constitutionalweasleymonarchy

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

Acknowledging that “critical thinking” means “thinking about things in a thorough way from different perspectives” and not “finding every flaw in a thing and fixating on it until all the joy is gone” is so liberating.

It’s supposed to be about intellectual curiosity, not about finding ways to devalue things that aren’t perfect or that we personally dislike.

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

Big shoutout to Cornelius Fudge for not taking the easy out of “Hey, somehow, Voldemort returned and murdered a kid” during an international, Ministry-sponsored death maze for teenagers. This perfectly good excuse would’ve voided all liability for the Ministry and Hogwarts because really, who could have planned for that?

Instead, he looked at the whole situation and declared it an unexplained accident. Opening up a beautiful path for the Diggory family to file a wrongful death lawsuit if they desired.

Incredible leadership. Just top-tier crisis management.

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

Incredibly funny actually that Alison describes her impression of Declan as "spartan, coarse, unrefined" when he is a commissioned officer (a gentlemanly profession) -- specifically the Colonel's aide-de-camp -- and, while a bit reserved, has manners and a distinct sense of maintaining propriety (e.g. when he says the encampment is no place for ladies) and is soft-spoken in his address.

Of course Alison finds him unfriendly, and therefore rude, and this line shows she views him as someone distinctly unromantic, in contrast to Will Carter with his pretty-boy looks and open interest in Alison.

But! It's still hilarious because Declan Fraser is an absolute DISH, I don't care how much effort that scar on his cheek is putting in. Sanditon was really like, "Okay so Will Red Herring Carter has a less attractive friend with some rough edges that will make Alison miss his heart of gold" and then it's this FINE man with unimpeachable deportment, lmao.

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

Maybe if he was a little less fuckable we wouldn’t be in this mess

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

Can't lose this gem in the tags:

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

people seem to love redemption arcs but absolutely despise a character doing something bad to earn the redemption. it’s exactly why i hate things like ‘well actually ____ didn’t deserve a redemption arc!!’ like bruh you do know someone has to do something bad before they redeem themselves right. like that’s the point of it.

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

I think 50 shades of grey did so much damage to BDSM writing in fic and like not because I think fic writers were taking inspiration from it, but we did get a lot of detailed explanatory posts about all the different ways in which those guys were Doing It Wrong, which is not in and of itself a bad thing but since then everybody got so hung up on making sure everybody in their fics was nothing like 50 shades of grey and actually demonstrates that yes I do understand the principles of safe sane and consensual and the traffic light system and safewording and aftercare and checking in that now everybody fucks like a 101 handbook and I think we've only just recently started to recover from it. love me a dynamic where it's two repressed freak idiots who accidentally invent BDSM all on their own and have to come up with the strangest most deeply harmful ways of navigating that situation

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

Ron to Harry:

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

I sure stay up late for someone who wishes they were fucking sleeping all the time

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

Wading in Waist-High Water Character Portraits!

For the amazing bind I made with Laura from @ldm.binding (Insta), I created character portraits to go into a fun little fold-out insert for the book. We have 8 contestants: Arthur, Rubeus, Kingsley, Lucius, Mary, Peter, Pomona and of course Remus <3 The two judges: Minerva and Albus The charming Bake Off hosts: Lily and Sirius The Bake Off staff: Poppy (First Aid) and Severus (cameraman)

And finally, the moral support: Marlene, James and Dorcas

Link to the AMAZING fic Wading in Waist-High Water:

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

RIP Anne Shirley, you would have loved Taylor Swift

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

"don't let it bother you" first of all, everything bothers me

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

The version of you right now is deserving of love. Not you two years ago when you had more of your shit together, or the five years later version where you’ll surely be thriving. The version of you right now. The one that might just be okay, or is really struggling, or is bored and unproductive. That version deserves love. Having trouble accepting this is fine, but actively denying it is not. Your value is intrinsic, and finding confidence in that is mandatory.

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

I love the old timey phrase "you forget yourself". bro that was so impolite like do you even know who you are rn

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

My dumb ass over here trying to articulate to myself the thing in between 'intentionally' and 'accidentally' that is my own headcanon