#kassie is a slytherclaw

[amorremanet]

so, I think I’ve decided that, were I a mutant in the X-Men sense, I’d want to have a mutation that gives me mental shielding abilities. like, on the most basic level? yes, I essentially want to have mutant Occlumency. but then, with training and development, I’d branch out some more, learn things like shielding others from any attempts at detection, making literal shields by sheer force of will and mental energy, and actual control over my own mind (i.e., shielding it from itself! no more intrusive thoughts!! no more morbid obsessions!!! this would be literally one of the best things that could happen for me!!) Q: why this power specifically? A: so I could annoy the fuck out of every single telepath who tried to read my mind by learning how to project false thoughts at them, and then making them hear the most fucking obnoxious, annoying, repetitive music EVER any time they try to read my mind. I mean *really fucking annoying*, like… Charles tries to read my mind; he hears some elevator music or the Benny Hill theme song. Emma Frost tries take a peek; she hears the, “a-badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, MUSHROOM!! MUSHROOM!!” song. Jean Gray tries it and she hears that ridiculous, “they're taking the hobbits to Isengard!!” remix. Psylocke gets to hear Weebl and Bob’s song, “Kenya.” Mister Sinister thinks he has a shot; he’s getting a nice round of Aqua’s, “Barbie Girl” or “Put The Lime In The Coconut” — maybe even “Mahna Mahna.” Apocalypse finally goes in for it, and he gets to hear the version of “Jingle Bells” that’s performed by barking dogs. like yes, I’m sure there are easier ways to handle this and better applications for my hypothetical mental shielding mutant Occlumency powers? but see, the thing here is? …I don’t care. I really, REALLY badly want to have the ability to annoy the ever-living FUCK out of every telepath on the planet who thinks, even for one second, that they are EVER getting into my head. *aggressively thinks Quincy Jones’s “Soul Bossa Nova” at every telepath in a five-mile radius*

[amorremanet]

wow, it's a good thing that I'm functionally dead inside or everything might really hurt right now and that's all I'm saying about the Mockingjay double feature right now

[amorremanet]

tfw someone is trying to fight you on something where you know more than they do and you don't know if you should pity them for their horrid ignorance or go in harder on them because their arrogance and their twice-sized pride have earned them double the fall

[amorremanet]

in the space of five seconds, I can apparently switch from rant mode to, "omg I need to go dig up my somewhat less than entirely above board PDFs of Giorgio Agamben's greatest hits so I can flappy hands about Harry Potter, biopolitics, and the state of exception, this is so omg omg omg, I NEED TO FLAP ABOUT THIS" …I think I have problems. and I maintain that I do not belong exclusively to Ravenclaw.

[amorremanet]

me @ other people: you have limits and that's okay!! they are valid and worthy of respect, and so are you!! it's okay for you to take breaks and be nice to yourself!! you deserve to be taken care of when you need some TLC and to have nice things in life, precious bb gumdrop!!!! uwu

me @ self: why are you taking a break after six straight hours of hardcore intense writing what the Hell is wrong with you, you stop that this instant, the limit does not exist Cady Heron now quit your goddamn whining and get back to this unnecessarily intricate project that is built on a bedrock of expecting too much of yourself, I SAID NOW LAZY SO HOW ABOUT YOU DO IT FUCKING *NOW* >|

[amorremanet]

Godric "you must have X many great deeds to your name and/or Y much potential to do shit that'd be worthy of getting written in some badass epic poetry or else you can't sit with us at lunch" Gryffindor

…why does anybody let me talk about anything ever

[amorremanet]

evil is always possible, and goodness is eternally difficult

or: "I'm trying to be a decent person right now but I'm also angry and petty and vindictive and spiteful and being a decent person is hard, especially over things that don't actually matter in the grand scheme of things"

I found comments by JKR from earlier this year that I missed at the time (amidst a bunch of awesome posts, and included in a good post but wow I just really don’t like it when JKR says things)

