pottersofthefuture

[pottersofthefuture]

The way that Spike knows immediately that Buffy clawed her way out of her grave because he's done it himself. The horror of being pulled from Heaven back into a previously decaying, rotted body, alive again where everything is too bright, too loud, and you had already been done and warm and safe and at peace. Mirrored by the horror of your soul returning to earth, in the body of a demon, burdened with the knowledge of all the suffering you've inflicted, a man suddenly reunited with a monster and twisted into a whole once again, lines irrevocably blurred, tortured by guilt. The fear that you came back wrong, maybe a little less human. The knowledge that you did come back wrong a long, long time ago, that even ensouled, you are still a monster, still have teeth and hunger and the urge to bite. Buffy being frightened of her Otherness, of being more or less than human. Spike unable to be a man, unable to be a vampire. Buffy finding solace at night, in a graveyard, in a crypt, in the arms of a vampire, being at home in the dark. Spike venturing out into the sun, eating and smoking and drinking like a human, seeking out a Slayer, who glows, who is effulgent. Buffy keeping a touch of death with her, Spike unable to entirely shake the remnants of his life. Both with a deathwish, both have died and come back, resurrected over and over and over again. Never able to just rest (can we just rest now?) Looking for something they desperately miss in the other. (The I love you/No you don't exchange being uttered by both of them, reversed) Mirror images.

[pottersofthefuture]

Y'all remember that Ryan Sinclair encouraged his best friend to seek therapy? He saw how lonely his friend was and he was determined to help him in the only way he could before hopping back onto the Tardis.

Even in its smaller moments and lesser talked-about episodes...Thirteen's era was so deeply compassionate.

Here I was remembering Can You Hear Me before this rewatch of mine for the fingers lodged in people's ears while they had nightmares and I was laughing about it. They still had fun with that part but they used the rest of that episode to write a love letter to humanity.

Yaz wanting to give up and the vagueness they approached that moment with opens the proverbial door for us to see ourselves in her spot no matter who we are; scared, angry, desperate. Someone came along and believed in her. She finds that woman and gives her the coin they bet on her that day. God that moment made me cry. That was so beautiful.

Graham even just sharing his fear of remission with the Doctor is a lovely moment. The Doctor didn't know what could be said to truly reassure someone that such a fate didn't await them but Graham and the Doctor have such a rapport...albeit subtle it's still present. Graham was comforted to know she'd heard him and wanted to help. No words were going to make those fears go away. But her intent to help in spite of that is still communicated and understood. Graham's quiet laugh acknowledges so much.

I would be so bold as to say, the writing is what helped those subtle moments shine. They were intentional and thematic in their character development.

[pottersofthefuture]

I think Voldemort, ultimately, would not have appreciated his grandfather Marvolo. He was a pureblood but also very crude and not very intelligent, so I imagine that Voldemort wouldn't have appreciated him very much.

[pottersofthefuture]

This might be a controversial headcanon I have about Merope and Tom Riddle Snr, because - although Merope is talked about with pity in the HP series - outside of it, within the fandom, she is very much a villain and Tom Riddle Snr her victim.

And I understand why - because she, according to Dumbledore's best guess, gave a love potion to (roofied) Tom Riddle snr and got him to marry and sleep with her against his will. In doing so she not only violated his body and mind but destroyed his actual relationship with the muggle girl, Celia, and created scandal in his hometown, making him a subject of mockery - when he was very much a victim.

And its distasteful (at best) to victim blame.

But... I think about how Dumbledore wasn't there and is only guessing, and how he is a man and sees the world through men's eyes, and I think about what the world (and men) are really like.

When Tom Riddle snr returns to Little Hangleton, he talks about having been "hoodwinked" and the people of the village assume Merope lied to him about being pregnant in order to get him to marry her.

Which means the people of the village are happy to accept that Tom Riddle snr was sleeping with Merope before they ran away together. They certainly don't think he was in love with her (hence why he was hoodwinked) but they accept without question that he had engaged in a sexual relationship with her.

And I don't think that's unlikely.

Maybe even before Morfin and Marvolo were arrested, but definitely afterwards. I just don't think it's unlikely - men being as they are, and sorry to be crude - that a man like Tom Riddle snr wasn't perfectly happy to use Merope as a warm hole to get his dick wet.

I don't think he loved her, or was even attracted to her.

But would he have sex with her?

Yes!

Especially if Celia is holding out for her wedding night.

Higher class man having sexual relationships with lower class women, which mean nothing to them, and not caring one jot how this can ruin the lower class woman's life is as old as time.

