vivithefolle

[vivithefolle]

Yaaaaasssss

DARE: SHIRTLESS RON SHIRTLESS RON SHIRTLESS RON

Why.

[vivithefolle]

[vivithefolle]

Hello internet user whose entire concept of feminism comes from tiktok. In front of you are three ancient myths about women. You have five minutes to figure out which one of them was made up in the 1970s. If you choose wrong, you will be ripped to pieces by Maenads.

[vivithefolle]

One thing that has made me a much more well-adjusted person is a clip I once saw of Hank Green saying that anyone can be in amazing shape as long as being in amazing shape is one of their top three priorities.

(This is obviously a generalization that isn't true for everyone. But it is true for most people and I'm proceeding from there.)

This "top three priorities" framing has genuinely reduced my tendency toward jealousy and self-comparison a lot. Now when I feel envious of someone’s spotless, aesthetic home, I think to myself, “Having a spotless, aesthetic home is probably one of their top three priorities. It’s definitely not one of mine, so I shouldn’t expect my home to look like that.”

Or when I see an influencer with a body that takes a ton of work to maintain: “Maintaining that body is obviously one of her top three priorities, because it’s her livelihood. My livelihood is my brain, so I’m never going to prioritize my body like that.”

It also helps me to identify areas that I actually DO want to prioritize more. I realized in recent years that my envy for my friends who prioritized writing more than I did was NOT going away, so I started to prioritize writing more. (Not top three, but higher priority than it has been in the past.)

[vivithefolle]

I am exceptionally lucky in that my parents never hit me, grounded me, confiscated my things, banned me from my hobbies or threatened any of these actions to make me behave as a kid. as an adult it has made me realise how very very long a road most people have to traverse before they can take a statement like 'no rule that must be enforced by threat is legitimate' seriously.

[vivithefolle]

ron and hermione naming their kids after each other’s initials, while ginny and harry got drunk and made dices with the names of all the dead people that they knew instead of numbers and rolled them to leave the names of their kids to fate.

[vivithefolle]

so. bad news. we have to keep going tomorrow. good news is that I’ll keep going with you

[vivithefolle]

not to enforce gender roles but a computer should NOT fucking have apps okay. if I wanted an app I'd go on my phone my laptop is for Programs. I mean this.

[vivithefolle]

Hiya! What do you think of the idea that Jily and Romione are meant to be parallels? I personally don't quite agree, but what's your take?

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

and the short answer is that i am definitely not convinced...

i presume that the idea that jily and romione are meant to be deliberate parallels hangs on a couple of things. the first of these are a series of superficial similarities, which i think we can dismiss fairly easily:

that each pairing is made up of a pureblood man and a muggleborn woman; that one person in each pairing is ginger; that both pairings fancied each other the moment they met, but didn't act on that attraction until their seventh years; and that both pairings seem to communicate primarily by bickering.

none of these hit for me - not least because, individually, none of james, ron, lily, or hermione are particularly alike.

[and i certainly think that it's tedious to suggest that two female characters must be broadly similar in terms of personality and serve parallel narrative roles simply because they're both muggleborn...]

the second piece of evidence for the two couples being intentional parallels is, however, slightly more persuasive. on paper, at least...

this is, of course, that idea that ron and hermione act like harry's "surrogate parents".

i do see why this is so widespread among the fandom [ron weasley, domestic god, my beloved], but it's a reading of the text which, i'll be honest, brings out the contrarian in me...

harry's character archetype is primarily the "everyman hero" - a hero who is perfectly, averagely normal in terms of talent, intellect, and appearance - who defeats a villain who is abnormal and exceptional. this is - obviously - one of the most common archetypes in the history of human storytelling, because it enables the people who read or hear those stories to see themselves in the protagonist, to root for them, to comfort themselves with the idea that evil people must be so unusual in terms of appearance or behaviour that they can be easily spotted, and to believe that ordinary people can triumph over evil.

but, nonetheless, harry is also required - like all heroes - to be special, and to be set apart from [and, indeed, above] all other characters in the series in terms of importance by virtue of this specialness.

[not least because the main hero-figure he resembles - especially in deathly hallows... is christ.]

in harry's case, his much-vaunted ability to love fulfils this requirement.

and we can see this narrative purpose affecting many of his relationships within the canon text - above all, in the way that he primarily views all the other characters with whom he interacts either as people he needs to keep safe from voldemort or people he needs to keep others safe from.

ginny is the primary victim of this tendency, especially at the end of half-blood prince, but ron and hermione experience it too - albeit in slightly more subtle ways...

for example, everything they ever know about harry's mission is at harry's own discretion - he notably doesn't trust them with several key aspects of it [above all, that he's a horcrux and that he's going to walk into the forest to die] within the canon narrative, and he generally holds the view that their interpretation of events is partial and wrong because they lack the special knowledge that he has as the series' singular hero [in particular, how he says several times in deathly hallows that neither of them understand voldemort as well as he does, and that's why they're so convinced that he'd have hidden a horcrux in the orphanage].

similarly, he insists throughout the series that following him - and following is the operative word - is dangerous to them. he never considers that being associated with them puts him in danger - because his narrative purpose is to be more important than they are in voldemort's hierarchy of interest.

