birlwrites

[birlwrites]

its so fun to make a character whose moral compass is not actually based on their own personal ideals but is a poor imitation of a more grounded person they care about. if a beautiful woman disagrees with me i will immediately change my views. idgaf about this problem but my best friend WILL get mad at me if i don't help solve it

[birlwrites]

(TTDL) Here ya go! A crowded throne for little kings.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

HOLY SHIT I LOVE THIS????? BARTY PONTIFICATING (PRESUMABLY ON THE CYPRIAN SILKWOOD BOOK HE'S READING)??????? EVAN'S SWIRLY MAGIC AND WAVY HAIR AND FANCY TROUSERS??????? THE *THRONE*???????????? OH MY GOD YOU EVEN GOT THE HEIR RINGS IN THERE AND *REGULUS*!!!!!!!! IN THE MIDDLE OF SOME OF HIS FAVORITE PEOPLE, LOOKING SO POISED AND YET ALSO TOTALLY INVESTED IN WHATEVER BARTY IS TALKING ABOUT, AS IS ONLY REASONABLE, BECAUSE BARTY IS TALKING AND THUS REGULUS SHALL LISTEN

[birlwrites]

the trouble is you are a monster

The promised short: my take on the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur…from the Minotaur’s perspective. Warnings for blood, death, and a good dose of self-loathing. Full text and requested taglist under the readmore.

The trouble is, of course, that you are unwanted.

You know your mother’s name is Pasiphae, though with your bull’s tongue you cannot pronounce it. On your too-thick lips and too-sharp teeth, the word collapses, as do all others, and their meanings. Your first memory is of the way she looked at you when you tried and failed to speak what you knew to be true.

Of your father you have heard only rumors. The man who should have been your parent is named Minos, whom others call king and ruler and majesty, as they grovel at his feet and beg him for mercy. But when you approach him, he recoils with shame so strong it sickens you to your core. He cannot stand to be in the same room as you.

These two – your mother, and the father you never had, hide you away for the first years of your life. You grow tall, and broad, and horned, and your speech does not improve. When you ask, you are met with fearful eyes and cowering. When you cry out, you are met with the bright, bright points of spears. Soon enough you anticipate this; you lash out before they can strike you, and scream before they can hurl their insults. It hurts less when you harm yourself before they can.

At times, your door opens to admit a man with sad eyes and thin shoulders. You want to ask if he has lost something as well. They call him Daedalus, and he takes your measures, the span of your arms, the width of your chest, the finer details of your bull’s head and the mane which extends down your back. Daedalus is the only person to have touched your horns and left with hands intact. The others who have tried, they were not so lucky.

Always, your blood betrays you. Despite your human flesh, there is something of the animal in you, just beneath the surface. They chain you when they cannot sate you. When they can, still they crawl in fear away. Because they must, and you will make them, no matter what the cost.

Some nights you wonder if it would have been better to throw yourself at this Minos’ feet and beg, just as his subjects do.

The trouble is, of course, that there is too much of the bull in you.

Keep reading

[birlwrites]

What is Barty and Lucinda's relationship like as the two 'outsiders' (aka: non-Sacred 28 students) in their cohort? While they are obviously far closer to other members of the group, would they consider each other decent friends?

they don't spend a ton of time together, but they consider each other closer friends than 'the time they spend together' would seem to merit, *because* of that link of being the outsiders. many a time they have been hanging out with their friends in a group and have to just Look at each other because someone's said something completely insane and only barty and lucinda see how nuts it is. especially in their first few years at hogwarts, there was a lot of 'why are you two laughing/making those faces' coming from the rest of their cohort

i'd say they're a similar degree of closeness as sirius and marlene. they're friends, they spend a lot of time together in group settings, and they also have something in common that the people around them don't share, which gives them an extra degree of closeness. and that especially became important in the first half of their fifth year when career pamphlets started showing up in their yearmates' hands and they were the only slytherins who had to give any thought to what they'd do after graduating

then, of course, barty's time started to get sucked up by the war in the spring term, so they're not as close as they might have been if the war wasn't happening, but they do still think of each other as 'my friend who's like me,' and they talk to each other about things that are harder to talk to their best friends about, like careers and being newcomers to the dark network

