#Especially if you wrote a few magic books in the 2000s

[kjzx]

The author of the les art history blog I reblogged some of the last few drawings from is yikes so just letting you guys know. Can't be bothered to find other post with the drawings but also just letting you know that I don't support that

[a-budding-little-feminist]

The part of this project I've been dreading the most has been addressing JK Rowling. This is the stickiest and most personal part of this project for me.

(This is a screenshot of a post I reblogged 9 years ago on my original tumblr account.)

I grew up loving Harry Potter. I read the first book when I was 6 years old, it really got me interested in reading, fantasy, writing, and magic. Harry Potter was influential to my worldview for the majority of my life and there was very little I felt the need to unpack or deconstruct about it.

Harry Potter swept through my generation like wildfire and JK Rowling went from obscurity to intense fame and fandom in a few short years at the beginning of the 2000s. When a fandom surrounding a certain work sees its creator as not just a creative genius but as an inherently moral person, it can be difficult to unpack the feelings surrounding their actual views.

Being on tumblr, learning about feminism, and making connections through fandom were all happening around the same time for me in my early tumblr days. I know that the way this platform functions creates an echo chamber very quickly based on what other blogs you follow and what posts you interact with. This can lead to very niche discourse around the internet, especially in feminist spaces.

JK Rowling had a few moments that pointed to her interacting with famous TERF accounts on other social media platforms and it started to bleed into her political views that she would post about on her twitter. Before she wrote her "I'm not transphobic, but here are all my transphobic dogwhistles" type manifesto in June of 2020, anyone who had been following her socials and vaguely aware of transgender politics had been alerted to this pattern for JK back in 2018.

This lead to her really doubling and tripling down over the years because the backlash she has received has been loud enough for mainstream media platforms to report on it on a slow news day.

It's been difficult being so aware of how a beloved author can hold such vitriolic views, aligning herself more and more with TERFs as time goes on. It has completely changed my view on the work I loved so much. I used to be an avid Harry Potter fan, but now all I feel is sad and with a bitter taste in my mouth when I try to reengage with it as a media property.

[twistedmusings]

Wake Up From Your Dream

A/N: I don't even know what I can SAY to this one except...I think I was so angry at not writing that I wrote smut outta SPITE? Can I be so angry with myself that I write Malleus smut to just get something out there? I guess I can. Anyways this ask certainly let my imagination fly q wq

Warnings: Non-con making its way into dub-con, manipulation, impregnating sex and Malleus realizing that family is really important.

You needed to find your way back to Night Raven College.

It has been so long since you’ve been back there, laughing and walking around as if there was no trouble in the world. Nevermind that you weren’t anywhere close to home and nevermind that your family was seeking you out.

As long as there was a possibility of you finding your way home, you had pretended that everything was going to be alright.

You were still a stranger to this world, you had no ties to this world and there would be no reason for you to stay once Crowley found your way back home. It was wonderful making friends with such a variety of people and watching them all grow in their own way. The way you knew you would grow from this experience as well.

Watching Ace and Deuce really come into themselves and their Unique Magic, watching the dorm leaders step into their positions of power and truly start to make a name for themselves that would help them out in their own version of the ‘real’ world. Riddle had gotten a wonderful position befitting of his family name, Leona was actually graduating, Azul was said to open a Monstro Lounge in the Coral Sea while Kalim had started investing time in his father’s trade without having Jamil help him. Even Idia was starting to take strides in his own field!

And you were proudest of Malleus. One simple conversation outside of Ramshackle had turned into a friendship you thought you would never forget. It was so wonderful to see him interact more with students, shyly following after you as you pushed him to talk more to others despite his position. That was what college was for, right? To experience new things and find your future--

You just didn’t think that Malleus would take it that far.

Was it because he was spoiled? No, even though he was born in a monarchy he still did his best to remain kind to others, especially his subjects. You were sure he was going to make a kind king in the future, even if you never got to see with your own two eyes.

You pull the hood over your head as you enter a bath house, the fae receiving you with a curious look and a smile as you hand her 2000 madols.

“Will you be booking a room tonight as well?”

“Just a simple shower and bath, that is all.”

If you were to make a guess, you were in the borders of the Valley of Thorns, a more rural area compared to the now rather modernized capital. You had stolen enough money to get you by for a few trips and you knew that places like these were the best at getting you directions. It had been a bit of a grueling trip, testing your knowledge of the fae language as well as avoiding questions about who you were and why you so desperately needed to make your way back to such a prestigious college. In a sense, you kept it minimal.

You needed to get back home.

“It’s fine. You’re fine. It’s fine. You’re fine.”

The mantra you kept repeating to yourself was whispered under your breath as you removed your articles of clothing slowly, still looking around to see if anybody had followed you in. But this is what was raising all of the hairs on your body, wasn’t it? This constant vigilance that didn’t let you sleep at night. You needed to relax, no one else would come this far.

You feel the fatigue melt as several days of walking are washed right off your body, a smile slowly creeping up on your face as you wash the dirt and oil from your hair.

It would be fine.

You would make it to Night Raven College and sneak into the Hall of Mirrors before wishing yourself back home. Crowley had said that they had pinned down the world you lived in and only after you make your wish would the connection be broken. This most likely meant that the connection was still intact since you didn’t even get a chance to to look at the mirror before you were whisked away.

Everything was going to work itself out, that’s the most you could promise yourself.

The bath is heavenly, the temperate water cooling you down from the hot shower as you look around.

There were no other patrons.

“Good.”

You lean back and press your head against a soft pillow of towels, enjoying the silence as you feel your worries soften while thinking back to what you would do when you were back home. It had been so long since you’ve seen some of your friends, your family was probably worried sick and you still had your own plans you wanted to get through.

If you had time, you could maybe drop by to see how your first year friends were doing?

Or were they in their third year now?

Wouldn’t that be a sight to see?

Your eyes close as you let yourself relax entirely, almost succumbing to sleep.

Only for a hand to grab your throat, the other covering your eyes as you hear a familiar chuckle that tenses your body up and breaks your heart.

“I am afraid we will have to postpone this shower.”

Tears well up in the corner of your eyes as you hear the sound of footsteps into the area, most likely the royal guard.

“Lilia--”

“You’d do well to stay put lest they chase after you.”

The hands covering your eyes pull back as you see a teasing smile looking down pitifully at your fresh set of tears.

“It has taken far too long to find you, Your Majesty.”

-----

“HUMAN!”

“[Y/N]-san!”

Lilia smiles as he leads you by the hand, the royal guard following close behind as Sebek and Silver join him.

“He might have already woken up, Father.”

“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? DO YOU KNOW WHAT MY YOUNG MASTER HAS GONE THROUGH?”

“Sebek.” Lilia looks at his charge, “Quiet. Malleus might still be sleeping.”

Silver takes one peek at you, trying to meet your gaze but pulling away when he sees that the veil Lilia had put on you is blocking anybody’s stares from seeing your face. In fact, the second in command had put you in one of the traditional outfits for fae royalty, complete with a light veil that flowed down from the silver circlet placed on your head.

“Excellent.”

Lilia turns his attention to you and laughs.

“He has been absolutely miserable since you left. It was quite a surprise to all of us when you managed to leave the palace walls. None of us thought that you had really done it, especially him, and it really was a hassle to search the palace up and down to see just where our little human had run off to.”

His voice drops to a whisper as he brings your hand up to his lips.

“I’ll make sure to punish you for that later.”

The older fae leads you along as you finally reach your destination, smiling as he knocks on large wooden doors while pushing you slightly to stand in front of everybody.

An answer he was going to get by the end of the night.

“Malleus.”

No answer. He tests the doors and nods when he sees they are unlocked, opening them as he leads you to step inside so that you both could see the figure drenched in moonlight, looking out the window as if awaiting for an answer.

Lilia waits for his other charge to say anything but shrugs as he looks at you with a smile and a bow.

“We are glad to have you back, Your Majesty.”

The door closes with a loud click as you turn your eyes to look up at the imposing figure, your nails digging into your fingertips enough to draw blood as you try to hold back from screaming and shouting at him to stop acting like such a child. Yet you do not wish to anger him, at least to save yourself from any sort of harsher punishment.

So instead you make your way over to the bed--

Only for the fae to turn around, grab your wrist and slam your back into the rough stone wall. Bright green eyes glare down at you as you wince in pain, still looking away from him but letting out a yelp when Malleus’s fingers grab your chin and force you to look at him in the eye.

“Why did you run?”

He really had no idea, did he?

“Because I don’t belong here--”

Malleus tightens his hold on your wrist.

“We’ve discussed this before, child of man, you belong here just like anybody else, you are my Queen--”

“Malleus wake UP!”

You push against his hold but the fae’s hold gets tighter, most likely leaving a mark. But that wouldn’t deter you, not anymore, you were going to tell him.

“I’m not from this world! Coming to Twisted Wonderland was just an accident! A stupid, stupid accident that no one bothered to fix! And just when we were close to making it right you---you--!”

Shit, you’re crying again.

“I have people waiting for me. Just like you had a family waiting for you. I came to the Valley of Thorns thinking that I was supporting you during your coronation but you just--made a decision entirely by yourself and announced me as yours! Why did you lie to me? To them?!”

Malleus’s hold softens as you finally let your tears flow freely, wishing to wipe them away only due to how weak they were making you look.

“...did you not say you loved me?”

“I did! I did but--Malleus after what you did I can’t--”

He lets go of your wrist only to cup your face as he leans down to press his lips on your cheek, his tongue licking up the warm tears as you grab hold of his wrists to try and push him away.

“Do you miss your family?”

You nod as he moves to kiss the corner of your eyes.

“More than anything…”

The dragon fae hums, letting his lips stay where they were a few seconds longer before chuckling as he pulls you close.

“I see--I really have been cruel to you, haven’t I?”

Your heart nearly leaps out of your throat at his words, hands clutching at his robes as you quickly nod. Maybe this was it, maybe it had taken you breaking down to let him see reason?

Please. Please!

“...A family.”

Malleus’s words are like dripped honey as a thought formed in his head, the thought taking shape and form as his hands clutched you tighter.

“Then we’ll just need to make a family of our own…”

-----

Hands clutch at his sheets as Malleus takes in the shape under him.

How beautiful could you be? How complex? To him it was as if not a day had passed since you first met. What had been mere curiosity had delved into deep affection and blossomed into a love that Malleus would only read about in fairytales. The sort of books that led him to believe in soulmates, in happily ever after’s and the possibility of spending the rest of your life with the one you loved.

And yes, you weren’t a fae, but the power of his magic was grand enough to keep you tied to him for the rest of eternity.

His lips can’t help but seek out yours as he thinks about how he is the one who will decide when you die.

This love hadn’t started out like this. What he felt for you had been a bit more relaxed, a lot softer and dreamier. You had confessed to him after his Overblot incident and he had gladly accepted your feelings. He was still keen on finding you a way home and promised himself to not let any moment be wasted in thinking how you soon would be far away from him.

Every day was spent happily with you, the rest of the school year flying by as you both enjoyed the time you still had together.

But Malleus was still a dragon at heart, a fae that yearned and longed to take and take.

So when thoughts about you leaving started to make their way to the forefront of his mind, not even your constant love and affection could keep him from his instincts.

You would leave him to go back to your world. Go back to the normal and the familiar. As you walked your path, you would eventually find someone that enchanted you the way he had, all ending with you walking down a beautiful aisle to your now beloved.

A person that wasn’t...him.

As the days of his third year started to run to a close, his hold on you had become a lot tighter, his kisses a lot more possessive and in the end he had invited you to watch his coronation as he entered his fourth and final year.

With his announcement of making you his Queen.

“Malleus! Please I can’t--I’m not ready--!”

He let Lilia make up some story about you not returning to Night Raven, fooling Crowley into believing that you had found your future in the Valley of Thorns with him. The announcement of you taking up the role of Queen had been surprising but Malleus had woven the story in such a way that there had been talks of having it printed for others to read.

It was a wonderful ending to your love story, you ending up in his arms. But something was missing…

Malleus was glad that you had given him the answer.

Both of your knees were on either side of his waist, your hands clutching at whatever they could as his cock buried itself deep into your cunt. The veil was long forgotten as his robes and your own are thrown carelessly around the room while you wail and scream at being broken into by such a thick length. The small sight of blood on his cock made Malleus smile as he pushed in further, the tightness that was pushing him back slowly opening up for him as he watched you do your best to fit him inside.

It would be fine, you would be fine.

With a growl he finally bottoms out, two hands holding your hips and forcing you down to take all of him as the tip of his cock pressed right under your womb--

He shivers as you tighten up again, leaning down to lick up the trail of tears on your cheek before eating up your tiny whimpers with a hungry kiss.

