- Ron and Hermione are equally supporting him- but as usual Ron has the most lines of verbal support in the book- because that’s his role as Harry’s BEST FRIEND.

In the film… I mean… LOOK AT IT! 

Ron is COMPLETELY SILENT. And seated about 20 feet away from them as the ‘grownups’ talk and Hermione pledges her ever loving support to Harry, while Ron, again, IS SILENT! FOR THREE MINUTES!

WTF

I JUST…. WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?!!!?!?

—————————————————————————-

DEATHLY HALLOWS

Ron is actually portrayed ok at times here- They are ALL OVER the place with Ron’s characterization though, and do LITTLE to show the sacrifices he’s making leading up to their journey (and don’t support that narrative much later either.)

At times a bumblerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiTgShhO-JM

But is finally allowed to hold his own when things get serious- but shows a weird sort of serial killer-esque darkness as he confronts the frozen deatheater.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk5I27gTOj0

Again they make him an idiot at the ministryhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxgGMs3tezw

But Ron’s injury for once is treated seriously. :) (no sitting up to make a joke!)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvpgvg_0neQ

The locket scene they do NOT honor Ron’s character, and have him become incredibly cruel compared to how he was in the bookhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZi_9E3ULwI

Again they do what they’ve done with ALL the fights based around Ron  (note how they CUT all of Harry&Hermione’s fall-outs?) they make Ron completely randomly unreasonable- and bolster Harry’s perspective as just misunderstood and not at all out of control angry

Don’t get me wrong, Ron was horrid when he was essentially possessed by the locket- but he NEVER went to the low blows Ron of the films did.

They go on in the film to show that without Ron, Harry and Hermione are fine. They are dancing and having a good time without him. And why wouldn’t they? He’s never been the rock of support and common sense he was in the books.

In the books they are hopeless without Ron. Miserable without him. that’s why when he’s back it’s a BIG deal                      _________________________________________________

♪REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD♪  meh

When reunited, Harry and Ron don’t have a particularly close bond- They destroy theh horcrux- and Ron’s emotional reaction of sobbing after his worst fears are out is cut- because of course all Ron-humanity is cut- and then his bond with Harry where they embrace and Harry comforts him is also cut- because only Harry & Hermione are actually close in these movies….

Movie version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1XUfFnmflU

The clip cuts off but after

All that, and all they say is:

‘Just think, there are only three to go.’

Oh ok! No Ron explaining things, no Harry and Ron bonding- Ron’s not a good friend anyways, right?

Augh.

Where Ron comes in saving the day and bringing them tons of knowledge (the taboo, snatchers, potter watch) film Ron comes back bringing nothing (because Ron in the films NEVER is smart or bringing anything to the table. The TWO TIMES in the WHOLE FILM SERIES he does, it’s commented on like ‘wtf?!’ from Hermione….), and his presence doesn’t seem to particularly change anything for Harry and Hermione either. They were fine without him and Hermione is laughing and smiling LESS with Ron around, so is Harry.

Anyways! Then there is Hermione’s torture. Ron in the books is going mad with grief for her- He on MULTIPLE OCCASSIONS defends her and even says for them to take him instead. in the movies he reacts with a worried look and silence, then when he’s down in the basement seems less worried about Hermione than he was about anything in all those other movies he was freaking out in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twHLFlqZ8T8

Look at how sedate he is. Jesus.

In the books he’s shouting her name and desperate for her.

But in the movies… BLECH

At least they still let him save her. (I’m surprised they let that stay.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2zNRrOXbPY

————————————————-

I only saw Deathly Hallows part 2 when it first came out- and haven’t seen it since because i really didn’t like it. The final fight sequence sucks so hard :P

But anyways- what I remember- Ron essentially does nothing and contributes nothing until he gets him and Hermione into the chamber of secrets and they randomly kiss.

ROOM OF REQUIREMENT

He is portrayed as plain old SILLY in the Room of Requirement:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZiGbypAnFU

————————————————-

MY FRIEND IS ABOUT TO GO DIE.

He gives a lame ‘what? Are you mad’ then as Harry goes off to die, Hermione gives Harry a big old hug- (neither character would let Harry do this- but Ron just STANDING there??? THE FUCK?) and Ron just stand there silently. Again, why is kloves so afraid of having these boys touch? Show affection????? (honestly I think all the times Ron shows anything like friendship in the films it’s usually silent moments that are improvised by Rupert.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg1LLVWZyg8

Like you’re telling me THIS BOY

Is gonna just stand there while Harry goes to die???

——————————

And then hermione almost seems embarrassed to be interested in him

——————————

19 YEARS LATER

Then in the final scene of the book, where Ron had tons of lines (the most besides Harry and Albus) he’s just this potbellied silent dude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEKA6rmVfW8

Like…. I can’t.

I HATE what the movies did to Ron. (don’t get me STARTED on Ginny.)

At every place they could they silenced him, took away his moments, made him a buffoon, made him a coward, made him a rotten friend, removed all his best traits- and left him to be mostly… THIS

He’s a selfish cowardly lump who is just around to keep the AUDIENCE entertained. Honestly you could cut Ron from the movie series and almost nothing would have to be changed- that’s how little they let him inform the narrative.

[achieveandhunt]

live typing extra life 2019

warning: this a fucking LONG post. if you plan on reading it all, godspeed.

i typed all of this as it was happening on stream so this gets progressively less coherent as i grow more sleep deprived. prepare yourselves. i may or may not go off topic at some points

larry vehemently vomiting pure malic acid. we’re off to a great start

what the fuck the soggy ass popcorn in that ranch jesus christ

lindsay in the song from AH the musical. i love her so much

jeremy going YAAAAAAY after someone eats a cursed oreo

matt getting AGGRESSIVELY kissed by larry

“this kiss this kiss” before geoff and jack kiss

geoff “i’m from alabama” ramsey

THIS FUCKING RANCH SEGMENT HAS ME GAGGING

jeremy “the alcohol demon the whiskey goblin” dooley

alfredo “you wont believe what the white people did today” diaz

DUSK BOYS DUSK BOYS DUSK BOYS GET THAT DICK ESSENCE

wait why does it sound like wonderwall

they look like characters from the matrix

the speaking parts. make my teeth hurt

in conclusion: they weren’t kidding abt the tight pants 

okay everyone get ready for eric soundboard spamming YEAH BABEY

“hi i’m from broadcast and i don’t want to be here” they represent themselves well

also, let’s take a second to appreciate broadcast here!! they have a really tough job and don’t get a ton of credit. lots of love to all of broadcast!!! you guys are awesome

i am: foreseeing problems with this eric sound board

which one is eric?? will the real eric please stand up?? was the real eric the one we found along the way??

“i’m... just really worried that i won’t ever find love-” “i really don’t care”

WHY DO THEY HAVE THAT ON THE SOUNDBOARD (what does that apply to? whatever it is you’re thinking of, but mostly “daddy wants some”)

ooh someone’s about to get a fReE tongue piercing from a pineapple

god dammit i went to the bathroom for thirty seconds and now they’re eating chad’s chest hair

owie the shock collar and belly slap look painful, but drinking natty light from a shoe? that’s a true punishment

“and this roast was brought to you by meundies”

ah yes what better way is there to end a segment than people throwing up

“man action” oh no

THROBERT MULVEINY

K A R B is blind in T W O of her eyes

“my last name is cottagecheese”

I HAVE A PIECE OF METAL SHOVED UP MY A S S 

chris has somehow managed to lose 23 years of age and roughly 412 pounds

“just open throat like baby bird” who the fuck is writing this and why is it jeremy

jon. jon you’re breathing in adam’s ass fumes

a summary of this segment: ass and cottage cheese

BARB IS HERE I REPEAT BARB IS HERE

“to fitness” -starts choking-

final fitness coach: tad, here to workout your issues so they can beat you into submission

