#(except for JKR who is a Shit we all know why no need to explain the olocaust denier terf)

[rollingwiththecheeses]

Every fan of every piece of media made by an actually problematic or just "problematic according to tumblr" author

[indigo-scarf]

Draco and Dransy for the ask game please?

thanks for asking! (I'll try not to make this post too huge lol)

ask game here

💚 Draco

How I feel about this character: 

My precious little meow meow for 15 years (that's a crystal anniversary!). I actually can't explain how I feel about him without divulging my entire autobiography, but here are some relatable things we have in common:

being edgy because vulnerability is weak

going scorched earth sour grapes when rejected

jealous little attention whores

having done cruel things for said attention

impossible-to-please parental figure set in their callous ways and restrictive worldview

complicated feelings about Harry Potter

Sometimes I wonder if it's unhealthy to indulge such strong kinship with a character over mostly negative parts of both of us but anyway moving on

All the people I ship romantically with this character: 

Pansy, Harry, Theodore, Luna, Goyle, Scabior, Borgin, Tom Riddle (in some really abusive way), Neville, Cedric, Remus, Sirius, Marcus Flint, Zacharias Smith, Cormac McLaggen, any random man off the street apparently. Astoria maybe.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: 

Narcissa! Love to project my mummy issues. And I also ship them incestuously, but that would still not be romantic, more just expressing mother-son affection in messed up ways.

My unpopular opinion about this character: 

He doesn't need to be redeemed to be lovable!!!

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

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Canon is perfect the way it is. Get out of here with your deleted movie scenes, let him be a confused Slytherin mess.

I don't even really wish he had married Pansy, because despite her being my beloved princess I sort of like how much JKR hates her + I guess that would be narratively weird, unless Pansy's character had been given more attention all along/had a "horrible to questioning" arc of her own.

my OTP:

I refuse to pick one (you'd think I'd say Dransy, but I can think of so many reasons why they could break up lol).

my cross over ship:

Any of my other mean rich kid blorbos: Blair Waldorf, Sharpay Evans, Cheryl Blossom, August (Young Royals), Nathan (Life is Strange), Ryle (The Riot Club).

a headcanon fact:

He always has two birthday parties, one on the actual day (and it's a whole thing that it cannot flop due to exams) and a bigger one after term ends that marks the beginning of summer holidays.

💕 Dransy (aka racistflower, raciststars, or racistracist)

when I started shipping it if I did:

Last year. I genuinely don't know why I didn't ship it before, must be misogyny (and the fact that there are so few fanworks about it).

my thoughts:

I like mean rich kids and two of those together is chef's kiss. Also there are so many different directions you can go with this ship, from the most wholesome to the most abusive, all of which l find fun to explore.

What makes me happy about them:

The comfort of being childhood friends (even if I don't think their friendship was equal or entirely healthy) to lovers. Empathising with each other's dark side. Romanticising the dramatic ups and downs of potentially toxic fictional relationships. Going shopping.

What makes me sad about them:

That it's such a niche ship! Come on, it was literally canon for a while, what is wrong with society 😭

things done in fanfic that annoys me:

What fanfic? 😭 But I don't like it when Pansy is too sassy-confident, when Draco is too traditionally manly, or when either of them is explicitly forced into their ideology like they didn't enjoy being bigoted little shits.

things I look for in fanfic:

Being mean together, struggling to be kinder, (getting used to) being vulnerable with no one except each other, fighting because they refuse to be vulnerable, doing rich people things together, struggling to do non-rich people things... But I guess the most important thing is I'm just picky af about the characterisation vibes.

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

Draco: Harry, Theodore, Luna, maybe Astoria

Pansy: Daphne, Marietta Edgecombe, maybe Lavender (but if she's black it gets rather complicated) + I once made up an OC that was Pansy's French gf

My happily ever after for them:

Luxurious travels around the world, until they're coastal grandparents with or without any grandchildren.

who is the big spoon/little spoon:

They both want to be the little spoon, but sacrifices must be made, so they alternate.

what is their favorite non-sexual activity:

Spa day! And taking Witch Weekly quizzes.

[itsclydebitches]

(WLW anon) I really don’t like the “bad rep is better then none at all”. I hate that. We should want good rep, because bad rep has been used time and time again by homophobes as to say we shouldn’t get representation. To me it’s not “gay can have the same flaws as het”, it’s “fix the flaws in the het”. Also I know Renora being independent was a good, I was just saying in comparison BB. Also, yes, they were separated, but also didn’t stop thinking about each other. Especially bad with Yang.

Indulge me for a moment because I want to take a trip down memory lane and list some—just some—of the queer rep that has been important to me over the years:

Ellen comes out both as herself and as her character… years later, she’s a hated millionaire who is criticized for how she treats her staff

The wildly influential Buffy gives us two women entering a loving relationship… except then Tara is killed off, Willow goes evil for a time, and Buffy comes under fire for Joss Whedon’s everything

The beloved and respectable headmaster of one of the most popular book series ever published is revealed to be gay… except it doesn’t count because it wasn’t in the text and now all of Harry Potter is cancelled because JKR is transphobic

Kurt is an unambiguously gay teen in a hugely popular TV series, acting as one of the first overt representations a generation has seen… except he’s way too stereotypical and Glee is a joke now

Orange is the New Black gives us a number of queer women, including one of our first trans characters… but isn’t it problematic that they’re all criminals?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine hosts an out gay captain and gives us a bisexual coming out story that resonated with many, myself included… except now we’re supposed to hate all the characters on principle because they’re cops

Korra and Asami walk off into the spiritual sunset together… but they never kiss or anything, so that doesn’t count either

Steven Universe gives us a queer relationship and a wedding… but it’s an issue that this is just a kid’s show and, really, does it count when the rep is embodied by space rocks whose entire species only creates a single gender? Feels like a cop-out

Same with Good Omens. Yeah, Crowley and Aziraphale clearly love each other… but you never see them kiss or declare their intentions. It’s great ace rep though! Unless you want to level the criticism that asexual characters are always nonhuman

A character intended to be a minor guest becomes a show staple and eventually declares his love for one of the two main characters… except then Castiel immediately dies, Dean doesn’t respond, and they never meet on screen again

I finished Queen’s Gambit the other day and the main character had a one-night stand with a woman! … but everyone is talking about how bisexuality is used to represent her lowest point, so that’s bad too

I could go on for literal pages. Some of these arguments I agree with (Dumbledore), others I’ve pushed back against quite strongly (Crowley and Aziraphale), but all of them are valid criticisms depending on what part of the queer community you’re in and what your expectations are. My point here is that it’s all “bad rep.” I mean that seriously. If anyone reading this is scrambling for the comment section to say why [insert media title here] is actually fantastic rep, I guarantee that someone disagrees. Or if they don’t, give it some time. Just wait until the characterization becomes offensively outdated, or another part of the story ruins the relationship, or it comes out that the author did something truly horrific, or the terminology changes and it’s labeled as “problematic” now… just wait. At some point, any rep we feel is good rep now will be criticized, cancelled, and dragged through the mud. The rep that I personally haven’t seen much push-back against—like the beloved Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who, or Schitts Creek that just won a ton of awards—is wrapped up in the criticism, “So it’s all just about able-bodied, cis, (mostly) white dudes, huh? :/”  Even the argument that queer characters need to be written by queer authors doesn’t hold up. I absolutely adored Sense8. “Wow, a gay main character in a loving relationship with another gay man, both of whom enter a loving poly relationship with a woman, another lesbian trans main character who marries the love of her life on screen, an entire cast arguably queer due to them sharing orgy scenes centered around the emotional intimacy they share, everyone survives, and this was written by two trans women! Great, right?” Well, not according to the wealth of opinions explaining how Sense8 is horrible rep, actually. Every piece of rep we’ve got is either currently flawed or will become flawed in the future.

So what do we do with that?

That’s where my “I’d rather have bad rep than no rep at all” comes in. For me, that’s not waving the white flag. That’s not an oath that I won’t expect better rep in the future (I do) or that I won’t criticize the rep we get (BOY DO I), but rather just an acknowledgement of reality. The vast majority—if not the entirety—of rep is “bad rep” in one way or another, but I’d still rather have it than nothing at all. Because I’ve lived just long enough and studied media just enough to know what nothing looked like. It was watching all queer characters meet untimely deaths. Before that it was watching queer characters be derided and treated as jokes. Before that it was nothing but coding, where queer characters didn’t exist except in our own headcanons and interpretations. Obviously “bad rep” covers a very large range of issues and “They haven’t even confirmed this relationship yet” is a bigger issue than “This queer character embodies one or two, mild stereotypes,” but ultimately I’d take any of it over nothing at all. And enjoying what we’ve currently got doesn’t mean I’m willing to settle for it indefinitely.

To use an iffy analogy, imagine there’s a factory. This factory makes plates. So. Many. Plates. Big plates, small plates, plain plates, decorative plates, plates for every possible occasion in your life—and everyone with a steak for dinner is pleased as punch. You though? You’ve got soup. You need a bowl. Your entire life you’ve been struggling to eat your soup off a plate (it doesn’t work) and listening to friends and family claim that the plate with a slightly raised edge could be a bowl if you squint (it’s not). To say it’s frustrating is an understatement.

