#i think of sirius as bringing out the best in remus and therefore barty bringing out the worst

[morsmortish]

Hi! I love your brain.

So what are your thoughts on Remus x Barty.

Im not quite sure they could work together so that’s why im writing them together but I see Remus as a more sane Evan. And a tiny bit more of a loser.

Barty is fun. You know him quite well, anyway.

It’s like rosekiller but at the same time I can never see Remus handling Barty well, I think for wolfstar angst it would definitely work. Where Remus went with Barty (because Barty and Sirius do have a similar style. Just Barty does it better) and Sirius is really jealous. That’s where you could add Evan. Because Sirius and Barty, and Evan and Remus. My mind is all over the place so I apologize for how much of a mess this ask is.

Barty would be a toxic ex for Remus. They tried it, and it never really worked out. Unless there were others. Like if you added other people it could work, because the main thing pulling them apart is that Barty is much too insane. Other people could handle that part, and they could actually be happy.

Maybe Evan would work. I’m not sure, but that is not my point!

Barty is energetic and Remus is not. So it works like a family dynamic (which probably isn’t good for a relationship) so all that aside, now I’m wondering about friends. Because I think it’s all or nothing. But at the same time there’s so many factors to think about.

So, what do you think about it?

i must admit i’ve never thought about it before…but the way you’ve phrased it here has definitely piqued my interest. i’m a loser!barty truther, and i see him as the kind of guy to skip merrily over to a dungeons and dragons club after giving someone the best sex of their life. i see him and remus as somewhat similar in that sense (they’d both be classified as ‘weird’ in an american high school), and they’re mostly separated by the fact that barty is extroverted, and remus is not (↤ take this with a very generous pinch of salt). barty wears his ‘loserness’ with a sense of unbothered flippancy; he does not care that his interests are stereotypically ‘weird’, and he will happily ramble on about the latest instalment of whatever vampire comic series he’s into at the moment (whilst blowing vape smoke into your face). on the other hand, remus is somewhat more self-aware- he’s shyer and much more awkward, and definitely extremely self-concious. however, i do still see him as having that same cruel streak running through him that is very prominent in barty’s character, to an undoubtedly lesser extent, but nonetheless present in him as well. remus can be cruel when he needs to be, whereas barty is cruel when he wants to be.

the idea of barty being remus’s toxic ex…yeah. this is the option i’m leaning most towards in terms of a ship between them, because barty crouch junior is the ULTIMATE toxic ex. he might as well have written the goddamn rulebook on it. with ships like bartylily, bartylus, they all work sm better (for me) with them broken up, and i think it’s safe to say i will be adding bartyremus (we need a proper shipname for them) to this list. i can see them meeting at some sort of convention, maybe hitting it off (barty talks!!!! and remus listens!!!!), but, as you said, barty is a bit too insane for remus. i think barty could unlock that aforementioned cruel streak in remus, he could bring out the worst in him. and i think this would scare remus away more than anything barty himself could do- remus leaves because he starts to hate himself, not barty (although he eventually hates barty for causing it). ie- it’s not barty throwing a plate against a wall that ends the relationship, it’s remus.

a lot of the time i like to think of barty as a foil to james, but it’s also really interesting to now think of him in comparison to remus. in the grand scheme of things, they’re not THAT similar (hence the generous pinch of salt mentioned above), but i can see them being drawn to each other due to similar interests or whatnot. i don’t see them as working particularly well as friends, but barty as That One Ex-Boyfriend? who makes remus roll his eyes when his name is mentioned? who sirius despises with a burning passion? who will hit remus with the “u up?” text at 3am? yeah. i can see that very clearly.

[hogwartswelcomesyou]

The Mods Fix HP!: Scripting (by Tory)

Hi guys! This is the first in hopefully a series of posts where the Mods attempt to fix what they saw as major problems with the Harry Potter film adaptations. Of course, to be clear, we all love the movies, but I think all HP fans have those little (or not-so-little) bones to pick with the finished result, so that’s what these editorials will discuss. Hope you enjoy them!