“Here...right here is where our family will start.”

A large hand takes yours as Malleus puts it right over the small bulge on your stomach, your eyes growing wide as you realize just how deep inside he is. He kisses you again, not daring to break away as he lets a trail of saliva dangle from his lips to yours, the clear liquid disappearing into your mouth as your body relaxed and your eyes grew hazy.

“Do you love me, child of man?”

It was a simple question, but your brain seemed muddled from his kiss. Dragons tended to excrete a certain liquid as they got ready to mate, the experience painful even within his own species but being eased with the help of saliva, sweat or cum.

And with the way he was pressed against you, his sweat matted on your skin as he let more of his spit drip down his tongue and onto yours...surely the answer would come the more you two worked to start your family.

Malleus hardly gave you any time to recover as he started to move, his eyes entranced with the way he disappeared into you with each thrust. Your mind was still muddled but your body was already eagerly accepting him, your legs wrapping around him slowly before locking him in place as he repeated the question.

“Do you love me, child of man?”

You open your mouth but the only word that comes out is a plea for him to go faster.

Which Malleus gladly listens to.

It didn’t take long for him to start pounding into you at a brutal pace, every thrust having the tip of his cock slamming against your womb as your toes curled from the pleasure of taking him so deep. His cock disappeared inside your tiny cunt, shaft now coated not just with blood but with your arousal as well. The bed creaked in protest while the sounds of the bed frame hitting the wall helped him keep time, Malleus leaning back down to kiss you again as your lips this time part eagerly and sucked on his tongue while your hands clutched his shoulders and horns.

Cries turned into happy moans, your sad and abandoned look now one of pure ecstasy as your pussy flutters and tightens around him, pushing him to go harder and harder so he could---!

“[Y/N]--!”

Your legs close tighter around him as you bury your face on the crook of his neck, your orgasm being ripped from you unexpectedly as Malleus halted his movements with a stiff body. He drops his head on your shoulder as your legs keep him in place.

“Malleus...ah--!”

He groans as he paints the inside of your walls white, the warmth of his cum filling your womb to the point that what you hadn’t taken merely dripped out onto the now stained sheets. Malleus lifts his head to look down at you, smiling as he sees your eyes staring up at him eagerly despite how much you had protested before.

“A family…”

You smile as Malleus nods, your hands going all the way to your stomach as you feel the warmth start to twist your brain even more.

“A family with you…how wonderful…”

Arms wrap around him as Malleus kisses a trail from your shoulder to your lips. He just needed to ask you one last time.

“Do you love me, child of man?”

With a hum, your answer is whispered into his ear as Malleus closes his eyes as he realizes that this is where his happily ever after would finally start.

“I love you Malleus, more than anything else.”

[politalysis]

# What has happened to JK Rowling?

Growing up in the early 2000s immediately made Harry Potter a huge part of your childhood. Even if you never read the books or watched the films, you can probably name the three main characters. Even if you weren’t interested in Harry Potter in the slightest, you probably know your Hogwarts house. It’s incredible what Harry Potter did for our generation all over the world. Children would stay up on their eleventh birthdays anxiously awaiting a Hogwarts acceptance letter, knowing full well that owl was never going to come. Our imagination kept the dream of going to Hogwarts and learning magic alive anyway. Even now at the age of 23, I can for the most part keep a conversation flowing with anyone who has read the books or even just watched the films. You could even go as far as to say it was our generation’s Lord of the Rings.

JK Rowling came from very humble beginnings. She suffered with depression in her childhood and early teens, and lost her mother to multiple sclerosis in 1990. These struggles inspired her a lot when writing Harry Potter. She channeled her grief and pain into her writing. In 1992, she married a man she had met whilst living in Portugal, but Rowling suffered domestic abuse at his hands and the couple separated a year later. She lost her job and moved to Edinburgh in Scotland, where she had to sign up for welfare benefits, which left her a poor and depressed single mother spending her time writing in coffee shops. When she finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, twelve publishers rejected the opportunity to publish the book. Once someone finally agreed to publish the book, it became the best selling children’s book of the year.

We all know how the story goes from there. Rowling wrote six more Harry Potter books, eight films were made, and Rowling went from a poor vulnerable single mother to a multi millionaire in the space of a few short years. Harry Potter is now a global brand estimated to be worth about $15 billion. The last four books have each consecutively set the record for the fastest selling book in history. Rowling is now the richest author in the world, with a net worth of $92 million. But as well as money, JK Rowling has over 14 million followers on Twitter. This gives her massive influence as well as money. Rowling seemed to initially use this influence for good, spreading mental health awareness, LGBT inclusivity, interacting with fans and creating a website for all us Harry Potter fans to determine our houses and let our wands choose us.

I remember being 8 years old when Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, and I was attending a religious school where some parents complained and called to ban Harry Potter over the controversial decision JK Rowling made regarding Dumbledore’s sexuality. Rowling had made the claim that Dumbledore was gay. Looking back, the controversy was ridiculous and I can only imagine how embarrassed some of those parents must be. I also remember as I got older, re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I noticed more that the emotion behind Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was one he held with a romantic love. So years later, when several members of the LGBT community attacked Rowling for only deciding Dumbledore’s sexuality after the books were written, I publicly defended her with my knowledge that that simply wasn’t true. I had this image of Rowling in my mind, that she had always been on the right side of this debate. She had always been inclusive and supportive of LGBT people as far as I could see, and I just didn’t understand the issue. Rowling had always expressed a centre-left political perspective, and although I didn’t agree with all her views, they seemed relatively uncontroversial.

When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released, I hated it. It was a literary disaster, completely disrespectful of the original book series, the characters were a shell of the characters we had grown up with, the plot was almost deliberately ridiculous and overly elaborate and I immediately dismissed it as not canon. I have never forgiven JK Rowling for publicly stating the book was canon. She almost destroyed a whole two decades of her own hard work and the franchise that she’d built that had been like a home for a whole generation. All because she wanted to grab a few extra quid for a terrible book she didn’t even write. To this day I can’t help but wonder if she has even read the book. If I had written the masterpiece that is Harry Potter, I would view the Cursed Child as an insult. Perhaps I’ll even write a review one day, just for fun. Rowling also annoyed me by going back on her story, regretting pairing Ron and Hermione together and not pairing Hermione with Harry. Ron and Hermione are my favourite couple from the story, and their relationship had so much meaning. I couldn’t believe that the author who wrote such a clever and consistent relationship between two beloved characters could ever regret it. At this point in my life, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Rowling was losing her mind. It was almost like she was trying to destroy her legacy.

As more years passed, the Fantastic Beasts films were released. The first film looked promising, but the second film was yet another disaster. Again, it was inconsistent with the franchise as we knew it, for some reason Hogwarts was full of people wearing 3 piece suits instead of the robes they wore in the Harry Potter series and Minerva McGonigall appeared as a teacher despite the fact that canonically there is no way she could have been old enough. The film was a disaster with both fans and critics hating it. Amongst this mess came controversy in December 2019. Rowling lost all respect she had once held amongst the transgender community when she made a public statement supporting Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her employment tribunal case against her employer who fired her over transphobic comments. Six months later on June 6 2020, Rowling criticised the term “people who menstruate” and stated: "If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives." Rowling’s views on these issues were heavily criticised by GLAAD and even by the actors from the Harry Potter movies including lead actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

Rowling published a 3,600 word essay in response to the mass criticism of her views four days later. The essay did her no favours, as she wrote: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” She seemed to be suggesting that trans women are often just men disguised as women in order to trick or even harm other women. This obviously angered the transgender community even more, and women’s refuge shelters that allow trans women were reporting no rise in violence as a result, children’s charities that support gender non conforming children were criticising Rowling, she was being made to give back awards and ultimately Rowling was labelled a Trans exclusionary radical feminist, a term often abbreviated to TERF.

JK Rowling is the perfect example of how money and influence can make someone forget their roots so easily. For someone who survived poverty, domestic abuse and sexual assault, she is so lacking in self awareness and how the things she has said and done can be harmful to transgender people. It is widely reported that transgender women are at more risk of harm in female restrooms than cisgender women. With acceptance becoming the norm, transgender people are feeling more safe to come out now than ever before, and so the rise in numbers of the community is huge, especially amongst our generation who grew up with Harry Potter. For a young transgender teenager to grow up wondering how Hogwarts would accommodate them, only to hear the author who gave us Hogwarts in the first place disapprove of equal rights for transgender people, must be very disheartening. However, JK Rowling has proven that she has no idea how powerful the legacy her books created really is. She was tasked with following up the Harry Potter series, and what she gave us was inconsistent and very poorly written screenplays. I have read better sequels on tumblr. Lots of them. Hogwarts doesn’t belong to JK Rowling, it belongs to the fandom. And I’ll be willing to bet my last penny that if Professor McGonigall witnessed any bullying of transgender students in her classroom (or indeed the girls bathroom!) she’d absolutely defend the victim without a moment’s hesitation. Hermione would decorate the Gryffindor common room with little blue, pink and white flags in support of a transgender first year who’d just been sorted into Gryffindor. Luna Lovegood would sit and befriend any trans student who looked lonely, and Ginny would dish out a bat bogey hex to anyone who dared pick on them. No matter what JK Rowling thinks, Hogwarts is not hers to ruin. It is ours. Regardless of what makes us different, Hogwarts is our home.

[lunasilvermorny]

Maria Black - Harry Potter OC

Introduction:

This is my HP OC that I created a long time ago, when I was around 12-13 y.o.  (so, you know... it’s been a while!)

Over the years I’ve developed her story more and more, changed it as I got older and basically kept the headcanon alive for years - but I never wrote about her. Everything I had I kept inside my head, and all the potential stories remained as nothing but a day-dream.

Until today! (or a few days ago, when I came up with the idea.)

It’s time to document this headcanon, even if it’s not going anywhere serious other than some stories and drawings.

I can’t emphasize it enough - I made most of it during the mid/late 2000′s, waaaay before the Cursed Child. So please don’t associate any part of my HC with this terrible excuse of a canon. JKR already proved that her judgement is questionable, so for me the only thing that is canon are the books and my headcanon relates to them and nothing else!

Anyway, let’s dive in!

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Bonus drawing from baby-OP:

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General plot:

Maria is the daughter of the Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestrange and was born a few months before they were sent to Azkaban. Her aunt Narcissa took her in and she was raised by the Malfoy family.

When she was about 5/6 y.o., she went to Azkaban to see her mother. (in the headcanon, her father died in Azkaban). She got scared by the Dementors and when she tried to find the exit, she came upon Sirius’ cell. This encounter changed her life and made her realize that her family is one of the “bad guys”, and she’s decided to leave the first chance she gets.

The day she left to Hogwarts was the last day she spent with her family.

Since it’s a HP OC-insert kind of headcanon, she befriended Harry, Ron and Hermione and was practically the 4th member of this friend group. So most of the plot of the headcanon correlates with the plots of the books, so I’m going to focus more on the individual parts that doesn’t relate the regular plot.

Before she got to Hogwarts she asked to be referred to as Maria Black and not Maria Lestrange. In the future she’d also legally change her name.

Because she’s decided to never go back to the Malfoys ever again, she was basically homeless for the first two summers away from Hogwarts. She mostly relied on magic (around other wizards, so no one will know she’s a minor using magic) and some friends that let her stay with them every once in a while.

(The is a LOT more, so if you’re interested, keep reading ^^ )

After the 3rd year was over, one of her friends that was an exchange student from Beauxbatons, invited her to spend the summer at his house in France. The reason he wanted her to come over was because his father was a coach for the French junior-league Quidditch team and wanted him to let her into the team, so in the future she’d be able to become a professional player. He knew that she plans on filing for Emancipation of minors, that will strip all the legal rights from her family and free her from them - but for that she needed a sufficient income. Her friend’s father was glad to help and after she showed him her skills, he let her into the team. When she was 15, she got into the professional league. (I based this part of the HC on the fact that Viktor Krum was also a student, when he became a Quidditch star.)

Sirius was the most important figure in her life and became like a father figure to her. Through him, she also felt that Harry and her (although not by blood) were related.

For a long time, the ending of the headcanon was that Maria killed herself after Sirius was murdered, but in recent years I’ve reversed this decision and kept her alive for the duration of the book and beyond that.

During her 6th year, after her mother already escaped Azkaban, she was forced to hide in Hogwarts (she wasn’t allowed to keep her role in the Quidditch team anymore), because Bellatrix made it clear that she’s going to kidnap Maria and force her to join Voldemort’s side.