But then, one day, the factory starts producing bowls too. Hurray! Except as soon as you get your hands on one, you’re told you really shouldn’t be using it, let alone praising it. Look at the state of that bowl! It’s cracked right down the middle, ugly as hell, shoddily made all around… you’re not really going to settle for that, are you? And no, you obviously still want the factory to produce better bowls, but at the same time, this is a bowl. You’ve never gotten one before and you can finally enjoy your meal, even if the soup leaks at times. Sometimes a lot. But you’re still feeling better about your meal than you ever have before. And what you then begin to realize is that lots of the plates are a mess too. They also have cracks, they’re also ugly, many are also shoddily made. The difference is that the factory is producing so many plates at such a rapid pace that every steak eater is able to get by. One plate breaks completely? You’ve got a thousand fallbacks. Don’t like the look of this one? A thousand other options. You disagree about what “shoddily made” means? Luckily there are enough plates that everyone can find what they prefer! But the bowls… there’s only a few. Some are really expensive. Others are only available for a limited time before they suddenly disappear. Your bowl breaks and you have to wait months, years sometimes, to get another one. You’re constantly told to go buy this one obscure bowl no one else has heard about and yeah, you like it... but you’d also like to buy one of the bowls everyone is already enjoying. You find yourself looking at the plates and thinking, “I’d like that. I’d like to have so many options that the flaws, while still a problem, are much more bearable.” You’re still going to demand that the factory get its shit together, you’re still going to (rightly) complain about the awful quality of your bowl… but it’s still nice to have a bowl, period. There are still things you like about it, even if it’s a mess: the color, the size, the beauty of the shape of it. Its potential. You’re still pleased you have something to enjoy and that helps serve the need you’re looking to fill, even if that something is imperfect.

That’s “bad rep is better than no rep.” To bring this very long response back to Blake/Yang, I don’t think their problems negate their benefits. Is their relationship currently non-canonical and filled with a number of writing issues everyone has a right to be angry about? Yup. I express that anger a great deal. Are they still half of a team on a very popular show that is (presumably) set to be canonized as queer? Yup. I’d much rather live in a world where big shows like RWBY try to include queer rep and fail in a multitude of ways—with the expectation and hope that they’ll continue to improve—rather than in a world where authors a) don’t care or b) are too scared to try. Because that’s where a “good rep or no rep” stance leads. The danger isn’t homophobes because they’re, well, homophobes. It doesn’t matter if the rep is good or not, they hate it on principle. But if queer authors writing for other queer identities, or allies writing queer identities, or even queer authors writing their own experiences (like in Sense8) continually come under non-stop fire for their attempts… there’s a good chance that many people won’t ever try. We’re already seeing that here on tumblr with young authors admitting that they wouldn’t touch [insert topic here] with a ten-foot pole because just look at what happens when you get it wrong. And authors will get things wrong because authors are fallible people forever unlearning their own ignorance. So though it might sound strange coming from a blog that has turned into such a RWBY critical space, I am glad that RWBY’s queer rep exists, despite all the frustrations that I share about it. I think a RWBY with various types of “bad” queer rep is better than a RWBY with no queer rep at all, particularly when “bad” or “good” is so intensely subjective. There’s a middle ground between passively accepting whatever we’re given, and tearing into rep with such ferocity that we end up rejecting it all. There’s a space where we can be critical of rep and embrace the parts that work for us, simultaneously.

I hope and expect the het rep will get better too, but… that’s never going to happen instantly. To quote RWBY, there’s no magic wand we can wave to fix all our problems. Rather, it will take slow, plodding, meandering, lifetimes’ worth of work to see that change occur and I personally don’t want to spend the one life I have waiting for that perfect rep to show up. Because it’s unlikely that it will. While we work, I’d rather find the good in what rep we’ve already got.  

[shamelessllamapeanutthing]

Ships and Feels about them

HUGE self-indulgent post but my brain is frozen and I need to get the juices flowing so I can start studying, because if I don’t get into the college I want I just might have to kill myself and then y’all can say bye-bye to your fav fics by your majesty. 

YoruSoi- status: worSHIPPING (geddit? XD) them like the goddesses they are

I regularly play Wicked Ones by Dorothy and just imagine these two tag-teaming against their opponents, like the crazy, badass, ninja lesbians they are. It fucking gives me goosebumps and makes me blush like I am imagining them rawing each other instead. I am a big time SUCKER for powerful, cut-throat wlw. They make me feel powerful by extension, and my devotion for these two is completely unparalleled. 

VictUuri- status: will protect them with my life  

First of all, I love how layered and interesting they are. I can think about this show and this ship for hours and hours on end ( @feastingonvicturi will vouch for that). I naturally gravitate towards angsty ships and writing (because I am a weird sado-maso cross, what can I say) except for these two fluffy bastards. I had been putting off watching YOI because of the weird things I had read about ‘yaoi’ animes (IK YOI is not yaoi, now) till someone told me how pure and deep their love for each other was and welp, here we are. 

RenRuki- status: comfort ship I’ll defend till death

It was one of my first ships and even as I multi-shipper, I always had a preference for them. Childhood-friends-to-lovers trope tugs on my heartstrings like little else and Renji’s devotion towards Rukia warms my heart. I hear them in nearly every song, imagine them in every scenario I read or write about and even though I have multiple ships I adore involving Rukia and Renji both, the two together is everything to me. (Presently obsessed with the amazing hcs and art by @recurring-polynya you might wanna check them out)

KaiRay- status: heart is taking a break, but remains firmly attached

I got into Beyblade BECAUSE of this ship, because of the moments these two shared in V-Force that I caught glimpses of when my younger siblings were watching the show. I love Kai and Ray’s dynamic and I guess what attracts me the most to this ship is the fact that as a teenager I was exactly like Kai and had my own personal Ray who got me through the worst in life. I love the sense of sweet nostalgia this couple brings me and I believe they are perfect for each other. 

MariahEmily- status: coffee shop AU, anyone? 

I was HUGE on MariahxRay but strong, stylish, kinda bitchy, dumb thot falling for the highly educated and fierce lady boss she doesn’t really know how to approach is another one of my favourite tropes, (see: PansMione, down under). I saw them interact and due to personal reasons my brain rejects petty rivalry between girls (because we’re all tired of that, children, be honest) and immediately tries to fix it in fanon. ( @trashyartz  and her beautiful drawings had a lot to do with fanning these flames.) 

ShunUki- status: want them to adopt me

Need I say more? No, but I wanna. I love the steady, secure vibes of this ship. This is the one ship I physically can’t write angsty shit about because of the level of understanding and sense of comfort these two share. They give me kind and strong dad vibes and I have emotionally been an orphan since I was in my early teens so. 

WolfStar- status: they’re canon, JKR can suck my toes

Fucking TERF 

Listen, listen, have you been listening? I mentioned I am a sucker for angst, right? Are you looking at the angst potential here, cause wow. What originally attracted me to this ship was the Chemistry between the two, cause it’s undeniable. You can NOT imagine Maurauders’ Era without imaging these two pining over each other. It’s impossible. 

PansMione- status: toxic and problematic, but oh so hot

I got on this ship because I was craving some quality wlw ships. You guys’ I can not explain to you how often female characters in shows and books do not pass the Bechdel test and I stumbled on some gorgeous PansMione art and just fell in love. IK this ship is hella problematic, but I am firm on my stance that the baby Slytherins deserve a redemption arc. 

Can you imagine these two after Pansy realises everything she did wrong and vows to be better? I imagine Hermione stumbling on a hurt and confused Pansy in year 8, who can’t stop her tears from flowing and is so ashamed of herself for that. She is feeling guilty and resisting the emotion with everything she possesses because the world she’d always known has crumbled down around her and everything she believed in has now been proven to be wrong. 

She lashes out at Hermione because how dare that smart, gorgeous, courageous girl also be everything Pansy once thought she was? How dare she, a muggleborn, unravel the complicated threads of the wizard world so quickly, so efficiently, and clearly see what Pansy never could? Pansy is hurt and guilty and angry and she hates the fact that fucking Granger of all people has now witnessed her crying. 

She feels lost and her anger only rages louder when Hermione doesn’t gloat or belittle her, she doesn’t say anything. 

(Why is this turning into a ficlet, WHAT) 

Anyways, Pansy gets over herself and she and Hermione get together and oh my god, imagine them then. Smart, powerful, righteous Hermione taking the fucking Wizarding World by a storm every single day with her sexy, vivacious, clever Pansy by her side. They’d be unstoppable and they’d love each other something fierce. It would show in the way they look at each other, with a sense of victory, not only over Voldemort but over the entire Wizarding society that had done everything it could to tear them apart, and ultimately failed. 

(BONUS: Imagine Ron and Harry being utter dorks when they go to Pride parades with Hermione and let the image cleanse your skin and soul. @feastingonvicturi @trashyartz one of you (or both?) needs to collab with me so I can write a fix it fic for these two, please. I will pledge my soul to the devil to be used and abused as per Trashy’s whims in exchange. Taura will do it cause she’s my best friend and loves me more than I deserve to be loved.)

(In conclusion, I adore every single one of these ships and am willing to slice a bitch’s throat to protect their honour. Except for YoruSoi, they are fictional characters IK but I am convinced they do not need anybody’s protection, least of all this dumb fuck’s and just might laugh at the very idea.) 

Also, feel free to reblog or comment with rants about your own ships even if they go directly against mine. More love to you if you expand on the ships I mentioned here myself. Tell me about your poison of choice, go ahead. 

But if any one of you dares to send hate to any of my ships, please know that I am something of a God in my own capacity and will smite you with my preferred weapon of choice i.e. blindness in the face of adorable puppies or kittens (in pictures, videos, art, real life or otherwise). Beware. Let people love what they love.

[impossibleleaf]

The Crimes Of Grindelwald Meta: The Lestrange tragedy

Soooo.... The Crimes of Grindelwald. A highly anticipated movie that missed the mark on several accounts.

Too many characters and plot conveniences, a blatant disregard for the ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ rule, apparent OOC moments. A few WTF moments that, if you think about it for a minute make you scream ‘But that does not make sense!’ At first glance, the entire movie is an utter mess.

And it is. It is a mess. I’m not going to lie, the execution was sometimes badly done and JKR makes you do intellectual acrobatics for points that are actually pointless. The movie has many problems, the first one being that it is a movie. And movies cannot handle so many new arcs at the same time.

Rowling is not a screenwriter. She is a writer and her mistake was ultimately to assume she didn’t need to make any adjustment. As a result, some new characters get accidentally tossed in the bin by the audience because the audience doesn’t care enough yet and has many more problems to deal with. And as it is a movie, you do not have the time to ponder any new point and see how everything fit as a whole.

But if you start looking at it as a book...

Well, if you start looking at the Crimes of Grindelwald as a book and began assuming she knows what she is doing...