I am now trying to remember how to be a good, respectful person who doesn’t unfairly bash on canon ships that other people love just because they annoy the Hell out of me, because the ship and its shippers have done nothing wrong in the present moment and lashing out like I’m feeling the impulse to do? is a Bad Thing to do

…but wow, this is really REALLY hard to swing after spending a lot of my early formative fandom years being called a lesser fan and told I was reading the books wrong or had to be (a long list of ableist slurs, most of them related to intelligence, but not exclusively) because I really didn’t ship the thing or think that the characters belonged together romantically at ALL

(and I got sort of personally offended by the implication that they did because of how often I was on the receiving end of, “but you just ARE that one of these characters, you are Character A and Character A is you” because… I was ickle and a fandom bb and it felt like people were telling me that I had to be with Character B or someone like them and I didn’t want that ever in a million years)

like for fuck’s sakes… full disclosure because I hate being coy and don’t want to get asked later: Character A is Hermione; Character B is Ron. on the old FictionAlley message boards, one of their ship names was, “the HMS Trees,” because and I quote (as I remember), “saying that you don’t believe in Ron/Hermione is like saying that you don’t believe in trees”

and I’m trying so hard to get myself grounded enough to remember that it’s not fair to be a dick about R/Hr just because I don’t like the ship, because that’s not fair especially when the current R/Hr shippers are a LOT better than the ones who were loudest when I was a fandom bb — but… whines.

it’s still hard to manage basic fandom decency 101 level stuff with R/Hr because of how many of my early fandom experiences involved either having to just refuse to talk about the ship because I couldn’t tell if I’d be insulted or not (all over just not liking the thing) or having to get insulted and told that I was reading the books WRONG for not liking the ship

and I want to be a decent, respectful person who doesn’t ship-bash like that…… but I also really, REALLY want to be straight up mean and I just kind of want to vent the pent up frustration that I was never really allowed to vent back then even though it isn't fair OR even remotely okay at all, period, because the people who made me frustrated back then are not the people who I'd be hurting now and they don't deserve to suffer now because R/Hr shippers were douchecanoes ten(-ish) fucking years ago, and know it’s wrong but I still really want to do the thing and just

*quietly whispers* I don't like the thing. I'm trying not to be a dick about it but in my heart of hearts, I'm just really kind of a bad person. I'm gonna just… watch some Community until I calm down enough to go to sleep.

Hermione/Luna = my one true love for both of them 5ever ♡‿♡

…in that I do like other ships for them (just not that one, and there are a few others that I'm not so fond of but their shippers were never gross to me and mine or anyone else for not shipping them so we're good), but. I just. Hermione and Luna are in love and they'd be so good together and wehhhh, bbs. T.T

[amorremanet]

I need enough money and social savvy to get some fake credentials and convincingly pass myself off as a journalist in an elaborate scheme whose endgame is to ask Tyler Posey about what he tried to put into the scene from this week's episode of Scott getting doused in gasoline, and what choices he made with his performance there and why, and what connections he made to Motel California there, and what was Scott feeling, and weh feelings…

…yes, the elaborate scheme is absolutely necessary, why wouldn’t it be.

[amorremanet]

Sometimes, I'm pretty sure I should be more actively embarrassed about the amount of time and consideration that I've put into whether or not I would ever actually go through with Kolinahr when: a. Star Trek is still unfortunately fictional; b. if Star Trek ever came to pass in the real world, I wouldn't get to be a Vulcan because I'm a human which stinks because Vulcans by all appearances know by feels better than humans do in a lot of cases; and c. if Star Trek were ever real and I were a Vulcan or partially Vulcan, I would probably not go through with Kolinahr anyway for reasons.