She was able to avoid this fate only up to the plot of the 7th book, that’s when she was finally captured and held hostage in an attempt to force Harry’s hands and save her. However, before she was kidnapped, Maria asked from the Order and Hermione that if she’s ever to fall captive, to prevent Harry from saving her at all cost, since it’s an obvious trap.

Frustrated by the fact that the trap hasn’t worked combined with Maria’s general resistance, Bellatrix tortured her daughter for the entire duration of her incarceration, mostly by using the Cruciatus curse on her over and over again. At a near-dead state, Bellatrix used the Imperius curse on her to try and make her fight on Voldemort’s side at the Battle of Hogwarts, but Maria was too weak and wasn’t much of use to her in the end.

After the fight, Maria was in a coma for a few months and even after she woke up, she had a very long recovery period. The worst expression of it manifested in her PTSD from the Cruciatus curse that caused her to scream in agony almost every time she went to sleep. At some cases she was in such bad shape that no one was able to wake her up.

After a partial recovery, she returned to her pending career as a Quiddich player.

Her relationship with Fred Weasley:

Maria was fairly popular and had dated a few people (in a non-serious way, due to her age), but her first love was Fred Weasley. They’ve started dating in secret when she was in her 5th year.

During the 6th year, she has prepared him for the possibility of the kidnapping and asked him not to come rescue her if it ever happened.

In the summer after her 6th year, to reassure her that they will both survive the war, Fred gave her a ring and told her that after it’s all over, they’ll get married. (It wasn’t a proposal per se, but an attempt to give her hope when she was sure she’s going to die.)

Maria wasn’t aware that Fred died since she almost met the same fate herself at the Battle of Hogwarts, and found out about it from George after she woke up from the coma.

Her relationship with Neville Longbottom:

At the beginning, no one knew she’s Bellatrix’s daughter. People were suspicious of her during year 3 (after all, she is Maria Black) because they thought she was assisting Sirius (and at some point there were rumors that she was his secret child), but it wasn’t until year 5 that the news about her being Bellatrix’s daughter has spread out by Malfoy.

Maria considered Neville a close friend and was afraid of his reaction once he finds out, but even though he had to get over the initial shock, he told her that he knows that she’s nothing like her mother, that she has proven she’s on their side and that he’s not going to judge her over something that is out of her control.

After the Battle of Hogwarts, during her recovery, she’s met Neville’s parents and also spent time with them while she was admitted. The fact that she was tortured by Bellatrix too was a bonding factor and made her and Neville even closer.

After a few years, Neville and Maria have started dating, but their future together in unknown.

PTSD and irreversible damage:

I mentioned that due to the torture she experienced, Maria suffered from PTSD, caused primarily by the Cruciatus curse. She would have recurrent nightmares that caused her to scream and cry in agony, as her body turned and twitched, as if she was under the curse.

In most cases people were able to wake her up, but in more severe cases, she was able to stay in that state for hours. The worst case was a day and a half without a break. She was taken to the hospital by apparition, but the snap switch in location has severely worsen the situation and she was taken to the ER (or a magical equivalent of an ER), where she was under treatment for days until the outburst finally got under control. She was in a coma for two months after that and had to go through the long recovery once more.

In addition to that, Maria also suffered an irreversible damage in her reproduction system. Bellatrix knew she doesn’t share her purist views, so to make sure she doesn’t “taint” the family legacy with a mixed-blood offspring, she completely destroyed the system, to a point that it was almost impossible to reconstruct, even with magic. Maria went through many treatments, but was eventually considered infertile.

Her relationship with the Weasley family:

Maria was accepted as one of the family back when she was still in Hogwarts.

Even though her relationship with Fred was a secret - Molly, George and Ginny knew about it. After Fred’s death, Molly has told Maria that she still views her as a daughter and said she’s always welcome at their house.

She usually spent the holidays with them and came to visit Molly and Arthur almost every weekend. She usually brought game-tickets to anyone that was interested, especially when she’s started playing for the biggest teams. (Nothing will make me do the proper research of all the Quidditch teams, so let’s just suspend our disbelief just a bit more, because I don’t have a specific name.)

Her relationship with the Malfoy family:

During the year she was Bellatrix’s prisoner, she was held captive at the Malfoys’ mansion. Even though Bellatrix showed nothing but cruelty to her, Narcissa secretly tried to help her, mostly by giving her food during starvation punishments, clean her room and at extreme circumstances - heal her wounds.

Even though she hasn’t set her free, Maria appreciated the fact that Narcissa risked herself by helping her, so after she heard about Lucius’s death, she agreed for a reconciliation.

Although there were some push-backs (especially from Ron), she accepted an invitation for dinner at the Malfoys’ mansion, where she reconnected with both Narcissa and Draco.

After that she came to visit every now and then, although not as frequently as she visited the Weasleys.

Maria and Harry:

As I mentioned before, Maria is basically an OC inserted into the main plot, so she’s best friends with Harry, Ron and Hermione.

Harry and Maria always had a sort of sibling connection, that was reinforced by their connection with Sirius. After his death, they referred to each other as the only family they’ve got left. (Even though Maria technically had Tonks, but that’s a story for another time.)

Maria and Ron:

Their friendship was a bit more complicated. Although not romantic in nature, they had a mutual crush on each other at a certain point (but nothing came out of it), and they always had a certain tension afterwards.

They also have very different personalities and got into many conflicts. Ron usually accused Maria of being a fake friend, because she was very friendly in nature and had many friend-groups other than the main three characters. Maria in return accused him of being too judgemental and had a hard time taking him seriously.

However, with all the flaws, they also had many things in common - their love of Quidditch, their disregard to the rules and in general they had a lot of fun hanging out with each other.

Maria and Hermione:

Probably have the rockiest friendship out of the three main characters. They are almost opposites, aside for their academic approach. Maria is more reckless and easy going, and she usually can’t handle Hermione’s stiffness.

Maria was especially sensitive to any criticism of Sirius, and they had many fights over it during their 5th year.

But even though their friendship wasn’t ideal, when it came to real struggles, they were there to support each other, especially emotionally.

Her special connection to Sirius:

Sirius was the catalyst that made her realize that she was born to a dark wizards family. She’s met him only once (before the events of the 3rd book), but it was a strong enough impact that affected her entire world view.

She put Sirius on a high pedestal and saw him as a parental figure. He was the first in the family to openly rebel and she followed his footsteps when she left the Malfoys’ household. This is also the reason why it meant so much to her that she was sorted into Gryffindor and not Slytherin.

During the 3rd year, everyone suspected that she helped sneak Sirius into the castle and was covering for him, since she refused to accept the accusations against him. She didn’t have any proof that he’s innocent and Sirius never told her that he is, but she was determined that he’s a good guy.

After Sirius escaped, he hasn’t kept in touch with her as much as with Harry, but it didn’t discourage her. She had a feeling that he’s hesitant to accept her because she’s still Bellatrix’s daughter and never resented him for it. However, after his death, Lupin told her that Sirius was very proud of her and had greats hopes for her - he just didn’t know how to show it.

Dobby:

Since she grew up with the Malfoys, she has known Dobby her entire life. They were pretty friendly toward each other, but they were instructed not to talk with each other.

Once, she tried to give Dobby clothes to set him free, but because she wasn’t technically a Malfoy, it didn’t work. After that, Lucius forbid Dobby from ever interacting with her again.

AUs:

Did you really think I don’t have like 200 different AUs for this headcanon? Of course I have! I’ve been building this headcanon since I was a literal child!

My favorite AU is the one where Fred didn’t die in the Battle of Hogwarts, and he and Maria got to be together after all. They usually get married (although there is a variation where she broke up with him instead), and in one AU in particular, healers are able to restore her fertility and they have a child together.

Maybe in the future I will make more posts about these AUs.

HPHM

Since Luna is very close with the Weasleys too, in most AUs Maria gets to meet Luna and the two become friends. Luna is also Maria’s private healer, since Maria gets injured a lot during Quidditch games.

---------------------------------------

There is so much more!!

But I will leave something for future posts :)

[exciting]

As requested, books / series I read in 2020 in the order I read them, with a few brief thoughts. (This took me a hot second because there are a few and also I moved cities) Should I keep a consistent goodreads? Yes I should but I didn’t think of that at the time, so bone apple teeth & sorry if I offend you abt your faves x

P.S. I can’t figure out how to do a read more on mobile so long post ahead!

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas - This is one of the most vivid published fantasy books I have ever read... I read it twice in rapid succession. The fandom POPS off. I must say I have issues with certain aspects e.g. fae lore completely ignored à la Twilight, all love interests 500+ years old and technically a different species, etc (I’m not going to deconstruct the entire series here but just know that I could... Nesta deserves better)

Cruel Prince by Holly Black - This fucking slaps, HB clearly has done her research, the lore is near immaculate, and it explores the Fae in such a unique way, tying it to the modern world subtly and seamlessly. My only qualm was that the books felt quite short; truly wish there had been more content.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas (6/7) - So basically I read this in one single, hyperfixated fit which meant I literally locked myself in my room for three days straight and read all six books back to back in a row from morning to the wee hours. Which is not to say it was spectacular; although it was a VERY rich world, sometimes it was too much... this felt like 6 stories in one. Ik she was young when she wrote this but it is my humble opinion that SJM needs a better editor & I personally think Rowan is a grade A asshole / straight up abusive (& personally think the ACOTAR Tamlin plot was born from that?). It’s good but not as good as ACOTAR. Skip-read the last book. 

Grishaverse (Shadow and Bone) by Leigh Bardugo (3) - This is essential to read before SOC but was very much simply a YA fantasy book, although the world was cool and the way the love plot played out was, imo, a subtle middle finger to the fantasy trope. Felt very much aimed at younger readers though? Really liked the sandwhich structure of the Proluge and Epilogue, especially in #2

Six of Crows series by Leigh Bardugo (2) - INCREDIBLE continuation of Grishaverse, better than the original series by a mile. It has the range, the diversity, the representation (the male lead is a disabled asexual and still the most cunning of the entire cast of characters), the plot is phenomenal, and it manages such a well rounded plot in only two books which means nothing is stretched out or squeezed in more than need be. Deserves all the praise it gets.

King of Scars series by Leigh Bardugo (0.5/1) - Personally I don’t consider this book canon, and while it’s nice to see the rest of Nina’s journey & the world again & everyone else, I don't like it. I will, however, be reading book 2 when it comes out, so shame on me, I suppose.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (1/1) - this was incredibly cool although it went off in a completely different direction than I thought it would based off the first few chapters? One of my favourite YA-author-debuts-New-Adult novels in 2020 though!

Crescent City by Sarah J Maas (1/1) - This was supposed to be SJM/s New Adult debut, although personally I would put her other series in New Adult, and I can’t say a remarkable amount was different with this except they said “fuck” and “ass” a lot. WHY is the romantic interest 500 years old AGAIN. I just... don’t... I just don’t think it was necessary... the world was cool though, and the last half of the book was riveting, but the beginning was quite slow and I thought the sword thing was predictable. I am interested to see where this goes though.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab (3) - This world is so fucking cool... four Londons aka parallel universes & the one in ‘our’ world is set in industrial era London. Magic, girls dressing up as boys, thieves, pirates, royalty... it all just slaps. Schwab is an incredible writer & I was completely immersed.

Midnight Sun by SMeyer - I didn’t think anything could possibly detract even further from the Twilight story but I was sorely mistaken... seeing the stalking from Edward’s POV - and it was worse than depicted in Twilight, for the record - completely obliterated any sort of romance the first half of the original book may have portrayed. I still hold the opinion that the entire series would have been better if some kind of vampire lore had been abided by, if only to see all of the villains thwarted by someone dropping a bag of rice on the ground, forcing them to have to count them all.

An ember in the Ash by Sabaa Tahir  (3/4) - This was just a very stereotypical ya fantasy series, emphasis on the YOUNG... it wasn’t anything to write home about but I remember quite enjoying it at the time. 

The Power by Naomi Alderman - This book is FUCKING incredible and EXCEPTIONALLY thought provoking... essentially women alone develop a power of electric shock etc. and then take over the world from men, and it explores feminism and the balance between equality & tipping the scales in the other direction. Written by a friend of M.Atwood in a similar tone to handmaids tale, I would say? Content warning; there are some exceptionally graphic scenes in the latter half of the novel. 

Hamlet by Wllm Shksp - I can’t believe it took me this long to finally read it but Ophelia is my favourite name in the entire world & we love to see a woman go batshit (although she didn’t deserve that). 

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas - this was unsettling in the best sense of the word... it was a little slow & honestly more of a concept than a big reveal, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I finished it? A Secret History vibes but make it blurry like the memory of all those dystopian novels you read when you were young?