~The Mods

Harry Potter was a series of books magically transformed into a series of movies. Adaptation is always a tricky tight rope to walk, but coming from someone who has actively studied film and television, adaptation cannot and should not just be literally copying everything on the page and slapping it up on screen without any thought. Some things have to change, both due to practical reasons like cost as well as for more story-driven reasons like making the plot follow a three-act structure. Although yes, all things considered, the Harry Potter films are rather good adaptations compared to many other book-turned-movies (*eyes Percy Jackson beadily*), I would still argue that there are quite a few things I would personally fix in regards to the screenwriting of these adaptations.

Let’s first knock out what I believe are the Harry Potter film series’ top four biggest problems, just in the script alone –

1)      The lack of continuity from film to film.

2)      The scissoring-out of important details needed to understand the scene(s) in question.

3)      The “trope-ification” of each character.

4)      The lack of moral grayness.

To tackle the first one, there are a LOT of changes made to locations, casting, and such made from film to film thanks to the many directors and extraneous factors on set (for example, the actor playing Crabbe ended up in prison and was unable to perform his role in the last film, hence why Goyle ended up being the one to die in the Room of Requirement instead). But again, just focusing on the script-writing perspective, the changes made writing-wise were made for a different reason. The main rationale for most of these scripting changes is that the filmmakers didn’t know what little details would be important later, as they were making the films as the books were still being written, and so therefore they had to play catch-up (with varying degrees of success) with all the information we should’ve already known from the previous films, but don’t because it wasn’t written in.

For example, let’s take a look at Harry seeing the thestrals in fifth year. Now, of course, in the books, the reason Harry can see the thestrals this year, and no other, is because he saw Cedric die in the Little Hangleton graveyard the previous school year. But in the movies, the filmmakers made the artistic decision to give Quirrel a marvelous death scene at the end of Philosopher’s Stone – which somehow didn’t count, I guess, since Harry saw Quirrel die and yet didn’t see thestrals until three years later? This sort of change follows the books’ continuity, but not the films’, and so film-only fans will be lost and confused.

Another good example is the portrayal of the Patronus Charm. Whereas in Azkaban it’s established that only a corporeal Patronus can drive away a dementor, in both Order of the Phoenix and Deathly Hallows Harry’s Patronus is nothing but a flare of indistinguishable light. It’s made even worse in Order when Harry uses a stunning charm on a dementor (which shouldn’t work) and Luna references Harry’s ability to perform the Patronus Charm, even though in the films we’ve only seen it take the form of a stag once. In Order we even see almost all the other students (except Neville) producing corporeal Patronuses with apparent ease and in the second Deathly Hallows film we see Snape’s Patronus is in the form of a doe -- the spell is supposed to be “advanced stuff,” but if Harry can only make bright white light a lot of the time anyway, why is it a big deal that he can perform it? He was already able to do that much in his very first lesson with Lupin, so it is clearly established not to be that hard to conjure up some light -- what is supposed to be hard is making that light have a form, but the films don’t really take the time to show the magic itself or even to re-establish how difficult and unique it is to do.

There are errors that are worse, though. What about the opening of Prisoner of Azkaban that infuriates me like few other things in this world, where Harry consistently uses underage magic to light up his wand (more than once, may I add, when in no other film does the charm need casting that many times!)? And then, no joke, just two scenes later, Harry’s running away scared because he used underage magic on his Aunt Marge! Wait – so – underage magic is illegal, but if you just use it to light up your wand, it’s totally okay?! It not only defeats the emotional punch to the stomach that Harry using magic on his aunt would’ve given the audience, but it also trivializes the entire scene and makes it nonsensical and confusing.

This also leads into the second problem – the cutting out of important details. How were the filmmakers to have known that a character only mentioned in a few throwaway lines like Mrs. Figg was going to have a role in Order of the Phoenix? How were the filmmakers to have known that the two-way mirror Sirius gave Harry and that Harry broke upon it not working would be important in Deathly Hallows? They couldn’t, honestly. But there are a few things they did know were important, but chose to leave out or just glossed over, and most if not all of those details boil down to one thing –

Backstory.

The Harry Potter films really, really do not like putting in characters’ backstories if they can help it – from simple things like Fred once turning Ron’s teddy bear into a spider and in the process causing his severe arachnophobia to really important stuff like Barty Crouch, Sr. being an ambitious man on the cusp of becoming Minister until his own son was discovered amongst the Death Eaters and Crouch was disgraced and then saving his son from Azkaban as a favor to his ill wife and keeping him prisoner in his own home, only to have his son get rescued by Voldemort and kill him when he got too close to telling Dumbledore what was going on.