A lot of things suddenly start to make sense.

Tighten your belt, we are about to enter the realms of guesswork and speculation. Some of you may even say this is only a headcanon but I really don’t think so. Still, if you want everything to suddenly make sense and several plot holes to magically fill themselves, just bear with me.

There will be of course MAJOR SPOILERS so keep reading at your own risks. Spoilers from CoG, and potential spoilers for the entire FBAWTFT serie. Also, I’m using some part of the original screenplay.

You’ve been warned.

First thing first, I am not going to talk about the reveal at the end of the movie about Credence’s identity. Mostly because, for how everything seems to turn around him, he is at the present moment a puppet. More than that, he is a McGuffin.

He is a McGuffin, only a plot device. The real actor, the key for understanding the entire movie is not Credence but this person.

(Bet you didn’t see this coming).

Yusuf Kama, that new character who falls on our laps telling us he needs to kill Credence because of an Unbreakable Vow and throws at us the entire story about the Lestranges. Spends half his on-screen presence with some insect in his eye, Nobody IRL seems to care about him.

We should. We should really look at him because he is the one who has all the answers even if he doesn’t know it yet.

Let me explain now.

As you must know by now, his entire life went to hell when Corvus Lestrange IV kidnapped his mother to rape her and had a child with her, Leta. His father went mad with grief when she died in childbirth and made him swear an Unbreakable Vow to kill ‘the one Corvus Lestrange loves most’. From the moment Leta, his half-sister, was born, he took the path of an avenger and began trying to fulfill the Unbreakable Vow by finding ‘the one Corvus Lestrange loves most’ and killing them.

He began thinking it would be easy. Problem was, Corvus IV is a shitting piece of work and has never loved his daughter.

But then Lestrange had a son... Corvus Lestrange V. And, according to Yusuf Kama, love began filling his cold and empty heart.

I’m summarizing the rest. To protect his son from Kama, he sent his children in America on a boat with a half house-elf (the script explains why the boat, to leave the least magical traces), the ship sinks, Leta being a brat at that age had switched the baby with another, Baby Corvus sinks. She never tells anybody but shows the family tree in the end to reveal the truth.

So, what now? Does that mean that Kama’s Unbreakable Vow is null and void? If Corvus is dead, then who was Voldemort’s classmate?

Here’s where absolutely everybody has made a dangerous mistake.

At no moment has it been said that Corvus Lestrange IV is dead.

We assume he is dead. But, unless we hear from a reliable character he is dead, we have to assume he is not.

Tom Riddle’s classmate? Tom was born the 31st of december 1926. Most, if not all his classmates were born in 1927. So, it is strongly possible that this Lestrange was not in the family tree only because he has yet to be born. It is 1927 in CoG, he may very well be born next month for them.

And, if you connect the two, Voldemort’s classmate might have just been Corvus Lestrange IV’s son and Leta’s half-brother.

And if Lestrange has another son, then Kama is back in business and will continue his revenge quest. He will try to find ‘the one Lestrange loves most’ and attempt to kill the new baby.

(Careful Kama. Killing babies because of prophecies is bad luck in HP).

Now, we are going to go deeper in the realm of speculations, so bear with me.

Kama’s father made his son swear he would kill the one ‘Lestrange loves most’. Kama had once thought that person would be Leta except he didn’t love her. Kama then started believing Lestrange loved Baby Corvus so he tried to kill him.

We’re going to assume for a moment Lestrange is a real monster (which he is). He used the Unforgiveable on a married woman to bed her, he does not love his own daughter. And, even if he supposedly loved his son, we need to remember he sent him to America to be adopted by Mary Lou Barebone.

He left who he thought to be his ‘beloved’ son so he could be adopted by Mary Lou Barebone. That woman!

A muggle! The leader of the New Salem Philantropic Society, a group which notably hates magic and would love to kill witches!

Don’t believe me? It’s written in the Original Screenplay!

IRMA: I took you to Mrs Barebone because she was supposed to look after you.

It was not an accident! He wasn’t dropped in an orphanage and she adopted him! The Lestrange’s servant was under order to give who she thought to be Baby Corvus to that woman!

And at no moment had the father tried to get any new of his ‘son’ or he would have known what an enormous mistake that was in a minute!

It’s as if he sent him to her and told that woman his mother was a witch so she could abuse him and turn him into a a powerful Obscurius!

No really, considering how bad his plan to send him to Mary Lou Barebone was, the only thing for it to make sense is to assume that Lestrange used the occasion to insure his son would be abused enough to become an obscurus. For how cruel, how despicable it is, that is the only ‘reason’, the only thing that sounds ‘logical’. Lestrange must have wanted an obscurus, probably thinking a pureblood such as his son would manage to control it and be an all powerful weapon.

So no, Kama is wrong. The one Lestrange loves most is not his son either. And even if he had felt even a sliver of paternal love, he wouldn’t be the one he loves most. And there is absolutely no reason at all that the new Lestrange will be loved either. So, someday, Kama after much research will finally get it right and see what should have always been obvious.

The one Corvus Lestrange IV loves most is himself. He is the one Kama is supposed to kill.

Baby Corvus? Even if he had cared, he still loves himself more than he loved his own son. And the whole ‘let’s send him by boat so that Kama cannot find him, love you baby’ suddenly becomes ‘So he thinks he needs to kill my son. Wonderful! Let’s send my son away so he goes on a merry chase and stay far, far away from me!”

And here comes the first part of the prophecy Kama gave us.

The first part, as you remember is: A Son cruelly banished. The Son is Baby Corvus, abandoned by his own father to save his skin and, possibly, to become an obscurus after years of abuse. The only thing that saved him from this horrible fate was that he died before reaching America.

Now come the second part: Despair of the Daughter.

It is obliviously Leta. Leta Lestrange who had accidentally killed her little brother and lived with that guilt all her life.

Question is: are we really sure Lestrange didn’t know what his daughter has done? If all you have to do to know if somebody died is to check the genealogic tree, then Lestrange who has it for years, even decades couldn't have not known Baby Corvus was dead. And for an adult, it is ridiculously easy to see a child like Leta at the time is feeling guilty because she did something very, very bad.

So it is possible that Lestrange has always known his daughter had killed his son. There was no point from then to care about Credence. He was not his son after all, he didn’t matter.

But Lestrange must have used her guilt to torture and manipulate Leta. Just the right allusion at the right moment, and she was his unwilling puppet.

Now, let’s take a look at this picture.

I don’t know for you, but it does not feel like it is the first time the two are seeing each other. There seems to be history there. It is not Queenie Goldstein joining Grindelwald, she’s getting a special treatment here.

The whole hate speech is happening inside the Lestrange Mausoleum, the Lestranges are a dark family. Grindelwald seems to have powerful and utterly loyal followers. So, it is very easy to speculate from there that Corvus Lestrange IV is also one of Grindelwald’s men. And if Lestrange is one of Grindelwald’s, then Leta also had to be one of his followers, whether she liked it or not.

But what could she do for the cause?

Well, she could seduce a rising and very powerful Auror for example. Be their spy, marry somebody high in the Auror Forces and tell them what she learns from him about the British Ministry of Magic’s plans.

It’s just a pity that Auror’s brother happen to be Newt Scamander’s hug-loving brother. She may not love Theseus and only use him, she still loves Newt. He’s probably the only one she has ever loved, in fact.

And because she loved Newts, she’s decided to save them by switching side somewhere around the middle of the movie and attempting to derail Grindelwald and Lestrange’s plan.

If you assume Lestrange knows his son is dead, that his replacement will believe he is Corvus Lestrange and that he is one of Grindelwald’s men, then it becomes extraordinarily obvious that it is Lestrange who told Grindelwald Credence is not Corvus and that he’ll probably try to find Irma Dugard because he took his son’s place and she sighed the adoption papers. From there, Grindelwald had enough time to makes a plan.

The real trick for Grindelwald to ‘seduce’ Credence to his side is to insure he follows his breadcrumbs and learn what they want him to learn at the proper time. Not before, not after. Not less but not more either. We wouldn’t want him to realize Lestrange sent his son to Barebone on purpose. Grindelwald kills Irma Dugard right after she tell Credence Mary Lou Barebone was supposed to look after him so that he doesn’t see this wasn’t an accident and some man sent his own son to hell.

And, when Credence finally despairs at the realization it is a dead end, he tells him he just has to comes to him to know what he is. That was their plan.

For this reason, Leta taking the Lestranges’ book was not a coincidence. She must have figured it out, maybe she was in the plan even if she didn’t know everything and she tried to derail the plan by taking the book before Vinda could. And then she told the truth, hoping it would solve everything, not knowing it was also part of Grindalwald’s plan.

And when all else failed and he was about to kill Newts and his friends, she decided to show her true colours and fight Grindelwald to save them.

Her death was not pointless, it was the natural end of her redemption arc, one that has yet to be told to the Scamander brothers.

So, where does that leave us? Kama, in his quest for revenge will most certainly discover the truth. Instead of killing the baby, he will realize just what kind of monster Lestrange really is and finally get the prophecy right.

A son cruelly banished

Despair of the daughter

Return, great avenger

With wings from the water

He is indeed the great avenger, but he got the prophecy wrong and jumped to conclusions even though he’s correctly identified the ones mentioned here. EDIT: The wings from the water are nothing but his realization that the two Lestrange children (whose family animal is a raven) are the true victims and ‘died’ because of their father in that shipwreck, giving him finally the drive to do the right thing for the right reasons.

Kama was never supposed to kill Lestrange’s children, he is the one supposed to avenge them and kill their father.

And when he does and kills Lestrange, the true culprit and the one that should have always paid for his crimes, he would have fulfilled the Unbreakable Vow he has made to his father and be free.

EDIT: ADDENDUM

The most striking evidence of this theory is the magical creature in Yusuf Kama’s eye.

