#maybe my opinions will change if i get better at identifying snakes idk

[bludraws094]

spiders 🤝 wasps

"everyone hates me even though im actually (usually) chill"

[theartfuldodger26]

For the prompt I'll be predictable: Harry Potter, Bellamort and Bellatrix 😁

Thanks for the prompts, @bellamort1993! Feel free to answer the same :) 

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character:

 Bellatrix Lestrange and Voldemort.

 Bella is the closest to my heart, but apparently I waste the most         brainmatter on Tom/Voldemort, so *shrugs*

Harry is my favourite light character, he’s an admirable person.

Least Favorite character:

Umbridge, as is universally accepted.

Favorite ships (canon or non-canon):

Bellamort (which is canon, bitches)

Delphi/Harry (it will become canon, you just wait for TCC part3)

Tomarry but not Harrymort (nearly counts as canon judging by how often Harry gushes over handsome Tom’s face)

Drarry (I’m human and susceptible to fandom mainstream, plus there’s some fantastic fics out there)

Delphi/Victoire (cause two pretty, hot-headed ladies are my cup of tea any day)

Character I find most attractive:

Bellatrix, hands down. Then Voldemort can do things to me too, but Bella would be my first choice.it’s so nice being bi, isn’t it.

Character I would marry:

No one, I’m happy by myself.

Delphi can be my angsty fuck buddy with whom we meet every once in a while, bitch, get drunk, cry and fuck.

Character I’d be friends with:

Harry, tho I’m not the best of friends and he does bring an unappealing high mortality rate to any occasion. It’s fiiine. 

a random thought:

The wizarding world makes zero sense in so many places. They haven’t had an Industrial Revolution, meaning they haven’t known first hand the new ideas that came with it, and they seem to be stuck in the Middle Ages in many ways, even if they dont seem extremely Christian as these times actually were. We know little about the political system and their beliefs are so random. It’s really confusing.

An unpopular opinion:

Idk what’s unpopular these days. Aside from Albus’ name, I actually liked the Epilogue.

It showed what we needed to know: that Harry and the rest made it out okay. They found the courage to face their destroyed community and rebuild, even though they had gone through enough during the war. I think JKR said it herself in an interview how important rebuilding is after a catastrophe, how it can daunt even the bravest people. The miracles of Japan and Germany bouncing back and better after WWII are relevant real-life examples here. 

A married Harry, enthusiastic about hugging his kids goodbye on their first day of school, a day that to him symbolises a new beginning, is the greatest gift and it does not erase the pain he might feel every day for going through hell in his early life. In fact, it’s this snipet of normalcy what he craved as a boy and refused to daydream about because its weight would be too much,and now he gets to have it. Along with the nightmares and the PTSD and the new challenges yes, but now, in this moment, as he waves to the new generation that he helped create, he’s safe, loved and happy. He deserves it. 

Second unpopular opinion: I don’t give a damn if McGonagall’s timeline is screwed up by bringing her to life in the 20′s. Didn’t really matter to the story before and she’s a freaking badass and comic relief, which is the best combo ever. Is it fan-bating or whatever it was called? Sure. But if she makes the story better with her presense I give minus two fucks about when JKR originally said she was born (also, newsflash: people have the right to change HC’s, especially people who don’t shit about maths, like our dear creator) 

My Canon OTP:

           BELLAMORT

Seriously, I have screenshoted the details of TCC where it shows they’re canon.

My Non-canon OTP:

            Harry/Delphi

I know, I’m sick, it’s fine. *insert dog sipping coffee in the flaming house meme here*

Most Badass Character:

Bellatrix, handsdown.

McGonagall for good people.

Most Epic Villain:

Voldemort, we’d have no books without him. He can be dumb, but it’s cute. 

Pairing I’m not a fan of:

I’m not huge on non-canon Hermione ships, and anything with Snape is gross.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another):

…Snape? Not his character, but the positive light she gave him by naming Harry’s kid after him. It appeared she was clear on him not being an admirable person, but then he’s the bravest bloke ever? No, ma’am.

On a Fantastic Beasts note, I do hope they handle the backstories of all characters well. We’ll surely get back to this after the FB series are over.

 Favourite Friendship:

The Golden Trio, they work as a three-man-group better, I won’t devide them. Also, as a part-time writer I have to admire how the writing and dynamics were handled, it’s so hard to think as more than one person, not to mention three!