I should probably also be kind of ashamed of the fact that of those three things, only the third is really an issue for me because it means that I've spent a lot of time and energy thinking about the ins and outs of doing a thing that I could never do anyway only to conclude that if I actually had the chance, I probably wouldn't take it in the first place so all of my navel gazing really hasn't had a point to it, it's just kind of been idle self-examination and self-character study for no real purpose and… I mean, I can pull out all kinds of justifications for why self-identifying with any kinds of fictional categories of stuffy stuff things is totally a legit thing to do, whether it's Hogwarts Houses or Star Trek species or whatever?

but I just really really don't like it when my idle self-analyzing doesn't really amount to anything more than getting to know myself better. I just want it to like, mean and/or accomplish something more than, "well I guess I understand myself slightly better as a person now." because that's fair and it has its value, sure, but it's not constructive enough for me to really feel okay with just letting it exist on its own terms or whatever.

[amorremanet]

I started taking a silly "what kind of character are you" quiz and had to stop because none of the potential solutions to a potential Evil Overlord showing up on the scene matched with how I would handle the situation. I mean, yes, I would technically overthrow the Evil Overlord but only because I presume that everything they'd be doing as Overlord would be wrong and if I overthrew them, I could set up a puppet government that I and a council of trusted friends and advisor could rule from the shadows and that would be ostensibly run by an adorable vacuous little figurehead of my choosing. We would be a beautiful femme oligarchy and the stuff of conspiracy theories and we would make the world a better place whether people want it to be or not. …see, it's posts like this that make it a visibly good thing for everyone that my really truly greatest ambitions in life are to write my thesis and dissertation, to get tenure at a good school, to debate Henry Jenkins about fandom and fandom studies and preferably in a public forum, to maybe have a Dead Poets' Society moment where I really realize how much I've impacted and inspired some of my students, and to not teach 101 level intro courses forever. Because I would be terrifying otherwise.

[amorremanet]

See, here's the thing: I know I'm not a good person a lot of the time but like for example, in the case of my research project? I don't want to be stuck on the lecturer track forever. I want fucking tenure. I will bust my ass to get it because I know I'm not just entitled to have it and without hard work, it would be meaningless anyway. But I still want it which means I have to do work and part of the work is scholarship and if I'm doing the work and loving it and dedicated to it, then who really cares that one of my other motivations for doing it is less than admirable on the grounds that it's petty and vindictive as fuck?

[amorremanet]

so my dad got home from going to a thing downtown and as a reward for trying to have a father/offspring moment while we were both in the kitchen well he got rewarded with hearing a rant about how I'm legitimately getting myself into an enormous research project that won't ever even get published in completion because I'm not publishing the whole thing as a dissertation anywhere but rather plotting it out as a dissertation for the sake of thoroughness and then picking and choosing parts of it to submit to conferences or anthologies or peer-reviewed journals thereby hopefully gaining academic credentials and advancing my career… because there is this one person I've gotten into fandom wank with before and I really really really dislike her and if I were a different sort of vindictive and petty, I would just reblog all of her posts and add "[citation needed]" to them at every point where she needs a citation but the sort of vindictive and petty that I am is the sort of petty and vindictive who plots out approximately 300+ page multiple-chapter research papers interpreting the text in question (and fandom reactions to it but to a considerably lesser extent) with MLA or Chicago Style citations and fucking footnotes and shit and all the trimmings just because she is legitimately wrong (like this isn't even an issue of, "all interpretations are valid as long as they are based on the text" because her interpretations are NOT based on the text; she invents things that never happened and then claims that they did so yeah QED, she is wrong) and I don't like her and I figured out a way to do something constructive with how much I don't like her so I'm writing a dissertation that I'm not even getting a degree for and it's gonna be pretty awesome.

[amorremanet]

perpetually irrationally over-defensive of the validity of combination Hogwarts Houses, or: I'm a fucking Slytherclaw and you will pry my combination House identity from my cold dead fingers, motherfucker, so fucking help me: the Tony award winning musical based on the medieval Kabbalistic midrashim.

[amorremanet]

It probably doesn't reflect very well on me that one of the things I'm most looking forward to about getting a PhD is being able to force my family to call me, "Doctor" but on the other hand? A lot of them have been mocking my intellectual and creative interests for years and if they're allowed to do that, then I'm allowed to rub it in their faces that ha ha fuck you, I got a PhD.