Yeah – this isn’t just something you can blame on people making these movies as the books were coming out. Knowing a character’s history is not only a very good way to understand where they are now, but also a very good indicator of future behavior. Knowing Severus Snape was the one who leaked the contents of Trelawney’s prophecy about Harry to Voldemort sets up why Harry distrusts Snape, as well as gives the audience a good reason to agree with Harry. Knowing Dumbledore’s sister died because of an argument that broke out between Aberforth, Dumbledore, and Grindelwald explains why Aberforth and Dumbledore aren’t on speaking terms and why Dumbledore has never talked about his family to Harry, or likely to anyone. Knowing that Remus didn’t stand up to his friends at school when they were bullying Snape not only gives Snape good reason to hate Remus, but it also foreshadows his adversity to conflict shown in his relationship with Tonks and in his confrontation with Harry during the Second Wizarding War.

Now of course backstory can be difficult to weave in smoothly. Sometimes it can come across as stilted or as a detour, if done poorly. But the nice thing about filmmaking is that you only need images, and not a lot of words or time, to translate this information to your audience. By depicting a little more of Snape’s Worst Memory, we would’ve seen Remus not standing up to his friends. By having Harry listen in on a conversation between Snape and Dumbledore in the Headmaster’s office a little longer, it could’ve been slipped out that Snape had been the one who told Voldemort the prophecy. Even Riddle’s backstory with Merope, Morfin, Marvolo, and Tom Riddle, Sr. could’ve been done with a lot of images and not that many words – the Pensieve scenes in Half-Blood Prince were already very stylized, so you could’ve gotten across a lot with very little.

The best way to fix both the first and second problems, honestly, was to have waited for all of the books to come out before adapting them, so that it would be easier to weigh what details would be important and which ones wouldn’t.

But now we get onto the problem of characterization, in the script-writing sense. Almost every character in the Harry Potter movies is a shallow representation of their book incarnations…not just because of the stuff the filmmakers left out, but because of deliberate additions and visual choices.

The most notable example that everyone brings up is Ron. Ron, in the books, is quite honestly the best friend most anyone could think up – he’s loyal, he’s funny, he’s laid-back, he’s incredibly generous despite his lack of wealth, he’s noble, he’s sensitive, he’s insightful, and he’s always ready to jump in and help when his friends need him. But in the films, he’s honestly more remembered for trailer-worthy one-liners and being a tag-along sidekick. In Prisoner of Azkaban especially, Ron is just dead weight, when the Golden Trio was always supposed to be just that – a trio, balancing out the flaws of the others.

Hermione has the exact opposite problem. Because she is the main female character, the filmmakers made a lot of choices that put her more in the spotlight at the expense of the rest of the cast. Because Hermione was the most important female character in the narrative, she suddenly had to represent all women, like most main women from films have to do – even if, yeah, the only reason many film women are put in that position is because they’re the ONLY developed female character in the story, and there are many strong and different female characters in the Harry Potter books, like Luna, Ginny, McGonagall, Molly Weasley, Fleur Delacour, Narcissa Malfoy, Tonks…even villains like Bellatrix Lestrange! But to follow film convention, Hermione was made into a “role model” more than a character, having all the flaws that made her relatable scrubbed away so as to make her more of an “Action Girl.”

Even Harry is given the short end of the stick. In his case, he becomes the wide-eyed, innocent, stock “Everyman Hero” that every audience member is supposed to jump into the shoes of for most of the film series, when Harry in the books had a very definitive personality. He was a hot-blooded, emotional, introverted, academically lazy, courageous, selfless young man who loathed the spotlight of fame and was well known for having a “saving people thing.” In the movies, however, a lot of his snark and temper is toned down and his disdain for fame is downplayed except when it is convenient (i.e. when his name comes out of the Goblet of Fire and he claims he doesn’t want eternal glory – even though in the books, he’d actually off-handedly fantasized about being Champion a few times).