Character I most identify with:

PostAzkaban!Bellatrix feels she’s letting her master and herself down, and so do I. I keep looking for my former self. Who wasn’t much after all, but had some qualities I should recultivate.

Character I wish I could be:

… I’d like to have some Bellamort qualities that I lack, but in general I’m fine working on myself.  

002 | Send me a ship and I will tell you:

When I started shipping them:

After I finished the books, so that’s since 2007. 12 cool, angsty years. 

My thoughts:

I love them, they’re my evil babies. In fact, I don’t even have reasons for loving them, as most shippers do, I’d just die for them, end of reasoning.

What makes me happy about them:

That they’re complicately made for each other in their unique goth way. And that in the end they had a kid, which I think helped Voldemort out a lot with his issues with intimacy and emotions.

What makes me sad about them:

That they died *sobs hysterically*.

Also in the books they have like two scenes together. (HE SCREAMED THO)

Things done in fanfic that annoys me:

Seeing Bella’s character butchered down to a snivelling, slavish idiot, though these aren’t Bellamort fics usually.

In Bellamort fics, it feels like a cheat when it says Bellamort but it’s just Bella pining and Voldemort really not caring. I don’t have a problem with the POV, but it needs to be tagged as unrequited. Otherwise I’m open to perspectives.

Things I look for in fanfic:

Good writing, mostly.

I’m also a huge fan of Muggle!AU’s, so if you have that, I’ll read it, no questions asked XD

My wishlist:

On Amazon? :P Fine, I’ll show myself out

I presume this means wishlist on fics/art with these two, but do correct me if I’m wrong. I dont have one, since I write myself, so whatever I want to read, I write. Right now I’m eager to finish the following Bellamort fics:

1. Harry finds out about Bellamort via looking through Voldy’s stuff.

2. BellaDiesButVoldyWins!AU

3. Voldemort discovers his breastfeeding kink

4. A therewasonlyonebed!fic 

5. Tomarry turns Bellamort in Easter setting, Muggle!AU, Harry wets himself in the process

In general I’d say I’d like to see more classic, tropy fanfics with these two, lighter ones, you know. Angst is great, but let us enjoy the coffeeshop!AU too.

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:

Alone and miserable.

I guess Bella would have been okay with Rodolphus, had Tom/Voldemort never been born.

And Voldemort/Tom would have been fine too with some nameless pretty woman he did not love but had to marry to keep face.

But I think that they would have never been truly happy with anyone else. especially Tom, he’d never be really comfortable with anyone.

My happily ever after for them:

VoldemortWins!AU, they conquer Europe, Bella is Minister for War, Voldemort the Emperor. Maybe they have a kid, maybe a couple more or none at all, who cares, the point is they live and fulfull their dreams of revolutionising the Wizarding Wolrd.

I also have a sappy afterlife!AU where for a while Bella is imprisoned at the family castle for having a halfblood little bastard, goes half-insane as Voldemort seacrhes for her (they had a spat right after they got there), and Delphi kills herself and goes to find her dad in small-child form. They finally get tgether and live deathly ever after in some Norwegian fjord in the frozen tundra. (it’s also my personal happy ending, only it’s cats and snakes)

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you:

How I feel about this character:

I love Bella. She’s a bitch and a sadist, but I love her.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character:

The one and only, his majesty the Dark Lord himself.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character:

Rodolphus, he’s her only friend.

Also, sad HC: Bella was very close to Andromeda until she got too involved with Voldemort and his cause, and they drifted apart. No one wept harder than Bella after Andy left, and it was her who spent days banging on the Tonks’ door to let them speak to her. Voldy could squeeze tears out of his shirt after she fell asleep on him crying about it.

My unpopular opinion about this character:

Again, not sure about what’s unpopular.

I believe she suffers from genuine mental illness that tortures her a lot and makes her life (and her shared life with Voldemort too) very hard. Also I find her more self-doubting and reserved than most authors, hard working and largely indifferent to people who aren’t Voldemort.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:

Actual romantic scene would have been nice, but HE SCREAMED after all. Let’s not ask for too much.

Favorite friendship for this character:

Rodolphus and Andromeda. Recently I’ve started Brotp-ing Sirius with Bella too, before they parted ways.

My crossover ship:

I don’t really have any other fandoms, sorry.

Well, that was fun! Thanks again!

[blackgirlsuperherorants]

I know Freddie Mercury isn’t a superhero, but he’s also maybe a superhero, and I guess I’m gonna put this movie discussion here, because... this blog is already used to my bullshit.

