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Me finally getting to enjoy my hobbies after retiring.

Kawanabe Kyōsai (河鍋 暁斎, May 18, 1831 – April 26, 1889)  Skeleton with Flowers (Kawanabe Kyosai Memorial Museum Collection)

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@tomarrymortmicrofics | stumble | 272 words

Potter storms off, pushing past Voldemort with a childish huff and stalking out the front door. Something, perhaps whatever enchantment has ensnared him, compels Voldemort to follow after him.

Out in the garden, Potter stumbles. He falls forward, barely managing to land in an awkward crouch to avoid injury. He sits back on his heels, looks up at the clear blue sky, and lets out an animalistic cry.

When Voldemort looks down upon him, he sees that Potter is weeping.

“You are not Harry Potter,” Voldemort proclaims.

Potter looks up at Voldemort, brows furrowed. He laughs, a desperate little sound. “What are you on about now?”

“Harry Potter would never cower and weep as you do. He faced Lord Voldemort fiercely and courageously, as a worthy adversary ought to do.”

Potter snorts, wiping at his cheeks. “I'm not cowering, Vee. I woke up this morning to my husband attempting to kill me because he somehow has lost the last fifteen years of his memories. I'm fucking sad.”

Voldemort tilts his head, considering. Potter sighs and rises to his feet, brushing off his pajama trousers as he does so. For reasons unknown, Voldemort finds it difficult to look at him, so he stares out into the garden, taking in the variety of flora, the trimmed hedges that form a menagerie, and the large pond filled with glimmering koi fish.

“When I was a child, I dreamed of having a space just like this, all of my own,” Voldemort says quietly.

He looks back at Potter, who is smiling faintly. “Yeah, I know. Then you realized that some things are meant to be shared.”

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I genuinely believe that if Grindelwald had ever met Voldemort it would be the same as a conspiracy person meeting an even crazier, even more hard-core conspiracy person and the encounter would instantly cure them, like "fuck, now that I'm hearing it out loud..."

Grindelwald: "The muggles are growing more powerful by the day, we must do away with them immediately."

Voldemort: "Yes! Also the mudbloods, and the halfbloods and anyone who doesn't listen to me, especially Dumbledore, and this one seventeen year old, and YOU if you don't bend the knee to me and-"

Grindelwald: "I'm fucking retiring."

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Voldemort and Gender: A Meta

I've been reading all these fascinating analyses about Voldemort and gender that keep circulating, and some of them are genuinely compelling, I love the creativity. The interpretations of him as femme coded or exploring his relationship with traditional masculinity are interesting from a transformative fandom perspective, and some of the meta is genuinely brilliant.

That being said, I think a lot of people are operating under this incredibly reductive, contemporary American working-class definition of masculinity that equates "masculine" with loud, physically aggressive, overtly brutish behaviour, and that's not how aristocratic masculinity has ever functioned, which gets us into some fascinating territory about classism and how different socioeconomic strata perform gender entirely differently.

The Slytherins, and Voldemort by extension, are explicitly emulating upper-class, aristocratic sensibilities. In those circles, the jock-adjacent, chest-thumping, aggressively physical masculinity is actually coded as vulgar, uncivilised, and lower-class. That sort of overt physical aggression would be seen as gauche, even pathetic. There's this whole classist framework where "refined" masculinity is performatively restrained, intellectually sophisticated, and economically secure enough not to resort to physical displays.

What commands respect in those circles is restraint, composure, and the ability to dominate through poise and intellect, not brute strength. A gentleman doesn't roar or brawl or puff out his chest to prove his masculinity, that's considered beneath him, literally déclassé. Think Caesar, Augustus, medieval monarchs. The most formidable men in classical literature embody this controlled, calculated masculinity. They don't raise their voices because everyone already understands the consequences of defiance. Physical violence is something you had others do for you, which is its own form of power projection. It's insidious precisely because it appears "civilized" while being structurally far more violent than any street fight.

Voldemort is written as masculine in the way a dark emperor is masculine. Silent, calculating, absolutely assured of his superiority. He speaks softly and rooms fall silent. He gestures and death follows. He doesn't need theatrical displays of dominance because his mere presence bends others to his will. There's nothing more masculine-coded in the classes that have historically wielded power than that level of control.

The classism here is crucial because when we code aristocratic restraint as "effeminate," we're inadvertently reproducing this false binary where working-class masculinity gets positioned as more "authentically" masculine than upper-class masculinity, but both are expressions of patriarchal power, they just operate through different mechanisms based on available resources.

Also, power is expressed through magic in the Wizarding World. Nobody's throwing punches lol. In a society where you can kill with a word or gesture, measuring masculinity by physical aggression is completely nonsensical. Voldemort's magical prowess is infinitely more formidable than any amount of posturing. The man literally split his soul to achieve immortality, which is the the most aggressively masculine thing imaginable, just expressed through magical rather than physical dominance.

Speaking of soul splitting, a big part of his arc is rooted in toxic masculinity taken to its extreme. His relentless quest for power, his inability to process emotional vulnerability, his complete rejection of anything that might be perceived as weakness. These are textbook examples of how patriarchal conditioning destroys men. He literally fragments his soul rather than confront his own emotional reality. That's masculine socialization so severe it becomes pathological. The way he handles his abandonment issues, his shame about his Muggle heritage, his terror of mortality. He doesn't process these emotions but weaponizes them. Instead of grieving or seeking connection, he transforms pain into domination, vulnerability into violence. 