“will you buy my wet” well i don’t see that on the raffle items

we’re back folks & i’m loving this walk around segment

moonball wall and gavin&michael will soon be reunited can we get an F in the chat

jeremy getting a borderlands tattoo is very on brand

what’s extra life without a little satan

“starvation army, putting lead back into paint, increasing childhood obesity” people in chat: TAKE MY MONEY

chris “i’m doing a different hole” demarais

ah yes. the game we all play in hell: twister

nobody edit chris getting mustard shot down his throat. i’m scarred enough from the original clip

oh fuck. oh god. the mayo. oh god what the fuck is up with the misuse of condiments this year

this just in: a human soul costs roughly $12,700

D̷̯͑̆̈́͝Õ̸̲͎̥̬͈̬̙͕̲G̸̢̧̠͉͚̙̲̙̓̔̀̇S̷̥̀́͆̈́̇̀ ̶̣̞̗͚̬̭̖̦͇̈́̎̈́̿̓̈́͆̒̋D̷̙̟̩̫͉̺̐̊̚Ö̶̥́̋́̓ͅĜ̵̞̌͋̏̉̌̕͝͝S̵̤̹̣̫̮̻͛̍̑̕͝͝ ̷̧̨̞̙̥̟̜͍̉̍̑̏̇̀̾D̴̻̮̩̯͓͉̖͎̘͐̒͋̓̉͝ͅỎ̶̰͓̳̥͑̅͛͊̒͐͊͘̚G̵̩̻̦̥̠̃̔Ş̶̹͚̩̱͖̀͆͘ ̸̢̢͇̻͔̗̺̼͖̱̏̾̔̚D̴̨̨̫̙̃̾̋̾̆̓̓Ớ̷̡͓͎͊G̶̱̣̣̰̝̖̰̗̓͐̐̊͋̀͊̀̕͝Ş̷̩̺̬̖͙̺̟͗̈́͒͗̀̑́́̕͠ ̷̡͈̼̲͈̳̫̺̝̈́̋͌͗̒ͅD̸̨̬̞̪̗̘̄̑͆̿̈́͘͠͝O̸̡̡͇͕̻͎͍͉̅̌͗̄͌̑̉̔͂̎Ḡ̸͙̟̪̞̬̬͕͐̈̏S̶̝̪̼̮̠̜̭̳͖̘̑

urine: to help with aerodynamics

jon: maya, speak! maya: *the smallest arwoo*

today’s mvp: any dog. pick one. no matter which you pick, you’re right

how the fuck did blaine change back from satan so quickly

barb as a cat is... my new sleep paralysis demon

blaine: barbara speak! barbara: climate change is real

#dogsforkids

this just in: extra life killed my wifi

we’re back & kdin is in the business of killing people with spice. she is the spice queen

queue six thousand well-timed 1337 donations

HOLY SHIT THAT’S COLIN FROM WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY

hmm “questionable liquids” is very... questionable

trevor: oh there’s four of them! we all get to join in the Fuckkkk

“what’s your favorite kind of candy” “any meat”

i like pickles and i would rather rip my eyebrows off than drink the juice so i feel for trevor

the only thing worse than drinking apple cider vinegar is shooting it out of your nose

“can you feel the love tonight” “i used to and that’s the problem”

“flubs every word man” damn, really missed the chance to say captain hair

jeremy not being able to intentionally flub his words is so fucking funny

OK BOOMER 

wow i can feel my blood pressure spike just watching these shots

Xavier Woods is here and he wants to know if it’s Christmas

miles doesn’t know what a question is

WHERE’S YOUR HAIR

oh no. oh no helping hands is next. everyone clear a splash zone

CHEF MIKE CHEF MIKE CHEF MIKE

miles bossing around chef mike is priceless

“you leave that fucking dough on the floor”

“you wanna slam your hands down on the table” *pizza sauce goes flying everywhere*

HOEDOWN HOEDOWN HOEDOWN jesus why do i keep doing that

“If Colin Mochrie is listening, I’ll see you here next year” OH FUCK YEAH

--- this is when i take a break so my soul can return to my body (aka i have work to turn in. college will never not be a pain in my ass) ---

oh god dammit i missed all of Always Open. fuck college who needs a medical degree

so... we have some very interesting things happening in family feud and i’m not sure if i like any of them

hmm. is now the time to get drunk

oily twist feels very... ominous

what do you mean you don’t remember gandalf having a taser in lord of the rings?

someone in the chat said “big stupid sleeping thing is what my parents called me in high school”

i think i’m blacking out what’s going on i don’t remember the past two hours

ah yes. voldemort and snape having a talk show together sounds exactly like something J.K. Rowling would make a spinoff book or show or porno of

can we just talk about how much shit chris has been doing this year? what a guy. what a dude

“coldy with voldy” actually means getting knocked the fuck out cold because you only got three hours of sleep last night and you don’t want to miss chef mike and lindsay cooking

this snape poem is summarized by one phrase: “that was terrible sit the fuck down” (sorry chris)

“let’s destroy a weasley” enter chad

fucking called it

“you smell poor” i need a caffeine drip

heh the wheel spins are at 69 heh nice

i’m a grown ass woman

welcome to a section called: we torture chad for your entertainment

“who wants us to kill weasley?” *massive cheers from the audience*

“wait weasley step away from the wideshot so i can masturbate to this later”

“i’m not gonna rub my eye mom”

oh they’re really gonna kill chad on stream huh

i felt that chest slap in my soul

i think i felt my own ribs crack

oh fucking

tumblr deleted my thoughts on the fanfic section

alright. fine. brief summary: my teeth are burning

my mom lindsay is on next and i’m so excited but i’m nearing the point of loopiness so things will go downhill dramatically from here

this is my fucking fourth extra life, you would think i’d be smart enough to sleep the night before

LINDSAY LINDSAY LINDSAY THAT’S MY MOM

JEREMY JEREMY JERE- wait a second... did jeremy get taller

oH CHEF MIKE CHEF MIKE CHEF MIKE

i hope Xavier comes back next year because he’s funny as fuck

m y a t t

oh god the mcdonald’s shade i’m rolling

lindsay “who’s the chef here” jones

chef mike mentioned mayo and i involuntarily gagged

chef mike clowning the big mac. i’m crying

he made the right choice with ryan bc i’ve seen his cooking stream(s) and it’s nothing if not great content

i heARD A MICHAEL JONES

“lindsay you haven’t done anything but warm up cookies so far” “yeah and?? you’re welcome”

you know that classic snack. slightly warm oreos

JEREMY THE LIQUOR GOBLIN DOOLEY IS BACK

oh god him screeching across set is making me cry laughing

why does it remind me of trevor’s voice cracks in the one minecraft ep where they’re singing the lion king

the biggest spoon for the smallest shot glass

i just realized we’re not even halfway through yet and i’m scared for the length of this list i’m gonna end up falling asleep involuntarily at some point

lindsay no your teeth are going to errode from that shot in your mouth

well timed leet donation #1829495

this gorden ramsey bit is so fucking good

jack: what do you think of the arugala? matt: i don’t even know what you said

iT’s NoT jUsT tWo CoOkIeS miCHeAL

jeremy and michael just chillin amidst the choas is exactly my demeanor at any party i’ve ever been to

lindsay scores: ryan = 7 because diet coke, matt = still eating lindsay’s meal so it’s a 10, xavier = also still eating it so it’s an 8. total: 25

“deep fry everything but a remote control”

chef mike scores: ryan = 9 for no death, matt = greens are present, words were said, score is 8. xavier = Gourmet Mcdonald’s, food is edible, score is 8. total: 25

oh fuck it’s a tie

now they fight to the death. death = doing as many shots as possible

i think we’re all going to need liver transplants after tonight

no jesus please don’t vomit oh goD oh fUc k please- oh thank god

okay i’m making a part two this is too much

[somethingbitchyythiswaycomes]

Arcana Main 6 Hogwarts Headcanons

Based on the sorting found in this post (I trust the devs at sorting their own characters better than I ever could, lol)

Julian

House: Ravenclaw (duh, this kid is such a nerd)

LOVES to learn, fave classes are history of magic, arithmancy, astrology, and herbology.

Prefers writing papers on magical theory to any practical magic assignments.  For some reason he never manages to stop struggling with actual spellcasting.

Aces his OWLs in the subjects he cares about (read subjects he’s good in, he stopped trying in transfiguration, charms, and DADA as soon as he realized he was hopeless at them) and thrives in NEWT level classes.

Randomly really good at apparition and uses it specifically to annoy Portia and Mazelinka when he’s home.

Spends a lot of spare time in the Greenhouse learning more about magical plants, their properties (especially medicinal), and their care.  Professor Sprout offers to tutor him privately on the subject in his NEWT years.

Furious when he’s given trouble for bringing Malak instead of an owl as his pet.

Gregarious (of course) yet hopeless at making close friends.  Parties a lot as he reaches higher years and becomes de facto leader of the party-type Ravenclaws despite not being particularly close with any of them.

Befriends Nadia in later years as they take completely different classes and he loves to hear what she’s learning and vice-versa.

Has a crush on Asra all through school and it is never reciprocated despite excessive effort from Julian’s side.

Absolutely adores Portia on her Quidditch team and is deeply supportive even when Hufflepuff plays Ravenclaw (just...slightly quieter about it in the stands)

Goes on to work in a clerical role at St. Mungo’s since he was never able to prove himself particularly useful at magic, but he manages to write some wonderful books on magical healing that become very popular and live on as excellent texts.

Unfortunately Professor Binns continues to refuse to retire as Julian tries to convince the Hogwarts staff to hire him to teach History of Magic. 