(they're not exact mirror images, though. lucinda's very much middle class, and although the crouches aren't ostentatious about money, they are *upper* middle class and that distinction comes across in things like barty's family having a house-elf and sometimes going to swanky government/charity events. lucinda had a normal upbringing)

[birlwrites]

obligatory post today

[birlwrites]

[birlwrites]

Btw, if I may ask, how did Barty and Regulus' first meeting go in TTDL? I feel like you hint at the fact they didn't get along at first (re: blood purity), so i'm curious how they got to the point they are now. Was Regulus a vehement blood purist before Hogwarts or did he just parrot whatever his parent say? Did Barty have difficulty integrating into Slytherin before he befriended Regulus?

actually they did get along from the start! they were each raised in an environment so dominated by one set of beliefs (even if those beliefs differed) that at the age of 11, they responded to each other's differing views with more bewilderment than anger

they're both the type to love picking at threads until they unravel, and frankly they're also both privileged enough that it was very much just a matter of politics to them at age 11, not life-and-death or deeply personal like it would be if one of them were, say, not pureblooded

my mental image of their first meeting is that they ran into each other somehow on the train and instantly latched on - they were both lured in by a sense of curiosity, because they absolutely knew who each other's fathers were, and crouch sr and orion black have never had complimentary things to say about each other. but they recognized a sort of sameness in each other's minds - both regulus and barty are clever and very interested in conflict, especially conflict that a) doesn't involve them or b) is something they're sure to win

they didn't get onto the topic of blood purity right away though. they were just sitting on the train talking about the books they'd both brought to read on the journey, and testing the waters with each other - and then they both went to slytherin, like right away, which is approximately when they pair-bonded for life

when they did begin to talk blood purity, politics, and the differences in their upbringings, they both already thought of themselves as being a unit, and both of them had the sense that they *would* come to an agreement, they just didn't know what that agreement would be when they started out

and regulus happened to be a little more open to changing his mind than barty was, because regulus had the example of andromeda lingering in the back of his mind to remind him that he'd known and cared for blood traitors before, and he'd thought andy was sensible, and then there was sirius, who regulus absolutely still looked up to a little (in a weird, bitter way), who was in the whole *house* of blood traitors, and i'm not saying it was easy for regulus to change his mind, but i am saying he led a pretty sheltered life and barty came in like a wrecking ball to crush the walls of regulus's artificially restricted worldview

so they exchanged things with each other: regulus gave barty 'how to navigate the world in slytherin,' and barty gave regulus 'how to navigate the world outside the sacred twenty-eight' (again, still from a place of privilege, and also he was 12, so take this all with a grain of salt). barty did have a little difficulty settling in, but that was more due to his being an outsider in his year, like lucinda, and both of them managed to get a foothold in the sacred 28 group very early via befriending one member of it. other older slytherins thought it was strange that black and crouch had befriended each other, but they just... got used to it eventually

i think the best way i can describe first-year regulus and barty is as two knowledge sponges who each saw that the other had different knowledge than them and rushed in to absorb as much of it as possible, with little concern for things like political affiliation or family background. they are very good slytherins, after all, so identifying and soaking up useful knowledge is what they do

[birlwrites]

Dawg, look at our dark lord. We’re dying.

BJWUIOEGHSOLJGHSOJGHLSGJSKL

I WAS SO UNPREPARED FOR THIS IMAGE AND IT'S GLORIOUS IT'S BEAUTIFUL I ALMOST CHOKED ON AIR. THIS IS PERFECT

[birlwrites]

recently re-learned that king priam of troy (loosely priam parkinson's namesake, because it's a classical name starting with a p and that's what i was going for) was married to hecuba, and i did not INTENTIONALLY give heather brown a name starting with he-, but i think it's fun that i accidentally did that

[birlwrites]

A lil reminder for you today. The amount of words you did or didn’t write today doesn’t define your worth as a writer

[birlwrites]

they say you can't pour from an empty cup but i've been doing it my whole life and aside from all of these mysterious ailments it's working out great for me

[birlwrites]

not to tell people what to do but as someone who’s been in fandom since i was like twelve, i promise that the only good fandom experience involves limiting your friend circle to, like, seven people. when you’re in a city, you don’t make friends with every douchebag on the street. stringently vet the people who are allowed to influence you. in an age of people and companies constantly demanding your attention and energy, your happiness will grow best like flowers in a greenhouse in a terrible city; a contained, curated space allows happiness to flourish. keep it small and don’t be sorry to tell people to stay the fuck out of your greenhouse.