His level of emotional avoidance and the compulsive need to convert every feeling into power and control is really peak toxic masculinity, as is his obsession with immortality, being the most powerful, his need to have others literally unable to speak his name. That's not someone rejecting masculine ideals but someone who's internalized them so completely he's willing to destroy his own humanity to achieve them. He's basically what happens when masculine conditioning around emotional suppression and power accumulation gets taken to its absolute breaking point.

There's also this persistent misreading of young Tom Riddle's charm and sophistication as somehow feminine-coded, which is absolutely baffling. The dude was performing gentlemanly masculinity to perfection. Cultivated, articulate, magnetically charismatic in that distinctly genteel way. That whole "suave, seductive, manipulative" persona isn't femme coded but literally the playbook of every male aristocrat, politician, and cult leader throughout history. 

Plus, there's something deeply troubling about how "effeminate" gets deployed in these analyses. Are we saying that anything that isn't overtly aggressive and traditionally masculine must be feminine? That's its own form of gender essentialism. We'll see a character who speaks eloquently, dresses well, and doesn't resort to physical violence, and immediately code that as less masculine, when historically, that's been the masculinity of the ruling class. It's worth interrogating why we've internalized the idea that "real" masculinity has to be working-class masculinity, especially when that framework often erases how different communities and cultures construct gender entirely differently.

Given JKR’s views on gender and her rather conventional approach to gender roles throughout the series, she would never intentionally write her ultimate villain as anything other than unambiguously masculine. For someone with her investment in traditional gender binaries, coding the most terrifying figure in her universe as feminine would fundamentally undermine his menace bbecause in her worldview, feminine-coded traits simply don't carry the same weight of existential threat. Voldemort's horror stems partly from his embodiment of patriarchal power taken to its most monstrous extreme, and Rowling's own biases would prevent her from subverting that in ways that might complicate her readers' ability to recognize him as the ultimate threat. The terror he inspires is inextricably linked to his masculine-coded dominance, control, and violence. Remove that framework, and you lose much of what makes him frightening within the moral universe she's constructed.

Moreover, Rowling constructs Voldemort and Harry as representing two archetypal forms of masculinity: the noble knight versus the tyrannical god-king. Harry embodies the "good" masculine ideal of the protective, self-sacrificing, brave knight, while Voldemort represents masculinity's darkest potential when untethered from empathy or moral restraint. This isn't a subversion of masculine archetypes but a a reinforcement of them, positioning both hero and villain firmly within traditional masculine frameworks while simply coding one as virtuous and the other as monstrous. Rowling's moral universe depends on this binary remaining intact and legible to her audience.

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Good news, fellow artists! Nightshade has finally been released by the UChicago team! If you aren't aware of what Nightshade is, it's a tool that helps poison AI datasets so that the model "sees" something different from what an image actually depicts. It's the same team that released Glaze, which helps protect art against style mimicry (aka those finetuned models that try to rip off a specific artist). As they show in their paper, even a hundred poisoned concepts make a huge difference.

(Reminder that glazing your art is more important than nighshading it, as they mention in their tweets above, so when you're uploading your art, try to glaze it at the very least.)

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I'm actually a huge fan of enemies to lovers because I do think it's hot but to be clear "enemies to I think you're attractive and that's overcoming my hatred of you" sucks ASS the trope is about growing RESPECT and GENUINE AFFECTION the POINT is that they always found each other attractive but it doesn't MATTER until they also have a solid relationship built on trust respect and friendship!!!!! Do you understand my vision!!!!

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“Hannibal, but it’s kind of edited like ‘The Office’” by copperdoo on Reddit

Everyone needs to watch this RIGHT NOW

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Like I get it, the hero's journey is meant to teach you a lesson and blahblah, but actually I don't want that. I do not want to be taught a lesson by the power of friendship or moral epiphany or whatever.

I want to be taught the lesson through total and absolute corruption. I want you to show me all the little lies and excuses the hero tells themself as they slide down that slippery slope. I want you to show me how love can absolutely corrupt. How falling for the villain forces the hero to make a choice, and choosing love is actually the WRONG answer. Because it means the hero will justify horrific atrocities to keep that love. I want all that nasty guilt, except, more and more, I want that guilt to become performative, because the hero has chosen the villain and accepts that it was a selfish choice, but it was also the only choice they could live with. They have fallen. They will not climb back out of this hole. None of the horrible things happening around them hurt as much as it feels good to stay in the villain's arms.

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When I say that the Tom Riddle I prefer to visualise is BEAUTIFUL, I mean 'angels looked upon him and wept/Michelangelo could never' levels of beautiful. I've always been a sucker for the Lucifer trope – of great beauty being a phenomenal facade for a villain, because humans have erroneously convinced themselves that beauty equals goodness/purity.

That being said, I will always prefer snakeface Voldemort, since, in my opinion, it is his truest form. I like the thought that Voldemort was so deeply buried in his god-complex that he saw himself as a higher, more monstrous being and therefore looking human was NOT how he wished to present himself. There is also something incredibly fascinating about making Harry fall in love with Voldemort without the aid of conventionally attractive good looks (on a separate note, Harry is definitely a monsterfucker, so there is that).

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This Barbie is a cannibal! ✨

Ref pic:

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there are two wolves inside me:

one is Hannigram

the other is Harrymort

...

They are the same wolf actually

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You ever just read a fanfic and love it so much that you just. Accept it as canon

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Albus: So I met an evil child today.

Aberforth: Why are you like this?

Albus: But don't worry. The situation is under control. I read his mind without his consent and then set his things on fire and told him he has to stay in line because I'm more powerful than he is. That will teach him to stop believing that the most important thing is power and to value love instead. Problem solved. Good job me as usual.

Aberforth: Albus, what the actual fuck?

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im always suuuuper chill when i see that service unavailable page

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from twitter user deejaygeejaygee