Nadia

House: Slytherin

Favorite subjects are care of magical creatures and charms, though she’s great at transfiguration, astronomy, and arithmancy as well.

Aces her OWLs in pretty much every subject and takes as many NEWTs as she can.

Snape begs her not to keep taking Care of Magical Creatures but she INSISTS as it’s her absolute favorite.

Definitely on the Yule Ball planning committee.

Prefect and Head Girl, of course.

Not particularly popular but also not disliked.  The nicer Slytherins adore her and she serves as a mentor to those in the years below her.  Other houses seem to be biased against Slytherins but the ones that bother to get to know her are always pleasantly surprised.

Spends a lot of time in the Owlery visiting Chandra, but also volunteers to help take care of the school owls.

Lucio and her bond in Care of Magical Creatures and get married shortly after graduating, only for her to realize the mess she’s gotten herself into when they butt heads while working at the Ministry of Magic.

Befriends Julian during their NEWT years and remains close friends with him after graduating.  

Asra partners with her in the classes she’s great at so he can learn as much as possible, noting her popularity with the teachers.  They make great study buddies in their mutual classes and Julian is deeply jealous despite her constant reassurances that she’s not interested.

Asra

House: Ravenclaw

Favorite subject: POTIONS

Partners with Nadia in Potions since he knows Snape will never take a liking to anyone not in his house and he wants to learn as much as he can.

Is exceptionally great at magic, learns more complicated tasks with ease.

Terrible in any class that requires remembering facts and dates.

Professor Trewlaney’s absolute _favorite _student.  He’s gifted beyond belief at all forms of divination.

Ravenclaw prefect but not even remotely overzealous about it.

Incredibly popular with most students but very picky about who chooses to actually spend time with.

Transfigures Faust into a toad so he can take her with him to school and loves transfiguring her back into a snake whenever someone gives him a hard time about his unfashionable pet.

Almost gave Julian a heart attack when he thought he was alone in the common room late one night and turned Faust back into a snake.

Faust loves to slither over to Julian while he’s sleeping and bother him since she knows none of the other Ravenclaws will believe him if he tries to tell them Asra brought a Snake.

Befriends Nadia through partnering with her in more classes after a successful potions partnership.

Childhood friends with Muriel and remains friends despite being sorted into different houses.  He’d honestly expected as much.  He still helps him with the classes he struggles in, though.

Dotes on Portia for taking care of Muriel.

Deeply annoyed by both Julian and Lucio and is thrilled when he starts to have classes without Julian.

Definitely that kid in class that gives piercing glares to any student that talks out of turn (cough cough* Julian cough cough Lucio)

Aces his practical OWLs and takes the NEWTs he’s interested in without working towards any specific career path, much to the frustration of Prof Flitwick.

Obsessed with Madam Puddifoot’s Tea Shoppe and insists on going there for every Hogsmeade field trip.

Goes on to work for the apothecary in Diagon Alley and eventually take over the shop after it’s owner steps down.

Portia

House: Hufflepuff

Favorite subjects: Herbology and Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Decent in most subjects, surprisingly good at potions.  One of Professor Sprout’s favorite students.

Doesn’t spend a lot of time studying but is incredibly friendly with just about anyone that will talk to her.

Obvs she brings Pepi.

Can’t stand Lucio or his small gang of Gryffindors.

Constantly talks shit and makes fun of Julian but will throw DOWN if anyone else does.  She’s his sister, it’s her RIGHT, not yours.

Befriends Nadia when she notices her studying alone in a courtyard and asks if she’d like company.

Hufflepuff prefect but barely takes advantage of any of the privileges except the bath.

Manages to befriend Muriel much to the surprise of every other Hufflepuff.

Fares decently enough on her standardized tests but doesn’t really care much about classes despite being well-liked by her teachers and a generally well-behaved student.

Aces flying classes her first year and goes on to be an excellent Beater for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team.  She’s even team captain!

Julian is her #1 fan when they aren’t playing Ravenclaw, and honestly even when they are.

Sneaks into the kitchens not to steal food, but to befriend the house elves and learn their cooking magic.

Gets a job as a bartender in a really nice wizarding bar in London frequented by Ministry officials where Nadia visits her often.

Falls in love and marries Nadia after she divorces Lucio and opens a bakery that Nadia insists on paying for.

Lucio

House: Gryffindor

Favorite subjects: Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts and Care of Magical Creatures.

The above are pretty much the only subjects he’s good at and no he does NOT stop bragging about how great he is at all of them.

Excellent Chaser for the Gryffindor Quidditch Team and it earns him a large amount of popularity.

Doesn’t have...friends, per se, but fans of his Quidditch skills that follow him around.

Is somehow made prefect and is _furious _when he isn’t made Head Boy.

Competes as the Hogwarts champion for the Tri Wizard Tournament, earning him even more fans.

Brings a lovely snowy owl with him so he can send off constant whiny letters to Morga and organize hook ups with various students overnight.  (We all know what the Room of Requirement is really most commonly used for)

Meets Nadia in Care of Magical Creatures where they bond over how much they love animals.  Convinces her to go out with him and proposes right before graduation.

Doesn’t have much contact with any of the other main characters as he doesn’t give them the time of day.

His dating Nadia fosters an end to the long-standing Gryffindor/Slytherin hatred.  The rivalry is still there, but it loosens the walls around members of the two houses being friends and even dating.

Works for the ministry after graduation and somehow manages to always be opposed to everything Nadia puts forth and vice-versa.  The two get a divorce within the first few years of marriage.

He remains at the ministry but never does manage to find someone willing to settle down with him again.

Muriel

House: Hufflepuff

Favorite Class: Care of Magical Creatures

Deeply admires Hagrid and dreams of acquiring the groundskeeper job one day.

Hagrid always lets him in on the secret (and dangerous) animals he keeps around and Muriel helps him out with more enthusiasm than he shows for, well, anything else.

Doesn’t bring a pet but meets Inanna lives in the forest and they become close when she keeps visiting him while he studies.

Only friends are Asra (from childhood) and Portia.

Is deeply upset when he and Asra aren’t sorted into the same house, even though Asra tries to console him.

Thankfully Portia is incredibly kind to him and he slowly allows her to befriend him.

Is the other Beater for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team and he and Portia are an INCREDIBLE team.

Every time Julian goes to congratulate them on a win Muriel tries to weasel his way out of the situation as fast as possible.  Luckily Portia never seems to notice as she’s much too excited and Julian almost always has some ridiculous celebration he hastily put together for the whole school (but really for her)

Does just well enough in classes to avoid drawing any attention to himself.

If he ever has a question in a class he and Asra share, Asra makes sure to ask it for him.

Tries to sit as far in the back of every classroom as possible.

Looks forwards to Hogsmeade trips so he can spend the day on a mostly empty campus.

Portia convinces him to go one (1) time and get a butterbeer with her at the Three Broomsticks.  He is nonplussed by the experience.

Goes on to open a sanctuary for wounded magical creatures he runs on his own.

Stays in touch with Hagrid partially as he has taken a liking to him and partially in the hopes that one day he can take over as Hogwarts groundskeeper.  (No desire to teach)

[basic-cable]

Fic Rec Bingo

I saw this making the rounds on Twitter and decided I’d like to try it (mostly because I enjoy going back through my list and reminiscing about the ones I love but haven’t read in a while), but didn’t feel like Twitter was the best place to post mine. I’ve got both Dreamwidth and Pillowfort, but I haven’t really used them. This is probably the kind of thing that should go there, so maybe I’ll post it there, too. We’ll see. 

Anyway, I only read in four fandoms, so maybe my recs will be boring to most people. But they’re good stories, and maybe there are even some people out there who haven’t read them. 

I don’t expect any reblogs or anything, but maybe people will see it and decide they’d like to take part, and then there will be more fic recs out there making the world a better place.

I put them under a cut because the descriptions and stuff take up so much space.

1. A fic you love without knowing the source material Take the Pieces and Build them Skywards by quarterturn Bandom ** Frank/Gerard ** 44,816 ** Explicit ** Character Death Gerard's not happy with his life, but that doesn't mean he's particularly thrilled when he wakes up dead. To add insult to injury, he finds out that instead of crossing over, he's been chosen to join the ranks of the grim reapers. Things get more complicated when he falls for one of the living, a waiter named Frank Iero. And just when everything finally seems to be falling into place, Frank's name shows up on the list of souls to be reaped. Loosely based on the TV show Dead Like Me.

I don’t know anything about the TV show Dead Like Me; when I first read this fic in 2009, I had never even heard of it. I’ve wondered since then if I like it even better because I don’t know anything about the source material, but I’ll never know.It made me laugh and cry; it’s an emotional roller coaster, and I love it.