[amorremanet]

And I’m emotional sure… but my approach to emotions is a weird mix of Cardassian (Space Slytherins) and Vulcan (Space Ravenclaws) and like. My approach to my own emotions is to logic the ever living shit out of them and break them down into their different parts and think about them until I understand why I’m feeling the thing (usually with a ton of self-invalidation piled on top of it), as opposed to just letting myself feel my feelings like a Gryffindor would. Literally the only thing about me that’s even remotely Gryffindorean as per the thing I linked above is that I love attention but even that’s kind of suspect because I want to get said attention and admiration for things that aren’t associated with Gryffindor House at all. TL;DR: anyone who has ever called me a Gryffindor is wrong and probably doesn’t know the first thing about me, or if they do, then I would really like them to explain their logic to me because I’m not seeing it even a little bit. But more to your actual comment here… without knowing what things you’re specifically talking about, I can’t really talk about whether or not they’re also Ravenclaw traits in my estimation and my understanding of the Houses… but it’s also pretty important to remember that just because a person get Sorted into one House out of four doesn’t mean that they don’t have any traits or ideals or anything that’s associated with any of the other Houses? Like this is a big reason why the combination Houses (Slytherclaw, Slytherpuff, Slytherdor, Gryffinpuff/Huffledor, Gryffinclaw/Ravendor, and Ravenpuff/Huffleclaw) are so popular with so many fans: because fans want to play Sorting Hat for themselves but they feel like one House doesn’t fully encapsulate all of who they are, or they very strongly identify with two Houses and don’t want to pick one over the other. Like, for me, personally? I literally can’t pick between Slytherin and Ravenclaw for myself and I feel like a huge part of who I am and what I’m about as a person is ignored and erased and devalued if I’m forced to pick between one or the other. I can’t do it, and I won’t do it, and anyone who asks me to do it is probably someone I don’t want to play with, and I know a good number of other people feel like I do. And looking at HP canon examples… Hermione is a Gryffindor ultimately but she has a lot of qualities and ideals that are also very Ravenclaw (not in that she’s good at school but in that she loves learning and she loves knowledge and her approach to solving any problem ever is to research the shit out of it and make a plan based on knowledge).

Neville could’ve easily been in Hufflepuff (and I think as of Pottermore canon, he kept the Hat debating back and forth between that and Gryffindor for over five minutes, and Hermione may have kept the Hat debating for that long too, but I could be misremembering stuff because Pottermore was a let down).

McGonagall DID keep the Hat guessing for more than five minutes because she’s very much a Gryffindor but she’s also very much a Ravenclaw.

Harry could have easily been in Slytherin, this is said multiple times and it’s a huge plot point in COS, and contrariwise, Draco could have easily been in Gryffindor (because said two Houses are foils for each other, much like Harry and Draco themselves; it’s a “two sides of the same coin” sort of situation).