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue by V.E. Schwab - This is without a doubt my book of the year, and probably the best book I read in 2020? I stayed up all night on a friend’s couch reading it, got a book hangover and reread the ending, and then thrust it upon my mother who doesn’t usually read but read this, and loved it just as much. HIGHLY recommend and you HAVE to read it, it’s beautiful and endearing and just plain wonderful.

Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat (3/3) - I went into this knowing it was going to be terrible, because I had received a blow by blow telling me as much; although I must say that it did learn a remarkable amount of new words, the books did get better as the series went on, and it did have a rather charming ending? BIG content warning for almost everything.

Sapiens by Yuval Harari - mind-expanding & must recommend for everyone, there is everything in this and I daresay everyone should posses this kind of knowledge? I listened to it as an audiobook (which I recommend because it’s rather hearty) but will be buying this in hardcopy & rereading it with annotations. 

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - Without a doubt, one of the most beautiful novels I have ever read, and certainly the most beautiful portrayal of the story of Achilles and the battle of Troy I have ever seen. Patroclus deserved the justice that was given to him in this book; indeed, all of the characters were written with justice and grace. Highly recommend.

Trials of Apollo by Rick Riordan (3/5) - Apollo is my favourite Greek God, and the sexiest greek god, and Rick Riordan’s writing slaps, as always. It did pain me to see Apollo, the sexy immortal, have to be forced back into a 16 year old’s body but everything else? Whimsical & wonderful, as expected. 

These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong - a retelling of Romeo and Juliette, except it’s set in Shanghai in the 1920′s, and the protagonists already have a history. Very well done, characters are incredibly diverse in race, sexual orientation, gender, and ability / disability (and honestly, representation has never appeared so effortless and elegant). Also it includes a monster and possible magic. Incredibly underrated and highly recommend.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix. E Harrow - this was such a unique concept, and truly captivating, the story was charming, and felt like the kind of beautiful fairytale you would read as children but with more grit? ABSOLUTELY recommend this one

The Pisces by Melissa Broder - I hated this so much, not my vibe at all. Mermaid smut x therapy but make it cynical and judgemental (I know there was a moral in there but that’s not my point) also the dog dies.

Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith (1/2) - really interesting & unique concept (all unwritten novels / ideas reside in a special library that is part of Hell and then sometimes the books can come to life) however, my first thought upon reading this was “this reads as if it’s stemmed from one of those writing prompt tumblr posts” bc of the tone and whatever and as it turns out I was somewhat correct, it did stem from a short story (not bad just obvious). It did kind of settle down as it went on but I found reading it kind of a drag, and I don’t think I will read the second one.

Abandon by Meg Cabot - 1. Meg Cabot’s writing always fucking slaps 2. Hades and Persephone but make it modern & very 2000′s & somehow kind of unique 3. I literally loved this, sue me

Medusa Girls (Sweet Venom) by Tera Childs - Like Percy Jackson except they are descendants of Medusa so they are Gorgons and have fangs & venom (hence the title). Gave me very 2000′s vibes? Quite cool but tbh I found the books quite short (like two hours each, if that)? Do NOT read the GoodReads description of the book before you read it, you will spoil it for yourself.

Bring me their Hearts by Sara Wolf - In my opinion, this is one of the most underrated YA series I read in 2020. The heroine is endearing, self aware, witty, and loves to look pretty even while kicking ass which in my opinion is an incredibly underrated trait. Also, immortality without being hundreds of years old? VERY sexy. HIGHLY recommend. 

A Deal with the Elf King by Elise Kova - High commendation to be given for the fact that it is a standalone and yet manages to fit in the plot of what would usually be a full fantasy trilogy without cutting corners or being a million miles long? Also sweet storyline & beautiful ending? If you liked ACOTAR you should read this as a “what would have / could have been had SJM had a different editor” (No shade I promise).

The Iron Fae by Julie Kagawa (4/4 + novellas) - Incredibly detailed faerie set around the modern world & our current use of technology & iron in it. Very neat adventure-style series, by the time I read the last novella I was well and truly done with the world (aka provided enough content to be fulfilling). Was definitely aimed at a younger audience though, NO smut / smut was brushed over.

The Modern Faerie Tales by Holly Black (3/3 SS) - This is technically the prequel to Cruel prince, set in the modern world, but with the fae world inside it as it traditional? All I have to say is that it is excellent & I highly recommend it.

Bridgerton series (The Duke and I) by Julia Quinn (9/9) - I read this after watching the Netflix show twice through and I am obsessed, although the books were not quite as elegant as the show, and some parts that made me cringe either by their portrayal (it is very firmly set in the 19th century and thus some things are not handled with tact or grace), the characters were exceptionally loveable and I am so excited to see where the show takes them! Lovely language & an abundance of words I had never seen before (always a plus). 

[eggs-love-loki]

Long post warning and spoiler warning for the Artemis Fowl movie

Here’s a collection of things I wrote down that offended me as a reader of the Artemis Fowl books. I have re read the first three books in the last few days so my memory is fresh.

Artemis II has morals. Disgusting. He is shocked and offended when the news calls Artemis I a criminal. In the third book, Artemis II is literally offended when his father wants to stop being criminals.

Artemis II also seems to be not only in good physical shape but is ACTIVE. VOLUNTARILY! This child was known to look like a vampire because spending all day looking at computer screens bleached the life out of his skin and you’re going to tell me he can SURF???

His dad (Artemis I) is a decent father. Leaves a lot but is at least a kind and loving father when home. Book Artemis I is not a good dad until he gets a near death experience and some fairy magic. Artemis II expects their first conversation after Artemis I wakes up to be about the family business, which I think indicates a lot about their relationship before Artemis I goes missing.

Artemis’ mom is dead??? (At least that’s what I got from the therapy conversation) Disney’s love of dead mothers strike again I guess. His mom is actually the only moral one in the family and is one of the primary motivators of his few selfless actions that occur in the first book.

This was the worst one so far- Calling Butler not only by his first name, but by a nickname from his first introduction. He doesn’t go by his first name until he is shot in the heart and literally seconds away from death in the third book, sharing his name with Artemis before being on his death bed is wholly against his code as a bodyguard.

Juliet Butler is now Butler’s niece instead of younger sister and is the same age as Artemis instead of older. I don’t know why they did this. I was expecting a forced romance plot with Juliet and Artemis but that didn’t happen, so I can’t figure out what the purpose of this change was.

Butler (Dom 🤢) and Juliet are black instead of European-Asian. I’d say it’s good that they’re still POC EXCEPT for the fact that they white washed Holly, a main character, and then moved the black character status to side characters when instead we could’ve had a black main character and European-Asian side characters. You don’t get diversity points when you took away book canon diversity. And, Butler and Juliet’s roles are significantly lessened, especially since one of Butler’s primary roles is being an actual father figure for Artemis. Since Artemis I is a decent father, Butler’s father figure role seriously lacks the emotional connection that exists in the book because even when Artemis I wasn’t missing he was still a cold and absent father. Butler was Artemis II’s only real dad for the first few books.

It doesn’t look like Holly even tries to be shielded in the troll fight? I know they have to be wiped anyways but she still wouldn’t just fly around in front of them willy nilly. Actually, I don’t think they’re using shields or camo foil at all since they transported the troll with no shielding.

I’m still upset at Root being a woman. They gave Holly a traitor father plot, which may be something in the later books that I don’t remember, but it’s not anywhere near as powerful or interesting a sub plot as Holly’s book sub plot of being the first female LEPrecon officer. I know 2020 is a lot different than early 2000s but there’s still value and power in a female character being the one breaking glass ceilings.

Josh Gad is a short human but idk why they couldn’t CGI him to be actually as short as the other magic people. Mulch is not a giant dwarf. He is a literal dwarf. This is the only complaint I have with Mulch though, he was probably closest to his book version so he passes.

Artemis II doesn’t believe in fairies at first when him being a child who still believes in fairies is the whole driving motivation of his big plot in the first book.

As I suspected, this is kind of a blending of book plots. Missing/recovering the father from the first two books, with Opal Koboi acting as the big bad. Artemis does kidnap Holly but it’s with an intention of saving his father instead of selfish motivations. I’m still appalled that they gave him morals. Disgusting.

I’d be mad at them speeding up his friendship with Holly but it’s cute so I’ll let it slide. If she hadn’t punched him in the face I wouldn’t have let it slide but she did punch him so it’s okay.

Sequel bait! Also, Artemis calls himself a criminal mastermind when he’s only done a single criminal thing and it was for the greater good lmao. Kidnapping Holly BARELY counts when you became best friends and let her go in like an hour. Also, the Fowls are apparently protectors of the secret of fairies now. Which Artemis does kind of eventually become that in the books but it’s largely out of self interest (getting to keep patents over his adapted fairy tech and such) and only partially out of friendship with specific fairies.

It’s kind of impressive how many elements they put into the movie from the first book while having a completely different plot than the first book.

Overall, I wish that they had done a more faithful adaptation to the books, but it’s not a terrible movie. Not great, but not the worst movie I’ve watched. Not anywhere close to as good as the books.

Also, I think that the book has a much more opinionated feeling than the movie does. A lot of the scenes in the first book that occur in Haven are about the problems with the LEP (who are, obviously, representing the police force). A lot of it is discussion of lack of funding, lack of diversity, the political aspects of getting promoted to command. The book has things to say. Not just about LEP/police forces but about society as a whole, later books address gang violence, address billionaires and selfishness leading them to watch the world burn. The billionaire CEO villain of the third book literally says something like “I’m dying in a few decades, I have no family, no kids, I have no reason to care about the next generation, so I’ll get rich and the world can burn for all I care.” The books have opinions about things it talks about. The movie has nothing. It doesn’t take any stances about ANYTHING the books address. It’s very hollow.

(And, let me say I blame none of this on the actors. The kids did a great job, I think they have a good future because these were solid performances. It’s not the fault of his actor that Artemis isn’t book Artemis, it’s not the fault of Holly or the Butlers that they had their race changed, that’s all on the writers, directors, and casting directors. I think that the actors all played what they were given well, but what they were given wasn’t good.)

[allthevmff]

Find Afrocurl’s work // AO3 // LJ  interview from vmfictitious // originally posted Mar. 20th, 2011

How did you get into Veronica Mars fandom?

Somewhere in the middle of S2, a friend of mine from high school started to talk about this show and how much I’d like it. At the general description of a high school detective, I borrowed her S1 DVDs and devoured the show in three days.  After that I started to discover fandom, mostly because I used Inigo’s transcripts to keep myself up with what the show was doing before I could watch live.

Shortly after starting the show, I had this job where I spent too much time in an office and was easily bored. I used a bunch of downtime to read fic and post in a message board (FanForum for anyone curious.)  When that job ended (thankfully) I had all of this spare time and just sort of fell into writing.

Were you an experienced writer when you started writing for VM?  If so, what kind of writing had you done, and/or what fandoms had you written for?   If not, was it really intimidating to post your first story?

I’m a little fuzzy on these details right now, but I wasn’t that experienced when I started writing in VM. I think I had a story or two written in The OC before I posted here, but I had some great support from a few friends (sarah_p //  Sarah's Crack ) for one was a big support) when I did post my first story.

What was it about Veronica Mars that interested you?  Why did you feel compelled to write for this particular show?

I really fell for the characters when I started to watch. Veronica was such a compelling character, and as I kept watching I fell more in love with Logan, too. I felt compelled in that post-S2 summer to see the relationship between Logan and Veronica explored (as so many other people did.)

Are you creative in other media for fandom (vidding, icons, etc.)?

I pick up making icons here and there, but I don’t think I have the same skill as many other people do. It’s a different creative medium, and one that I think stretches a different part of my brain.

What was the best moment for you, in fandom?  (Not necessarily a moment in the show, but fandom itself.)

I think it was the moment when I found myself in a position to go to all of these events around LA and San Diego. I found that people around LJ were interested as a result because there was something for people to enjoy that I had been able to capture.

If you had a magic wand, and could change VM fandom in any way, past or present, what would you do?

I wish S3 hadn’t been so divisive—it’s spoiled so many people on the show, and when you still love parts of it, but not all of it, it’s hard to stay positive around other people.

Of your accomplishments in fandom/cyberspace, which are you most proud of?

Weirdly, I think it’s little things I’ve done that bring a smile to my face. Sharing my time with the cast with others in any way. That’s not just the picspams when I went to an event, but these moments where I could get autographs or phone calls to other people. At different times, I’ve been able to make a friend’s birthday just a little brighter with a message from the cast (Sarah and another friend M.)

What’s your favorite VM episode and why?