2. A fic with a premise that shouldn’t work but does

An Inexplicable Occurrence of Angels by stele3

Bandom ** Frank/Gerard ** 35,192 ** PG-13 ** No Warnings

I've messed with the band timeline, clearly. This is set in summer of 2005... but it ain't the Summer of Like. This is a story about second chances and gutting through your own failures, but never letting them defeat you. Take that, bitches.

Frank (Frank!) is a literal angel, okay, but there is not a thing I don’t love about this story. It’s angsty but still manages to be cute and charming as fuck, and the characterization is great.

3. A fic you’ve reread several times

Seeds by thesardine

Sherlock ** Gen, supposedly ** 5,475 ** PG-13 ** No Warnings

In a fit of boredom Sherlock plants some seeds, may or may not eat one cracker, and definitely waxes dramatic on the sofa for a while.

Sherlock struggles with a bit of depression caused by boredom, and accidentally discovers a hobby he slowly learns to allow himself to enjoy. I love this a lot; the author takes us into Sherlock’s headspace, so you’re painfully aware just how much he needs a distraction, and how much better off he is with John in his life.

4. A fic you still remember many years later

In Care Of by Fangs_Fawn

Harry Potter ** Gen ** 45,319 ** PG-13 ** Child Abuse

During the summer before sixth year, Harry finds an injured bat in the garden and decides to try to heal it...and an unwilling Snape learns just what kind of a person Harry Potter really is.

Between the Dursleys getting what’s coming to them, and the redemption of Harry, Snape, and Dumbledore in each others’ eyes, this story has really stuck with me through the years.

5. A comfort fic

Nature and Nurture by earlgreytea68

Sherlock ** Sherlock/John ** 203,273 ** Mature ** No Warnings

The British Government accidentally clones Sherlock Holmes. Which brings a baby to 221B Baker Street.

Thousands of words of fluff. Literally. There’s not a lot of conflict in this story, which makes it a great comfort fic when your mind is too busy or real life is too depressing.

6. A cathartic fic

The Quiet Man by ivyblossom

Sherlock ** Sherlock/John ** 157,369 ** Explicit ** No Warnings

"Do you just carry on talking when I'm away?"

Post-Reichenbach John is walking the line between fantasy and reality, choosing to stay with the Sherlock in his head rather than deal with the reality where he no longer exists. He eventually manages to attempt a normal life, but he’s bored and basically sleepwalking through his days, so when Sherlock finally reveals himself, it’s the best kind of relief. They go after the last remnants of Moriarty’s web, in hopes of a second chance at the life they should have had together.

7. A fic you’d print and put on your bookshelf

Saving Sherlock Holmes by earlgreytea68

Sherlock ** Sherlock/John Mycroft/Greg ** 139,494 ** Mature ** Underage

Okay. So. This was literally supposed to be, like, three or four chapters as a prologue to the show. Sort of a "what happened in the Holmes childhoods to make them the way they are today." That's why it's set in the time period it is, because I thought I was eventually going to leave them to go on to the show. And then...I got a bit carried away and thought, Here I have established the two young Holmes boys. Now what happens if, instead of making them wait twenty years, I give them everything they need to fix themselves right now? Forty-three chapters later, you have this story.

To be honest, I would like to have most of my favorite fics in book form, with actual pages, that I could pluck from my actual shelf and sit and read without the glare of a screen between us. But I do enjoy the feel of this story, and I do believe it would make a good actual book.

8. A fic you associate with a song

Unholyverse by bexless

Bandom ** Frank/Gerard ** 186,764 ** Explicit ** Violence & Character Death

“He thinks I have stigmata,” Frank said, because what the fucking hell, it couldn’t get any worse. He might as well just lay it out.

“Oh, well,” said Brian into his hands. “Of course.”

Every time I so much as think about this series, MCR’s Heaven Help Us starts playing in my head.

9. A fic that inspires you

Turn by Saras_Girl

Harry Potter ** Harry/Draco ** 306,708 ** Explicit ** No Warnings

One good turn always deserves another. Apparently.

Frankly, I love every single thing this author has ever churned out, but this one is my very favorite. Harry gets a glimpse into what his life could have been, and a chance to make big changes he desperately needs. 

10. A fic that brought you on board a new ship

So, So Fucked by Anonymous

Bandom ** Pete/Patrick ** 12,565 ** Mature ** No Warnings

Pete accidentally "outs" himself and Patrick on Good Morning America. Only problem? They're not gay. What now?

I was reading strictly in Harry Potter at the time, and wasn’t interested in bandom at all, but my best friend was doing betas for someone who was writing in bandom, and she ended up getting into it and then wrote this one, and kept calling me about it to bounce ideas around, and the story was so cute, and Pete and Patrick were so cute, and I suddenly found myself totally invested. Honestly I think it may have been one of the best things that ever happened to me.

11. A fic you wish could be a movie

The Anatomy of a Fall by novembersmith

Bandom ** Frank/Gerard ** 107,525 ** Explicit ** Violence & Character Death

The unholy union of a high school AU and a ghost story. Gerard's life takes a strange turn when his family moves to a small town in Vermont and he discovers the locals aren't all what they seem to be. Also includes: unexpected nature walks, murder, pining, improper treatment of crime scenes, a number of bone-related puns, high school bullies, and a short-range shrub named Ferdinand.

This story has excellent imagery that I think would work really well on the big screen. Plus I can’t even hear the name of it without my heart doing flip-flops.

12. A fic that led to you making friends with the author

Seven ficlets for Valentine’s Day Part VII by RedOrchid

Bandom ** GSF ** 1,042 ** Mature? ** No Warnings

Panic-as-cleaning-equipment-AU Valentine's Day GSF.

I technically don’t have a fic for this bingo square, but this one comes close, I guess. The author was already in my larger circle of friends, but we didn’t actually talk to each other? She wrote this crack ficlet around the same time we started talking to each other more, and I still vividly remember it because of the genius involved in turning band boys into literal cleaning equipment. The line “Ryan bristled” has stuck with me to this day.

13. free space

Elf ‘Verse by mokuyoubi

Bandom ** GSF ** 103,247 ** Explicit ** Underage

Modern AU where Ryan is a famous poet, and he and Spencer are fiercely private and insular and stupidly co-dependent until Jon shows up and effortlessly breaks down all their walls.

Or

Wherein Brendon and Frank are Christmas elves who, inspired by Will Farrell movies, venture into the real world to become rock stars. Or something of that nature.

I’ve got a lot of love for this universe for various reasons, but it’s also fun and heartwarming and honestly, I don’t really need anything else.

14. A fic you’ve gushed about irl

Harry Potter and the Battle of Wills by Jocelyn (and her mum)

Harry Potter ** Mostly Gen ** 137,385 ** Basically PG-13 ** Character Death

Harry mourns his godfather as the war finally begins in earnest, bringing tragedy and new struggles for all those on the side of Good. If they hope to win, all quarrels must be set aside, new alliances must be forged, and Harry Potter must find the courage to face down dark wizards, his own emotions, and a destiny he did not choose. Snape blows his cover as a spy to save Harry from Voldemort.

This begins after Order of the Phoenix, and the story and characters read more like canon than any other HP fic I’ve read, so because of that and because it’s so, so good, I like to rec this one to people who are new to fandom.

15. A fic you associate with a place

Stately Homes of Wiltshire by waspabi

Harry Potter ** Harry/Draco ** 57,582 ** Explicit ** No Warnings

Malfoy Manor has mould, dry rot and an infestation of unusually historical poltergeists. Harry Potter is on the case.

Wiltshire! I’ve never actually been there, but this author is really good about details. The story is also lovely and funny.

16. A fic that made you gasp out loud

Home is a Name by Arsenic

Bandom ** Frank/Gerard ** 39,314 ** Explicit ** No Warnings

MCR Clinic of Love. Companion fic to Wednesday Night Boys.

Okay, so this one is actually a sequel, and the first installment, Wednesday Night Boys, should 100% be read first. It must be said, though, that while the sequel doesn’t have any warnings, Wednesday Night Boys is about the Panic! kids as prostitutes, and has warnings for graphic violence, rape/non-con, and underage sex. The MCR guys work at the free clinic, and Home is a Name focuses on them. They’re honestly both gorgeous stories.

17. A fic you found at the right time

real or not real by thearkdelinquents

Anne with an E ** Anne/Gilbert ** 11,587 ** PG ** No Warnings

“I could do it.” Gilbert said, looking straight ahead.

Anne stopped. “What?”

He turned to look at her; they were just outside Green Gables now. “I could do it. I could court you.”

“What- We- You- I- You don’t like me like that.” Anne sputtered.

Gilbert smirked at her. “Well we could pretend. I could court you and be your fake boyfriend.”

For one of the few times in her life, Anne Shirley-Cuthbert was speechless.

