#ANYWAY THIS IS A RON WEASLEY STAN ACCOUNT

[phoebe-delia]

Ron's Turn

I spent most of my day thinking about Ron and how undervalued he is. So this came out 😂

I am so goddamn tired of not feeling good enough.

All I ever did was throw myself into danger. I'm not as brave as Harry, or a genius like Hermione. I'm not a dreamer like Luna, a botanist like Neville, or a Quidditch star like Ginny. I'm left off the list of the most beloved, the strongest, the best, the most talented. I'm lucky if I get an honourable mention, and even then I know it's just by association.

Everything I've wanted for myself—I've just fallen short. It was hell watching every single one of my friends and family succeed over me. I was happy for them—truly, part of me was—but this knot of jealousy just keeps festering inside. And with few exceptions, I've been good at keeping my jealousy separate from my pride for my friends.

Even when it's objective—when there's no favoritism and we take our NEWTs and our names are magically coded so as to ensure complete anonymity—I still fall somewhere in the middle. I am plainly average. Not the worst—but certainly not the best.

It makes me want to quit trying. And it makes me want to find something where I can be the best for once in my fucking life.

And, god, don't tell me I'm a "good brother" or a "good friend" because why the fuck can't I be good at something that helps only me? Why can't I take pride in my relationships—and also in my work? In my talents? Why am I not allowed to be more—and to be upset that I don't have it? To resent the fact that I see glory all around me—all fucking around me—and know none of it's for me, no matter how hard I try.

I've had enough. It's not my friends' fault, I definitely don't blame them, but I can't do this around them. I can't do this with them. I need something that's just mine.

It's my turn.

[hamliet]

What Does It Mean to Save?

I keep seeing it said that Deku, Ochaco, and Shouto will “save” Shigaraki, Himiko, and Dabi, but that there will be no redemption and/or no survival for them. I’m truly not trying to vague these posts and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but literary criticism is fundamentally responsive so I’m writing this anyways.

I personally think that’s not BNHA’s definition of saving nor of redemption. So here, have a deep dive into literary tropes related to redemption, genre, and character arcs as they pertain to BNHA and the question of: what does it mean to save Shigaraki, Touya, and Himiko?

Before we begin, let me say that while we might be personally uncomfortable with redemption (there’s a redemption arc in BNHA I am personally quite uncomfortable with), that doesn’t inherently mean the narrative won’t go there. The key principle I’m operating on here is BNHA’s message that heroes save people. It’s held up as the highest ideal. 

So let’s talk redemption in BNHA-verse. With this guy, whose redemption arc I dislike in principle but accept as part of the story so don’t come for me stans and/or antis. I’m analyzing because it shows us what redemption means in BNHA-verse, whether or not that is satisfying to you personally as it fits/does not fit with your own morality/philosophy.

If Endeavor can be redeemed and live, and he’s Bakugou’s negative foil, I highly doubt Shigaraki and Deku as well as Touya and Shouto and Ochaco and Himiko will be any different. Why? Because Enji is an adult character. The others--well, Himiko’s age we don’t know, but we do know that Shigaraki and Dabi are technically adults. But does the story consider them adults?

(It doesn’t.)

Child-coded characters are generally more likely to survive a redemption, which I’ll explain more later. First I have to define what I mean by child-coding, because I DO NOT mean this in the way it’s often (mis)used in fandom wank. Child-coding is a real thing, but it is not done to infantilize and it has nothing to do with shipping.

Child coding frames the character as a child for a few narrative purposes to convey a story’s theme or purpose. For example, if it’s a coming of age story coding a character as a child even if they legally are not emphasizes their journey to an understanding of self-actualization, or a true understanding of self with self-awareness and an understanding of self-value. An example of an adult coded as a child is The Kite Runner, wherein Amir is a legal adult for half the story, even married for fifteen years so we’re talking 30s-40s, but he does not truly become an adult until he returns to his homeland and takes responsibility for a childhood sin. In Attack on Titan, the main characters are now nineteen, but are still struggling to take responsibility as adults and have only started doing so now that their mentors/parental figures have started dying.