No, but, this is actually a serious thing. This will be lengthy, because I’m approaching this not as a rant, as per usual on this blog, but as a study? I guess? I mean, without research, because I’m in grad school and my brain will crumble if I add any extra research, but yeah. 

I have seen a lot of criticism of the Bohemian Rhapsody movie that I have been giving a lot of thought to. To be completely fair, I sort of have always had this view of Freddie Mercury as a godlike figure. And I love Rami Malek. So, I have been checking and double-checking myself for bias, which is the thing to do in this situation. 

I really enjoyed the film. I am also a screenwriter (MFA student) and I understand and cannot totally ignore the problems with the film. 

One of the things we’ve been taught to do, in my MFA program, is pay attention to things like cultural markers and identity markers in our writing. As in, if we write a bisexual character, what makes them bisexual? If we write a South Asian character, what makes them South Asian? Often, writers will write “diverse” characters just for the sake of having them in the picture, but they will inadvertently be devoid of whatever it is that makes them... part of their culture. This is not my criticism of BoRhap. In fact, this post will not be a criticism, per se. It’s... it’s an examination, and a question. And, full disclosure, I should absolutely be working on stuff for class, right now.

This will be focusing on the portrayal of queerness in BoRhap more than anything. 

When I saw the movie, being queer myself, I was very... excited to hear Freddie say, on screen, that he thinks he’s bisexual. Like, what a moment, in film. I don’t think that happens, often, and I don’t think screenwriters write shit like that. I believe it’s because bisexuality is misunderstood. People assume bisexual men are gay. People assume bisexual women are straight. People think of bisexuality as something you do while you’re in college out of curiosity, or the last stop over to gayville. People think bi people who date or marry members of their same gender are gay/lesbian. People think bi people who date or marry members of a different gender are straight. It’s just a very, very misunderstood sexual orientation, and those of us who identify this way (I mostly do, although I kinda like queer as a general term) really walk on eggshells all the time trying not to ... be constantly judged from all parties, I guess. So, to hear a character say it in a film? And it’s sincere and not a character flaw or played for laughs? I C O N I C.

But the film also undercuts that line immediately, with Freddie’s girlfriend yelling at him that he’s gay. Because a man can’t be bisexual, yenno? If he likes dick at all, he’s gay. (Of course this is wrong as hell, but whatever.)

I guess, that’s part of the reason so many people are unhappy or even angry with the portrayal. One criticism I keep seeing is how it treats queerness as a cautionary tale. How Freddie gets caught up in this “gay underworld” lifestyle and it literally kills him. How redemption is him “straightening up”. (Which actually does not happen in the movie. The movie... ends with him finally settling down with JIM, a man, JIM! How that was read as “straightening up” or I guess becoming hetero to some people is beyond me.)

And mentioning that, there’s criticism of showing Paul Prenter, who I understand re: Queen fans, to be a slimy slimeball piece of crap, as the villain, because Paul is also a gay man. 

So, this is my concern, or I guess, my issue, with these criticisms: much of this is based in the reality of the situation. I’m not suggesting that this film is historically accurate. I’ve seen discussions of timeline issues, invented moments, and Freddie actually never told his bandmates he had AIDS until the day before he died (unlike in the film). But I struggle with the argument that it presents queerness as a cautionary tale when Freddie’s battle with AIDS is actually what happened. He actually died of AIDS related illness in 1991. That’s not to say being gay killed him. A lot of people were gay in the 1980s and did not contract HIV or die of AIDS. But unfortunately, Freddie did.

So, what is the line? When we’re handling stories based on true events, based on real people... what are we supposed to write? Would it have been worse to show Freddie as a healthy man who died in his sleep of natural causes, ignoring his battle with AIDS completely? 

What about the Prenter situation? The man wasn’t a good person, and wasn’t good for Queen or Freddie. I’m not extremely well versed in Queen history, but I do know that Paul Prenter is, well, a villain in the eyes of Queen’s fans, and he did do snake shit to Freddie. Does the fact that he’s also gay mean that should be left out? Or should they have erased Paul’s queerness, so that it’s not suggested that the evil gay person ruined Freddie’s life?