-

a fake dating fic but it's basically just a shirbert To All The Boys I Loved Before au.

I really, really loved Anne with an E. When the final season was released, I spent a weekend binge-watching the entire show, and then it was over and I was bereft, so I decided to see what was available on Ao3, and I found this, and it was exactly what I needed. And now I have another fandom.

18. A fic that you would read fic of

Left by lifeonmars

Sherlock ** Sherlock/John ** 45,153 ** Mature ** No Warnings

John Watson is left-handed.

He’s tried not to let it affect his life, but as any Lefty knows, that’s almost impossible.

In this universe, all right-handed people have some kind of power, or ‘knack’, most of which are mild and easily categorized. Sherlock’s is rare and believed to be the only one like it in the world. John is left-handed, part of the 10% of the population without a knack. I would read all kinds of fics of this fic.

19. A fic that made you laugh out loud

What to do When Your Flatmate is Homicidal by hyacinth_sky747

Sherlock ** Sherlock/John ** 58,650 ** Explicit ** No Warnings

Sherlock takes Molly's advice when dealing with his dangerous flatmate.

Heartwarming and hilarious. I laughed a lot.

20. A fic with a line (or two) that you’ve memorised by heart

A Necessary Requirement by Bexless

Bandom ** Frank/Gerard ** 3,759 ** Mature ** No Warnings

Right, here is the extremely silly storylet I wrote BY HAND on holiday. On PAPER. With a PEN. My god. The things I do when I'm separated from my beloved net. It is set during the Summer of Like (Warped '05, for those of you who don't know) and is basically a product of my reaction to various pictures of Gerard groping himself on stage, which led to me obsessing about his dick and what it might look like. As usual, I chose to work this obsession out through Frank.

This fic could have gone to multiple other squares, but I am not usually the kind of person who can quote lines from things, and I have many lines from this story committed to memory. I’ve read it multiple times, because I read it every time I need a pick-me-up or a good laugh. Or if I’ve read something scary and I need something lighter before I can actually get up and move around my house...

21. A fic that gave you butterflies

Pretty Much A Sex God by adellyna

Bandom ** Spencer/Jon ** 3,985 ** PG-13 ** No Warnings

Jon and Spencer’s first date.

The Jon in this story is so soft and warm and fluffy and his character makes my heart and stomach do weird things.

22. A fic that embodies something you value in life

A Marauder’s Plan by CatsAreCool (Rachel500)

Harry Potter ** Harry/Hermione ** 865,520 ** PG13 ** Violence/Death/Underage

What if Sirius decided to stay in England and deliver on his promise to raise Harry instead of hiding somewhere sunny? Changes abound with that one decision...

ALSO

Harry’s New Home by kbinnz

Harry Potter ** Gen ** 318,389 ** PG-13 ** Abuse

One lonely little boy. One snarky, grumpy git. When the safety of one was entrusted to the other, everyone knew this was not going to turn out well... Or was it? AU, sequel to "Harry's First Detention". 

In these two stories, Sirius and Severus throw everything they have into creating the best possible world for Harry, as he is their number one priority, because that is exactly how parenthood should be. 

23. A favourite AU

Performance In a Leading Role by Mad_Lori

Sherlock ** Sherlock/John ** 156,714 ** Explicit ** No Warnings

Sherlock Holmes is an Oscar winner in the midst of a career slump. John Watson is an Everyman actor trapped in the rom-com ghetto. When they are cast as a gay couple in a new independent drama, will they surprise each other? Will their on-screen romance make its way into the real world?

This has got quite a bit of schmoop, which isn’t usually my thing, but this story is so, so good, and I always love stories that describe Sherlock realizing and appreciating how extraordinary John is.

24. A fic you stayed up too late to finish reading

Collared by VelvetMace

Sherlock ** Sherlock/John ** 83,028 ** Explicit ** Violence & Rape/Non-Con

In a world where the British Empire is still strong and slavery is her economic backbone, John has become a terrorist for the abolitionist movement. He is caught by Mycroft, enslaved, and given to Sherlock for training. The goal: To test a new kind of slave collar with the power to break even the strongest willed fighter. One that will make even John learn to love being a slave.

Dubious consent, and humiliation. I remember staying up very late reading this one, even though I had to work early the next morning. I just couldn’t put it down. 

25. A fic that made you feel seen

Buy Handmade by jjtaylor

Bandom ** Frank/Gerard ** 18,755 ** Mature ** No Warnings

He knows something else is going to happen; his life isn't always going to be this. He just doesn't know what has to happen for that change to come, for him to wake up and become an artist with an Etsy page and a home studio, and to never have to see a cubicle again.

This is the story of my heart. I have felt Frankie’s feelings and thought his thoughts, and I love that he does something about it, and I love Gerard so, so much. I first read this in 2009, and my love for it has never wavered. I could have used this one for a good half of the bingo squares, but it’s the only one that could go here.

[robinallender]

Albums of 2019/the decade

(‘Martin Brennan’ appearing on This Time with Alan Partridge, my favourite TV programme of 2019.)

It’s impossible to make an album of the year list because I haven’t listened to every album that was released this year. And to make an album of the decade list…? Well, that’s even impossibler.

I suppose I could try to do what James Acaster did in his book Perfect Sound Whatever, but instead of listening to every album from 2016 I could attempt to listen to every album from the entire decade. A Sisyphean task – and by the time I’d listened to all of those albums, it would probably be around 2030. And by that point, providing the world is still functioning by then, I’d have another decade of albums to catch up on. I could draw a comparison to Tristram Shandy here but I won’t. 

(Plume is my favourite novel of the year.)

(‘DNA.’ is the most thrilling three minutes of music this decade.)

The excellent thing about Acaster’s book is that it glories in the fact that beneath all the hype and buzz of big releases, and away from algorithmic playlists and ubiquitous albums of the year, there is a universe of incredibly diverse and exciting music being made all the time. Acaster rightly celebrates bandcamp, which has become something like the anti-Spotify over the last ten years. Thanks to bandcamp, it feels like there has never been a better time to listen to experimental music. Obscurity no longer exists – there is no longer any music which is difficult to hear. 

I’ve become enamoured with Jim O’Rourke’s Steamroom page, where he regularly releases albums of ambient/noise music. if you’re expecting the Bacharach-esque chamber-pop of his Drag City albums then I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. There’s a fantastic interview with him here where he describes his creative process (I’m a particular fan of Number 44).

It feels like the prevalence and dominance of the internet has brought with it a certain kind of musical freedom. There’s a kind of the-music-industry-has-collapsed-so-does-anything-really-matter-anymore attitude which I love! Dean Blunt’s Black Metal (2014) feels like an album that couldn’t have been made at any other time. An ‘anything goes’ album of hip-hop/indie/experimental/weirdness that breaks so many production rules (samples of badly compressed MP3s, levels clipping all over the place) but sounds all the better for it.

Of course the problem with everything being available at the click of a button is that you get overwhelmed with choice. I think this decade I got something like cultural fatigue. I'm pretty sure Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s endlessly meta online show On Cinema should be my favourite thing ever, but I can’t be bothered to watch all one hundred hours of it. And you can’t dip into it because the joke is that it only really works if you watch all one hundred hours of it. Being told to stick with things because they’ll get better in the fifth series…? Can I not just watch Masterchef and have a lie down? 

(I played the Olympia in Paris with Yann Tiersen in 2014!)

The other problem with making ‘best of’ lists is: do you choose albums because you love them or because of their cultural importance? Clearly the best album of the decade culturally was Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly – an actual soundtrack to a civil rights movement, an album of astonishing power and viscerality. It’s a dense, difficult album full of brilliant songs. But you’re not always going to be in the mood to listen to it. You’re not always going to be in the mood to be challenged, or to be saddened that an album like that needed to be made! 

Or should your album of the decade be the album you listened to the most? This would probably make sense since Spotify has taken over our listening habits and now insists on sending us our most played songs of the year, a cruel reflection of our exposed ids (for a Velvet Underground fan, I really listen to a lot of Bastille). Well, if we went by what Spotify suggested, one of the most successful artists of the decade would be ‘ambient rain noise’.

I believe that the truth is between. Some albums on my list I have listened to almost constantly, others I have only listened to once or twice, but they blew my head clean off when I did (Yeezus for example).

(My most played album of the decade was Benoît Pioulard’s Stanza I-III, released in three parts throughout 2015-6, probably because I listen to it most evenings to help me fall asleep. Beautiful melodic ambient drones, drenched in reverb and tape hiss. Er… just a bit!)

(I got to the finals of So You Think You’re Funny in 2017!)