I go back and forth on this answer all of the time, but I think it’s Ain’t No Magic Mountain High Enough. In part because it was the first episode I remember watching live, and also because I’m a sucker for banter between Logan and Veronica. That whole episode is filled with it, even if they aren’t together as a couple.

What’s your least favorite episode and why?

Blast from the Past—I just can’t get behind the mystery of the week, or what Jackie does to Veronica as a way to keep Wallace to herself.

How do you feel about season 3?

I’m a mixed bag on the subject. I think that the first arc has promise, though it didn’t do much to satisfy my need for Logan and Veronica in a healthy relationship. I’m not a fan of how Piz was introduced, or what his purpose was in the long run.

The Dean O’Dell arc lacks heart (and the Hearst rapist does too when I look at it), and the last five are just all over the place.

In total, I haven’t brought myself to rewatch the whole season since it aired, but I made a promise to myself at some point I would (I plan to live-blog all of the episodes, but I only managed to finish the first three.)

If you met Rob Thomas, what would you say to him?  (Assume that you have taken magical drugs that enable you to not be tongue-tied and you can completely speak your mind.)

I briefly met him and talked to him during season three, but if I could have a longer conversation, I’d really want to understand what his motives were for Logan and Veronica in that season. It seemed that the show always had Logan and Veronica together off screen so that the audience had no real reason to understand those later break-ups.

If you could talk to the writing staff, what question(s) would you have for them?

I’m always interested in some of the specifics of the room—are there any writers who cater to writing for certain characters? What characters do you like to write more than others? I think I’m just interested in their process more than anything else.

Writing

Which story of yours is your favorite, and why?

I’m really a fan of “The Black Hole” because I think it was a different sort of writing exercise for me. I also think I was really into the moment when I wrote it, and it shows. I can’t remember how long it took me to write, but I think it was a pretty quick write once I had the idea solidified in my head.

Are there any stories of yours that are (to your surprise) fan favorites?

Not really a surprise, but I love the reaction I had to Rational Thought. My Piz issues just got one big escape in that piece and everyone who read it had a similar reaction.

Do you (or did you at first) feel uncomfortable posting R or NC17 rated stories?

I think I was a bit apprehensive the first time (especially since it was my first fic in the fandom), but as I’ve written more and more of those fics, I’m more comfortable with the ways of writing it. I also love all of my betas who help me through the mechanics of writing it.

If you could start over and rewrite any of your stories (assume unlimited time and you would be paid for your efforts, because this is a fantasy), which story would you choose, and what changes would you make?

I’m not proud of Compulsion as it was written in the end, so I’d work there and really craft the narrative more than it is now. It’s not that it’s not beta-ed, but that it wasn’t really planned or structured beyond what is written. I think there was promise in the beginning and it floundered.

Do you write for any other fandoms?

I write here and there in a few other fandoms, but most of my work is in VM.  Some of the other shows are harder to get a feel for, so much that I don’t know if I have the character voices down.

Do you write any original works, and if so, can we see any of them?  Have you ever taken any writing classes?  Have you ever published anything? Won any competitions?

I wrote a few pieces of original fic, which are at my writing community. I haven’t been one to take a writing course, but in high school I had an award-winning poem at the local county fair.

That piece, I wrote was in my junior year of high school, spring semester (so let’s call is March 2000.) We had to write an emulation of Langston Hughes’s “I Am”, and I went all out—confused kid to the max. My teacher ate most of it up, and had me submit it to the Fair.  It went on to win the best poem for high schoolers, the best high school piece and Best in Show for all student work. I have three lovely ribbons, a paper weight to show for it.

What other VM author influenced you the most?  Do you have a favorite VM story (by another author)?

I spent most of my time reading things from Loveathons and Fic From Mars when I was reading, so I guess any of those authors. I really love dark_roast’s ( dark_roast) style. I think mutiousmuse and truemyth (TrueMyth) each have some amazing pieces, too. What’s great about being part of fandom is learning how much else you have in common with authors you love. I’m still friends with Musey and Truemyth after I met them at Comic Con in 2006.

Overall, I think my favorite story is Finite Erasure (TW), which puts me in the camp of loving angst. I worked with Trixx (Trixx) as she wrote it and I think I fell for the story she was telling and how much it hurt along the way.

What fanfic do you wish you’d had the idea for and written yourself?

If I had a mind for her particular brand of crazy, I’d have love to have written One True Pair, because the creativity and perspective amaze me.

Who are your favorite traditional authors?  Do you have a favorite book or series?

I love Oscar Wilde’s wit; I love Fitzgerald’s use of flawed characters. When I was in college I became a huge fan of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Sadly I’m not a huge book fan, though I do love words and compelling stories. Persuasion is one of my favorite stories, along with The Alchemist. I found myself more easily distracted by television as a kid and when I do get a book, I tend to read some fluffy chick-lit.

 Getting to Know You

To which character in VM do you feel you are the most similar, or what situation in VM reminds you of your own life?

Even though I don’t write her enough, I feel like I’m a slightly less tech-savvy version of Mac. I wasn’t one to have boyfriends in high school, and I think that just influences my outlook now.

Share a fun memory with us, something related to fandom.

This moment at an event in San Diego where my friends and I spent a good five minutes trying to remember the Eleanor Roosevelt quote from Logan’s voicemail.

Or the time I had Jason write a message to my journal without him really knowing where it was going.

Dog person, cat person, neither or both?

Cat person! My cat Auric loves everyone he meets, and wants to keep me from my computer when I leave it open in his presence. He really loves to sit on my keyboard when I’m not around.

What was the happiest day in your life (that you can share with us)?

December 12, 2000—the day I got into college. I’m pretty lame most of the time.

The apocalypse is on us.  You’ve got five minutes to gather your stuff before you flee (assume that your loved ones are already safe).  What do you take?

This is going to be pretty typical, but my laptop, and external hard drives, so I’m not without my pictures. Maybe a few of my autographs and old-school photos too.

What don’t we know about you, that we should know?

I’m not nearly as interesting as I sound on the internet. ;)

 The Nuts and Bolts of Writing

Do you consider yourself a stickler for grammar, or do you prefer a more casual approach?  Specifically, serial comma: for or against?

I’m weirdly a stickler for grammar when I’m not the one writing. I’m usually for the serial comma, which I blame on years of it being grilled into my head from school.

What grammar issue do you constantly have to struggle with?

 Spelling—I’m horrible at it most of the time.

 Do you have any writing reference books you can’t live without?

 I have a few copies of writing guides tucked away in my garage, but I don’t regularly look at them when I’m writing.

Are you a plotter or a “pantser”? (Do you outline your stories or do you write “by the seat of your pants”?)

It really depends on the story. I have some basic idea of a fic when I start to write it, but there are times when I only know that general outline and other times when I have a better plan.

There’s one story that’s been buried on my computer that’s plotted more than anything else I write. There are notes on how each chapter should work, but I only did that because it was a true multi-chapter fic.

My other fics that have turned into WIPs are not as plotted as they should be.

 What’s your favorite point-of-view to write?

 I love third-person more than anything else. It gives you the flexibility to talk about more than one person in the context of the story.

What type of writing is your favorite to write (dialogue, plot, action, interior monologue, description, sex scene, etc.)?  Your least favorite?

Dialogue—no questions. I love banter as much as anyone else.

My least favorite—probably sex scenes. They’re awkward to figure out, positions, how clinical but not too clinical.

Do you listen to music while you write?  Do you listen to different music depending on what you’re writing?

I do, unless I’m watching TV. My music doesn’t change depending on what I write, though maybe it should. My poor iTunes has been known to be demonic when I read fic, though it doesn’t do that as often when I’m writing.

What inspires you to write?

 I like motivational moments that can drive a point home—so I tend to write shorter pieces that are about emotions instead of plot driven.

What blocks you from writing?

Lack of time. The inability to express what I’m looking for.

 Specifically for Afrocurl!

What surprised you the most about Jason Dohring in person (that you can share with us)?

He’s a genuinely sweet person who adores his fans and what they do for him. I’d never had too many experiences with actors before I met him and he set the stage for being kind to fans.

How is he like Logan?  How is he not like Logan?  Did he do anything that freaked you out after watching him on TV so much?

I think he has Logan’s physical ticks—hair rakes and the like.

 He’s not as precise with language as Logan. In person he’s sort of like any other California guy I’ve met.

Which story of yours would it appall you the most to find out that Jason had read?

The Weevil and Logan story. I think he’d blush and be shocked at the subject more than anything.

Which of your celebrity encounters thrilled you to death, but the rest of world could care less?

The girl who loves politics was thrilled by meeting Justice Scalia at my college. Though I’m sure I’m the only one who can appreciate it now.

We know you do a lot for charities.  Do you have anything coming up that we should know about, that you’d like us to support?

Since Sweet Charity has ended, I haven’t done much work for charity recently. I’ve been a little too busy with the rest of life to help out with the Queensland floods and the like.

What’s your dream job?

Working at a high school teaching either Government or US History, maybe AP if that’s an option.

Your life seems to be going through a lot of changes right now.  How do you see yourself ten years from now?...family, job, hobbies, etc., anything you want to share with us.

I’d love to have a stable job, with friends and family nearby for support. I can’t hope for much else than that right now.

 Find Afrocurl’s work // AO3 // LJ

Source: X

reposted from vmfictitious // originally published on Mar. 20th, 2011

[monysmediareview]

Juliet, a novel by Ann Fortier Review

This time I have a review for a one-off book rather than a series for you guys and it may have actually reached the top of my list for favorite books ever. Juliet, a novel by Anne Fortier was so incredibly good I worry I’ll never be able to fully describe the way it made me feel reading it. I read this book incredibly slow because the idea of finishing it made me so upset; I didn’t want it to end but also found myself thinking about it constantly.

The Shakespeare of it All

When I found this book at goodwill, I figured I’d grab it just to see what it was. Having a degree in theatre and having studied Shakespeare in Europe, I even work for a Shakespeare specific theatre; I figured it would at the very least be interesting. And I was right, but for the wrong reasons. Shakespeare is barely mentioned as the book is actually about the true story of Romeo & Juliet.

If you don’t already know, Shakespeare stole the story of Romeo & Juliet from an Italian poet who wrote the story in the early to mid 1500’s. That story may have also been stolen from another author from France, and maybe even someone else before that. Thanks to the lack of records or copyright laws, there’s not really a way to be sure but we do know that Shakespeare was not the first, only the most famous. And to be fair, his story is much more intense since it takes place over the course of less than a week while the original plot takes months. There are a few other differences between the two but the gist of it is, two star crossed lovers separated by family feuds and ending in tragedy. And this book takes us through all of that drama and gives us a beautiful and dramatic ending to it all.

The Real Story

Some of the things I loved about this book were actually the historical events and characters. The three families in the story, the Tolomeis, the Salimbenis, and the Marescottis were apparently all real families that had feuds and stories fairly similar to what happened in this book. Fortier wrote in her authors note that she did take some liberties with the history for the sake of the story but that she tried to be faithful to them. I do highly suggest reading her author’s note if you get the book because for me, it made it that much more special.

I think that her ability to blend the past and present was well executed and emotional in ways I wasn’t expecting. I really felt the connection between the Romeo and Giulietta of 1340 and the Romeo and Guiletta of the early 2000’s. Her ability to connect these people not only by blood but by fate and destiny and emotion and passion is unmatched and she managed to do it in roughly 500 pages.

Divine Intervention

I am normally not a fan of books with religious undertones, especially without some kind of supernatural explanation to it but in Juliet it really didn’t strike me as prevalent even though it was. The Virgin Mother and the “curse on both your houses” are two huge driving forces behind this story. Both felt like completely natural pieces of the puzzle rather than an overbearing push for Catholic guilt which could have easily been the case in a story set in Italy spanning 600 years with generational family drama. There was a real feeling of the Virgin Mother being the overseer of the fate of these people and bringing them together, to righting the wrongs done in the past. In a lot of other books this might have felt preach-y or overbearing but it actually made fate feel real.

Love Story

I’m a sucker for a good romance book; I will read love story after love story after love story, but even I can get tired of the same plot over and over again. Sometimes the misogyny gets tiring and I want these female led stories to be about more than finding a man to complete them and this book gave me exactly that.

The story starts and ends with Julie Jacobs’ family. She needs to learn about her family, about her history, where she’s really from. I got so sucked into her journey of self discovery that I kind of forgot it was a love story for a while. And that kind of messed me up when we got there because I had missed a lot of the chemistry build up that I had to think back about to even realize it was there. I was so focused on her learning about her father and visiting banks and libraries that I nearly missed her falling completely in love. But in the end it was one of the most passionate and tumultuous love stories, because when you’re Romeo & Juliet, how could you have anything else?