Some of my opinion on that matter should be clear, but I also don’t really know the way they should’ve handled this stuff. I thought, personally, that they handled AIDS delicately, and maybe a little too delicately, but... I thought it was done fine. Freddie wasn’t even blamed for having the disease. And the invented scene where he tells the band before Live Aid (I don’t know that he had even been diagnosed, yet, in real life), was a touching, beautiful scene. Nobody scolds him, or says “you shouldn’t have fucked all those people!” They aren’t angry. They cry together, and tell him he’s a legend and they love him. Then they go get a drink. It wasn’t... at all... very “cautionary tale,” to me. Especially because directly after that moment, he goes and finds Jim Hutton, the man he’s been wanting for a long time, and finally pursues being with him for real. So, what’s the caution, here? Don’t be gay, just be gay? I don’t... get it....

Like, it’s a hard line to tow. Do you... make a huge show of an icon dying from a horrible disease that ravaged the LGBT community terribly during the 1980s? Or do you.... not mention it at all? Or ... do you do what they did and mention it lightly, and try not to make it a huge deal? I don’t know. I’m sure you don’t really know, either. You’d probably try your best, if you were writing this, but ultimately, it’s hard to know what the move is, here. 

That’s not to say that the movie doesn’t have faults. It doesn’t know which story it’s telling. It sort of moves like a “brief history of” type of thing. It’s also 2 hours and 30 minutes long, and still feels like it didn’t go in depth at all. 

I also agree that we see much of Freddie’s vices and little of the other members’ vices. I mean, we get hints of Roger’s affinity towards being with multiple women, but barely. And John and Brian were basically angels. Which... can’t have been realistic, considering they were hot rock stars in the 1970s, when everyone was fucking everyone and everyone was snorting cocaine. I do wish they would’ve showed them all behaving like rock stars, more, instead of showing Freddie throwing lavish parties and the other guys sort of shaking their head and going home to their wives. But also, we don’t see very much of Freddie’s wildness, either. The movie is very, very tame, as rock star biopics go. There’s not even a sex scene. There’s cocaine on a table, but nobody snorts it on screen. There are parties with lots of boys making out and whatnot, but Freddie isn’t even shown really participating in that shit. I honestly think it’s even this tame because the living Queen members had a say.

Like, if Brian May and Roger Taylor weren’t involved in the production, I’m sure we would’ve seen more of their vices, too. And probably more of Freddie’s vices. I think it’s silly for people to suggest they are jealous of Freddie and made it look like Freddie was the only one partying to make themselves look better, because I think Freddie looks damn near innocent in the film, and I think that’s thanks to Brian and Roger protecting his legacy. For instance, we learn towards the end that Freddie has AIDS. But WE NEVER SEE HIM CONTRACT HIV. We don’t see him sleep with some dirty bear in the back of some gay bar in NYC or something. We just... learn he has AIDS. 

That can either be cause for criticism or praise, I guess. From a writing perspective, generally you wouldn’t randomly reveal a character has AIDS without some hint as to how they contracted it, in a narrative like this one that spans like 15-20 years. And also, maybe you could stretch it as an example of that “cautionary tale” business, like “even though Freddie was a good boy, he still got AIDS because of all the gay.” Which... is a reach, and I’m sorry I pulled it out of the sky. They also did one of my least favorite movie tropes, which is “character coughs up blood, so you know he gon die.” Although, IDK if that’s something that every happened to him. Singers can cough up blood just from damaging their throat while doing certain things with their voice, and getting infections and things...

Anyway...

I just... I get the criticism, and I get the instinct to be hypercritical of this movie. After all, Freddie was one of the most unapologetic and influential queer artists in the world. In history. You want to make sure it’s done right and with respect.

But, I genuinely don’t know how they could’ve approached this differently. I mean, I see how changes could be made to make it a better film, narratively speaking. But I’m not sure how I’d write a movie about Freddie Mercury and discuss his battle with AIDS... without the reality that Freddie succumbs to the illness in 1991. Or, how you write about the doomed dealings with Paul Prenter, without acknowledging that he’s a creep, even if he is gay.

See, when shit is based on a true story, it’s harder to navigate these things. Because, I totally understand the reaction to what many perceive is a slight against their people. But, IDK, if I’m writing a Freddie Mercury film, I’d know that he’s going to die, and from what, and I’d know that he kept it to himself, and explore why that is. 

And as for Paul Prenter, fuck that guy. One can be evil and gay. Just as one can be a sweet baby angel and gay (like Jim Hutton.)

The movie has problem. (Another topic for another day). These aren’t problems it has, to me. 

I’d be open to hear others’ opinions, here, but only if you promise not to yell at me (CAPS IS YELLING) or call me names or be a general jerk about things.