Along those lines, in any kind of story, you can code a character as a child of someone, regardless of biological relationship, to convey the type of relationship they have (usually a mentor one). For an example of this, see Bungo Stray Dogs’ Dazai and Akutagawa. Despite their two year age difference, Dazai recruited him to the mafia, abandoned him, and Akutagawa desperately seeks his approval. Usually in these stories a character will “overcome” their parental figure. This can be done through overcoming their need for the parental figure’s approval in stories where the parental figure is kindly (such as in Harry Potter, when in the final book Harry, Ron, and Hermione leave the Weasleys to find the Horcruxes despite Mrs. Weasley’s please) or through like, killing/stopping/leaving the parental figure when they are abusive (see fairy tales like Rapunzel and Cinderella). The parental link to self-actualization is because it is childlike (and a part of actual psychology that is reflected in literature) to see yourself as a part of your parent; self-actualized person would see yourself as a distinct person from your parent, but also acknowledge the ways in which they’ve shaped you.

So, how do you code a character as a child? BNHA isn’t subtle about it, because Horikoshi seldom is subtle about anything. The villain trio are all coded as children.

Shigaraki Tomura:

Who cannot achieve self-actualization so long as AFO has access to his body, as he’s literally trying to possess him. He’s trying, but it’s not gonna work because Shigaraki can’t keep AFO and become an adult at the same time. It’s a choice the narrative is setting up: your dream of destroying, or your freedom? (To get the latter, he’ll probably have to destroy AFO).

Todoroki Touya, who is repeatedly emphasized as a small child when compared to his siblings, and yes, I know he’s now tall. Specifically he’s spotlighted as the child of Endeavor:

And he’s the least self-actualized one in a lot of ways, contradicting himself constantly. I’m not Endeavor, DUH! But these are Endeavor’s flames! He’s gonna have to choose one or the other, because the tragic irony is that the more he takes out his rage on those around him, the more like Endeavor he becomes.

And Toga Himiko (who might well literally be a legal child), who is actually the most self-actualized one thus far, because she rejects Curious’s child insistence (Curious holds her in a Pieta pose, based on Michelangelo’s statue wherein Mary holds a deceased Christ):

She’s still got, like, a way to go though:

Because Himiko also wants to be like the people she loves to the point where she loses her own identity in them, which is er, not self-actualization. So she’ll have to choose whether or not she really wants to be like the people she loves or whether she wants to live her own way, which she herself tells us how that would end (death):

Deku said it himself: it’s good to focus on what someone is doing now. And look, I have issues with this statement and how it’s framed. I’ve talked about it at length and it was doomed to fail because Shouto himself told us long ago that it was annoying to hear a righteous speech by a stranger when you hadn’t gone through the same, plus Endeavor kinda failed by choosing being a hero over a dad here. But, the principle is that if the past doesn’t preclude Endeavor from seeking a better self, why would it preclude three characters coded as children, one of whom is literally somewhat the product of Endeavor’s sins? BNHA doesn’t think the past keeps someone from a better future. 

So what about Dabi’s counterpoint, which is indeed valid? Well, redemption doesn’t mean the past forgets, either. It’s complicated and nuanced, and we can debate how well Horikoshi strikes this nuance (it’s got its flaws), and admittedly I don’t know how this will go down in the future. But it is asking Endeavor: how do you redeem yourself to the people you’ve hurt? And we have Endeavor asking this question to Touya’s shrine. I mean, the foreshadowing is obvious. Endeavor has to redeem himself by trying to save Touya. However, it will still probably come down to Shouto to save Touya.

For our three villains, it’s a little harder to predict... well, sort of. For Shigaraki it’s extremely obvious: he has to help take down AFO. Dabi probably has to do something to help his family (siblings probably), but it’s vague. Toga needs help and not condemnation, but presumably she’ll help Ochaco with something.