This isn’t even touching a lot of the other “trope-ification” we see – Fred and George as the comic relief (even if they had angry and dramatic moments too in the books), Cho Chang as the (wrong) bland love interest, Ginny as the (right) bland love interest, Fleur as the pretty blond airhead (seriously, what does she do in the movies?!), Lavender Brown as the jealous girlfriend, and Neville as the klutz (in every movie except for the very last one, honestly!). Even Seamus is mostly just known for being the subject of one recurring joke throughout the entire series. As much as we can’t expect that every side character will get a lot of focus, as they shouldn’t, there are ways to hint to deeper character development in these people in the background, rather than just making them stock set pieces. Even in the Harry Potter films themselves, there are examples of how to do it right! Although we never learn everything about Sirius in the films, we do get a lot of who he is simply through a few well-written scenes seasoned with some backstory and some good acting on Gary Oldman’s part. We see this again in the character of Slughorn, who only really appears in one movie – again we feel we know this character better than ones like Ginny or Seamus, even if he’s a side character, because of some well-written scenes and some good acting. It’s just when those scenes become one-note or don’t add or expound upon the established character that it creates a problem.

This particular bullet point also has links to the final problem, and that is the stark black-and-white morality of the film series, which is a huge departure from the moral grayness depicted in the books. As Sirius says, 

“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.”

But unfortunately in the films, we do not see that theme expressed very well. Whereas in the books we have Severus Snape viciously bullying his students and taking every opportunity he can to put Harry down, in the films we have him occasionally growling at his students for their cheek and indulging in slapstick routines where he smacks Harry and Ron over the head for talking during an exam. Whereas in the books we show Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy running to try to find their beloved son during the Battle of Hogwarts, in the films we see Lucius whacking Draco with his cane. Whereas in the books we have Marietta choosing to defend her mother’s job over keeping a secret about an illegal student organization that she hadn’t want to join in the first place, in the films we have Cho Chang being drugged by truth potion by mean old Umbridge, so it wasn’t her fault that she told…and yet she’s still shunned for telling anyway, for some reason – seriously, what’s up with that?

In the films, the good guys are pretty solidly that – the good guys – and the bad guys are pretty much the exact same way. One of the ways this damages the entire series for me is how the film version of Half-Blood Prince depicts Tom Marvolo Riddle. Now in the second film, Riddle is actually handled pretty well – his resemblance to Harry is played up and the performance radiates charm as well as coldness. But then when we got to Half-Blood Prince, it seemed that the filmmakers suddenly thought they were making a movie geared for toddlers and so had to make the past version of Voldemort as friggin’ obvious as they humanly could, sucking out any potential charm or charisma that anyone could’ve seen in Riddle and blinded them to his darker side. The creative decision not only makes Dumbledore and Slughorn and everyone else who didn’t see Riddle as a threat look like idiots – it not only cheapens this menacing villain that you’ve spent the last five films building up – it not only ruins any real-world allegory you could make about real-world monsters that lure followers to their demented causes – but it also defeats one of the central themes of the story, that of choice. Harry at several points in the story is reminded of how similar he is to Riddle, but what makes him in truth nothing like Riddle are his choices. Harry has chosen to save lives, rather than take them. Harry has chosen to love, rather than hate. Harry and Riddle may have gone through very similar traumas and so both have light and darkness in them, but Harry chose to act on the light part of himself, whereas Riddle chose to act on the dark part. This, in the end, is what dooms Riddle and saves Harry.

Honestly, if I had my way, I would wait a few more years (2021, to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the events starting?) and then remake Harry Potter as an HBO miniseries with a huge budget and a more diverse all-star cast. I think we’re ready to tell this story again now…hopefully with more of the detail and themes that we loved in the original books.

[ask-themaraudersmap]

Snape > Ron !?

((OOC Becci: Posted it before but I couldn’t put a read more so... here it’s again.))

Topic: Killing of Ron to let Fred live. People said they'd rather see Ron dead. [German discussion translated for @captofthesswolfstar] Me: The way some people write here is really strange sometime. But since it's about Ron, it's no problem. It's "just" Ron. He has such a bad image here (in Germany)

S: Sad, since he has always been a loyal friend.

M: Loyal? What about part 4? Okay, one might Say now he had his 5 minutes but he had them quite often. Each life weights the same. But if it's about a fictional character people will always chose one character over another. It's human. If instead of a Weasley Tonks would have died people would care even less. In my opinion nobody had to die but Ron could have disappeared. Severus dead hit me hard. If Ron would have went missing I would have been happy.

L: Yes, M. Since part 4 I'm constantly annoyed by his jealousy.

