#[ also I’m a lowkey sucker for enemies to lovers bUT ANYWAY THAT’S NOT WHAT’S IMPORTANT HERE. ]

[phantaloon]

right so, vent below on all for the game aka the book series I finished in three and half days bc my stupid brain would not let me live my life if I didn't finish and I haven't studied for two tests I've got tomorrow but this is somehow more important in my brain (and everyday I'm more convinced about adhd)

first things first... I love neil josten with all my fucking heart and oh jesus christ I AM IN LOVE WITH HIM, he's the typical damaged mysterious character I always love but I can't regret it, like I love every single one of these characters which is a lot to say bc that never happens? (well except maybe aaron, but he has his moments, and I totally get his attitude) BUT NEIL owns my heart, like genuinely, he is my everything now, he might be one of my favorite ever characters?? like I said, I love this type of angsty character, and it's dumb but I love him

also can I say how much I love this bc it literally is one of my favorite tropes? like found family? check. queer? check. mentally and emotionally unstable? check. enemies to friends to lovers? check. abusive pieces if shit getting what they deserve? check. did I mention found family????

like I genuinely love this, and the suspense of wtf will happen next is honestly what's pushed me not to sleep this past few days and push my assignments aside (which is so not me lmao) because I physically need to know what's gonna happen fr

like nora is a very clever writer that way, even though three books cover a year which is odd, she really has a way to captivate the readers, ffs she got me to read a sports novel?? I just love the simplicity and symbolism of her writing

but oc at this point, if you have any semblance of how I am you know exactly what my vibe is... andrew and neil. lowkey toxic relationship at first, andrew was truly a piece of shit as a friend, but am I a sucker for characters finding that person they can call home and feel safe around after not ever having that?? absolutely. (warm is the word I love when describing this, a person that makes you feel warm) the way their relationship was shaped over the three books and how subtle the details are is amazing

and how much of a fucking simp neil is. there you have andrew hiding his sexuality like a pro for a long ass while and then neil just cannot stop staring at andrew like dan howell looks at phil lester. he really did nothing to try to hide his fondness for andrew once they started hooking up even though they pretended it was purely physical. I just love how hard neil fell for andrew in so little time, like he went from yes I think I'm attracted to andrew to loving and looking for andrew like nothing else mattered (big percabeth vibes)

also can't not love andrew's development. like not in the literary character development kind of way, but more of a... personal kind of way, like it's not in a writing sense, it's simply his emotional development in a human sense. idk how to say it. it's not like apollo's in toa or damon salvatore's or tony stark's. it's simply his personal development from being self isolating, possessive, closed off, and just done with everything, with no semblance of a purpose to live, to someone whose doors just opened in every way. he gave in to his own dreams, his feelings, and he understands that he truly is not alone, he has aaron again and kevin and nicky and renee and neil and everyone else. he actually allows himself to be happy and live for once instead of just existing, and maybe he's not there yet, but he's definitely working to get there now, and I love him so much istg I wanna cry rn as I write this

but getting back to neil and andrew, god I love their relationship. they worked through every step of the way, they're so caring and careful of each other's boundaries and triggers and stuff, and they just understand each other so perfectly. not one of them expects of the other more than they can give, and they just work so well. I love that they never told anyone absolutely anything, their relationship is theirs, and theirs only, they don't deny anything, they're not ashamed of being together, but I really love that they chose not to let the others make a big deal out of it.

and I can't ever forget how much andrew must really love neil. we know neil is head over heels for andrew, but technically we don't know how andrew feels. except every single action he does proves it. it's in the details. from the second book and onward, andrew has such a soft spot for neil, even through what happened with drake in TRK, god andrew cares so fucking much for neil it hurts. he may pass it off as 'there's nothing here', but every one of his actions proves otherwise. even right after coming back from rehab, he cared for neil like he cared for no one else, not aaron or kevin. everything that happened was perfectly paced. from their first kiss to their last. just andrew even going against kevin when he was being too aggressive to neil is enough proof, not to talk about andrew letting the deal with Aaron go to be with neil, or everything when neil was kidnapped.

it's just, they both deserve all the happiness in the world, and I'm very fucking happy they found love in each other after all they've been through.