My Personal Opinion on R&J

Following that I want to talk quickly about Romeo & Juliet. If you’ve taken a Shakespeare class or even just a high school English class at some point you’ve probably talked about this. Sometimes it gets glossed over because it’s one of the well known stories and they don’t usually waste time on it but I’m going to.

Classes like this tend to brush these lovers off as horny teenagers who are in lust and get married so they can bone each other but I think that’s a sad approach. I’ll even admit that was my view on it for a while, but not now. It’s a love story. It’s the love story. So to read an in depth story like this that doesn’t diminish the real feelings they had for each other was very pleasing. I might write a whole thing about some of my Shakespeare opinions one day but for now I will leave you with this:

To thine own self be true. Shakespeare is theatre. It isn’t mean to be read, it’s meant to be staged. And the beauty of theatre is that every single production of every play is different (at least it’s supposed to be. Some directors have yet to learn this, but I digress). This means that everyone interprets things differently, so while I think Romeo & Juliet are the ultimate lovers, you might think they were just horny teenagers. And that’s okay.

Generational Drama

Generational stories like this hold a special place in my heart. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but the idea of fate and family and stories that span hundreds of years just really get me. I won’t go on about this too much because I’ve already mentioned it a few times but I love the redemption that Romeo and Guilietta get through their ancestors, even if it was 600 years later. I love that their love lasted generations and the thought of how the spirits of the original couple feel looking at themselves, their ancestors, finally bringing their families together chokes me up a little if I’m being honest.

Alessandro

I was really not counting on Alessandro being such an important piece of this story, but his evolution as a character was a fucking ride. Going from a security guard/driver, to basically an undercover cop, to potential lover, to fake identity, to actual lover, to liar and cheat, to being framed and actually being a lover and savior was intense. Ideal. I loved and hated him through the whole thing but I was very happy with where he ended up.

Symbolism

There is so much symbolism in this book. The gems being the color of their eyes, the golden statues, the paintings, the maestros. All of it. It can be found on almost every page. But there were a few that really stood out to me.

The cencio and dagger constantly popping up as important of the story for Giulietta was not lost on me. I’m still tossing around what I think it really means, actually, but where I stand now is the idea of an official marriage and what makes it official in the eyes of the Virgin Mother. Romeo and Giulietta weren’t considered actually married because they never consummated and it didn’t happen on the cencio if it had. So for it to have been hidden in Julie’s bed after that weird secret ceremony with Alessandro, was interesting because they also weren’t really married. Not the way we think of now. It just shows that marriage isn’t defined by sex (which I think futher proves my point that this was never just about horny teenagers. As well as the entirety of this book), or by words. Marriage is defined by love and commitment.

And then there’s the River Diana. Another thing I haven’t quite landed on a full meaning for, but I know what it made me feel. It’s hard to put into words, but the first word that came to mind was literally symbolism. This story, this curse, killed Diana, Julie’s mother. And now Julie made it to the statue, and she found her Romeo and in the moment that she almost dies it’s by drowning in the River Diana. This whole time she was drowning in what her mother started for her and it’s Alessandro that pulls her out and saves her from it. Being with him is what keeps her alive, from being swept away by this curse the way her mother was. So maybe it’s symbolic of the end. Of not falling into the same pattern or being swept into the same current.

Plot Twists

This story never went where I thought it was going to go. I don’t actually want to talk about the plot twists too much because I want people reading this to be as surprised as I was. Not like I didn’t spoil things before but there are still quite a few things I didn’t mention that really fucked me up if I’m being honest.

If you’re a fan of plot twists, please read this book.

Ye Olde Slow as Hell Language

I don’t want to scare anyone off here - most of the book is in modern language and even the parts that take us back to 1300 aren’t that bad. But they are far more detailed and can sometimes just feel really slow. But all of the information is really important so I wouldn’t skip it. But the language and the flow of the story really slows things down in these parts and it’s what made me take so long to finish this book. Well that and the fact that I just wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I finished it too soon.

However, I will give the author credit for having parallel story lines set so far apart. She really pulled it off and made the entire thing just so magical. By the time they died, I didn’t want to leave that world. I wanted to stay and watch them be happy but then I got to go back to Julie and watch her get her happily ever after

Janet’s Character Development

Right off the bat we’re supposed to hate Janet. And we do. She’s awful and when she shows back up we kind of hate her even more because of what she’s been doing. I didn’t feel sorry for her in the slightest. Up until the last few chapters of the book, these twin sisters felt very estranged so to go from that to them being a fantastic duo that you root for was a twist I wasn’t ready for but whole heartedly welcomed. It was a nice change of pace to see a female character arc into a better person instead of someone who got increasingly bitter. Still not a huge fan of the character but she ended up being kind of important and at least it passed the Betchdel test, right?

In Conclusion

I think this might be my favorite book now. High recommend.

[vfdarkness]

Love AVFD, the season finale was amazing and I can't wait to see what you do in season 2! I'm curious, what are some of your favorite horror podcasts?

Thank you! 

I’ll answer - at the same time - I’ll give the caveat that I’m less inspired by other horror podcasts for AVFD and more so by horror and other sorts of fiction (magical realism, weird fiction, surrealism) in other mediums. I might make a follow up post to this one in the future and list out a few books and authors that’ve been especially influential for the show. 

For podcasts though - 

Welcome to Night Vale was what got me to listen to modern fiction podcasts. It’s not horror per se, but walks a strange line that I appreciate and the single narrator radio host format is inspiring for those of us too poor to put on larger productions. I heard the show while living in Chicago back in 2013. At the time I tried doing a Twilight Zone-esque podcast called The Night NeverEnding (you can’t find it online anywhere anymore) but I was doing everything myself and the writing and narration quality just weren’t there.

I am in Eskew - I really love this show. It plays with so many themes and things that I’m also attracted to. After I’d been writing NoSleep stories for awhile and wanted to do something more, I heard this show, and again thought about making a podcast. So Night Vale and Eskew are probably the two biggest influences on AVFD coming into existence.

The Black Tapes - great production, exceptionally well acted, and some individual episodes and ideas that carry across the series are excellent. I feel this show has gotten enough praise elsewhere though that I don’t need to write further about it. 

Nightlight - I only started listening to this one recently, but it’s wonderful. Really well written stories, great narration. In particular, the last two episodes as I write this have been really good - if you’re looking for a jumping off point. Back in their first season they narrated a story by W.E.B. Dubois that’s just amazing. I had no idea Dubois wrote fiction. The story’s called The Comet - about NYC being destroyed and the only two people left are a poor black man and a wealthy white woman. This was decades before The Twilight Zone but it’s that same sort of story - using speculative fiction to smuggle in social commentary. 

The Magnus Archives - shortly into our series people told me our show reminded them of TMA. I’d not heard it before. I’ve since listened to the first several episodes, but stopped shortly into the first season - not even ten episodes in if I recall. It’s fantastic, I love it. But as I was writing the first mirror leeches story initially the second part of that story ended in an identical manner to a story TMA did. I didn’t want to be influenced to do - or not to do - stories based on another show so I didn’t want to listen further. I’ve had second thoughts on this though. Especially since I feel the world, direction, and mythology of AVFD is established enough in my head that it can’t be further influenced by other series.

Old Gods of Appalachia -  another exceptionally well-written story with phenomenal narration. I didn’t get very far into the first season for the same reason I didn’t listen much to TMA. I’ll probably listen further to this one too soon though.

Nocturnal Transmissions - I have to mention Kristin’s other podcast. He’s the best narrator in the business and he curates incredible stories. When I was contributed stories for NoSleep I got asked a dozen or so times to have my writings used by Youtube narrators and various podcasts. Most of these weren’t bad - but you could tell it was just someone doing it for a hobby. Kristin’s show is as professional as it gets - in terms of production value and his talent as a narrator. He asked to narrate a story I wrote - a quick, silly thing about a guy being upset that his neighbor is just a giant spider in a trenchcoat and no one seems to notice. Several months later, I was thinking of starting an audiodrama of some kind. I really liked the idea of a parapsychologist (Peter Venkman’s job in Ghostbusters) having Frasier Crane’s radio psychiatry job. I pitched him that and so we made AVFD.

Wolverine: The Long Night - Not horror, but I have to mention this. It’s written by Ben Percy who taught me creative writing in college. He had a huge impact on me. At that time, at the university, I was being led astray by the rest of the English dept - told that you couldn’t write speculative fiction stories - horror or weird fiction - and get taken seriously. If you weren’t writing about married couples having passive aggressive arguments where nothing really happens - then you weren’t writing “literature”. Not so in Percy’s class. He had us read Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joyce Carol Oates - authors celebrated across the globe as literary yet they wrote amazing mythic, strange, horrific tales. He had us read an anthology of stories put out by McSweeny’s where literary authors wrote speculative fiction - showing how to use literary techniques to write genre lit. Today, in 2020, that all might read as obvious - of course you can write literary speculative fiction. I’m 37. I was in college in the early 2000s. It was far less obvious then. Anyway, a lot of the best advice I got on writing came from him. A lot of authors who’ve influenced my writing - I was introduced to in his class. And when I went to create AVFD - I felt confident I could write in the audiodrama because I was taught by someone who’d already written a breakout series in the medium.

And finally I should mention The Storage Papers and Weeping Cedars. The first is about Jeremey, who purchases an abandoned storage space that’s filled with files on strange and horrific things happening in San Diego. It’s a really well-produced single narrator show. And Weeping Cedars is more in line with The Black Tapes in terms of medium - a journalist doing an audio documentary. in this case about a small upstate New York town. The show unfolds very slowly - like a long Stephen King novel. I recommend them both. 

[cassraven]

My thoughts on the tea of JK Rowling.

Anyone who has known me, Growing up, I was one of those die hard Potter fans. In Junior High School, I was the happy baby goth bat that loved every minute of reading all of the books at the time that were published. I was a proud Slythern pride house supporter, loved house elves, and even made my own d.i.y. homemade wands out of wooden craft sticks, chopsticks, hot glue gun wax, cheap paints, glitter, beads, you name it. I wrote Harry Potter fan fiction back in the early 2000′s of fan fiction days as a teenager without shame!

The day as a grown batty bat artist Goth Woman adult, that I and my equally geek-nerdy Potterhead boyfriend/partner and I got to go to Hogwarts at Harry Potter world in Los Angeles Universal Studios Hollywood a few years ago, it felt magical and just so beyond fucking awesome! Magical people! I got to drink rounds of butterbeer, eat a delicious witch’s meal at the three broomsticks, tour Hogsmeade, going into shops, posing with awesome monster books and statues with Bradley. We even got wands! I got my own Severus Snape wand thanks to Bradley gifting it to me as a surprise and candy!

Concerning JK Rowling's comments concerning Transgendered people being apart of the LGBTQA, Her Transphobic comments and half-ass excuse of "I have gay friends who consider me a lesbian", "People who Menstruate", and other negatives, she lost my respect as a fan. Literally, she lost my full respect. Her personal, very negative beliefs were sad for me to read as a woman of color, a member and supporter of the LGBTQA.  Nope, this riot grrrl witch isn’t giving any support to anything that Rowling may put out later in stores whether it’s other fiction, non-fiction or Harry Potter related. I will always love Harry Potter but not the beliefs that it’s author a very problematic person at that puts out.

The fact that she has lots of fans of Harry Potter who are of the LGBTQA movement and she made comments and statements on her Twitter that were very transphobic/homophobic is very disappointing. But then again, many Scottish fans online on social media I saw stated this behavior and hate from Rowling isn’t surprising to them, When Apparently, herself as a Scottish woman has never supported or given anything positive back to her Scottish homeland or people because she’s that cold and negatively anti-Scottish, and that she has allegedly made other messed up statements concerning/related to racist, sexism and homophobia in the past.

I think as Harry Potter fans we can continue to love, support the books, movies, theme parks, the magic of what we love of as a series; We don't have to support JK Rowling as its author or her hateful/negative beliefs. Especially when she's a hypocrite especially.

[love-takes-work]

Below, I’m sharing a long outline of what was discussed in this wonderful interview, for those who can’t or prefer not to listen but want to know the content. It is very long and I don’t feel like finding pictures so you’ll have to just enjoy it like it is. It’s not a transcript but it is, in my own words for the most part, a recitation of everything Susana and Rebecca talked about: musicals, the upcoming movie, animation influences, and quite a few things you did not already know.

Susana introduces the interview by saying that tons of attention is paid to the diversity and the characters and all this great stuff in the show, but she wants to talk about the science fiction aspects and the society and worldbuilding Rebecca and her team have put in. She begins by talking about how the show seems so planned considering aspects of the show's beginning feed so well into the end, and she asks Rebecca to talk about that.