While putting together this list, I thought I’d go back to the albums of the 00s list I wrote in 2009. Deerhoof aside, I kind of got snow blindness from reading it! Significantly, I didn’t even notice at the time that my list was made up almost entirely of white artists. Well, I do listen to a lot of morose indie, a genre not famed for its diversity. But this decade I feel that I have expanded my listening habits, and this should be reflected in my list. I hope it doesn’t look like when Rolling Stone do their best albums of all time and put What’s Going On in the top ten as a kind of afterthought (not even Marvin Gaye’s best album).

Who gives a hoot what I think, this is just a blogpost, it’s not like I’m writing for a major newspaper (although I do need a job if anyone’s reading this), but I think that, even on this platform, this is a really important albeit difficult thing to consider. If this decade is to be remembered for anything it’s that we all have a responsibility to promote diversity in our every action; the 2010s were a decade when the personal became political. It was the decade when it became prudent and necessary to notice things like the fact that I posted a list of my favourite albums and they were all made by white artists, even if it’s on a blogpost that no one reads.

It’s not just racist language and behaviour that must be challenged, we must also challenge the social subliminality and structuralism of racism. So yes, a best of the decade list with only white artists, that is part of the problem! Yes, maybe those were my favourite albums of the 00s, but to use a term that has become increasingly prominent this decade, we need to think of the optics. 

Aren’t you overthinking this? Tying yourself in knots to sound woke? Well, voice in my head, you sound like a bit of a twat, as does anyone who uses the word ‘woke’ pejoratively. 

Can’t you just list your favourite albums? Yes. But my point is: no conversation about culture takes place in a vacuum. Take Mark Kozelek, who topped my list last decade. Would I feel comfortable having him in my list this decade because of his appalling treatment of the excellent journalist Laura Snapes? Not that this would be an issue this decade because of the startling decline in Kozelek’s music. Who could have predicted that Kozelek would go from singing about love and grief with such incredible poignancy to mumble-rapping about buying furniture? (I have written at length about Mark Kozelek before.)

Anyway, I think the terrible state of the world has really affected my listening habits. Basically, life is horrible so I got into ambient music. Turning off the news and drifting off into a hypnogogic daze. What a luxury! 

(From the opening sequence of Midsommar, my favourite film of the year. The murals were created by conceptual designer Ragnar Persson and art director Nille Svensson.)

This is the decade when I no longer collected music – as I switched from downloading from iTunes and buying CDs to streaming it felt like I went from active to passive. It was a decade where music became part of the background – Spotify playlists were engineered to be as bland and un-skippable as possible. So it’s been refreshing to see artists challenge this monotony: Michael Kiwanuka’s dense, conceptual KIWANUKA from this year, and Beyonce’s thrilling video albums. 

(Do you ever listen to something like Otis Redding singing ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ and almost find it hard to believe that that really happened? That it was ever possible for someone so talented and charismatic to ever walk the earth? I got a similar feeling when I watched Homecoming. How lucky we are to have an artist like Beyoncé!)

(I played Green Man Festival in 2012 with Yann and, because Van Morrison wanted to go on first so he could get away early in his helicopter, we played after him on the main stage. So I can sort of say that Van Morrison supported me.)

(How dreadful to lose Mark Hollis and Scott Walker – and Neil Innes – this year. Whenever I have ten minutes to spare, if I’m waiting for a bus or something, I like to listen to ‘After the Flood’. Ten minutes of transcendence!)

(My favourite tweet of the decade.)

(A personal highlight of the decade for me was filling in at a gig at the 9.30 Club in Washington DC by playing ‘Lady in Red’ when Yann broke a violin string.)

Some specific musical highlights of the decade:

‘Sscending’, an extremely blissed out track by Acronym w/Korridor.  

How good was ‘Video Games’? I mean really.

The production on this Nicki Minaj song is utterly fantastic.

I love the lyrically virtuosic Villagers song ‘Earthly Pleasure’.

‘Work’.

Anyway, I’m going to end this by quoting from one of my favourite songs of the decade, and like some dreadful character from a 00s pre-mumblecore indie romcom, it’s by The Shins. 

Love’s such a delicate thing that we do  With nothing to prove Which I never knew 

Albums of 2019 

Orange – Caroline Shaw/Attacca Quartet The Sacrificial Code – Kali Malone Xièxie – Celer Homecoming: The Live Album – Beyoncé Occam Ocean II – Éliane Radigue Requiem for Recycled Earth – James Ferraro Nonlin – Steve Hauschildt Tracing Back the Radiance – Jefre Cantu-Ledesma Cuz I Love You – Lizzo Chastity Belt – Chastity Belt House of Sugar – Alex G (Sandy) Tip of the Sphere – Cass McCombs Designer – Aldous Harding Psychodrama – Dave Titanic Rising – Weyes Blood Compliments Please – Self Esteem KIWANUKA – Michael Kiwanuka When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? – Billie Eilish Nothing Great About Britain – slowthai New Miami Sound EP – Twain MAGDELENE – FKA twigs Normal Fucking Rockwell! – Lana Del Rey STONECHILD – Jesca Hoop This Is How You Smile – Helado Negro I Was Real – 75 Dollar Bill PROTO – Holly Herndon uknowhatimsayin¿ – Danny Brown Fear Inoculum – Tool The Reeling – Brìghde Chaimbeul U.F.O.F. – Big Thief

(U.F.O.F. is my album of the year. It sounds like alchemy, music where trauma has been channelled into something beautiful.)

(I supported John Robins at the Apollo in October this year. Cool!)

Albums of the decade (which I might keep amending Life of Pablo style)

Sleep Like It’s Winter, Steamroom 44 & Simple Songs – Jim O’Rourke  Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death – James Blackshaw Magma – Gojira (superb metal album) The Dream My Bones Dream – Eiko Ishibashi The Suburbs – Arcade Fire EARS – Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Spark of Life – Marcin Wasilewski Trio & Joakim Milder Toumani & Sidiki – Toumani Diabaté & Sidiki Diabaté (please listen to ‘Lampedusa’) Closing – Victoria Hume (got me through a very difficult time) For Those Of You Who Have Never (And Also Those Who Have) – Huerco S. The Uncle Sold – Ed Dowie Witness – Katy Perry (really underrated!) Blonde – Frank Ocean Smoke Ring For My Halo – Kurt Vile Transparent Water – Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita The Curious Hand – Seamus Fogarty Reflection – Brian Eno Looping State of Mind – The Field Tomorrow’s Harvest – Boards of Canada Be the Cowboy – Mitski  Volumes 1-4 – Kosmische Läufer Stateless – Dirty Beaches Bridge Music – Eerie Gaits Veteran – JPEGMAFIA V2.0 – GoGo Penguin Lemonade – Beyoncé Oh Holy Molar – Felix Get Your Hopes Down – Landslide Purist (I played on this album but I don’t care, it’s really good!) Beach Music – Alex G (Sandy) Phantom Brickworks – Bibio Chaleaur Humaine – Christine and the Queens Only Myocardial Infarction Can Break Your Heart – Matt Elliott Dust Lane – Yann Tiersen Black Metal – Dean Blunt The Harrow & The Harvest – Gillian Welch Yeezus – Kanye West Ruins – Grouper Kill All Children – Prison UK (sad music from the future) Age Of – Oneohtrix Point Never (more sad music from the future) Nothing Important – Richard Dawson Hidden & Field of Reeds – These New Puritans To Pimp a Butterfly & DAMN. – Kendrick Lamar  Devil is Fine – Zeal & Ardor    Divers – Joanna Newsom Stanza I-III & Hymnal – Benoît Pioulard alterum – Julie Fowlis Unfold – The Necks DAYTONA – Pusha T Golden Hour – Kacey Musgraves Olivia Chaney EP – Olivia Chaney Wit’s End, Big Wheel and Others & Mangy Love – Cass McCombs

(My favourite album of the decade is, unsurprisingly if you know me, Wit’s End by Cass McCombs, released in 2011. A perfect album of eight perfect songs. I still listen to it at least once a week and I don’t think it will ever lose its magic.)

[luthienebonyx]

Fanfic Meme

I was tagged by @agirlnamedkeith

At what age did you start writing fanfiction?

I was 31. And yes, that was a couple of decades ago. I am not just fandom old, but old old.

Who is your favorite author?

I have favourites in every fandom, and I’ve been in a lot of fandoms. Also, inevitably, if I tried to list them, I’d wind up forgetting some. I’ve written lots of recs over the years, and you can find quite a few of them here on my dreamwidth account. (I hardly used dreamwidth at all for about five years until about six months ago, so there’s a gap between the recent few recs and the earlier ones.)

But yeah, okay, if I had to pick my favourite authors over a long time and across many fandoms, then the two constants would be @telanu and Nym. Yes, they’re two of my best friends, but the reason why I wound up talking to them in the first place was because I loved their writing, and that hasn’t changed over the many years I’ve known them.