He lives with some magical creature in his eye and only manages to keep it at bay via the use of his magical eyedrops. How long he’s had that problem, we don’t know, but it is a clear metaphor for him being unable to see clearly things as they are. He tries to keep going despite this, tries to contain the problem, but it stops him for doing what he has to do. He is ‘blind’ to the truth, he cannot see it because of that parasite that according to Newts must come from the sewers, in other words used water, and is in other words fated to fail so long as the parasite is here.

It’s a good thing Newts Scamander got rid of it. His eyes are now ready to finally see clearly what has always been right in front of him.

[adorkabell]

1. Ask me anything!

2. what would you name your future kids?

Iris, William Warren, Lucy … don’t get me started 😂

3. do you miss anyone? Doogan & my dad.

4. what are you looking forward to? A vacation 😂

5. is there anyone who can always make you smile? My besties and my fella 🙂

6. is it hard for you to get over someone? Once I decide it’s over, it’s pretty well over. Ngl my first love was the hardest.

7. what was your life like last year? … pass. Lol

8. have you ever cried because you were so annoyed? Usually with myself or my pets (potty training is so hard though!)

9. who did you last see in person? My mom?

10. are you good at hiding your feelings? Heart on sleeve lol

11. are you listening to music right now? Not exactly?

12. what is something you want right now? For chocolate to be sugar free and provide all my daily vitamins. 😂

13. how do you feel right now? Content 😊

14. when was the last time someone of the opposite sex hugged you? Yesterday 🥰

15. personality description … quirky

16. have you ever wanted to tell someone something but you didn’t? Uh. I work loosely with the public, so YES. On a more intimate level, also yes.

17. opinion on insecurities. I have them? I don’t understand the question. They suck.

18. do you miss how things were a year ago? Uh. Let me check. No job. Broke up with my fiancé’s. Dreams of having a baby and owning a home … demolished. No. Nope. Not a ducking bit.

19. have you ever been to New York? State? Yes. NYC no.

20. what is your favourite song at the moment? Uh … the Cave, Mumford and Sons. 🤷🏻‍♀️

21. age and birthday? 37/May 3rd

22. description of crush … amazing? Hella smart. Sweet. Handsome. Loving. Kind. Made for me.

23. fear(s) … if I told you, you could use them against me. Put simply, white, cis-het men.

24. height … 5’8”

25. role model … I don’t have one? Maybe my besties. I really admire the women in my life.

26. idol(s) hmm. Mulder and Scully

27. things i hate … poop. Blatant ignorance.

28. i’ll love you if… you … love me? 🤷🏻‍♀️

29. favourite film(s) … Cool Runnings, Gone in 60 Seconds, Harry Potter (yes, I know, JKR is a shit human 🤷🏻‍♀️), Center Stage … etc.

30. favourite tv show(s) … the X-Files, Doctor Who … lots of good television out there tbh.

31. 3 random facts … I like to color, I like chicken nuggies, I live with my mom? 🤷🏻‍♀️

32. are your friends mainly girls or guys? They’re Mainly people.

33. something you want to learn … ohhh so much to learn! Maybe astronomy.

34. most embarrassing moment … you tell me, everyone has a Dee story 😂😂😂

35. favourite subject … me. 🤣 jk. Literature or poetry.

36. 3 dreams you want to fulfill? Travel! Owning a home. Horseback riding.

37. favourite actor/actress … yeah. Brad Pitt? Idk tbh. 🤷🏻‍♀️

38. favourite comedian(s) … Fluffy? 🤷🏻‍♀️

39. favourite sport(s) … hockey & figure skating

40. favourite memory … geez, idk. Pick one for me and leave it in the comments lol.

41. relationship status 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

42. favourite book(s) … the Phantom Tollbooth, Harry Potter, the 5th Season, that Patrick Rothfuss book that I can’t remember rn.

43. favourite song ever … ever?! Um. ANYTHING EXCEPT PACABEL’s CANON and Africa.

44. age you get mistaken for … 20s?

45. how you found out about your idol … I was a weird kid obsessed with horror and the paranormal?

46. what my last text message says … Interesting

47. turn ons … good conversation … eye contact

48. turn offs … poor manners, rude behavior

49. where i want to be right now … with you 😉

50. favourite picture of your idol … ??? Just Google David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson for yourself 😂

51. starsign … Taurus

52. something i’m talented at … nothing appropriate 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

53. 5 things that make me happy … puppies, kitties, rainbows, unicorns, cupcakes.

54. something thats worrying me at the moment … money.

55. tumblr friends … that explains this weird quiz. I have a few. 🤷🏻‍♀️

56. favourite food(s) SOUP. Pizza!!! Pasketti!!!

57. favourite animal(s) dogs, cats, horses.

58. description of my best friend … I have a few. They are all beautiful and wonderful and kind and patient and just fucking amazing.

59. why i joined tumblr … Michelle told me too when we first met lol.

60. ask me anything you want … if you need to, DM me.

[writesbatty]

days 14-29

complete with unedited content notes from the facebook group i’m in

29/30

i love to rewrite the classics

to make persephone send hades running

(keep that 'rewriting the story of persephone as a love story’ shit several hundred miles from me, thanks.)

to give echo back her voice

to let arachne weave her tapestries once more

rewrite pride and prejudice so lydia bennet does not marry a rapist

get jane eyre out of her aunt's home sooner rather than later

find ophelia a therapist

remind everyone that tragedy can still have a happy ending

  28/30 content warning: mentions/discussions of sex and consent. this is very vulnerable and im uncomfortable and DOING IT ANYWAY rip

.

.

.

i tell my boyfriend i think we should start scheduling sex

but that this is not some indication of failure in our relationship

i know he worries that my complicated relationship with sex is some reflection of how attractive i find him

(it doesn't help that the past few years seem to have taken my ease of flattery away from me

i don't know when it got so hard to tell the love of my life he looks good in tank tops

and black jeans like the ones he wore when i met him)

but it's not that

it's that i don't think about it, the same way i don't notice i am hungry till i'm starving, don't notice i'm thirsty till my head aches and spins, don't notice i am anxious until i am already in the middle of panic

it's that i was in a relationship where i never thought about the word no, it never occurred to me as an option, and now i end up consumed with pointless worry that i do not really want this

i try to talk to my therapist about these things, but i never really know what to say

how to explain my ex never set out to hurt me and half of it was my fault, but i am still feeling the aftershocks years later

without sounding like i am making excuses

(maybe i am, i don't know, i have always had a hard time with blame, with holding others accountable)

but at the same time i never want to imply what happened was more serious than it was

nothing like a genuine violation, nothing that should label me victim or survivor

nothing like what others have gritted their teeth and fought through

maybe some of it is the meds

it's hard to tell

how much is the meds and how much is the trauma and how much is just me

and why has it been six years and i still can't

-casually tell my boyfriend he has a nice ass

-sit in my boyfriend's lap

-fearlessly messily uninhibitedly make out with my boyfriend

because some paranoid corner of my mind is afraid to say 'no'

(nothing would happen if i said no, because everything would stop happening, it's not fear that makes me question, it's the idea of disappointing someone i love, and that's all on me, not on him)

my boyfriend is an angel with a nice ass

(seriously, i am not overstating this, he has a very nice, round butt)

and when i tell him

i think we should start scheduling sex

he kisses the top of my head

and talks about how bob and linda on bob's burgers schedule sex, and they have like, the best marriage on television, so clearly we're in good company

and pulls me over to the couch to feed me ice cream and scratch my back

  27/30 warning for like. harry potter/jkr 'discourse' or something i guess?

listen, we all should have known jk rowling was going down in flames the moment she made harry james potter a fucking MAGICAL COP at the end of the series

i have a list of problems with the deathly hallows epilogue that is longer than the actual epilogue and this is at least three of them

will somebody cut harry a fucking break?

why on earth would someone punish this abused, traumatized, exhausted person by giving them a career that will repeatedly remind them of every bad thing that has ever happened, which is most things that have happened to harry potter

harry potter should have been the defense against the dark arts instructor

harry potter has intimately seen both sides, every inch of light and dark

and he saw them as a child, he grew in them like a weed in brackish water, an in between neither fresh nor salt

(but he chose good, he always chose good, and it was always a choice, and it wasn't always easy)

let him teach other children to protect themselves

let him eat lunch with neville longbottom so they can discuss their students and make sure no teacher ever treats kids the way snape treated his students

the way snape treated harry and neville

let harry spend his weekends in hogsmeade with friends both old and new remembering only the light spots in the dark days of his schooling

let him know the joy of helping a struggling student

(this is how he will carry on remus lupin's legacy; that and the bar of honeyduke's finest chocolate in his desk)

let harry potter retire and spoil the ever loving shit out of all of his grandchildren

let harry potter put the past behind him

consider the fact that we don't all want to devote our lives

to fighting the demons we met in childhood

  26/30

nightmare at 20,000 feet is the most terrifying episode of the twilight zone

and what an apt title

what an apt metaphor

because what could ever be more nightmare then knowing the worst is just outside the window

but no one else can see it

25/30 this ends like super abruptly but idk how to end it Properly and i need sleep so. shrug emoji.

it's like a bad joke, this harmless word that never stops following me

you know those tasteless reddit posts about trigger warnings? how there's 'no way' someone could be traumatized by something so normal

so small

that's me. i am that joke.

a man at the aquarium calls his young daughter pumpkin and i–

i swallow a wave of nausea

i try to ignore the way my skin begins to crawl

and my heart speeds up

and i can hear the sound of his voice

it's like time travel

it's like a curse

just say 'pumpkin' and i fly back in time and it's like my body does not know that he is dead

that he hasn't called me pumpkin in nearly a decade

you would think it would be the mocking, the insults, that would ring like shots through my echo chamber brain

but

it's that fucking petname

it's 'i'm sorry, pumpkin' in his voice and the look in his eyes as he digs the hole in my chest just a little bit deeper with another fake apology

an apology all for him

when he came to my high school graduation there were rules

-he could not drink

-he could not apologize

-he could not call me pumpkin

24/30

it's funny

this disconnect between the me i know and the me other people know

at home i pace the floor, building up the courage to call for a cab

at work they tell me i am good with people, that i am no nonsense

at home, i twist my hair in my fingers as i struggle to tell my partner of nearly six years i need something to eat

at school they called me confident, self assured

i wonder where this other me is when i need them most

where is this confident and self assured version of me when something actually happens?

when someone is in trouble?

when someone gropes me in the street?

when someone needs them?

when i need them?