I'm sorry I'm ranting so much, but you can guess how I feel about smth when I've slept so little the past three days bc I was obsessed with finishing it despite having too much to do (I didn't pay attention to a class bc I was reading and it's fair to say I didn't do good in the following quiz), so yeah I have a lot of feels for this series

I just love their little family so much, you don't understand <3 found family is just my favorite ever trope and I have to stop my rant short before I write way too much when I should be studying for my very important tests to come

anyway you can bet I'll keep posting about this lmao <3 truly recommend it but mind the trigger warnings, some content can be a lot for some people, hell I like reading angst and I had to put my phone down a couple of times bc it's a lot, so yeah, ttyl

[pateldevs]

don’t be shy; share those cho chang headcanons 👀 (thank you for blessing us with that cho chang gifset btw, i love her)

ok literally thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about how much i love cho chang and she got done so dirty in the books AND the movies and i also have this elaborate backstory for her parents bc i love her so much aaaaa anyway there’s a lot so under the cut! ~~

i have fully adopted it into canon in my head lol but her chinese name is 張秋 (which means the pinyin i’m more familiar w would be ‘zhang qiu’ which i guess is close enough to cho), 張 meaning hunter/archer and 秋 meaning harvest/autumn

the fact that her anglicized surname is ‘chang’ and not ‘zhang’ makes me think her dad’s family is taiwanese

her mom’s family used to be involved in international affairs for the british ministry of magic office in hong kong (as it was still a colony) and that’s how her mom’s family came to the uk

her parents fully embodied the enemies-to-lovers trope when they were at hogwarts b/c her dad captained the ravenclaw quidditch team and her mom captained the gryffindor team and they were both seekers

hence cho totally grew up on quidditch and played around trying to catch an old snitch with her parents from a young age

she almost ended up in hufflepuff. look at the way she stuck by marietta in ootp?? she’s so fiercely loyal!! wtf!!!

the kinds of traits that ultimately put her in ravenclaw make her a good athlete and vice versa. look at how she plays quidditch: she relies on a number of strategies besides just outright skill, usually distraction/diversion and turning the opposing seeker’s skills against them

that said i fully think her father is muggle-born or half-blood and grew up fencing, so he teaches her how to fence, and so she’s also a great épée fencer

she’s not great with offensive spells - hence her trouble in when they’re in DA in ootp - but she’s excellent with defensive charms, predicting what her opponent’s going to do, moving fast. it’s what makes her one of flitwick’s favorite students.

charms is her best class. don’t ask me for justification here it just is.

flitwick obviously sees her potential and totally invites her to dueling club even though she’s quite young for it

she’s a harpist. don’t ask me where this came from i just think if she played an instrument it would be harp

she’s a younger sibling, she’s so sensitive like fr the eldest daughter in an asian family would just internalize their emotions (this one was developed jointly with my older sister lmao)

she and cedric didn’t start out as a couple. they started as friends when both of them were out on the quidditch pitch early one morning, just practicing flying.

she and cedric tell each other EVERYTHING. absolutely everything. like fr this girl was almost a hufflepuff ok don’t tell me they wouldn’t have the most emotionally invested relationship

cedric asks her to the yule ball and quickly says it’s a really lowkey thing, they’re just friends

they’re not just friends though, she thinks she’s starting to like him because when he looks at her she feels like she can do anything, and when he looks at her it’s her, not her sister, not anyone else.

she’s secretly glad that she has a reason to turn down harry when he asks her to the yule ball. marietta thinks she’s crazy - who would willingly turn down a chance to be harry potter’s date?? - but cho just can’t bear the thought of just being ‘harry potter’s date.’ with cedric, at least she has a chance to be herself.