Favorite type of scene to write?

I love writing long, navel-gazy descriptive stuff. Description comes easily to me, and my aim in any fanfic is to get under the POV character’s skin and find out what makes them tick, so inward-looking description just makes the words flow for me.

Dialogue, otoh, is something that I don’t enjoy writing so much. People have told me that I’m quite good at it, but when I’m writing dialogue I’m always hyper-aware that one wrong sentence, or even one wrong word, that isn’t in-character can throw out an entire paragraph or an entire scene.

What is your favorite fanfic?

Again, so many fandoms, so many great pieces of fanfic. If you read the links to my recs above, you’ll get an idea of the sorts of stories I like.

One story that sticks out above others, though, is Nym’s A Bed of Thorns. It is an IMMENSE story, longer than War and Peace, and it’s still a WIP, though Nym dearly wants to finish it.

It’s a Once Upon a Time Rumpelstiltskin/Belle (rumbelle) canon divergence, where instead of going with Rumpelstiltskin to be his servant/sort of captive, Belle marries him. You know all that navel-gazing description that I like to write? It’s even better when someone else does it for me, and when that someone is a writer as talented as Nym... This story is chock full of character exploration, including character exploration via a LOT of sex scenes, and angst, and fluff, and more angst, and plot, and memorable original characters and original cats. There is nothing else like it in any fandom. Read it.

What tags do you avoid like the plague?

Very little. I’ll read just about anything if it’s well-written. I dislike anything where the author’s kink (not necessarily a sexual kink) trumps the characterisation. If the kink is used in service of the character exploration, rather than the other way around, then that’s fine, though. Because of this, stuff like Alpha/Beta/Omega really doesn’t work for me.

What AU do you wish to write but feel like you won’t manage?

Not so long ago, I would have said that the one AU I’d LOVE to write but wouldn’t be able to manage was a novel length Regency AU. I’ve written Regency one-shots in other fandoms, but I didn’t think I would have the strength for a longer Regency AU. But, um, well... You I Know.

Do you outline or write as you go?

Hahaha. I’ve have TRIED to outline. It doesn’t work for me. My outlines turn into drafts of scenes. I do work with a sketchy mental outline of the main beats of the story, a sort of skeleton that will be filled in with the flesh and blood of detail as I write. There are going to be about half a dozen distinct sections to my current WIP, and those will keep me writing in the right direction (I hope). I do also have a list of bullet points that I keep adding to whenever a detail strikes me that I’ll want to include later on, but that’s really the extent of my planning. Oh, and I like to know approximately where the story will end up before I start putting words on the page. Until I know the destination, it’s really just a story idea rather than a story draft.

What has been your favorite story to write so far?

Very occasionally, a story is so clear in my head that I just have to write it. I can’t stop and second-guess myself; the story just has to be what it wants to be. I’ve written precisely three of this type of story over the years:

1. The Rain Keeps Falling (Harry Potter, Snape/Harry)

2. Plain Jane (Once Upon a Time, Rumple/Belle)

3. More Than a Memory (Game of Thrones, Jaime/Brienne)

Do you prefer to write one-shots or multi-chapters? Why?

Um, both? I mean, I am TERRIBLE at predicting the word count of my own stories, to the point where my friends just laugh when I confidently tell them how long I think my current story is going to be, so sometimes I think I’m writing a one-shot and it turns out I’m not. Case in point: More Than a Memory was going to be a one-shot of a few thousand words. Three weeks later, it ended up at 33,000 words over five chapters.

What is your favorite kind of comment?

Well, the long, detailed comment where it’s clear that someone really ‘gets’ what you were trying to do with the characters and the plot is hard to beat - but absolutely any comment is great. I view fic as being part of the fannish conversation, so when I write a story, I’m opening a conversation about the characters - the comments are the other half of that conversation. And, really, that conversation is why I’m in fandom at all, so it’s all good!

Why did you start writing fanfiction? Why are you still writing it?

Back when I first found fandom, I lurked on a Mailing List (yes, it was that long ago) devoted to one particular character. It wasn’t a big group of people, so there wasn’t masses of fic, and some of it was only so-so. And no, this is not where I tell you that I decided one day that I could write something better than what I was reading. In fact, it was the opposite. One day, someone posted a REALLY good story, and I read it and thought, “Fanfic can be like this. It can be this good.” And I wanted to be part of that, so I gathered my courage and sat down and tried writing something of my own.

Why do I still write fanfic? Well, actually, I thought I’d stopped. I hadn’t written any fanfic for a couple of years, apart from the occasional drabble, although I’d started a few stories but not finished them.

And then the final season of Game of Thrones aired, and characters I’d loved for years, without ever feeling the urge to write them, had an ending that just left me going “but... but... but...” I got that feeling where I HAD to write them, and now I’ve written over 50,000 words in six weeks.

Fandom taught me long ago that I should never say never about anything. I should have remembered that.

—-

Tagging @slipsthrufingers, @woodelf68, @sfiddy, @indiefic and anyone else who wants to play.

[dukeofriven]

[Note: this post originally appeared in this thread. Owning to Tumblr’s inability to update reblogs with edits because it is a hellsite programmed by a secretive cell of former Stasi operatives to avenge the fall of East Germany, it has thus been re-edited and reformatted here for your reading pleasure.] JK Rowling’s wizards are the most useless, lazy, incapable dumbfucks in the history of fiction. The average Muggle? You take away their technology and they would be able to complete the basic tasks of feeding and clothing themselves without shitting on the floor. If a wizard ever lost their magic in Harry Potter, though, they would die. They’d be dead in three days. They’re garbage and I hate that I’ve come to hate Harry Potter - a series I once loved - because an author inexplicably hailed for her world-building is daily revealed to be appallingly bad at it. I realize this is a really dumb thing to be this angry about but I’ve been told for years what a great world-builder J.K. Rowling is, and that was not even true when the books were coming out. The Time Turner ruined all of Harry Potter forever, not because it offers easy time travel you can hold in your hand (although it does), not because you ask ‘why don’t they just use the time turner’ with every subsequent scenario forever (although you do), but because it was an enormous, flashing red light warning everyone that the series was going to attempt to make the transition from Fairy Tale Logic to Serious Fiction logic and fail. Badly. Really, really badly. I still think Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone is an almost perfect book: a distillation of decades of boarding school genre fiction combined with magic, friendship, and wonder. It is a book that owes as much to Enid Blyton and L.M. Boston as it does to C.S. Lewis or T.H. White and other authors with two first initials. Its sense of place is magisterial, from the frumpy, soul-crushing suburban sadness of Privet Drive to the ephemeral curio-shop wonderland of Diagon Alley to Hogwarts itself, a bastion of astonishment, homeliness, and delight. What it isn’t is the sort of framework on which you can support the horror that is the torture and murder of Charity Burbage in front of her colleague Severus Snape, who could not rescue her because he could not break his deep cover as a spy against Wizard Hitler 2. Long-running series can experience changes of tone and complexity. This is neither something laudable nor worth reviling; it’s a neutral phenomenon. Sometimes series do it well: Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld are both series that by-and-large end with books focused on far more complex issues than their earlier entries. TV series do this too: contrast the early episodes of Steven Universe or Adventure Time with episodes from later seasons. With Adventure Time, for example, trying jumping from the pilot to Remember You and see how hard you get tonal whiplash) Lois McMaster Bujold sublime space opera The Vorkosigan Saga doesn’t just change tones but also genre: space adventure, murder mystery, political thriller, goofy regency romance, comedy of errors, heist movie, schizoid identity crisis - on and on. The latest entry in the series has almost no plot to speak of, but is instead a musing on age, gender roles, grieving the loss of a lover, and the hope of new life. Some series, however, manage the transition poorly, largely because the initial tone cannot be harmonized with the later tone (Mass Effect jumps immediately to mind). But Harry Potter has more than just a problem of its tone getting darker: its trying to have darker events fit in the same world in which people can walk around with names like ‘Mundungus,’ the Hogwarts school song can be a nonsense poem, and the Philosopher’s Stone was defended with a series of video game puzzles. In a world in which the villain openly tortures somebody to death, the Philosopher’s Stone shouldn’t have any whimisical bullshit about its magical defences: it should have trip mines in the floor and an enchanted statue with a gun, because Voldermort isn’t a guy you confound with drinking potions and flying keys. You should just kill him. The charming fairy world of wonder of HP & The Philosopher’s Stone has room for a love potion. The later books, in which it is revealed that Voldemort was essentially born from rape, is not place where Ron Weasley can hand-out a book to Harry called Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches without seeming like a predator in the making. The cradle that is The Philosopher’s Stone cannot hold a beastly baby like Deathly Hallows any more than Grindlewald pontificating about the superiority of wizards can sit comfortably in a universe in which wizards took until the 18th century to accept the outhouse! Not that fascist ravings are inherently logical; but even non-fascists in Harry Potter never act like wizards are anything other than 100% better than muggles at all times. They can’t, because if the series were ever to do that it would have to acknowledge that the two worlds are different: neither better, just different. Instead - well, as Ron once bitched, magic makes coffee perfect every time, so it’s not clear how muggles stand being alive and don’t just roll-over and die from the hellacious half-life that is living with imperfect coffee. This has nothing to do with irony, a suggestion that ‘oh Grindewald talks a big game about wizardly superiority but wizards didn’t use toilets and cal themselves goofy names like Flumpus MacFludgeon: Rowling is using dramatic ironic to lampshade how wizard supremacy lacks self-awareness. No: this is about a world that is silly being asked to host a genocidal dictator and his crimes. It’s like those tedious ‘grimdark’ AUs that always show up in bad fanfiction by authors attempting to be serious: what if the Sesame Street gang had to deal with ICE, what if Po started haemoraging while hanging-out with Laa-Laa, what if Peppa Pig learned that she was adopted and her real parents were brutally murdered as part of gang war because they were heroin dealers and so on. (The best skewering of this edgelord comedy is still probably either Andrew Hussie’s Muppet Babies/Saw comic or any encounters the Shortpacked staff ever had with the Transformers: Buckets of Blood guy.) In Harry Potter, Rowling built a wonderful little fantasy world that ran happily on the logic of fairy tales and fairy stories, and then decided she was never going to be taken seriously as an author unless she introduced Hitler to the equation. And it never works for her. It’s not like it couldn’t have worked. The Lord of the Rings is famously a very different book from The Hobbit. It did, in fact, introduce Hitler into a little fantasy world but Tolkien made it work by abandoning huge portions of the Hobbit’s tone, style, and structure: he wrote a completely different book.  Frodo isn’t scarfing-down Bertie Bott’s Every Flavoured Beans on the slopes of  Mount Doom. The moment, say, Cedric Diggory lay dead in Harry’s arms, we needed to never meet Mundungus Fletcher ever again, or Weasley’s Gooftacular Prank Nonsense, or Ron getting Harry a book about love spells. All the very least that needed to go away, at least until the very end, because Rowling is not an author with the skill to keep the silly and the sublime on the same page. That’s fine in and of itself: all artistic people have strengths and weakness, nobody is skilled at every element of creation. J.M. Barrie was very good at writing a book about an eternal child, but a bit crap at writing a biography about his mother. Arthur Sullivan spent his life quietly seething no one wanted to listen to Ivanhoe instead of The Mikado. There’s a reason Jerry Lewis never released The Day the Clown Cried.  Virginia Wolfe is a great writer, but that doesn’t mean she would have written a great run on She-Hulk. [Although now that I’ve said it I can’t think of anything I want to read more.] There’s a great bit in the Lord of Rings after the Shire has been scoured of Saruman where the Hobbits essentially open-up their larders and allow people to have fun again; there’s also a nice bit slightly earlier where Great King Aragorn puts on his old Strider clothes just so he can be his D&D character again: when series change tone, unless you’re really good at walking on a knife’s edge, the quieter, gentler, lighter world isn’t gone forever, but it does have to go away for a while: which means its time to tamp-down on the people with silly names and personalities - like Slughorn, who slips into book six like the second-coming of the vain and silly Lockhart, even though that’s the book where Dumbledore dies.