[and, indeed, it's always really striking to me that deathly hallows heavily implies that voldemort doesn't have a clue who either of them are...]

ron and hermione certainly demonstrate many traits which can be associated with parent-child relationships - they are extremely loyal; they are [especially ron] extremely caring, including in domestic and pseudo-domestic ways. ron also provides harry with his greatest longing - the experience of a loving family - in a way which, superficially at least, mirrors james providing the same for sirius after he runs away from home.

but harry is - before the pre-epilogue end of deathly hallows - still set apart from the weasleys by virtue of his narrative specialness. we can see this throughout the series - in chamber of secrets, just after harry is astonished that everyone in the burrow likes him, his vastly different financial circumstances make him feel like there is a division between the weasleys and himself; in order of the phoenix, he initially aligns himself with the group who aren't family when visiting arthur in hospital, and is only brought into the family group at molly's insistence; he leaves ron's bedside in half-blood prince to make room for family visitors; he is adjacent to the family grief over both george's injury and fred's death in deathly hallows.

similarly, while james and sirius' relationship is set-up in canon as essentially fraternal, the same cannot be said of harry and ron. ron is narratively lesser than harry - he isn't as academically successful, or as good at quidditch, or as instantly recognisable, or as aspirational to get to know - and he is very aware of this, which is why his jealousy plays such a major role in the series.

[although it's worth saying, on a more positive note, that his and harry's relationship is genuinely close, mutually fulfilling, and nowhere near as codependent as james and sirius'...]

and so the apparently parental traits which ron and hermione display for harry actually reveal a power-dynamic which is very different from a pseudo-parent-child one - in which we would expect the parent-figures to consider their care for the child-figure to be their responsibility. instead, the dynamic is a [benevolent] master-servant [or, to return to the christ allegory, master-disciple] one - in which ron and hermione fill the role of harry's faithful retainers, who care for him, serve him, and follow him because it is their duty.

this doesn't mean that ron and hermione aren't more important to harry than other characters [ron - in particular - is harry's saint peter, the most important of the apostles, who doubts], but it does mean that they're subordinate to him within the narrative's hierarchy of power.

and this - obviously - is not the dynamic which existed between harry, james, and lily prior to his parents' deaths...

[vivithefolle]

Rewatching Treasure Planet (great movie, watch it) made realize something about the way that stories convey information to their audiences. There's been a lot of discussion on the overuse of plot twists and how many stories prioritise surprising their audience over telling decent stories. However, if you instead reveal the "twist" to the audience before it becomes known to the characters, you can build tension and stakes. Treasure Planet comes right out and tells you that Long John Silver is the main villain almost immediately after his introduction (And even before he's introduced we're warned about a cyborg, so you'd have to be pretty dense to not put 2 and 2 together and realize he's a bad guy). So when the audience watches him and Jim bond and grow closer, it builds tension for when Jim finds out and it highlights the tragedy of their friendship, because we all know it's not going to end well. Then, after the truth is revealed, stakes are created because we want the friendship between Jim and Silver to be repaired, because we know it was real, but we don't know if can be after what Silver's done. And all of this would have been lost if Silver's true nature had been a cheap plot twist. The tragedy would be completely overshadowed by the surprise and betrayal, and any investment in their relationship would have been built on the false impression that Silver was a good guy.

Another good example of this is Titanic. Even if you were somehow ignorant of the ship's sinking, the film makes sure you know that it sank with its framing device of Old Rose telling her story to people salvaging the Titanic's wreak. And Titanic's plot structure could only possibly work if you know the ship is going to sink. I'm not just talking about building tension, tragedy, and stakes for the characters like with the above example, I mean that if you didn't know that the Titanic was going down walking into the film, the abrupt shift from romance to suspense-disaster would be an increadibly tough pill to swallow. But it works because we expect it. You don't walk into a film called Titanic without expecting the damn boat to sink.

However, the sad thing about both of these examples, is that despite all the benefits that came from telling the audience these things ahead of time, I think the main reason the creators didn't make them plot twists was because they couldn't have. Treasure Island is the single most influential piece of pirate media out there, and you'd have to have been living under a rock for over a century to not know the Titanic sank. So, the writers had to work around the fact that these important turning points in the narratives were common knowledge, and they wound creating incredible stories as a consequence.

I want to see more of this style of writing in stories where the writers aren't forced to do it. We've clearly seen that you can tell some really damn good stories by giving information to the audience before the characters learn it, and I just wish more works would do that instead of trying to surprise people with shocking twists.

[vivithefolle]

there's a really funny 3d printing controversy going on btw.

if you don't know, there's a very popular 3d printing model out there called "benchy". this is used for benchmarking your 3d printer because it's a difficult print and will help test it out.

this is so widely used that people make their own little versions of it, remixing the 3d model to make benchy look cooler and stuff. however, a new company owns the benchy license. they are sending copyright takedowns to all those who wrongfully uploaded the benchy model.

of course, this is pissing off the 3d printing community greatly. everyone loved benchy and have used it for years. so someone on reddit decided to make a new model that is designed as a 3d printing stress test. one that works a lot like benchy, and people are freely able to edit it as they please. you know what they called it?

boaty.

[vivithefolle]

[vivithefolle]

Concept: You walk outside one night and notice that there are two full moons. A few hours go by and they don’t seem to move.

You stare up at them.

They blink.

[vivithefolle]

I WISH ALL MY FRENCH FOLLOWERS A VERY GOOD JEAN MARIE LE PEN IS DEAD

[vivithefolle]

New year, new chapter of Mens Sana

... yeah it was totally planned all along don't look at me like that

[vivithefolle]

not to be a number nerd on main but 2025 (45^2) will be the only square year most of us ever experience. the last one was 1936 and the next one will be 2116