whinlatter

[whinlatter]

Hello 👋

I've been re-reading the last 4 chapters of Beasts (as a Xmas treat I guess 🤭) and here's some details I've picked and loved :

- Cho entering Sirius' room at Grimmauld to get a change of clothes from Ginny and stepping into Harry and Ginny's intimacy - I'm picturing clothes on the floor and those eggcups on the mantelpiece

- Neville sending his friend some bulbs to plant in Hagrid's garden 🥹🤧🤧🤧

- Ron helping Mrs Granger unpacking and keeping an eye on her, whithout telling anyone he's doing so, just because he's a generous and caring man 🙏- those little labels he put on the photo !

I hope you still have some time to write and I can't wait to read more from you. You've got a very special gift, making us dive into the world you've created with such complex and endearing characters.

Do you have any future plan for Ginny and her inquiry?

Cheers ✨

mate! i really hope you are well and 2025 is being good to you, even in the dark global days... i am obsessed with you re-reading and pulling these out, pleased as punch about it (these are all the little moments and details that are most fun to add into chapters - plot, blegh, eggcups, slay - so makes my day to have them noticed. your kind words mean the world, honestly, as do the very very kind words other people have left the old inbox in the past few weeks, all of which are very much appreciated.

please be assured i have many plans for ginny and her inquiry. i'm in a weird position rn where i'm writing more than ever (o lawd she writin), churning out stuff i think is some of my best shit (fr) and thinking about beasts constantly as i try to rework these next few chapters about ginny's war (am having to write chunks of them together for complicated reasons - mostly to keep track of plot threads, but also because the next chapters are all in the past, so it requires me to write with the canon narrative/timeline, which takes ages if you are as forgetful as me and have to keep going and checking canon/calendars constantly). i am very aware that i am quiet on socials/not posting chapters yet and causing annoyance and frustration, which i feel very badly about. it will always be weird to have people ask if you have abandoned a fic you work on a little bit every day (life would be easier if the ideas for the fic would leave me alone, believe me). candidly, i have found guilt for taking more time with writing to be a real demotivator: equally i have tried not to be on tumblr too much (as people tend to get mad when i am posting on tumblr but not posting chapters), but then feeling less connected to the source material when i'm not having regularly engagement with fandom. so am trying to remember this is my hobby too and it's supposed to be fun and a source of joy, because that approach is a much deeper font of motivation and inspiration than guilt (who knew). the main thing is no-one need worry about official hiatus or abandonment - i am just taking my time and enjoying doing so, especially as i turn a corner and feel i'm writing my way out of a sticky patch. and unusually for me, i think i will be proud of the stuff i put out when i do put it out, and hope people will get a lot out of it when i do. loads of love!

[whinlatter]

Happy Birthday, Severus Snape🖤

wherever you are, I hope you’re giving a killing lecture!

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Someone is about to get a lecture on constant vigilance.

(If we ever got a series about the Aurors featuring Tonks and Moody and cubicles, I would simply perish)

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Happy new year!!!

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Buckbeak (totally forgot that hippogriffs should have eagle-like front legs, sorry ><)

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I actually hear "the order of the phoenix is not a gang of child soldiers" a lot, and I agree to some level - especially because I like to use Dorcas and Marlene to explore corners of the wizard world and its timeline that the marauders scooby gang doesn't reach.

But isn't it also true that a lot of resistances and guerrillas through history have been manned mostly by young idealists, often university students and recent graduates?

Young, agile, energetic people to do the work older people don't have the disposition for, and that important people can't do because that would compromise their important positions?

i think there's an interesting quirk when it comes to the order and its demographic make-up which stems from jkr's own politics.

because the order is a resistance organisation, sure... but what it's resisting is revolution. its aims, across canon, are the maintenance of the status quo, with the state and its institutions [including the class system] left broadly untouched, except for the fact of a minor expansion of wizarding society's parameters to accommodate muggleborns [or, at least, muggleborns who also bear the markers of class-based acceptability]. its politics, across canon, are gradualist, liberal, pro-state, and demonstrably unradical.

that is to say, it represents the "adults in the room" - the sensible, rational, intelligent, considerate people who disapprove both of the reactionary, emotionally-led conservatism of fudge et al. and the radicalism of voldemort.

[he literally wants to rip up the principles by which the wizarding world is governed! he wants to tear everything about its social fabric apart!]

and so it makes perfect sense that its members would predominantly be adults - and adults directly involved in the maintenance of the state and its institutions.

whereas the death eaters do conform to the more typical make-up of revolutionary [and/or terrorist] organisations. huge numbers of the death eaters we meet in canon are people who are decades younger than voldemort and who, during the first war, were canonically in their teens or twenties - snape, mulciber, avery, wilkes, evan rosier, bellatrix, lucius malfoy, rodolphus [and presumably rabastan] lestrange, barty crouch jr., regulus black, peter pettigrew, and so on.

many of these death eaters are either stated or implied to be the children of voldemort's school friends and/or the knights of walpurgis, which invites the suggestion that they supersede their fathers in importance once voldemort returns to britain in the later 1960s because their attitudes are much more radical, zealous, and revolutionary, while their fathers want voldemort to take a more traditional political route to achieving his aims.