when cedric dies she’s absolutely devastated:

she can’t stop thinking about how they snuck out of their houses to sit on top of the astronomy tower and look at the stars the night before the last task

she can’t stop thinking about how he confessed that he was scared but he knew he’s so close to winning, and how he joked that it would be impossible for her to not fall in love with him if he won

she can’t stop thinking about how she said don’t be scared, just pretend i’m there with you, i’ve got your back (because obviously they’ve been to dueling club together and he knows how good she is at defensive spells)

she can’t stop thinking about how he waved to her before he entered the maze at the start of the third task

she feels so insanely guilty that maybe she’s the reason he died, he said he wanted to do well to impress her that night on the astronomy tower, didn’t he?

she loses sleep over it, she has dreams about that last night all the time, she has dreams about seeing harry coming back with cedric’s body, she has these dreams where she’s watching him get killed and she can’t do anything to defend him

she wants to ask harry about it at the end of the year but she doesn’t, because she doesn’t think she can handle hearing about it, but somehow it’s worse hearing rumors from everyone else

she finds herself drawn to harry because he makes her feel closer to cedric, because the loss of cedric is something they both share and surely harry must know how it feels

honestly this is what really pisses me off about how she’s written in the books, is that her emotions are so one-dimensional that they become a caricature of asian women as meek and weepy. the most her emotions ever got developed was when hermione explained how cho must be feeling after she kissed harry

like, you’re allowed to have female characters whose arcs are largely tied to and/or driven by other characters, but you gotta actually go into those relationships yk? in the books she’s only ever someone’s girlfriend and she just cries all the time but we don’t actually talk about why

she’s not just crying all the time because she incapable of moving on (which is more or less what harry thinks). she’s crying because she didn’t just lose her boyfriend, she lost one of her best friends. she stops going to dueling club because she’s lost her partner. her flying starts suffering because she thinks about all those early morning 1v1 games she and cedric used to have.

(marietta only goes to DA meetings with her because she feels like it’s the ‘good friend’ thing to do. if going to DA helps her cope with cedric’s death then sure. she goes.)

i’ve already said she was almost a hufflepuff but i have to say it again, cho loves and cares so deeply. she’s a sucker for sentimentalism. she skips dumbledore’s funeral to stand up on the astronomy tower and think about the war that’s coming.

on the last day of her seventh year, she finds the room of requirement again and spends hours walking through it, remembering everything she learnt in DA

when the war really starts up after dumbledore’s death, her parents want to move away, they want her and her sister to have as non-magical a life as they can, so she does, but she keeps the DA galleon and her wand instead of snapping it like her sister. her parents have absolutely no idea that she goes off to the battle of hogwarts. 

when she fights she’s a team player. she partners up with katie bell for most of the final battle

at one point she and katie are separated and she comes face to face with a death eater. she almost kills him. she wants to so badly. she hates what the man stands for. but she thinks about two of the most important people in this war, harry and cedric, and she thinks, they never would. so she doesn’t.

^ she doesn’t think of harry and cedric because of her relationship with them. in fact it’s thinking about her relationship with cedric that makes her want to kill the death eater. but she thinks of harry and cedric, and what they would want and do, because they are the ones who had/have the most to lose in this war.

when are we going to get a series that delves into how visceral her emotions were?! how her grief tore her to pieces! how her trauma ate away at her! how disarming a death eater and pinning him to the ground and holding the tip of her wand to his throat made her feel like a totally different person, how close she came to ending his life! how, in the days after the battle, she feels disgusted by the idea that she even thought about using an unforgivable curse. how she learns to recover and rebuild and heal!

she plays seeker for the holyhead harpies for a while. she learns to love flying again. she learns to love the stars again. 

she doesn’t really start a family because she has little interest in being associated with others as ‘so-and-so’s wife’ or ‘so-and-so’s mother.’

she always visits cedric’s grave on june 24 every year.

eventually when flitwick retires she takes his place as charms professor and head of house because if anyone deserves a happy ending it’s cho chang!!