Rowling keeps trying to makes her old tone fit with her new world without having to pull a Tolkien and actually write differently, which produces moment after moment of tonal whiplash in which the latest Potter-related movie literally involves referencing the holocaust but she also drops some fun trivia about wizards shitting on the floor like animals. (You could describe the entirety of the first Fantastic Beasts film as Tonal Whiplash: The Motion Picture. I’d say that’s an essay for another day but I do not want to have to watch that movie again.)

It needs to be said that a primary reason these tone shifts ‘don’t work’ for Harry Potter is that the logic of a fairy tale is different than the logic of a mundane story. The logic of a fairy tale tends to be self contained: it doesn’t have a smart ass running around asking questions like ‘why’ because there is no why; a thing is the way it is because it is the way it is. Fairies steal babies on the third Sunday of every month, and nobody in the story asks ‘well what about in countries that use different calendars, and what about the shift from Julian to the Gregorian calendar that skipped eleven days?’ because such a pedantic question has no substance in a fairy-tale world. The Clever Child might question what the fairies need with babies, but she’s not about to break-down the week-to-week investment metrics on the Fairyland Infant Exchange. It’s not that one cannot critique or bring critical thinking to fairy stories; it’s that in a fairy story you don’t ask how the sewer system works because it’s not pertinent to what the story is trying to convey. It’s being the guy at the book club who is mad nobody wants to discuss his theories on the music of Rush: its not that the theories are bad, it’s that in this time and place they are of limited relevance. Harry Potter, however, does not belong to to the world of fairy stories, but to the legacy of Tolkienesque fantasy - the world of

  In The Hobbit nobody would ever ask if Hobbiton had sewers - it’s not important, and if you ask those kind of questions expecting there to be a serious answer of grave import you’re being a twit. Lord of the Rings, though? Not only is it a valid question, but Tolkien probably wrote a paper explaining the etymology of the Westron word for ‘sewer’ and how sewers were first invented by Shítlívær the Noldor as a way of helping the Blessed Isles cope with all the crap that tumbled out of Fëanor’s mouth.

The world of The Hobbit is one you could enter and expect to quickly find yourself on an adventure. The world of The Lord of The Rings is one you could enter, walk-about, and study without anyone ever exepecting you to solve some sort of regionally-disturbing social problem: in short, it wants you to be invested in the existence of its world in a different way than The Hobbit. Even then, although The Lord of the Rings is more grounded than The Hobbit, it is not so grounded that it doesn’t leave room for mystery, and questions that refute Wittgenstein’s assertion that all questions must be answerable. Tolkien loved to create complex worlds, but there was stuff he knew wasn’t worth elaborating on. It’s really his fans and authorial heirs who developed the somewhat worrying belief that a good worldbuilder has to have an answer to literally every question or else didn’t think their world through. (This has killed more potentially good books than bad cover art ever has.)

The Lord of the Rings leaves room for The Undiscovered Country. Harry Potter wants too… but can’t. Firstly, Rowling obviously understands the need for what we might call poetic mystery - like the gateway in the somewhat unsubtly name Department of Mysteries - but she also wants you to know how wizards pooped three hundred years ago. You get the feeling she knows exactly how and why that gate works, and what it is, but she withheld the knowledge because she likes mystery’s aesthetic more than she ascribes to any idea that an author might have lacunæ in the knowledge of their own work. That is, she would never put something into her work that she didn’t have an answer for - for her there is no undiscovered country that exists beyond the knowledge of even the author; she is an omniscient deity. Not for her is C.S. Lewis’ insistence that for her characters: All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. Rowling knows exactly what happens to every one of them from the moment they were born to the moment the rot in the ground and the day-to-day schedules of their lives in heaven. Secondly - and far more of an issue - is that Harry Potter becomes a world that invites you to pick up each part of its structure and think about it, because the author has - with loving care - built that entire world for you to interact with. A place for everything, and everything its place. Except JK Rowling is a lazy thinker who never, ever considers the consequences of anything she says. Nagini is actually an Asian woman cursed to live as a snake, wizards used to magically disappear their shit from wherever they just stood and shat it out, Hermione Granger can have a time travel device to attended a bunch of classes but Harry can’t grab one off a nearby shelf and go back fifteen minutes and save his godfather, and nor a few years later can the Minister for Magic’s protection detail keep them on hand to go back half an hour and tell their past selves ‘Hey Voldemort is about to walk in here and kill y’all thought you ought to know.’ No author can work-out every aspect of every element in their works - that’s impossible, and why ARGs are solved by the internet hivemind in half a day even though they took a far smaller group of minds months to devise. But Rowling is intellectually lazy - she adds the holocaust to her Magic Fun Land without sparing a single moment to think that idea through. She then gets defensive when confronted by the suggestion that her worldbuilding might have been shallow. Hey your American wizard houses seem a bit racist also America doesn’t really use the house system in its schools - and her response was to lash out and not listen.  Rowling tried to move Potter from a fairy logic world with its own rules into our world with our rules and our history but she doesn’t know our history very well, or even our rules, so she tells us wizards shat on the floor until the 18th century while the rest of us sit around going ‘but humans have never done that as social groups - even in horrible slums and facility-free prison cells humans create a designated place for taking a shit even if it’s just ‘that corner over there.’ We don’t just drop pants and go whenever!” This is because, as a worldbuilder, J.K. Rowling is actually kind of rubbish.