Merope is "in love" with him, she is unprotected by people who will look out for her, she has no friends, no education and little experience of the world. She is unloved and desperate for kindness.

She is a sitting duck for a callous man who wants to get his end away.

The problem for Tom Riddle snr is that she is not, actually, as powerless as other lower class girls. She has magic.

And when poor, silly, in love Merope tells Tom she is pregnant and he tries to cast her aside, unlike her muggle sisters she is able to do something about it. When he refuses to do "the honourable thing" as she believed he would (because she believed he loved her), she uses magic to get him to marry her.

Dumbledore says he thinks Merope must have somehow found a way to trick Tom Riddle snr into drinking a love potion; that she got him to stop his horse by her house on a hot day and offered him water. That she eventually stopped giving him the love potions because she thought he might have really fallen in love with her by this point, or would stay for the baby, or just didn't want to lie anymore. But he is only guessing. That is, in fact, his headcanon.

Mine is that Tom Riddle snr was using Merope for sex, that she was already pregnant when they ran away (like the villagers thought), and that she only used magic to ensnare him after he rejected her when she told him about the baby. I think she did grab her wand and confund him, as she was reacting to his rejection - and had not been planning to kidnap him before this moment. I think it makes more sense than Dumbledore's explanation for why Tom regains his own mind and leaves, that Tom began to fight a confundus charm applied by an inexpert witch and broke free. And, if it was Merope who stopped using magic on Tom, I think it makes more sense than Dumbledore's theory for her to do so if she had a concrete reason to believe that he had ever loved her in the first place (no matter how misguided that belief was and how much the concrete was actually sand). Whichever version is true, I think Dumbledore's explanations are vague and patchy at best.

I also think it makes the pain of his leaving her more real, than if it was all a fantasy she cooked up in her head, and explains better why she just gave up after he left. She was not only desperate and alone and genuinely heartbroken, because she had been part of an actual relationship (if under false pretences on his side) but was also having to come to terms with the fact that she had been tricked and made a fool of and not only did Tom not love her, the Tom she loved never existed and the real Tom thought she was so worthless he was happy to use her, discard her and didn't care if she lived or died.

I just think that - using a sex class analysis of behaviour - my headcanon is far more realistic than Dumbledore's, because men really are that awful.

Now, the fact that they were sleeping together and Tom was doing so under false pretences doesn't stop Merope's using magic on him from being wrong. But it does even things out between them a bit, Tom is no longer a hapless victim of Merope's, but his being enchanted somehow is a consequence of his own poor behaviour. It is arguably deserved. And I see why that is a controversial take because it removes Tom from being a totally innocent victim of Merope's while making Merope a victim of his and finding an excuse for her bad behaviour. It is - arguably - victim blaming.

But I'm afraid the whole story just makes more sense if Tom and Merope were sleeping together before they eloped.

[pottersofthefuture]

This planet may have kidnapped you, but now you were somehow unwittingly part of its founding mythos. You're at the root of its civilization, with all its opressions and neuroses. You're the founder, the queen, but in a way that disempowers and dehumanizes you more than anything else. You also dragged your ex along in your wake and subjected him to some pretty horrifying losses of autonomy and self, and it's kind of your fault and kind of not. But now he's let his sense of supremacy (fueled by your own inadvertent founding mythos) go to his head and is having a big tyrannical murderous freakout (and secret cry for help) about it.

This too is timeless child.

[pottersofthefuture]

[pottersofthefuture]

weeding the garden doesn’t cure anything but you keep trying and that’s what matters

[pottersofthefuture]

And it was not just the one time. He might not have ever called Lily a mudblood but he called other muggleborns that quite happily. Lily even called him out on that.

Someone on here, idk who i just saw a screenshot, was basically bashing Lily mother fucking Evans over not forgiving Snape for calling her the equivalent of the n word. I'm sorry but if my friend called me a nigg*r, idc if it was out of anger or embarrassment. If I get called that by someone I consider a friend, I wouldn't listen to his fuck ass apologies either. Mudblood shouldn't have been in Snape's vocabulary if he really cared and loved Lily Evans but it was and it just goes to show that he was a racist piece of shit to everyone but the girl he "loved," until it came out in a "fit of anger."

Whew...now that I got that out of my system, let's continue showering Lily Evans in all the love she deserves ❤️

[pottersofthefuture]

Clark Kent has lactose intolerance. Not really, but that's what everyone thinks. When hes running to thw bathroom in the middle of a workday after conveniently eating a dairy product from his lunch while watching a catastrophe in the city on the news channel, everyone in the office comes to the same conclusion. He's obviously one of those people who are painfully allergic to dairy. Does that stop him? No. Now Clark is confused on why everyone tries to stop him from eating cheese from the charcuterie board at office parties.