So, is this redemption? I’d define it as redemption in the eyes of the narrative. To address what makes a redemption is another essay unto itself, but if we bring in the oft-compared Star Wars example: did Darth Vader get a redemption? Did Ben Solo? Everyone says yes to both. However, only Luke witnesses Vader’s redemption, and only Rey Ben Solo’s. So the rest of the galaxy? Doesn’t think so. When I say they’ll be redeemed, I’m defining it as their role in the eyes of the narrative, not whether or not society will accept them or even whether their victims will forgive them (of note, in canonical novels, Leia never forgave Darth Vader despite learning he was her father and obviously knowing Luke’s account of his redemption was true).

So, redemption in a narrative doesn’t mean all of society has to forgive and accept them. Dabi has still like, murdered 30 people--many of whom were thugs, but he himself acknowledges they didn’t deserve to die. Additionally, he himself also acknowledges that the families left behind--their feelings matter:

But why does that mean they have to die? Why even does it mean they have to languish in prison forever? (If there’s even a safe prison at the end of BNHA which I kinda have doubts about.) Heroes have also killed: see Hawks as Exhibit A. In fact, some people want revenge on the heroes precisely because they arrested or killed their loved ones (jail isn’t held up as a rehabilitative place in BNHA’s world. In most countries it isn’t in real life, either, but again that’s for another essay). So why don’t the League’s feelings on Twice’s death matter just as much as the feelings of unnamed and unseen (and thereby less important narratively) characters?

Additionally, regarding death... the villains routinely get called on their death wishes. Himiko’s determination to decide how/when she dies is called out because this is right  before Twice overcomes his trauma to save her, and the next arc they appear in is when Twice dies trying to save her again. Dabi’s suicide wish keeps him from getting close to others, and it keeps getting thwarted. Shigaraki’s obsession with destruction and death is clearly not a good thing, and his rejection of his family’s desire for them to join him in death this past arc is growth.

In other words: what Dabi said and what Snatch said about families and how they feel matter for the villains too. The villains are their own weird found family (Dabi as the deadbeat prodigal brother of both his families). Their deaths--Magne’s and Twice’s thus far, and I’m not ruling out further deaths in the future--affect the others. People’s feelings on losing loved ones matter. The villains are people, as Himiko said herself this arc:

Their feelings about each other matter:

How would Touya dying affect the Todorokis? At least they saved him spiritually, I guess, but that’s absolutely lame narratively, and if you have Enji eventually do a sacrifice to save Dabi (pretty likely, even if I personally think Enji will survive said sacrifice) then what’s the point of Dabi dying? How would Himiko dying affect society? As a martyr like Curious wanted her to be, even a redeemed one? A tragic warning story? What even is the point of Ochaco saving her if that’s the case? If Shigaraki dies, well, who would mourn besides Deku? How would Shigaraki dying affect the surviving members of the league? He just couldn’t be saved physically? 

It’s not impossible some of this happens, but it doesn’t seem like great writing, especially with panels like, oh, these that show us BNHA’s perspective on death:

Sacrificing something is a type of death that occurs in stories; this should happen in a redemption arc, which is why I’ve been saying Enji needs to sacrifice his hero reputation to help save Touya and even then it’ll still be Shouto imo who does the saving. But physical death?

If you want further analysis of the latter two panels and how they relate to the ending, see here.

We already have another villain who will definitely die redemptively (Kurogiri--an adult coded character--because he’s already, like, dead), and Spinner and Mr. Compress aren’t coded as kids so I hold them with anxiety towards the end. But again, this isn’t me being ageist or saying this is the way things ought to be in fiction or real life: it’s me looking at writing tropes and saying that child-coded characters tend to survive their redemptions. See: Zuko. Why? Because the death of children or child-coded characters is a tragedy. When a child-coded character dies redemptively it doesn’t feel like a happy ending and if framed as such, it’s often criticized for bad writing (see: Ben Solo). Curious even called this out in her fight with Himiko. I would hope Horikoshi doesn’t end the story being like yeah Curious was right that’s the best use of Himiko’s/Dabi’s/Shigaraki’s arcs:

Additionally, as for the believability of a character getting a new chance after so much destruction and murder... well, it’s kinda a thing in shonen and even in seinen? For better or for worse, it’s a thing. We have Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z and Kaneki Ken in Tokyo Ghoul (Kaneki, by the way, is absolutely an inspiration for Shigaraki). We can debate how well-written these redemptions are (I personally have been quite critical of Kaneki’s despite wanting it to happen narratively), but it can be done. BNHA’s Japan especially isn’t as harsh a world as Tokyo Ghoul’s Japan, so it would make even more sense for something like Kaneki’s ending.