Percy also could have very easily been in Slytherin (which probably explains a lot about why he’s my hands down unquestioned favorite Weasley). Talking about Sorting Hat headcanon characters: Scott could fit easily into Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, though I infinitely prefer to put him in the latter. Stiles could fit really easily into Ravenclaw or Slytherin, though again, I infinitely prefer the latter for him. Allison could fit into Slytherin or Gryffindor, Lydia could fit well into Ravenclaw or Gryffindor (possibly also Slytherin but she’s more of a potential Gryffindor to me), Isaac could fit well into Hufflepuff or Slytherin, Boyd would make an excellent Ravenclaw or an excellent Hufflepuff, Derek is a pretty hands down obvious Slytherin to me but he also displays some Gryffindor traits and ideals, Erica could be a Slytherin or a Gryffindor, Cora could be a Slytherin or a Gryffindor, Melissa and the Sheriff could be in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, Deaton could be in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor, Morrell could easily be in Ravenclaw or Slytherin, Danny could easily be a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin, Jennifer could be a Slytherin or a Ravenclaw, Kate could be a Gryffindor or a Slytherin, Kali could be a Slytherin or a Hufflepuff, the list goes on and on. I actually used to do a thing called, “GET SORTED INTO ALL OF THE HOUSES!” where I’d make a pretty Hogwarts colored picspam and write some meta full of reasons why any given character could be in any of the four Houses. If I remember correctly, I did… Dean, Sam, Castiel, Bobby, Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez, Brittany Pierce, and Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony. And sometimes, I idly toy with the idea of bringing it back and doing it for Teen Wolf characters but there are some Teen Wolf Sortings that I just don’t think I could argue for at all (like Slytherin Scott and Ravenclaw Derek for instance, but I really want to read someone arguing that Derek could be a Ravenclaw because it’s not an obvious Sorting at all and it would probably be a really really interesting look at Derek as a character unless it tried to rest on bullshit Ravenclaw supremacy, bullshit ableism regarding Ravenclaw, Derek headcanons more than legit canon, and/or Derek related abuse apologism). Really, the only Teen Wolf characters I can think of whose sortings aren’t really debatable at all are Gerard (Slytherin) and Jackson (also a Slytherin). Similarly, there aren’t a lot of other fandoms’ characters (or even HP characters) who are clearly one House and don’t really display traits of any of the others, like Bela Talbot on SPN (Slytherin), Crowley on SPN (Slytherin), Jeff Winger (Slytherin), Gul Dukat on DS9 (Slytherin), Garak on DS9 (Slytherin, though in fairness to Garak and Dukat both, Cardassia is a Planet of Hats where the hat is Slytherin, and I could also maybe see Ravenclaw Garak but only if you ignored a LOT of Garak as a character and a lot of his actions), and Voldemort (do I even need to say it, I mean. He’s the Heir of Slytherin for fuck’s sakes). (Huh. I never really noticed how all of the characters who strike me as really clearly one House and not really any of the others at all… are Slytherins. That is very interesting.) Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is… just because you identify as a Ravenclaw (or just because someone identifies any given character as one House or another) doesn’t mean that every single trait they have exclusively and only ever belongs to said House? Like, there are also a lot of arguments to be made against the way that fandoms in general handle these traits, like for instance the ableist and also really classist constructions of intelligence that go on when Sorting characters into Ravenclaw or explaining why other characters can’t be Ravenclaws… but like, just because someone is a Ravenclaw doesn’t mean that every single one of their traits or values or motivations is something that is associated with Ravenclaw, if that makes sense? Like. I’d be hesitant to say that any given trait isn’t a trait of a particular House because like… recklessness is more associated with Gryffindor but anyone can be reckless, and just because a Ravenclaw cares about people doesn’t mean that they’re not a Ravenclaw just because caring about people is more strongly and more usually associated with Hufflepuff. But at the same time, Rowena Ravenclaw and her myriad inheritors on the whole don’t value caring about people as much as Helga Hufflepuff and her inheritors do. It doesn’t mean that a True Ravenclaw can never care about people or that Ravenclaws can never put people first or that doing these things make someone less of a Ravenclaw; but the core values and primary interests of Ravenclaw as a House aren’t centered on caring about or looking after people. And the ways in which and reasons why a Ravenclaw and a Hufflepuff are likely to care about people are usually going to be very different. Like yeah, they both have friendships with people and they most likely form those different friendships for similar reasons (e.g., I like this person, I like the way I feel when I’m around them, I like the person who I am when I’m around them, we share common interests, etc.) but they also ultimately form those attachments based on valuing different criteria more than others and based on different sorts of feelings that they express in the same way (e.g., they might both say, “I like the person who I am when I’m around them,” but a Ravenclaw is more likely to say that because they find a person creatively or intellectually stimulating and/or creatively or intellectually challenging, whereas a Hufflepuff is more likely to say it because the other person in the equation encourages them to be a good person or something. So basically, the traits I listed as Hufflepuff things that resonate with you aren’t things that people who are Ravenclaws CAN’T have? It’s just that they get called Hufflepuff traits and values and motivations because they’re more highly prized by Hufflepuffs and more commonly found in Hufflepuffs.