[pottersofthefuture]

[pottersofthefuture]

Rewatching Merlin absolutely losing my shit whenever Percival is on screen. The BBC cast two of the hottest women they could find for this show and still gave the slutty, impractical, too-much-skin-barring costume to Tom Hopper instead. God bless.

[pottersofthefuture]

Character who doesn't get to die & character who doesn't get to live. Is that anything.

[pottersofthefuture]

"JK Rowling can't write world building" my arse. There's like an entire book in those few sentences

[pottersofthefuture]

When it comes to great, strong, female characters in movies, I don't think Rose from Titanic is mentioned enough.

She is a bright young woman who starts off trapped, depressed and suicidal and with the help and inspiration from Manic pixie dream boy Jack she gets enough strenght to ditch her horrible life and, within hours, she stands up to her abusers, tells of her mother, spits on Cal's face, single handedly saves the man she loves (while pushing and punching other men in the process), she decides to stay on the ship until the end with Jack, she survives the sinking and the freezing cold and goes on to live the best life she can with no regrets.

I just think she deserves more credit

[pottersofthefuture]

vlad and fire

i've been rewatching the show and when watching some of s1 noticed thart vlad's bed is placed in the area of his room where the fireplace should be. now i could write this off as basic set design decisions, but there isn't any fun in that and instead i'm choosing to look at it as symbolic. there were a couple of theories i had regarding this:

the bed is there as a representation of the lack of warmth within the dracula family. the place where vlad should in theory be the safest and most welcome has no source of warmth and the room (and family) is instead cold

vlad being the central part of the home (family), and by extension, the castle. vlad is obviously the most human of the family and the one to bring life into the undead (cold) family

i also think using fire as a metaphor for vlad coming to accept that he is a vampire is particuarly interesting

looking at my third theory, i've looked (admittedly not in a lot of depth) at how fire is used through the show. aside from providing atmospheric lighting, it can be used to tell a story.

in s1-2 vlad's bed is in the fireplace, the fire cannot be lit because he is actively blocking it off. we see the fireplace inside the castle be lit with candles instead of an actual fire. to me this feels like its showing that vlad is actively supressing his vampirism by trying to block it at the source

in seasons 3-5, we constantly see the fireplace in the living room in garside lit. vlad can no longer hide from who he is and has come to accept it.

at the end of s4e8 (loyalty's for breathers), we see vlad at one of his lowest points in the show and he is sat in front of a well stoked fire, swigging blood from a bottle. i could write so much about this scene alone and will likely come back to it at a later point in another post because it's one of my favourite scenes in the whole show. but in this moment, vlad has no way of hiding who he is, instead he embraces the warmth of the roaring fire as he likely feels the most like a vampire as he ever has.

in the first photo you can even see the flames flickering at the bottom as he considers taking a drink.

the links between vlad and fire don't end there either. in s2e6 (baby dracula), vlad manages to create a fireball for the first time. this is the only time we really see him get excited over a vampire power, especially this early on. whilst he came to accept hypnotism as something extremely useful fairly quickly, especially in the episodes following this one), at first he was very apprehensive of it. the same can be said for turning into a bat. when it comes to fireballs however he is excited from the off.

he also uses fire when talking to erin about the perks of vampirism in s3e4 (fangs for the memories), and demostrates the candle lighting thing

another observation is his aura having flames when talitha sees it in s5 (i unfortunately can't remember the episode off the top of my head)

with vlad it seems to constantly draw back to fire which is just so interesting to me.

outside of these surface level observations, one of my personal favourite themes through the show is the use of blood addiction as a thinly veiled metaphor for alcoholism. this is once again something i could talk about for so long but fire (vlad's relationship with vampirism) and alcohol (blood) don't mix and when they do it's not a good thing.

the final thing which i noticed today when rewatching the finale, is that we see vlad and sally infront of the fireplace as he makes his final choice to leave any links to humanity behind. the fire is lit and well tended despite what has been happening in garside.

anyway those are my current thoughts on it but its a concept i've been unable to escape for the last few weeks since i first noticed the bed in the fireplace. as i rewatch more i hope i'll notice some more links but overall i think it is such interesting symbolism.

[pottersofthefuture]

[pottersofthefuture]

oh god sudden thought

so as per various DC social media concepts Clark has a Superman twitter where he posts left-leaning but fairly safe & tame stuff e.g. happy pride from Superman. Clark Kent also has his own twitter account where he posts his actual opinion.

what happens if uh. what happens if he forgets which account he's logged into.