23/30

weirdly specific sections i wish i could find at the bookstore:

unconventional sci written by women and queer people

dystopian fiction that ends hopefully

non-ableist romance novels with disabled protagonists written by disabled people

young adult romance novels about lesbians and magic with happy endings

poetry for queer girls who really like artemisia gentileschi's art

collections of personal essays about hospital waiting rooms

college kids from dysfunctional families getting their shit together and falling in love

narratives about found families of misfits

young adult novels about queer romance and theatre kids

the exact novels you needed to read at 15 when you were scared and alone and will still make you cathartically sob while reading in a public park

(this last section is real except it's just the francesca lia block shelves in the young adult section)

how to guides on how to be a person when your body and the world you live in are crumbling to pieces rapidly

advice on how to make your best friends move out of state to be closer to you

novels where the protagonist goes through hell but they come out the other side and are still an essentially good and optimistic person despite their trauma because the world is a terrifying place and we need fiction and narrative to remind us of the potential for hope

22/30

edit: i just word vomit typed this directly into the comment box and it got weirdly long so Be Aware

elle woods is my personal hero

i'm blonde

'yes sarah'

i'm sure you're thinking

'i know, i have seen you'

but it's more than that, okay? i am blonde on the inside. my heart and soul are blonde. i talk to people and they say 'i can't imagine you not blonde' because the concept of me any other way is absurd

maybe because its the one thing everyone always loved about me. when i was a kid, everyone wanted to play with my hair. i had barbie hair, disney princess hair. long blonde waves like strands of gold.

i grew up telling blonde jokes, so everyone would know i was Smart and Cool. i got teased for being a nerd and a four eyes and for awhile everyone called me 'dictionary' because i knew how to spell zombie. smart was more important to me than cool, but i still told blonde jokes. the blonde swims ninety percent of the way to the other shore, gets tired, and swims all the way back, and god if that isn't a metaphor for my life. god if i haven't spent 25 years fighting not to be the blonde who turned back.

when i almost failed math in my freshman year of high school my father told me i should give up and become a playboy bunny because i didn't have a future. a childhood friend asks when i will grow out of the color pink.

i am a blonde the way i am pink. spiteful. elle woods walking malibu barbie through the halls of harvard. elle woods taking notes in pink sparkling pen. elle woods handing in her scented resume printed on pink paper.

elle woods saying

'what, like it's hard?'

i tape my thesis pages to the wall with glitter tape and pin my blonde hair back with a flower clip and i wear baby pink leather heels with bows on them.

'what, like it's hard?'

21/30

why do the aliens always want to kill us?

why do we always build a giant weapon?

why can't the aliens come to earth to help us?

why aren't scifi movies about healing?

20/30

ode to vestibular stimming

i do not like metal music

i'm sorry, it's just not my thing

but good god do i understand why people head bang

and why people mosh

when i was a kid i loved jumping on the trampoline, and the way it made my heart and brain jump and soar and bounce

now i can't jump on trampolines anymore but

i can listen to british pop music in my living room and laugh and feel that soar and jump and bounce as i swing my head from side to side and up and down and sometimes, for extra fun, twist my torso around a little

like i am so much energy and so little body but finally it has somewhere to go as my hair swishes against my face and an unstoppable grin spreads across my face and

don't you ever wanna just let go?

don't you ever wanna shake your head until the dizzy chases everything else away?

19/30

i like to talk to the creatures in the tanks when i do my aquarium rounds

the old man of an octopus in the floor tank i call gramps

my favorite sea star, a purple velcro star in the touch tanks, i call zippy

mostly i just call everything 'buddy'

'hey buddy, how ya doing today?' or 'come on buddy, scootch down from the top of the glass'

i apologize to the anemones when they close up because people have touched them too much

and i apologize to the jellies when it takes me more than one try to scoop them out so i can change their water

in middle school i noticed a rip on my baby doll's neck so i made her a neck brace from the sash of a build a bear robe and propped her up on pillows every night, so she wouldn't rip anymore

i am nearly 25 and i still feel guilty when my stuffed animals fall to the ground

i am nearly 25 and i keep multiple stuffed animals in the bed i share with my boyfriend of nearly six years

a common misconception of autism and other similar social disorders is that people on the spectrum do not experience empathy

and in some cases this is true

but an often ignored aspect of these disorders is that anything you could lack, you can also have too much of

hyper-empathy is when you are so receptive to others feelings they become your own

they become so much your own it causes you physical distress

and everything

everything

has feelings

i once got sad about throwing away a pair of pants because i had them for just... so long

i once cried on an apartment balcony because my neighbors i had never met, never even SEEN, were fighting

today i watched a young boy scare simon, a seagull who hangs out by the aquarium, by screaming at him

and it broke my heart a little even though i not especially fond of birds and am, in fact, kind of afraid of them

sometimes i sit and think about the things my dad experienced and my aching too big heart thinks

maybe it was okay

maybe the things he said were okay, because of what happened to him

my aching too big heart always forgets

things happened to my mother, too

things happened to me, too

and neither of us turned out like that

articles on the internet talk about hyper-empathy like a super power

call it 'being an empath'

to me it has always felt more like a bruise

like my aching too big heart just can't stop pumping blood to the tender surface of my skin

18/30

a very angry letter to a lady who came into the aquarium yesterday. less poem and more just 'complaining' but wow, i am still mad like 36 hrs later

for the love of god, lady

what is your fucking problem?

you are a grown adult. you have multiple children, some of whom are teenagers, and this is how you behave, in public, in front of your family?

are you incapable of basic human decency? did no one ever teach you manners?

yes, there is a disabled person and their caretaker in this aquarium, and yes the person is making noise. people make noise. you are in a fucking public place. children scream in here literally all the time. the seals scream. parents scream. sometimes the people who work here scream, because it is the only way you can hear us over the damn seals.

so why, lady, do you feel the need to make some rude ass comment about a person you don't even know, and look at me like

you expect me to play along

i wish i could say something to you but i am an employee and that is not polite but

if i was just a person i would tell you to shove it

but i wish i could have been a staff member AND told you to shove it

so i could have told you, hey, lady

this person helping you, telling you all this information about sea stars, is also fucking disabled

and your rude as hell eye roll and 'oh great, here we go' and 'really?' and loud scoffing is not appreciated

and frankly you can kiss my autistic ass and get the fuck out

17/30

capitalism is broken

and the reason i know this is because of jurassic park

not the franchise but the canon, the universe it exists in

every time i complain about the jurassic park universe

demanding to know why, for the love of GOD, do people keep opening these parks full of dangerous dinosaurs

someone always tells me 'the money, obviously'

as if capitalism was a reasonable excuse for making a super t-rex that eats people

as if money were an excuse for making yet another death trap

yet another super dinosaur that's going to –inevitably– escape and eat and/or traumatize someone

the idea that the people who built jurassic world looked at the events of jurassic park and thought

the money is worth it

we won't fuck up this time

is completely fucking baffling to me

i suppose maybe i am meant to see this as a heartwarming representation of the american refusal to fail

if at first you don't succeed, try try again, after all!

but i think about the news article i read last night

about how insurance companies worry curing diseases is not profitable

and i think about all the lives lost and therapy needed because everyone in jurassic world refused to learn from john hammond's mistakes

and i don't think any of this is saying americans refuse to fail

it's just saying we don't care how many times we kill people if there's good money to be made

16/30, inspired by how affectionate the characters on new girl are with each other

all through high school i did theatre, and i don't know if this is a universal theatre kid thing, or just something we all did

but we were all about physical contact

we were a bunch of misfit touch starved pets

piling seven teenagers on one sofa, every part of you touching somebody, every part of you warm

and i miss that

all that platonic but physical affection

i am a very affectionate person, and i find myself fighting to seem 'normal' in social situations

reminding myself not to wrap my arms around people, or rest a hand on someone's leg, or call casual friends babe, or offer people bites of food

this is how i lived all of high school

sitting in laps, holding hands in the halls, kisses hello, shared drinks and forks

i miss it

i don't understand our desire as a society to deem intimate touch romantic

why shouldn't i kiss my best friend on the cheek? why shouldn't friends hold hands?

we are social creatures, after all

we don't start out like this

we sleep in heaps at slumber parties, we play doctor, we play house, we do each other's hair

why does all that stop because we get old enough to want to kiss people?

doesn't that seem silly?

15/30 write more love poems about your friends guys. love your friends tell people you love them. i love telling people i love them. i love u. all of u. here's a poem about my best friend aka the greatest human on earth, the guildenstern to my rosencrantz

so i've known my best friend since 9th grade

except

except actually i met her in 3rd grade and didn't know it until 10th grade

and she wasn't my best friend until college

except

except she was, i think, maybe the whole time and we just didn't know it

on my fifteenth birthday she came with me to get my nose pierced and gave me a hand drawn birthday card that quoted my favorite green day song

once we spent six hours on skype drawing bad caricatures of celebrities

and when i left to grab a snack she yelled after me

"don't you go where i can't follow"

our senior year we read "rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead" for ap english and we started calling each other rosencrantz and guildenstern

and when she gave her senior project speech on william faulkner she cried, not because she was nervous, but because she loves faulkner and she got emotional

she is exactly 12 days older than me, and a taurus, and she plays a bunch of different instruments and one day we're going to start a folk punk band called the rebel amish

last summer we went to the deyoung together and laid in a shag covered bean bag chair watching the light show in the summer of love exhibit for like an hour

and we took a selfie in some giant gold antique mirror

and when i picture my future, she is as much a part of it as my boyfriend

this other love of my life, this girl with the bright eyes and the once broken nose and who is always willing to sit and talk about books

or the shitty people we went to high school with

or weird titles for potential memoirs

this amazing person, who is the only person i would trust to drive me through marin county while eating a mcdonalds cheeseburger

it is a different kind of love, sure

but it is a love story

and it is ours

14/30 which i wrote but forgot to post because i was playing video games

i wish my own mysteries were this easy to solve

just look for the spot that glows

and unearth what's hiding

no crying

no years of therapy

no buried memories

just point and click

[lotstradamus]

But Lottie, we cry, you haven't talked about Cursed Child yet, the people need to know

OOOOOOOHHH MYY GGGOOOOOODDDDDD

you’re right, I haven’t, I got distracted by going on holiday immediately after and then starting a new job so now The Cursed Child feels like it happened TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO!!! but oh my god, I will talk about it. will I talk. 

ok, so, firstly MILD SPOILERS PROBS! 

before seeing it I would’ve been like ‘oh spoilers, but at this point who doesn’t know everything that happens haha’ but it turns out the answer to that is LOTS OF PEOPLE, and the #1 best thing about seeing it was HEARING THE UNSPOILED PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE GASPING IN SHOCK ABOUT THINGS! IT WAS SO PURE! the Single Best Gasp was when Scorpius pops out of the lake at the end of the first part and Umbridge is like ‘?!?! I’m Dolores Umbridge!!!’ the gasps of shock were DEAFENING, IT WAS SO COOL! 

so anyway, yes, spoilers.