S: M, I'm mother of a dead child and still I wouldn't wish someone else to die for my child to live. Snape's dead hurt me, sure. Ron made ONE bigger mistake in part 4. As a teenager. But he did so well for Harry and Hermione.

Me: I find this quite interesting. Ron did one mistake (that wasn't even "bad", plus he was in puberty and it was relatable) and gets so much hate. Snape did maybe one thing right (while he did so much wrong like bullying students, being a death eater and therefore killing people) and gets so much glorification. Something is REALLY wrong.

S: RIGHT!?

M: It's not jst that one time. It's from 4-7.2 and he constantly turns from one side to another. That's not just one mistake. Snape did "just" one thing right? I remember he tried to save Harry in every part and he was only "mean" to play with the Dark Lord. Other than that he also is Dumbledore's man and does many good things. Having a look at 4-7.2 I wouldn't have been surprised if he would have become a death eater in the end. That is why I dislike him.

Me: Ron doesn't "turn". He's very much his character and self-explainatory. He's very "in character" and a loyal and a self-sacrificing Friend. He would put down anything anytime for Harry, would risk his own life for him. In fact he did! Snape protected him and? He bullied the students, made their lives hell. He never learned from his behavior, was always like that. How much "good" he did remains a secret. We can't read about it. It's only assumptions.

For Ron it's so much. His lovely, caring nature, his loyalty, his humour, his insecurities that make him so human. I find it horrible when people reduce him on part 4 or the Horcrux-thing. That happens all the time. But it's also the movies' fault. The books are so complex and show much more of him. In the movies they changed some lines and even gave them to Hermione. So he looks like an idiot.

M: I wasn't happy about part 5 and 6 neither. Even in part 3 he was very weird to me. In part 1 he was very loyal and a good friend but he wouldn't become my friend there with his stubbornness. Part 2... well I think if Aragog would have caught Harry he would have run away. Part 3 he also had no trust in his friends. In part 4 he left Harry in the lurch and was against him. Part 5 he was neutral and nobody I liked. Part 6 jealousy because Harry got the book. Part 7: Horcrux as you sad. I'm no friend of Ron.

Snape was rough but he supported harry in every part the best he could without raising attention to himself. 1: Quidditch, 2: the snake and the bones, 3: Sirius/Wormtail, 4: Tournament, 5: Occlumency, 6: Book and friend and let him go, 7: his own sacrifice. That's the reason Harry's son carries HIS name and not Ron's.

MS: Snape tortured students over years! He also didn't support Harry in every part just because of caring but because he knew Harry had to live to kill off Voldemort. "Rough" is very understated. I mean... Neville who's parents were tortured by Bellatrix to madness says Snape is his biggest fear... you really need to think about that. And 3 and Sirius/Wormtail? He wanted Sirius to be handed over to the dementors without reason and told the whole school Remus was a werewolf though he knew what would happen. In part 5 he also tortured Harry with thoughts and memories and the lessons were also only because of Dumbledore. Snape has good sides but he was an asshole.

Me: First Snape. 1 - wow. Good job. While he made his and other students' lifes hell. 2 - ??? 3 - Sirius and Wormtail? What did Snape do to help? He tried to bring a innocent person into prison and let Peter run off. Great. And the talk about werewolves is also not the best choice. 4 - what exactly did he do? 5 - Because he had to. Dumbledore's order. 6 - He didn't give it to him. It happened by accident 7 - A sacrifice I'm not sure if he wanted to make it. I still can't understand how Harry named one son after loved people and the other after a manipulator who had used him and a teacher who caused his mother's death and tortured students over years (himself included). Why didn't he name his son after Ron? I guess it's like Remus. Whom he wanted to "give" to Teddy so he could name his child after him one day. About Ron [here I put a translation of this by @rondefencesquad]

M: Really. Someone can see everything negative. Snape killed off the snake and wanted Harry to go to the hospital wing instead of losing bones. Part 3 he wanted to save Harry from Sirius who he though would kill him. And Snape knew about the truth much later. And the werewolf-thing was revenge because of Lupin and the others.

4 - He supported Harry! 5 - he needed to do that so Harry could learn. What else should he have done?! 6 - Might be but he also didn't take it from him. 7 - He wanted. Because of Dumbledore. And to give Harry more time. He also gave Harry the sword in the lake. Severus' name is Harry's son's just like it was written in Cursed Child. Because he was a kind-hearted human and wizard.