[birlwrites]

Please don’t pirate books at least while the author is alive. I’ll make an exception for actual billionaires and wildly expensive textbooks you cannot afford yet need to complete your studies. I can’t make an exception for assholes, because we’re all considered assholes by someone.  I don’t know how many people realise how many writers who created successful, beloved stories and characters still die poor while other people get rich off the same work. I don’t think people realise that in the UK the current average yearly earnings for an author has nosedived over the last fifteen years to £10,500. That obviously is forcing people to quit writing. It increasingly means writing is a job for people who’ve inherited money or have wealthy spouses who can support them. I don’t know if people realise that in general, writers are poor and getting poorer. I’m sorry, but if you think widespread sense of entitlement to free books has nothing to do with that … you’re just wrong. 

I say I don’t think people realise - the truth is I hope they don’t, because the alternative is that they don’t care. That’s certainly the impression I’ve got from Twitter, where a truly horrifying number of people are arguing that copyright on  all books should expire after thirty years, and you should be able to acquire books for  free after that. This … would not just mean that everyone gets free books. It would mean if you write a book at 30, not only do you lose any royalties from it at 60, but Disney can take it, make a franchise out of it, Scrooge McDuck it up in a pool of money while you starve because writers don’t get workplace pensions.

Some threads on the unintended (?) consequences of this. I can’t go over it all again. John Brownlow NK Jemisin Michael Marshall Smith Me Marina Lostetter Kari Dru and others William Gibson and others

There are plenty of others. It’s not that this actual idea will actually happen, but I do think it reinforces the idea that it’s not only okay, but sometimes actually virtuous to search for ways to enjoy writers’ work without paying for it. Like it’s somehow a step towards a better world. Not just at the reader end, to be fair, at the employer end too. And I do see a lot of people here too who are all about supporting workers unless the workers are writers in which case fuck’em. 

Like. If you want to radically change society in such a way that mass-media conglomerates don’t exist and so can’t exploit us and we’re supported to make art in some other way than fine. But can you start the revolution with actual rich people please, not ask us to live right now, in the society we’ve got, without the money we need to survive it. Finally, a plea: I really, really, do not want to debate this. This whole thing genuinely makes me feel tense and shaky and sick. If you’ve got to disagree - unfollow me, block me, vagueblog somewhere I can’t see it. The Twitter version of this already has me feeling like I’ve been kicked in the gut. I didn’t want to write this post. I just felt I wasn’t going to have any peace until I did.

[birlwrites]

Neither enemies to lovers nor slow burn but a secret third thing called Schrödinger's intimacy. We are in love and we are not in love do NOT open that lid I swear to God.

[birlwrites]

the devil's historians: how modern extremists abuse the medieval past, kaufman and sturtevant

[birlwrites]

My default assumption whenever I see people pitching fits about how characters or ships or the color of the wallpaper or whatever else they don't like must be evil, is that they are a teenager.

They are a teenager who has never used anything other than an algorithmic feed on a social media app to find fannish content, they don't even know where the settings page is, and they're having a real bad time. They have to get up early in the morning, school is awful, all their clique-y peers have been mean to them about their weight, their teachers are impatient, they just got seven hours of homework and their last class was gym. And they are eternally frightened that they're secretly a bad person and their only current recourse against this is to be like, at least I know that pineapple on pizza is a sin.

Approaching things from this angle has never steered me wrong. Even when the person in question is not literally a teenager, they're still pretty much letting their inner kid drive the bus right now.

"A four year age gap is abusive!" okay champ. Screen time's up. Let's get you a protein shake and a nap.

[birlwrites]

You all need to hear this:

1. You probably dont suck at your craft as much as you think you do, I bet a lot of people are amazed at what you can make, and

2. If you actually are the Literal Worst In The Whole Wide World at your craft... who the fuck cares? What are they gonna do, call the police on you? Keep making your shitty little things, youre the boss of you, fuck the haters.