I DON’T REALLY KNOW WHAT TO SAY. WHICH IS RARE FOR ME. I feel like I need to review it in two parts, because I felt so differently about the two parts. I also feel like seeing it on stage highlighted a lot of the things I really didn’t like about it. ALSO, my friend works in the theatre, HENCE THIS INSTAGRAM PICTURE (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), and he gave us a) a backstage tour, and b) insider info, which changed how I felt about parts of it a lot as well. BASICALLY IT WAS A ROLLERCOASTER FROM START TO FINISH, I SPENT NEARLY £100 ON MERCH, AND @scorbius SAT ON THE STAGE AND CRIED. 

so! first of all! all the magic stage stuff was amazing. all of it. literally every single instance of magic was incredible. if you were reading the script and you were like ‘hmm, I wonder how they do that on stage?’ the answer is FUCKING BRILLIANTLY. while I was watching it I kept FORGETTING magic isn’t actually a thing. my brain would just be like ah, yep. magic. and then it’d be like wait, no, this is a STAGE and WIZARDS AREN’T REAL. I can’t even begin to explain any of it (my pal’s little backstage tour filled us in on what we wanted to know and honestly it all sounded so improbable and difficult I’m starting to suspect they all might actually be wizards), but know that it was WONDERFUL and SPELLBINDING and SO UNBELIEVABLY IMPRESSIVE. my mouth was straight-up falling open at some parts. even when you thought you maybe knew how they did it, you did not for a second see it happening. just so clever. 

secondly: SHOUT OUT TO THE DEMENTORS, THE SINGLE COOLEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN ON STAGE. I actually really don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it and might in the future, that’s how amazing they were. I was like the little open-mouthed crossed-eyes emoji at them. it seems insane to me that the dementors could be so lacklustre in the films, because they were literally breathtaking on stage. terrifying and so, so real. I got CHILLS, MAN. 

another very cool thing that had me all 😵  was Al and Scorpius in the lake. it looked amazing. ALSO THE FACT THAT THERE WAS REAL WATER UNDER THE STAGE THAT THEY WERE POPPING OUT OF AND HAVING SCENES IN. my #connections told us that at one point one of them (Albus or Scorpius, I couldn’t remember if you paid me) is under water for 3 ½ minutes with scuba gear waiting for his cue. imagine.

SO YEAH, ALL THE SPECIAL EFFECTS AND MAGIC AND #MOMENTS WERE VERY WELL DONE IN THE FIRST HALF. they were pretty well done in the second half as well, but I really wasn’t into the Voldemort effects (INACCURATE AND PANDERING TO THE FILM AUDIENCES), the Lily and James death scene (kind of awkward), and the Hagrid-rescuing-Harry bit (basic). but everything else was great. Harry and Draco’s duel was a fucking DELIGHT from start to finish, the Polyjuice scenes were athletic feats, AND THE HOGWART’S EXPRESS ESCAPE SCENE WAS INDESCRIBABLY HILARIOUS AND VISUALLY AMAZING. THE WHOLE THING WAS VISUALLY AMAZING. 

I think my #1 main qualm, WHICH ANYONE WOULD BE ABLE TO GUESS, AS I AM A ONE-NOTE HUMAN BEING AND TRANSPARENT IN ALL THINGS, is The Albus Problem. 

it occurred to me when I read the script, but it’s not as Glaringly Obvious in the book as it is onstage - mainly because when it was happening in my head it was 25000x gayer (I’ll get to this later, don’t fucking worry). the main… not plot, precisely, but the main, like, Emotional Drive of this play is Albus and his relationship with Harry. it’s a classic ‘but it’s your dream, son!’ ‘no, dad… it’s YOURS!’ kind of father/son relationship: blah blah misunderstanding, blah blah can’t fill your shoes so I AGGRESSIVELY DO NOT WANT TO, I’m a REBEL, you’ll NEVER UNDERSTAND ME DAD, etc. etc. ad nauseum. you get the picture. Albus resents his famous father, hates being compared to him every second of every day, hates that he’ll never, ever measure up to him, the usual. 

and Albus isn’t the only one being like ‘You Don’t Get Me, Dad!’ everyone is saying this to Harry - or implying it, at least. there is SO MUCH CHAT re: Harry not ‘getting’ Albus, Harry not seeing him for who he really is, Harry not understanding him, Albus being DIFFERENT from his siblings, Albus being DIFFERENT in general, Harry needing to handle Albus DIFFERENTLY because he’s so DIFFERENT. Albus Is Different is the theme from the get-go: the play starts, he’s sorted into Slytherin, and we’re off. Albus ‘Different’ Potter rises. 

here’s the thing: we’re never really shown how Albus is Different, other than the fact that he’s in Slytherin. (which… like, I know it’s a BIG DEAL in the books and a BIG DEAL to 11-year-old knobheads, but honestly if I’d come home from school like MUM, I’M IN ST. PATRICK’S HOUSE, YOU’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND ME!!! she’d be like ‘aww ok, love!’ it’s just a school house. it’s just a way of organising a bunch of prepubescents. it’s not life and death. get over it, @ every single person in the Harry Potter series.) and RE: ALBUS IN SLYTHERIN - and Scorpius in Slytherin, to an extent - we’re really never shown WHY they’re Slytherins. I LOVE that they don’t fit the usual Slytherin mould, i.e. they’re not ~*~evil~*~ bullies or indescribably cool, but we’re not shown any Slytherin traits at all. like… ok, guys. barely even the Not Evil Traits. weeehhh. 

so, yeah, the main emotional thrust of The Cursed Child (and lol, don’t even get me started on that title) is that Albus Is Different And His Father Will Never Understand Him, but it seems like different = Slytherin and bratty. there’s lots of YELLING AND STORMING about how he’ll never be understood, but… there isn’t that much to understand. or misunderstand. like, not being funny, but it’s not hard to understand that your son is a rude and grumpy little shit who hates authority, like every other teenager in the world. 

AN Y WAY. Harry tries to understand Albus and relate to him and it all goes shockingly tits the fuck up. 

Albus and Scorpius almost destroy the world, it’s a whole thing, dreadful. 

after the world is not destroyed but Harry is forced to watch his parents get murdered, HAZ AND ALB SUDDENLY SEEM TO GET ON. I understand that trauma brings people together etc. etc. but Harry, after being a shit dad who we’ve been repeatedly shown Does Not Understand His Son, seems to Understand His Son. 

WHAT IS THERE TO SUDDENLY UNDERSTAND? WHAT??? WHAT???? ‘OH MY SON TIME TRAVELED AND NEARLY FUCKED THE WORLD, I #GET HIM NOW!’??? THERE IS S T I L L NO EXPLANATION AS TO WHY ALBUS IS [DEEP SIGH] DIFFERENT AND WHY IT’S SO HARD FOR HARRY TO [EYE ROLL] UNDERSTAND HIM! THEY SEEM TO JUST… SORT OF GET ON AT THE END. 

there is, in my humble opinion, a big, glaring hole in this story, and that hole is where The Reason Albus Is So Different To His Siblings, His Father, And Seemingly Everyone At Hogwarts Except Scorpius should be. and I think

you know

what I 

am 

going

to 

say. 

when you read the script, it is fucking unbelievably gay. unbelievably. I mean, for starters: the stairs scene, the ridiculous ‘you’re kind, Scorpius’ scene (which makes me sick to my stomach with LOVE and I will not think about it), the whole Severus Snape #1 Scorbus Shipper scene. for seconds: child going through puberty is different from his peers and siblings for no discernible reason, doesn’t fit in, doesn’t think he’ll ever be understood, closes himself off from almost everyone and is angry and prickly all the time. his dad doesn’t #get him, he doesn’t WANT his dad to get him, his mum SORT OF gets him and gently tries to explain to his dad that he needs to UNDERSTAND that their son is DIFFERENT from their other children. 

DOES THIS SOUND AT ALL FAMILIAR TO ANYONE?

this kid gay. or, at least, this kid gay IN MY HEART. the first time I read it I was like, ‘WOW, YOU CAN DEFINITELY DO A QUEER READING OF THIS, WHAT A SHAME THAT THEY’RE GONNA GIVE US SOME OTHER LESS COMPELLING REASON FOR THE WHOLE ‘ALBUS IS ~DIFFERENT~’ THING.’

but they don’t. cast your mind back -- do they ever actually get around to explaining what makes Albus so Different, other than hormones and general Teen AngstTM? no! they don’t! he’s a Slytherin, but that’s PART of his being different, not the reason for it. and other than that... he’s a grumpy shit? bit of a knob? doesn’t like his dad? OMG, HOW DiFfErEnT and oRiGiNaL! they never give us a real, concrete Here’s What Sets Albus Apart explanation. at all. and this was GLARINGLY OBVIOUS ONSTAGE, in a way it just WASN’T (as much) when you read the book. because when you read the book -- or, at least, when I read the book -- it’s gay as hell in your head, because it’s gay as hell on page, regardless of Albus’s implied thing for Bellatrix Lite and Rose being entirely demoted to a love interest. I barely even noticed that they didn’t give us a reason for Albus Being Different when I read the book, BECAUSE IN THE BOOK THEY DID, AND IT’S THAT HE’S GAY. 

but, for some reason*, it just doesn’t come across the same way on stage. 