[amorremanet]

Sometimes, I really wish I could write some mission statement about how I make up femme headcanons to fight effeminophobia and to fight misogyny and in the service of some cool, high-minded ideals. And like. It's not that I CAN'T do that—one of my superpowers is that I am quite well practiced in the art of bullshit and the art of manipulating words and language in the ways I want. Give me ten minutes or so and I could totally write up at least the outline of my, "yeah all of my femme headcanons are totally combating these things woohoo transformative power of fandom" argument, if not the whole argument itself. But I can't really do that in good conscience because my reasons for doing the thing are much more selfish and while I'm generally more on the morally and ethically compromised side of the spectrum here… I just wouldn't feel right about being all like, "yeah my myriad femme headcanons are totally a big political statement" when the real reasons why I do the thing are more like: a. I like living vicariously through my headcanons because I love femme stuff but can't really present as femme offline for various reasons (including but not limited to: money, the time and effort that goes into creating a femme aesthetic, general ineptitude with makeup and clothes, feeling kind of uncomfortable in anything fancier than jeans and a t-shirt or maybe my tiered black lace miniskirt and a cute colorful button up, inability to wear heels due to the serious possibility that I will fall over and break myself or someone else); and b. I like prettiness and pretty things and I firmly believe that all of my myriad femme headcanons make everything prettier. So, like. Yeah. Basically, there may or may not be more transformative things going on here and there may be more potentially liberatory side effects to my femme headcanons, but… for all I'm morally and ethically compromised and for all I generally only behave myself for at least kind of underhanded reasons (like when I encourage people not to fight wank by tagging their hate not because tagging your hate for something is a dick move in general but because it gives the people wanking about us more ammunition to make us look like the aggressors and the people in the wrong, and to turn more people off of seeing our perspective on the issues at hand)… Yeah, for all those things are true of me, I just really don't feel right about going, "my femme headcanons are totally a political statement and stuff y'know what I mean" when actually my femme headcanons are pretty much just me doing a thing that makes me happy for the sheer and sole purpose of making myself happy. Nothing more, nothing less. Which isn't to say that I think my motivations for coming up with femme headcanons and doing stuff based on them are wrong or lesser than or worthy of dismissal because they're primarily self-serving. I mean really, self-gratification is one of the primary reasons why fandom exists in the first place and one of the most common reasons why we do what we do. There are certainly more nuanced versions of it or reasons for it—like self-gratification gained from queer interpretations of characters or racebent fanworks or from making neuroatypical headcanons, where the self-gratification comes from increasing representation of marginalized groups (usually groups that you yourself are a member of), which is a different kind of self-gratification than say, my femme headcanons, where the locus of the gratification is pretty much, "I think Stacker Pentecost would look really pretty in mascara and sparkly nail polish and lace panties uwu"— but yeah, fannish self-gratification is a thing and it can be a good thing or a bad thing or neither depending on how it's used in different scenarios by different people. And like my example of fucking the canon in the name of representation shows, self-gratification and transformative social, cultural, and political motives aren't even mutually exclusive. I just don't feel good about the idea of conflating them in the case of my femme headcanons because… mmm, yeah, no. There is no mission. There is no statement. There is no powerful underlying desire to fuck up the androcentric canon by making all the characters femme as fuck. I'm really just doing the thing because it makes me happy and I think it makes everything prettier. And I might be morally and ethically compromised in general, but I do try to make an effort to keep myself honest and to check myself for any hypocrisy because hypocrisy and deliberate, malicious, self-serving dishonesty are two traits that I really loathe in other people so I don't want to exhibit them myself, y'know what I mean? This post has been brought to you by random thoughts I had while driving out to campus and mentally drafting a post about femme!Stacker Pentecost.