Rebecca opens by saying it was conceived as a coming-of-age story, so a ton of stuff that the adults know, Steven doesn't know, allowing it to be a story about things that happened to adults but remain child-friendly. Rebecca brings up a college class on the sublime that she took, about what's going on and implied to be going on just outside the frame of the art, so she was really taken with that concept.

Rebecca claims that her planning is pretty dry, and it's just a bunch of charts. She had stuff like Fusion names and weapons from the beginning, and of course she couldn't use them in her pitch because it didn't make sense without knowing the characters. Susana mentions that CN wanted the show to be aired in no particular order, and Rebecca mentions how it was hard to work with because she DID want continuity. Planting seeds in episodes and giving puzzle pieces that'd come together later worked for a long time, while still making each episode work as a whole and be satisfying. Later, when CN came to them wanting like eight related episodes, there they had the barn arc to give them--they had already planned to make this story related. She felt it aired in a "bizarre" way, but they comforted themselves on the Crew knowing someday people would watch it how it was meant to be watched. As a lead-up to the movie, CN IS going to air "every Steven ever," so people will actually get to see it in marathon format.

Batman: The Animated Series comes up and they discuss how censorship limited what they could do on that show because of problems with glass breaking. Susana says she actually really appreciates it when stories can still be told well despite the constraints put on them, and asks Rebecca if that applies to SU. Rebecca agrees that it does, and also that she loves stuff like video games that managed to function with ridiculously small space requirements. Developers still offered up such creativity, she says. So because of the beauty that arises from those constraints, she thought she should have constraints in her show on purpose, even if it isn't applied from outside. The most obvious one for this show was that we're trapped into only knowing and seeing what Steven knows and sees. "The Test" is a good example of Steven actually seeing something he isn't supposed to see: the Gems having a private conversation about him. According to her, plenty of stuff is written about what the Gems are up to outside of what Steven knows about them, and they can only kind of hint at it.

Coming from Adventure Time, there were some similar aspects. Rebecca got to work with some of her heroes from independent comics, and she got a lot of inspiration from them. On Adventure Time, it's our world but far in the future, and Rebecca would have loved to do something similar with Steven because she loved that aspect. Quite a few of the Adventure Time crew had come over from Flapjack and they thought it would be funny if the Adventure Time characters found a tape of Flapjack. As much as it would have been cool to take that idea for her show, that was theirs, so Steven's is more like it's our Earth but in an alternate timeline where Gems invaded 6,000 years ago. She rattles off some known similarities and differences of our two worlds, and elaborates on how Hollywood is in Kansas because in that world Disney never left where they started. Laugh-O-Gram Studio took off like it didn't in our timeline. She has a ton of other info like that but it won't matter to reveal it until or unless it matters to Steven. (She also throws in that Harman-Ising could be Ising-Harman in her world if they never figured out how cute it would be to have it the other way.)

When Susana asks about how she took so many details and managed to make a pilot with enough of them that she could get a show with it, Rebecca takes a turn into discussing working on Hotel Transylvania (for just a month!) with Genndy Tartakovsky. She had been planning to have a month off, but then Genndy asked, so she of course couldn't say no and felt she learned a ton. (She wrote the Steven Universe theme song in the car during that commute, by the way, given that she had a lot of time to sing and be alone.) When she hit Genndy with some of her ideas, he advised her to slim the details down and just boil it into its essence--who are the people and what is their relationship to each other? She still uses that advice, trying to condense things from macro to micro. She has succeeded since in figuring out how to keep the complexity and still assert the simplicity. Ultimately, you can keep those details but you don't have to emphasize them if they're not feeding into the main point. They'll drag the piece down. They discuss Genndy's role as the Animation Director on her pilot, which happened when she was asking if he knew anyone and he ended up saying he'd do it himself. She was so shocked that he agreed to direct her pilot that she was dazed and ran into a pole in the parking lot. The whistling of the wind through the resulting dent always made her giddy because she was thinking she would be working with Genndy.

Susana then turns to discussing Rebecca's influences and brings up Revolutionary Girl Utena. Rebecca mentions that she initially saw Utena because a person named Connie lent it to her in high school, so that's where SU's Connie's name comes from. Rebecca points out how hilarious Utena is in addition to being beautiful. She felt it was formative because Utena was "gender expansive and bisexual." Rebecca saw the movie first (which she doesn't recommend doing), then saw the series and then the movie again. She wanted to understand why the characters were turning into cars. (Chronicler's note: I was equally baffled by the Utena movie's car chase and car transformation stuff in the early 2000s. I did not know what to make of it.)

Rebecca elaborates on Utena and art influences, saying she loves to trace artists' influences to see where their pieces were coming from. She saw that Utena is very influenced by Princess Knight, and she was thrilled to visit places in Japan that influenced Osamu Tezuka. The Takurazuka Theatre is in Tezuka's town, and Rebecca describes how every show there is performed only by women. She felt that having this theater there influencing Tezuka certainly inspired him to include gender expansiveness in his work. The influences are so obvious when you look at the sources, and now all of this that came through Tezuka's work then through Utena then to Rebecca is so incredible.

When Susana brings up trends and how magical girl stuff influenced today's creators, Rebecca says she prefers not to think of it as a trend really because some of what's roaring out in popularity now was always around but was actively prevented from being made in the past. She talks about watching Tenchi Universe (the "Universe" part of SU came from Tenchi!) and Sailor Moon on CN, knowing it wasn't American, but she didn't really realize it "didn't belong" on the network, and felt that her access to influences was really unusually open--especially since her dad was an animation nerd and had a bunch of unusual stuff that influenced her, especially stuff that gave her a peek into how animation actually worked and knowledge that she could be one of the people making it. If she could call anything a trend now, it's that that sort of access is now available to more people because of the interconnectedness of the Internet and how we're so much more capable of influencing each other now.

They then discuss some anime stuff they had been exposed to and how Rebecca helped with an intro to Whisper of the Heart which is her favorite movie. She discusses how that movie (and Kiki's Delivery Service) are good representations of creative processes and sometimes what happens if an artist is blocked. She thinks the actual craft and work associated with the process is more important (and more interesting) than talent. Rebecca adores artists who take notes and figure out how to make their stuff good versus a specific moment of inspiration or an artist just "bleeding" their talent on everything. Art is a craft! You can study it! This is front and center in Whisper of the Heart. Rebecca discusses the Russian movie Film Film Film (which influenced the Zircons' design), and it has a writer character who is afraid that his process will destroy something inspired by a muse. She thinks it's a really interesting look at process.

Next they discuss a science fiction story in another format: the book The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. Kat Morris lent Rebecca the book while they were roommates at the very beginning of when the show was starting. She loved seeing how the world worked in the book through the way they treated the main character. They also discuss the artist Jules Feiffer, who Rebecca had a relationship with because she carpooled with his nephews. They gave her a book of his called A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears. She loved it so much, especially how it deconstructed fairy tale tropes. One story was about a prince whose special ability made people close to him laugh themselves senseless, so he really couldn't have a relationship with anyone. She considers this an influence on Pink Diamond as a character. The SU character Sadie was named after this book's character Plain Sadie.

Next, Susana asks about musical influences for the show. Rebecca names Patti LuPone first. She saw Patti as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd and remembers seeing her playing the tuba in this weird arrangement where the cast was also the orchestra. She was so impressed. When she later wrote to Patti asking her to be Yellow Diamond, she referenced learning from her that a person could be so dramatic that it's funny and vice versa. She also has a "chills" moment from a different show, during "Everything's Coming Up Roses," where the character she's playing is imagining an audience going wild but the actual audience IS going wild.

As they discuss how the upcoming movie is a musical, Rebecca talks about going home with Ian after work and putting on musicals or movies based on TV shows so they can "study" for what they're doing. She'd take notes about what works and what doesn't and why. She loves these old movies that dissolve into total weirdness by the third act. She references Ziegfeld Girl and Busby Berkeley movies, which were an influence on Homeworld's style. She subscribes to a philosophy attributed to Bob Fosse that characters have to be feeling something strongly if they're compelled to sing. She makes a reference to A Goofy Movie as a movie that moved from a TV show to a movie. She wished that movie had more songs.

Susana and Rebecca discuss the movie, some intense moments, the history of Goofy and how different some of the old versions of him are, and how a description of Goofy by Art Babbitt was influential on her. She loves that cartoons can be so many things, and she adores studying moments from them and incorporating them. There are some really horrifying discoveries you can make, but you can also reinterpret some of the beautiful moments and stir them together to get new brilliance.

Susana says many songs in Steven Universe become the centerpiece of an episode, but in "Mr. Greg" it's more like a typical musical even though it's an episode of a cartoon show. Rebecca agrees that it was great practice for the movie. She was more moved by that episode coming back than any other so far by that point. She also felt that "For Just One Day Let's Only Think About (Love)," the song, was a great practice musical song--especially since there's all that chatting in between singing. That song was really influenced by A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum's song "Comedy Tonight." She finds those kinds of musicals so much fun. She was influenced in "Mr. Greg" by Victor/Victoria--specifically the song "Crazy World" when the camera is panning around the protagonist (who's wearing a suit). They're of course dated, but they contain beautiful moments. She took home some of the Pearl drawings from "It's Over, Isn't It" when she went to the studio in Korea. (Yes, Steven Universe is animated on paper, though the color is digital.) Elaborating on "Mr. Greg," she says the episode became much simpler and sweeter--originally there was some intense stuff in there, like Pearl picking up cars and throwing them at Greg.

Back to the movie, Susana points out that Rebecca's been studying how to make a conversion to a cinematic story versus a really long TV episode. What makes something feel like a movie? Rebecca struggles to figure out how to talk about it without saying too much. She figures you have to dig into the fundamentals of the show--make a movie about something new, but something basic. She loved the Dexter movie and it was so smart. Rebecca has a weird connection to the Beavis and Butt-Head movie too (some of her crew worked on the movie!), but she thinks even that movie is smart because they're all about watching TV and in the movie their TV is taken.

Susana then asks about the movie length format and how it felt from going from a very short TV format to a movie. Rebecca's word to describe it is "terrifying." The episode "Change Your Mind" was 44 minutes and that was a ridiculously long format for them--but it carried the extra baggage of tying up so much of what they'd dumped into the show. Rebecca said they couldn't really even "feel good" about finishing it because the immediate next step was something that was so much more of everything hard about "Change Your Mind." Rebecca elaborates on the elements that were ramped up for the movie and concludes "What I'm trying to say is I'm really tired." She's really, really excited for us to see it. It's so different than a bunch of episodes tied together, even if it was eight "Mr. Greg" episodes. All the pieces have to be awesome and then tied together have all the pieces inform each other. She remembers being impressed by anime as a kid because it usually told interconnected stories, and she thought that would be really hard; turns out self-contained episodes are even harder, and she has to kind of do both on her show. She thinks of her songs like that too--they must be good on their own, but they enhance each other by all being part of the same work and building something better together.

Finally, Susana asks what comes next after Steven Universe--one day, when the show does end, what does Rebecca want to do? Well, take time off, write some guitar songs, write poetry no one will ever see, and so on. Rebecca says that her head is really in SU now though, and there's so much more to do--yes, there is more to tell that comes after the movie, and she wants us to know there are also stories that belong in that two-year gap between the end of "Change Your Mind" and the beginning of the movie, but she feels this is a good place to stop talking. She's so excited about everything we have yet to see.

[ana-c99]

Artist Books

Pre - 2000

1. "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" by William Blake

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

 "Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and "Fall". Often, interpretations of this collection centre around a mythical dualism, where "Innocence" represents the "unfallen world" and "Experience" represents the "fallen world".Blake categorizes our modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a state of protected innocence rather than original sin, but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through "experience", a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes. The volume's "Contrary States" are sometimes signalled by patently repeated or contrasted titles: in Innocence, Infant Joy, in Experience, Infant Sorrow; in Innocence, The Lamb, in Experience, The Fly and The Tyger. The stark simplicity of poems such as The Chimney Sweeper and The Little Black Boy display Blake's acute sensibility to the realities of poverty and exploitation that accompanied the "Dark Satanic Mills" of the Industrial Revolution.

William Blake (28 November 1757 - 12 August 1827)

Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only grown in popularity. In his Life of William Blake (1863) Alexander Gilchrist warned his readers that Blake “neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work’y-day men at all, rather for children and angels; himself  ‘a divine child,’ whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth.” Yet Blake himself believed that his writings were of national importance and that they could be understood by a majority of his peers. Far from being an isolated mystic, Blake lived and worked in the teeming metropolis of London at a time of great social and political change that profoundly influenced his writing. In addition to being considered one of the most visionary of English poets and one of the great progenitors of English Romanticism, his visual artwork is highly regarded around the world. 