*haha, kidding, I know why. wanna know why? here’s why: 

The Cursed Child, in the wake of the script’s publication and every person in the world knocking on JKR’s proverbial door yelling ‘JO, THIS IS GAY’, has been thoroughly straightened. they couldn’t really straighten it off the bat, what with the cast all rehearsed and perfected and ready to go, but it has been thoroughly straightened with cast #2. well and truly de-gayed. and I KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE, because I have the aforementioned [dramatic pause] insider info. 

the friend I mentioned earlier, who for the sake of me not distantly worrying about him getting sued for spilling secrets I shall call Chad, works at The Cursed Child. his job is something terrifyingly technical like Lighting And Effects Assistant Manager or something or other. Chad and I have been friends for many a year. Chad, like 90% of people who read this script, thinks that The Cursed Child is gay as hell. CHAD LET US PLAY WITH PROPS, TOOK US ONSTAGE, RUINED ALL THE MAGIC BY TELLING US HOW THEY DID IT ALL (SO AMAZING AND COMPLICATED IT MAY AS WELL HAVE BEEN ACTUAL MAGIC), and THEN said, when the subject inevitably came up, that the first iteration of Albus and Scorpius were 5000x times gayer to the point that Chad used to make jokes to them about their Love Scenes. (which makes me Mad Jealous, but apparently he and Anthony Boyle didn’t get on. imagine knowing someone from TCC cast well enough to know you don’t get on. insane.) 

obviously I didn’t let this ‘it used to be much gayer’ comment slide, attempted to downplay my interest, and was like, ‘oh, really? is this version... less... romantic?’ (he was immediately like ‘OH HAHA, I FORGOT ABOUT YOU AND FANFICTION’, which: [annoyed Marge Simpson noise]) and TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ: YES. THE SECOND CAST IS SIGNIFICANTLY LESS GAY ABOUT IT. HE SAID IT’S ALMOST LIKE A DIFFERENT SHOW, AS FAR AS THE ALBUS/SCORPIUS STUFF IS CONCERNED. FAR LESS INTENSE, FAR LESS STARE-INTO-EACH-OTHER’S-EYES-Y. and, don’t get me wrong, it was still pretty fucking gay. I mean, the lines haven’t changed -- it is well and truly romantic af. BUT IT’S CHANGED ENOUGH THAT SOMEONE WHO’S BEEN THERE FROM THE BEGINNING IS LIKE ‘THIS IS ALMOST BELIEVABLY HETEROSEXUAL NOW! GOLLY!’ 

I can’t remember what point I was trying to make 1500 words ago. 

right, yes: this was my main, unconquerable problem. (well, this and the fact that the second half is so batshit insane you just can’t suspend your disbelief anymore and you’re sitting there like ‘this looks incredible, but wtf?’) at best it’s a plot hole or a loose thread, AT WORST IT’S INEXCUSABLY BAD STORYTELLING AND PURE COWARDICE. either way it niggled at me all the way home and then all the way to Paris, and it’s still the thing that niggles at me now. it really just feels like something’s MISSING. which is... a shame. 

even more of a shame that they’re such a bunch of horrific twats that they changed the direction of the play so it was less gay, but I’m choosing to interpret it as IT IS BLINDINGLY HOMOEROTIC THROUGH AND THROUGH AND THEY’RE HAVING TO ACTIVELY FIGHT AGAINST IT BUT IT’S STILL GAY AS A MAYPOLE, HA HA, FUCK YOU!!! 

anyway. 

I’m not sure if I have anything else to say. 

to sum up: it was truly gorgeous, and parts of it were so incredible that they’re quite literally indescribable. I have never in my life seen anything like it on stage, and I would see it again in a heartbeat. Draco Malfoy deserved his redemption arc, Harry needs to leave the wizard cops immediately, and Albus and Scorpius are in love. alright. the end. whatever. 

[jhaernyl]

Have you ever had a phrase or a concept get stuck into your head?

Like, I am nowhere ready to make the post my mind wants me to make

But I am haunted by the beginning phrase

And it's not even that good

Like, it's run of the mill normal shit but it's keeps popping up

@gallusrostromegalus : like a writing earworm?

Yes

'Now, let's talk about how a war in magical Britain should have played out and which consequences wars ought to have.'

Because, as I explained to my mother, JKR tells us there was a war, eleven years before and that it was terrible and bloody and that there were attacks and families disappeared and it lasted eleven. fucking. years. but we never see the consequences of the war in the social and cultural fabric of her wizarding world.

We never see the influences it came from, the philosophical and ideological currents, we never see memorials or art or anything that remembers, commemorates, damns.

Kids at school with Harry in Harry's first year lived through the end of that war, some of them old enough to remember relatives dying in it, but we never see it.

Because that war was eleven years long, ended eleven years priors and the Seventh years at Hogwarts when Harry arrives, where six years old then, the Sixth years were five years old, the Fifth years were four years old.

Maybe the magical world is so little now because of that war, that began in the years after Voldemort's return and his climb to power (apparently there was one, not that we are ever told anything relevant about it) by sinister disappearances and then exploded in so many murders, tortures and disappearances that the Aurors were overwhelmed.

Maybe the pureblood in Malfoy's circle still believe in their purity because they stick to their circles and their circles are the ones who emerged the most unscathed, for obvious reasons, but all the other families they considered beneath notice? They were wiped out or went into hiding or left or were maimed and lost family members and they won't forget and they cannot forgive and they are few when once they were many.

They still believe they are strong, but if the eleven years of terror Voldemort rained on the magical world (which means that the whole time James and Sirius and Snape and Lily and Remus and Regulus were at Hogwarts, their world outside was one of terror) did anything, it was to cull the magical populations blood until magic had no recourse left but to start pouring into kids they would call 'mudbloods'.

Where does the magic goes, where there is no 'pure', no 'half' blood to come alive into?

Down the squib lines, down into blood that will be stronger because it's new and not crossed over and over again until it has become harmful to those who mean to cross it again.

But wouldn't the pureblood notice? 

How? 

They are wrapped in their own little world and acquaintances, because no one decent will have someone of their ilk over at their place or welcomed into their celebrations.

Imperiused or not, the killer of your children, of your sister, of your relatives, will never be welcomed at your table.

Lucius Malfoy is a Governor of Hogwarts, but he is not a student and most student who walk the Halls are not willing to spill the beans or try to inform to curtail the favour of someone like Lucius Malfoy.

Because, If Malfoy wasn't Imperiused, he was a liar. 

Because, if he was Imperiused, he was either willing enough to do what he was told to do to not struggle that hard or he was too weak to break the hold of the Imperius on himself or both. 

How is that someone you want to associate with? 

Let him pour gold in your pockets, if you are the type to be bribed, yes, do him the occasional favor if you don't have any grudge against him yourself, sure why not, but trust and support and advice and inform? 

Nah. 

He is not the kind of wizard you want to be that in cahoots with, Malfoy, especially not when he will take and sneer and condescend and, seriously, fuck the Malfoys.

Those students, their families, they have lived through the war and they know better. 

They are teaching better to those who join their world without being in the know yet and most purebloods kids of the people in the Malfoy's circles have learned to keep their mouths shut at school and about school, because there are those who have been so scarred by the war that they are just spoiling to be given an excuse to lash out righteously.

They have lived through the war too, and their parents came out on the losing side. 

Their future depends on the good will of the victors, regardless of what their parents seem to think it’s going on.

Where are the memorials to the fallen? Where are speeches on days they ‘cannot afford to forget’?

Where are the consequences of an eleven years long war that supposedly destroyed generations of the magical world?

JKR never wrote them, not really, never stopped to consider what her words could mean, how long eleven years can be, never thought of the individual stories or the oversweeping, long lasting influences on society and art and expression.

Draco Malfoy calling someone a mudblood in public should have garnered far more than Ron attempting to make him eat slugs.

Especially from the older students.

Especially from his own House that has tried so hard to disavow the actions of those that came before them as a survival tactic.

Especially from the muggleborns and halfbloods and purebloods of his own House who do not stand for Voldermort's shit, will not stand, have never stood.

Durmstrang in a bit of dialogue by Viktor Krum in book 7 shows more realistic consequences of Grindewald's regime on the psyche of it's students than Hogwarts does for Voldemort's eleven years long war on it's own population.

@gallusrostromegalus: THESE ARE ALL EXCELLENT POINTS AND I;D READ THE SHIT OUT OF A FANTASY BOOK DONE BY YOU

@gallusrostromegalus: i'm listening in attentive silence

@gallusrostromegalus: also it's 5AM and i am short on words but yes good.

I have been working for years on maps and timelines and stuff. It all started because I wanted a Hufflepuff!Harry and I wrote down a complete roster for his first year of school.

I made stories in my head for everyone as I wrote down where they live, their blood status, their ethnicity, their religion, if they are prefects or not.

I made Quidditch team lists.

Then I realized that I was looking at it in a 'normal school way' and that was neither fair nor realistic.

So I ripped my heart out and made a 'War Adjusted' version.

Blacked out names.

I drew black lines with the Open Office highlighter tool on them and rewrote my numbers and suddenly I wanted to tell their stories, I wanted to know how and why they died and I wanted it to have meaning.

It slowly snowballed into making maps of magical places based (except in a couple of cases) on runes as bases.

Recently (I blame all the visits with my mother at the Tate Modern during the last four weekends) I started thinking about art pre-war and art of the war and art post-war.

I thought about Grimmauld Place not as a dark mausoleum infested by dark creatures but as an elegant, aristocratic palace.