[which helps explain why voldemort is so furious about half of them claiming to be under the imperius curse in order not to face punishment, allowing them to live according to the social convention they once claimed to want to destroy...]

and voldemort's ability to recruit young, eager men continues during the second war - crabbe, goyle, draco malfoy, stan shunpike, the snatchers, and so on. the order, in contrast, only takes on young members due to the accident of proximity - the weasley children, who become part of it entirely because their parents are involved; fleur, who becomes part of it entirely because of her marriage.

the anti-voldemort resistance organisation which actually attracts young recruits is - despite the fact that harry spends half-blood prince and most of deathly hallows thinking of it as completely irrelevant to voldemort's defeat - dumbledore's army.

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Harry’s Christmas, year three

Harry’s got an ace anonymous gift, Hermione doesn’t like it.

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molly’s girls!

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“come along, ginny, dear!”

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R.A.B.

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a new week and more @hprecfest!

day nine: a work in progress

beasts by @whinlatter harry potter/ginny weasley teen 

why i recommend it:

because it's the only post-war hinny fic i've ever encountered which actually feels plausible.

it's rare to find a canon ship fic which examines its endgame couple so critically and deeply. one of the reasons i don't otherwise read a lot - or, really, any - hinny is because i find the standard race towards all was well quite trite, and often involving a fairly dismissive approach to ginny's character, which flattens her into somebody whose only goal in life is to be harry's bang maid. but i also think there can be a fair amount of overcorrection in the opposite direction, turning these two into something toxic and unsatisfactory.

beasts actually thinks about the tension which their massively divergent experiences of the war and its aftermath, and the attendant differences in how they'd think about things like justice, resistance, and grief, would cause in harry and ginny's relationship - and it does so by showing two fundamentally imperfect and human people doing their best to deal with that fact.

it's also - because molly weasley bashing is something i must say i have complete contempt for - one of the best manifestos for why she deserves much more respect from the fandom than she gets.

[whinlatter]

What is your favourite hinny fict of all time?

ooh this is a great question!!! several come to mind, because there are some really incredible writers out there who i think capture harry and ginny perfectly in their writing. and i can’t pick one so here goes:

Orchards by @whinlatter

this oneshot is incredible, building up hinny’s relationship over the summer that we see so little of in the books. it’s just so in character, funny and beautiful. you really see their easy dynamic and how perfect they are for each other. i’ve reread it several times and i will do it again it’s THAT good. also her other work Beasts about post-dh ginny and everything that follows the war with lots of flashbacks and added details. it’s really honest and gritty portrayal of grief & recovering from the trauma of a war

The Path From You by @takeariskao3

i am obsessed with this fic. it’s wonderful bc it has all the canon elements but it’s set a few years after the war, and the main plot is completely fresh and new. it’s like a harry x ginny second chance romance, harry is super protective and they’re both like still so in love with each other it’s ughhh *chefs kiss*! it’s so well-written too. i LOVE it.

quick-fire and warm front by @jiilys

these are two oneshots that i think perfectly capture hinny’s relationship after the war. the writing is just beautiful.

Come Stay for The Summer by @ashotofogdensoldfirewhiskey

this is such a fun and hilarious text-fic. i’m such a fan of hinny in a different universe, like regular high school / soccer fics. just another fun exploration of their relationship. also basically any of the oneshots by this author are so good.

Bewitched by @brightlybound

i loved this fic so much. such an orignal concept — it’s mainly a non-magical storyline but with a twist. loved the characterisations and the non-linear format. so cute and fun and the ending is perfect.! also this author has lots of other wonderful works.

FloreatCastellum on ao3 is also wonderful - their missing moments works are so on point.

i also might take this opportunity to self-rec my fic too (lmao sorry) which is-

but i’m a fire, and i’ll keep your brittle heart warm by me hehe

it’s a fic about the beginning and blossoming friendship of harry & ginny during order of the phoenix. basically missing moments and build up to explore how and why these two eventually end up together !

but i am always looking for more fics to read so pls give me recs!!<3

[whinlatter]

This seems like an overcomplicated way to eat eggs and look posh while eating. Very demure, very British. I’m intrigued. I’m going to use my butter bell and try this out while working on my British accent. What else do you guys have special cups for?

and the most cursed of them all:

[whinlatter]

My dad would prank us by eating his egg, then turning it upside down so it looked like an unopened one and offering it to us

a timeless, classic dad caper if ever i heard one!

[whinlatter]

Whoa hold on… British ppl don’t peel the shells before eating the egg hard boiled eggs?? DO YOU GUYS EAT THE EGG SHELLS?? Or do you eat around the shell? Do you wash the shells before you put it in the cup since your bread might touch the shell??… I have so many questions 😑

hard boiled, we peel! soft boiled, we just scalp the fucker. rest assured that we do not, in any instance, eat the shell. also i have never in my life washed the shell and think the bacteria has only made me more powerful

[whinlatter]

I really need to know… what in the world are egg cups?? I don’t think we have them in my country or it’s called something else lol

you mean to tell me your soft-boiled eggs are not lovingly cocooned in little clay/porcelain/stone pots ready to be beheaded and scooped out with a lovely slice of hot-buttered toast atop the breakfast table…

and then you can have dippy eggs and toasted soldiers (toast cut into strips), which is a time-honoured way of getting little children excited about eating an objectively quite boring breakfast item, like so:

[whinlatter]

To me it sounds gay as hell