The reality is that the cycle of revenge via hurting people and then leaving hurting families and loved ones has to stop somewhere. Someone has to be the bigger person and step up and be like “naw.” That’s heroic. That’s brave. That’s sacrificial itself. Justice itself doesn’t really exist in its purest form without mercy.

There’s another genre-reason I don’t see death or jail as likely (I could see, like, maybe a mental health ward like Rei’s? But it’s too soon to speculate).

If saving is considered a good thing for the story, if it’s truly the highest ideal, then saving someone should be rewarded by the narrative. The characters who save should have a positive result to show us this a good thing.

This is why it doesn’t work for the heroes’ end journey to be accepting that some people cannot be saved. The notion of just accepting that you cannot do something, you cannot save everyone, you cannot, cannot, cannot, is called out as a flaw of society. Determination, on the other hand, is rewarded.

We see it with Deku as well as with Mirio.

So, what if they save them and the redeemed characters then go on to sacrifice themselves in their redemption and die (come to the same end)? If saving changes absolutely nothing for the saved person, if it’s too late for the saved from themselves to change and/or do anything that matters besides die, then the narrative theme of saving as important is left unemphasized at best and undermined at worst. Simple intrinsic knowledge that the kids “did the right thing” doesn’t cut it for a story with so much focus on physical saving when the kids are already doing the right thing; moral struggles about whether to choose to be good aren’t really Deku, Ochaco, or Shouto’s arcs. It works for Aizawa’s arc with Kurogiri, but not for the kiddos. If BNHA was more of a philosophical/spiritual text, that would indeed make sense, but it is not. Genre-wise, BNHA is a fantastical superhero optimistic story, not a gritty real-world set drama.

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

First post, better make it underwhelming (or, in which I stan fanfic and gawky gingers)

I’m currently supposed to be writing the next chapter of my WIP; so, naturally, I decided to make a tumblr instead. This surely won’t come back to bite me in the ass at all, considering I already spend way too much time on my various FF-related accounts.

But honestly, I spend so much time looking at tumblr content sent to me by @aurevoircassielassie I think I was halfway here anyway. (I am, in fact, a Ronmione stan whose fanfic BFF is a Dramione stan, and I may at times have encouraged the creation of some Dramione fluff+ and I’m still real mixed up inside about that.)

I’ve been writing HP fanfic since 2009 (we won’t talk about those lost years from 2012-2019). Back then I was exclusively on HPFF+, and last year when I came back I cross-posted all my stuff to AO3+ and FFN+, as well as joined the amazing HPFT+ community @hpfanfictalk.

My penname (which I decided not to update since 2009 because I’m a creature of habit) tells no lies -- Ron Weasley is an absolute treasure (and the highlight of the books -- there, I said it) and I set out wanting to write about him and Ronmione. But I have written an assortment of characters and ships, and as time went by, Percy emerged as my hands-down favorite character to write.

It all started with a Percy/Audrey romance called Irrational+, which I started back in 2009 because I hadn’t seen a lot of Percy/Audrey featured as a main ship, and I wanted to explore the characterization of the person who fell in for-better-or-for-worse love with Percy Weasley. Once I set myself to really understanding Percy, and what made him into the person we know from canon, that was it for me. That maligned and misunderstood nerd has my heart and soul.

I certainly do love some other fandoms, but I’m so immersed in HP I’m not sure I see myself writing for anything else in the near future (aside from some OF).

Let’s be friends? Ask me some questions, rec me some fics, yeet me some prompts, how does this tumbling thing even work?