With white marble and elegant gold, with portraits of aristocratic wizard and witches on the walls and beautiful vistas that are only beautiful as long as you don't know that the field you are watching has breen drenched red with the blood of peasants in the Reinassance because a village was standing in the perfect place for the new Black estate.

It needed to go and the mudbloos needed not to know where the estate would be and why waste time Obliviating mudbloods when you can just kill them?

Make it a family outing!

Dark does not mean 'mad' or 'ugly' or 'rotten'.

You can be the most beautiful man those you see as inferiors have ever seen, of perfectly sound mind and without a stain on your soul, because you live by the Code of Honor of your family and those are ants who are in the way of a grandiose new achievement, and you'll still be Dark because you use your magic in certain specific ways, with certain intents.

@gallusrostromegalus: rolls happily in meta while sobbing IT'S SO GOOD

I made notes about wands and elemental wands and families who made pacts with the Fae and other creatures. Marcus Flint may have a troll's teeth, but does he also have a troll's strength? Resistance to spells? Sacrifice beauty for defense and power, now that's a bargain to make.

I wrote down family trees from canon and then made my own to fill in (part of) the rest.

And I keep going back to the war, to the Rise of Voldemort and then eleven years of fear and how would that warp a society?

Wouldn't the children at Hogwarts, especially those who were five when the war ended, who were four, who were three and have vague memories of the fear and have been taken every year to the memorials and had family ceremonies, close ranks around Harry Potter?

Because if the Slytherin monster wants anyone, it would be the halfblood kid who was supposed to have ended the line with Voldemort.

They will not let that happen.

I have one character, who lost family in the war and was in an attack when that family died protecting him, when technically he was the reason they were attacked. His family is notoriously neutral, has always been, but then their people were also never touched.

Ever since that attack, the whole family swore a blood feud on their magic never to rest until all Death Eaters and their leader have been brought to justice.

He is a Slytherin prefect, burning with the ambition of avenging his mother and aunt and sister and he is a Duelist, which is not someone who is good in a duel of wands.

Being a Duelist is a state of mind, a way of life, is being trained into a mindset, is changing the way you see a room, the way you consider people, it's warping yourself into a lethal someone and he is the brightest star of his family.

Do you think such a prefect, who burns from within with righteous fury and has a blood feud singing in his veins, would ever stand aside if a Malfoy came strutting in and called someone a mudblood? Said in the common room 'I hope Granger is next' ?

And where is the society too? Where is the theatre and the music, where are the muggleborns bringing innovation and spreading it beneath the noses of the conservative purebloods, so busy congratulating each other that they fail to notice how it's insidiously spreading?

I have a boy, oldest of a brood of twelve all wizard and witches and all born to Squib parents, who has finished Hogwarts and has put on a commerce of enchanting beads to play music. Each bead is a song. A bracelet is an album. A necklace is a discography. 

He is planning to make beads available on demand for 'Make your own set of songs'.

He began his commerce by Geminio-ing newspapers and magazines at school, asking his parents to send them to him so he can multiply them and sell them to muggleborns and halfbloods who want to keep in touch with the muggle world. Selling them to curious purebloods.

His siblings inherited that commerce and he used the money from that to fund his own music shop, bringing muggle music into the wizarding world.

If you buy a complimentary enchanted earring, the music will only play in your ear rather than out in the air. Buy both earrings and you have a portable player.

Draw a circle with your wand on the bead and left to right the volume will increase, right to left the volume will decrease. Tap once to play, twice to pause, thrice to stop. If you tap on the first bead of a bracelet or a necklace, all the beads will play one right after the other. If you want to listen to a bead in particular again just tap it and the cycle will reset from there. If you want to listen to a bead on repeat, tap it once and hold a steady pressure for five seconds.

You have accessories that play music now, how cool is that?

Where is the conservative culture, with their outdated ways, with their young artists drawing as of old and using ‘raditional’ mediums that contrast with what muggleborn and halfblood artists are doing?

Where are the conservatives’ young musicians composing in the way it was once done, for piano and violin and magical orchestra?

Who is in the production line of household items, where do they live? Who enchants the beautiful items, who crafts them? How do self-repairing charms affect the market? Are certain items enchanted to resist any Reparo,and similar or derivative spells, to assure a continuity of market? Who imports? Who exports? 

What kind of books and plays and stories are written and narrated? What sort of entertainment is played over the radio in between Celestina Warbeck's songs?

What books would you find, in Grimmauld Place, in their beautiful and airy library, with plush carpeting and so much Lore? 

What kind of version of Beetle the Bard's stories rests in a forgotten bottom corner of Regulus' bedroom's shelves, stolen from his one-year-older brother the year that Sirius went to Hogwarts, so that Regulus could read the stories and imagine Sirius quietly making the voices for him so that Mother would not overhead and punish them for indulging such flight of fancies?

How much did narrative and the kind of books sold change from before Voldemort's eleven years of terror to during-in-the-beginning to during-in-the-middle to during-at-the-end to after?

How much did art and style and clothing and decorations change?

Accessories, colors, hairstyles, wand holsters?

What potions were more popular before, in the various moments during, after?

Drinks and food? 

Popular games? 

What proverbs and way-of-saying and slang and turn of words fell out of favor and which ones emerged? How much did language change?

What was the pureblood vs halfblood vs muggleborn composition of the magical world before those eleven years? Did the purebloods come to believe they could do away with muggleborns with semi-impunity because they were the majority? Did they think that they could prune away opposing purebloods because there were so many of them and they mistakenly thought that enough would always be left?

Did they think they could entice more 'pure' blood from outside and have it be subservient to them as they were the ones who were there beforehand? Was it this how the Malfoy family, whom I headcanon as once having been French, first arrived in the UK and was this how they thought they could position themselves better? Move to a primacy position from a subordinate one?

You can sum it up in 'eleven years of war' and a couple of phrases here and there, as JKR did, but you are not going to make it real and it galls at me to think of all the ways I was never showed that there had been a war and that said war had had consequences.

What if Slytherin has a bad reputation now, but when Tom Riddle went to Hogwarts, Slytherin was for the cunning and ambitious and intelligent and Ravenclaw was the one with the nasty reputation?

The last big Dark One had been a Ravenclaw, maybe, and their friends had banded with them.

'All intelligence, all knowledge and all ruthlessness. No soul to them.'

Maybe it had been a Hufflepuff, a century or two before and everyone still whispered in whispers of the loyalty of the followers, of the hard work they had put into trying to change things.

And why would Tom Riddle put himself in the 'evil' houses, then?

He might have wanted that loyalty, he might have been burning with a thirst for knowledge but no.

Better play it safe.

Better be Slytherin, the smart ones you could rely to think their way out of a problem.

What if, shocking idea I know, it's the actual events of the world you lived into or your parents lived into that warps House reputation and changes it through the centuries?

'Hufflepuff only look out for their own' turns into 'No one capable of empathy ever came out of Ravenclaw' becomes 'There's not a dark wizard who has not been a Slytherin'.

History is changed, shelved, warped, forgotten, repurporsed, remixed by those who follow and their own experiences, in an endless cycle.

They used to whisper 'Gryffindor forges conquerors who will stop at nothing, don't trust them, they will use you in their charges as an expendable wand and toss you aside when your core is spent', and it was at the height of British Magical Colonialism.

Addendum: how many professions there used to be in the Magical World before Voldemort's eleven years of war? How many professions went lost? How many wandmakers? How many scholars and researchers? 

Is the Ministry such a mess because they went from having a reasonable workforce to being incredibly short staffed, once purebloods and halfbloods started dropping like flies and muggleborns were either dead or driven into hiding, except for a couple of cases?

How many children were homeschooled or withdrawn from Hogwarts because it simply was not safe for them to be in there? 

How many families do not trust Hogwarts, because yes Voldemort (and why should they still fear the name so many years afterward? Why shouldn't they boldly go ahead and use the name, to spite the dead monster? To refuse him their fear? He is dead, ding dong the Wicked Wizard of the UK is gone) might have never gone against Dumbledore, but Dumbledore let the youngest wannabe Death Eater stay there and get away with doing 'foul' things to students, to a point where even muggleborn students were aware of who those people were going to be? 

(See Lily and Snape's discussion in Book 7).

If there was an active group of terrorists who wanted nothing more to kill you and your children, would you leave your children in the same school as those monsters? Let them have leeway to torment and come to know their faces and habits and friends?

Hell fucking no.

How were the markets influenced by the war? Which items were in high demand? What was used to make them? To bring back the potions point from above, which ingredients became scarce or rare because of the demand for them? How much did it inflate prices? What alternative solutions were found, if you couldn't afford them / couldn't afford them anymore? 

Which professions were bolstered and soared and which ones fell in disrepair because they were unneeded? How many people changed job track because their chosen profession was not what was paid for anymore / because they thought they needed to specialize differently?

How did all of this influence Healers and Healing as a profession? The stockpiles of St.Mungo? How many healers are around who know how to counter dark curses and have earned to do brutal triage when necessary and how to pull off miracles on a fly? How many Healers died? How many Healers exhausted themselves into dangerous low levels of magical energy, just to save one more? How many were killed, because they had become targets for being too good at their jobs?

Where are Mad Eye Moody colleagues? 

I have a muggleborn Hit Wizard who lives right next door to the Ministry and and works in his office and has since the war, when his muggle wife and not-even-two-years old daughter were killed by Death Eaters as a 'warning' to him to stop doing his job as an auror. 

Where are the aurors still surviving at the end of those first eleven years, kids who became veterans, veterans who were hollowed out, the people who would not stand if even a whiff of Voldemort's return went past their noses, those of them who still have working ones?

Those who saw Pureblood Maniacism develop as a cultural current of thought and felt plagued by the 'if I'd seen it sooner' 'if we acted more swiftly' 'if only' 'if only' 'if only'?

The ones who swore 'never again' and 'not in my lifetime', where are they?

Eleven years of peace are not enough to heal eleven years of war, coming on the heels of a build up of a handful of years marred by disappearances, coming on the heels of Grindewald's war in Europe.