Ron - He bought the train empty and had much more than Ron. Also Hermione was already down there and saved Ron. 2 - point of view 3 - your opinion is not mine 4 - doesn't explain his behaviour 5 - you're just showing me how selfish he is 6 - you can't make him positive for me. 7 - someone can see you're a massive Ron fan I like everyone except Ron. Maybe because he's just a clown and I dislike that. Ron did some good things but not enough and I dislike his jokes. I like Snape more.

Me: Snape did a great job telling Harry to go to the hospital wing. Like... every decent human being would have done that. Still - point to Snape Snape KNEW Sirius was innocent and he wanted to bring him to the dementors because of hatred. Out of spite. Remus didn't do anything actually. Nothing we would know of, at least. 4 - pov. 5 - Exactly. Instead of learning with him like a teacher he tortured him. EVERY teacher would have done that. And look how great it turned out, how successful! 6 - Which reasoning? He couldn't get the book [though he tried] 7 - You know he wanted to die because...? He didn't say so, did he?

Ron - 1 - you're confusing something. 2 - his kind-heartedness is a matter of opinion? THat shocks me. But after Snape... nothing surprises me... still... WOW. 3 - Where are you not my opinion? THose are FACTS. They are written in the book EXACTLY LIKE THAT. You can't be another opinon. 4 - because a 14-year old was jealous for a moment you have to hold it against him even after years? Right! 5 - Selfish? Were? Please. Explain this to me. I don't get it at all how support can be something selfish. 6 - I don't want to make him look good. I want to tell you how he really was. 7 - It's facts. And I'm not a Ron fan. I like him not more or less than other characters. But I hate reducing characters on one thing.

Exactly like you do it with Snape. How he tried to kill off Trevor, how he tortured students, because he never had a good heart but was very selfish, ignorant and full of hatred.

Ron wasn't a clown and I get the feeling you only know movie-Ron. He's so NOT Ron in the movies. Book-Ron and movie-Ron hardly have any similarities.

M: When you watc Harry Potter or read it you get the feeling he's a hero. When I read it or watch it I think Hermione is the hero not Harry or Ron. I question everything people do and I thought a lot about Snape and really, you only see the "bad" snape.

Umbridge, Barty Crouch Jr as Mad Eye and some others were really evil but having a closer look on Snape one can see what a good human he was and he even sacrificed himself also for Draco.

Ron on the contraty how he's described he's selfish and some other things. How Ron really was knows nobody. We only know what was shown. I only want you to see how Snape really was. Not like many people think. He wasn't always nice but someone have to look closer.

Me: "How Ron really was knows nobody. We only know what was shown." Same for Snape then. And we saw a lot more of Ron. Also I see not a hero in the trio. One wouldn't be anything without the others. All of them or nobody at all. So don't put words in my mouth.

M: Well, by reading what you wrote about Ron one might expect that. You don't see mch of Snape so it's easy to make him good or evil and for me it shows he wasn't that bad because of Dumbledore and because of Harry's son. In my eyes Ron was an arse.

With Snape I question much but Dumbledore trusted him and he did so many good things for Harry though he didn't need to. Why shouldn't that count when it counts for Ron?

Me: You can't measure with Dumbledore. Manipulative. Can't stand him. Snape is ignorant, bullies kids, tortures them, terrorises them, wants to kill their pets, always has been a death eater with heart and soul until it was his fault Lily was killed. He only became "good" because of Lily. Otherwise he would have been a death eater until the end. Ron was good through and through. He made mistakes, yes. But he would never have felt entitled because of blood purity and would have killed because of that. Ron > Snape. And that is although I like Snape more as a character. I find him very fascinating and interesting. That is why I dislike him so much as well.

M: THat's the problem. Ron isn't good for me. Snape did a lot of things but he suffered from it and he knew that Voldemort still lived so he had to play his part. It sounds like you would find some excuses for Ron killing people but not for Snape. Snape suffered and he made atonement for his doings. You musn't forget that.

Me: I would never ever find excuses for a murderer. That's absurd. How superficial you are...

[That's basically it. People tried to interfere to quiet everything down. So... it stopped. Anyway. I'm still shocked by this. I mean... what the hell?! the German fandom scares me so much sometimes...]