[awesomenell65]

Been thinking a bit about what I have dubbed the ‘Mad Bad Jim Kirk Problem’ and The 100, particularly re: Bellamy and Octavia, but also a bit on Clarke and @reblogginhood posted about not attributing opinions held by a few to the many, and then we hit round number whatever of “So, just how guilty is Bellamy Blake, anyway?” so I decided to write it up. 

This is my personal theory by the way, so no one is accountable for it but me. It’s also based off my own personal experiences as a fan. Thus I start - naturally - with history.

When the first Star Trek reboot movie came out - there was great excitment and all kinds of meta and fic and fannish activity. I was particularly keen on the OT3 of Kirk/Spock/Uhura and I read a lot (okay, all, many of them waaaaayyy more than once) of the fic available for that ‘ship over the next many months. Then I got desperate and started reading other Jim shippy fic as well, though a great deal less comphrensively. 

The cumulative effect of that was to create a fannish image in my head of a Jim Kirk so damaged, so intense, so fragile, so mad, so wild, so reckless ---- it was impossible to believe Star Fleet would let this kid even look through the fence at a Star Fleet base, much less touch a star ship, much less COMMAND one. !!

I wanted to protest and argue... with someone. I mean, clearly everyone had got it wrong! Only. There wasn’t ‘one’ with whom to argue.

Each fic writer, after all, had just pushed one element of Jim’s character -- picked out one aspect of Chris Pine’s portrayal and used that as their hook into the new re-boot Kirk, devised their own backstory from the tantalizing bits and pieces dropped in the film, and then set their story in motion. 

Each fic also had plenty of other Kirk stuff that made it, in that singular fic, seem perfectly reasonable (or, well, reasonable enough) that that particular Jim Kirk made it to the helm of the Enterprise,and served in that position with honor and distinction.

Only the things that made it possible for each of those Jim Kirks to be ‘Captain Kirk’.... were unique, while the madness and damage and wild recklessnes (thank you, Chris Pine!) were remarkably similiar fic to fic.

As a result, my collective impression of the new Jim Kirk (fic version) .... was of a man wholly and completely unsuited to anything beyond -- possibly -- light janitorial work in a friendly, supportive, well-ordered environment. Or a life of violent crime. Probably a short one. Then death or prison.

Anyway .... If you did fannish meta about that Jim Kirk - the fannish collective impression of Mad Bad Jim Kirk -  at least among the various varieties of Kirk+? shippers  - any one writer who read it would probably have a fit. “Not mine! That’s not how I read/wrote/think....”

And off to the fannish races you’d go. 

Because no one person thought of Jim that way. No one person had created that ‘average’ Jim from all of the various indpendent, individual and often mutually incomprehensible Jims out there. 

I have begun to believe that a lot of that is happening/has happened around the more polarizing characters in the 100 as well. (Any fandom no doubt. Snape or Dumbledore anyone? How about Ron Weasley?) 

Bellamy, Octavia, Clarke... it’s very easy to fall into the trap of writing meta about them that strawmans the shit out of everything any particular fan/anti has ever been thought to have said about them, all rolled into the center of the zenn diagrams as though it were all one collective thought. But no one person holds the composite average fannish Bellamy (or whomever) in their heads. They only hold their own particular one, who of course isn’t the collective sum of overlapping parts. 

So ‘fans’ don’t hold ‘strong statement X’ to be true, where strong statement X is a collective impression on the part of the person writing the meta - and not what any one person has actually said in good faith. (Shit stirrers and trolls excluded, of course.) And to try and argue against ‘strong statement X’ will get a lot of baffled/upset pushback because --- people feel like they have to defend themselves against holding that clearly false/wrong/silly view. 

Anyway. I have to keep it mind myself. 

It’s so easy to shorthand, especially when feeling grumpy or feeling like you have to defend a character you like against the collective WRONGNESS ... and so you begin -- “All ‘stans say....” some really weird comphrensive thing no one person has ever actually said.

Or - the ‘Mad Bad Jim Kirk Problem.’