 Because Blake's later poetry contains a private mythology with complex symbolism, his late work has been less published than his earlier more accessible work. The Vintage anthology of Blake edited by Patti Smith focuses heavily on the earlier work, as do many critical studies such as William Blake by D. G. Gillham.

 The earlier work is primarily rebellious in character and can be seen as a protest against dogmatic religion especially notable in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which the figure represented by the "Devil" is virtually a hero rebelling against an imposter authoritarian deity. In later works, such as Milton and Jerusalem, Blake carves a distinctive vision of a humanity redeemed by self-sacrifice and forgiveness, while retaining his earlier negative attitude towards what he felt was the rigid and morbid authoritarianism of traditional religion. Not all readers of Blake agree upon how much continuity exists between Blake's earlier and later works.

Psychoanalyst June Singer has written that Blake's late work displayed a development of the ideas first introduced in his earlier works, namely, the humanitarian goal of achieving personal wholeness of body and spirit. The final section of the expanded edition of her Blake study The Unholy Bible suggests the later works are the "Bible of Hell" promised in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Regarding Blake's final poem, Jerusalem, she writes: "The promise of the divine in man, made in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, is at last fulfilled." 

John Middleton Murry notes discontinuity between Marriage and the late works, in that while the early Blake focused on a "sheer negative opposition between Energy and Reason", the later Blake emphasised the notions of self-sacrifice and forgiveness as the road to interior wholeness. This renunciation of the sharper dualism of Marriage of Heaven and Hell is evidenced in particular by the humanisation of the character of Urizen in the later works. Murry characterises the later Blake as having found "mutual understanding" and "mutual forgiveness".

Other Works:

1. The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake's work. Here, the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged. The Song of Los is the third in a series of illuminated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the Continental Prophecies.

2. Blake's The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun (1805) is one of a series of illustrations of Revelation 12.

3. The Ghost of a Flea, 1819–1820. Having informed painter-astrologer John Varley of his visions of apparitions, Blake was subsequently persuaded to paint one of them. Varley's anecdote of Blake and his vision of the flea's ghost became well-known.

4. The Night of Enitharmon's Joy, 1795; Blake's vision of Hecate, Greek goddess of black magic and the underworld.

2. "Investigations—The Four Elements: Earth" by Daniel E. Kelm and Timothy C. Ely

The series of unique books Investigations: The Four Elements draws upon Kelm’s and collaborator Tim Ely’s shared interest in alchemy and sacred geometry. Each book consists of a set number of interlocking panels that can be assembled into one or more shapes forming Platonic solids.

The Platonic solids—tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron—are polyhedrons with congruent sides, edges, and angles. Although these five shapes were known prior to Plato, they are specifically mentioned in his dialogue Timaeus. In this work, Plato describes these solids as the building blocks of matter, equating the tetrahedron with the element of fire, the cube with earth, the octahedron with air, the icosahedron with water, and the dodecahedron with the materials that form the stars and the cosmos.

The closed box.

Book sculpture by Kelm.

Painting and surface treatments by Ely.

Acrylic and ink on paper, with airbrush acrylics, aluminium, brass tubing and rod, thread, and wire edge binding.

A first glimpse inside the box reveals shaped page panels and a metal tube with paper wrapped around it.

One slot in the box holds the square page panels and a second slot holds the triangular page panels.

The Investigations series is the earliest example of Kelm bindings with no permanent hinging; i.e., the pins can be removed and the pages completely disassembled.

The metal tube contains the pins that will be used to hold the binding together.

The paper scroll depicts a possible configuration of pages.

Here you see all the pages combined to form a cube-octahedron—which means that it is an integration of a cube and an octahedron. 

Detail of the painting and hinging.

Daniel Kelm

Daniel Kelm is a book artist, sculptor, book binder, and teacher. His intricate, detailed works invite unconventional ways of reading—which can resemble unearthing a mystifying treasure or solving a 3-D puzzle—and they condense wondrous topics that have laid between book covers for centuries—like alchemy, mathematics, science, metaphysics, maps, and illustrations—within visually astonishing bindings.

He invented the widely-used “wire-edge binding” and is the founder and proprietor of Wide Awake Garage studio in Easthampton, Massachusetts, where he designs and produces artist’s books and innovative sculptural bindings. His work has been shown nationally for over thirty years, and he has taught and lectured at universities and libraries in the U.S. and Europe.

Interview:

Lyra Kilston: Your work expands the form of what most people think of as a book: your works don’t need words, or images, or to open in an arc. In your view, what is the outer limit of having something remain a ‘book’?

Daniel Kelm: Books are a wonderful vehicle for telling stories. Most often the book artist constructs the book around their or an author’s story. Many of my books contain no recognizable words but are made of shapes that allow wide-ranging flexibility and movement. They are actually quite toy like, and if successful engage the “reader” in the same physical and interactive way as do toys. During that play, these wordless books can inspire someone to discover their own voice and story. I love watching someone interact with one of my sculptural books, then suddenly stop to tell one of their own stories.

What are some of your favourite materials to work with?

I love working with vegetable-tanned goat skin, a material commonly used in traditional fine bookbinding. For non-traditional work I tend towards metal, glass, and plastic. I’ve not found any material to be too rare or impossible to find and work with; there is always a way to invite it to play. In all cases, whatever the material used, it is important to discover its voice and to let that voice support the story being told.

Mars, 1991–2005, Daniel Kelm. 11.5 x 8 x 3 in. (closed). Contents: box, accordion book partially pinned together, and three objects representing various aspects of Mars. Materials: paper board, paper, acrylic paint, thread, stainless steel wire, dry-mount adhesive, iron nickel meteorite, chrome steel ball bearing, Civil War iron canister ball, felt, fibre board, cloth. Techniques: wire edge binding, painting, photocopy transfer, airbrush, paste paper, silk screen printing, letterpress printing. Voice of Mars text by Taz Sibley. Letterpress printing by Art Larson.

What themes have you been working with recently?

After 20 years immersed in chemistry, I began a thirty-year study of alchemical processes that has inspired many of my artist’s books and sculpture. Experimentation with plant alchemy (spagyric alchemy) led me to an appreciation of pharmacy. In my latest work I’m exploring chemical and pharmaceutical processes through installations combining laboratory apparatus with antiquarian books describing the process.

I look at the installations as functional sculpture. The animating voice of each piece is that of the chemist, pharmacist, researcher, or lab worker who developed and explained the particular approach, so their name is usually intimately associated with it.

What is your research process like?

I often start with a description of a process or an image of the associated apparatus and then find out everything that I can about it, including details about the life of the person who developed it. My work always tries to integrate the personal connection (through the life of the individual associated with the science involved), the historical (by choosing a process that has been proven through its historical record to be significant to our lives), the aesthetic (as seen in its sculptural quality), and the technical (the details of the process and materials themselves).

Relgio Mathmatica, 1990–2007, Daniel Kelm. 9 x 9.5 x 9.5 in. Materials: paper and paper board, stainless steel wire, thread, English yew wood, paint, leather. Techniques: wire edge binding, spattering, paste paper. Photographer: Jeff Derose, One Match Films. Binding assistance by Kylin Lee. This video of Kelm manipulating the binding shows how the “Lotus Flower” configuration closes—the red cube moves to the inside, and the black and white surfaces to the outside.

Sources used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence_and_of_Experience

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake#Development_of_his_views

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-blake

http://www.danielkelm.com/core/wideawake/3/1#/galleries/2

http://www.danielkelm.com/core/wideawake/3#/entry/wide-awake-garage-videos

https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/alchemical-book-artists-at-work-part-2-daniel-kelm/

  Post - 2000 Artist Books

1. "Don't Lose Heart" by Anne Gilman

Don't Lose Heart 2001 mixed media digital accordion book printed on Arches cover stock, edition of 10 9" x 6" x 1" Don’t Lose Heart contains a play on expressions we use with the word "heart". Below is the text that appears at the end of the book:

You can have a change of heart, a heart of gold, a heavy heart, a heart to heart.

You can eat one’s heart out, lose heart, have a heart, take heart.

In my heart of hearts, with a heavy heart, cross my heart, from the bottom of my heart, Don’t lose heart.

Anne Gilman 

Anne Gilman is a Brooklyn-born artist who works in varying formats that include large-scale drawings and multi-panel projects.  The political, social and personal concerns that fuel all forms of moods, worries, and psychological states of being are the materials that feed her work. She begins by using her own thoughts and experiences as a starting point for considering larger issues of why we do what we do, what matters and how we can get lost in distractions that are ultimately unimportant. The resulting drawings are a mapping of information, thought and emotion. 

Other Works:

Sundowning 2018 pencil, graphite, paint, tape, ink, on paper with hand-stained wood 134 x 60 inches

Sundowning (also known as a sundown syndrome) = a neurological phenomenon associated with increased confusion and restlessness in patients with dementia. It occurs in the late afternoon/early evening. Symptoms include increased agitation; a person may become more upset/anxious/confused/disoriented/suspicious

Boiling point (5 works in this series) 2018 ink, pencil, tape on mulberry paper One section is 94½ x 27½ inches and the other four are 46 x 27½ inches

“A part of the writing in these drawings focus on issues of anger and rage. I was thinking about the levels of discontent that people live with, whether triggered by relatively insignificant incidents or by a build-up of frustration over time, and the need for an appropriate outlet to diffuse and address the intensity, before it erupts in explosive ways.” A. Gilman

this place / this hour 2019 Coloured pencil, graphite, ink, and washi tape on mulberry paper 321 x 27 inches

“I was invited to do a project commemorating the 200th anniversary of Walt Whitman’s birth. My research resulted in this two-sided 27-foot scroll and a limited-edition artist book. In both projects Walt Whitman’s words, process and internal struggles are intertwined with my own. This scroll is suspended from the ceiling and extends across the floor in two directions. This view shows the non-text side of the scroll on the left side and the text-based side of the scroll on the right side.” A. Gilman

Up close / in the distance / now 2018 pencil, graphite, tape, ink, BIC ballpoint pen, matte medium on mulberry paper 340 x 38 inches

This scroll suspends from the ceiling with one side showing primarily the text part of the work and the other side showing non-text drawing. This view shows the text side. The next two images show other views.

Up close / in the distance / now 2018 pencil, graphite, tape, ink, BIC ballpoint pen, matte medium on mulberry paper 340 x 38 inches

This view shows the scroll from the side. The next view shows the non-text side of the drawing.

Up close / in the distance / now 2018 pencil, graphite, tape, ink, BIC ballpoint pen, matte medium on mulberry paper 340 x 38 inches

This is a view of the non-text side of the drawing.

2. “Second Road” by Timothy C. Ely

Second Road, 2016, Timothy C. Ely. Drum leaf binding, full leather, watercolor, dry pigments, gold and ink on paper. All images in this post courtesy of the artist.

 Timothy C. Ely

Ely studied design and printmaking and has been making books for over forty years. (He also owns sixty books on baking bread, his other passion that relies on precision and a bit of alchemical magic.) He has shown his work at museums around the country and it is in many private and public collections.

Interview:

Lyra Kilston: Do you have a favorite rare or ancient book? Have you been able to see it in person?

Timothy Ely: The Gutenberg forty-two-line Bible, which I saw in New York’s public library. I have handled this book, and revel in the idea that it is a point on the historical timeline where we switched over from the book as a handmade ideal to an industrial product. My work is embedded in the ideas of pre-Gutenberg technology, with as much of the production being done by hand and the content generated by long contemplation and the intuitive handling of method.

Timothy C. Ely’s studio, 2016.

You work with fascinating materials, like animal skin bindings and nineteenth-century paints. What are a couple of your favorite materials to work with? Is there a material that you’d love to work with, but it’s too rare or obsolete?

I envision making a large vellum book using a contemporary variant on an old technology. I have a vellum model in the works which has been in the press for sixteen years. Vellum is expensive and requires much animal husbandry to provide foliation for the artist. This book-to-be needs patronage.

Other favorites are rare pigments made of materials from obscure locations. Not so much for what they materially do but what associations are formed. Meteoric dust (I have some from a meteor that fell around the time of Columbus), sand from Asian deserts, soil from the gardens of bookbinders and monasteries. My collection is vast and my spies numerous. This material adds form to covers but on occasion finds its way into the interior.

Soil from the plains of Central Tibet, one of many unique materials in Ely’s studio.

Your work takes inspiration from a range of sources, from ancient runes to science fiction to the spiral pattern on a pine cone. What themes have you been working with recently?

I am attempting to render the invisible, to describe some ideas like 4-D architectural renderings and diagrams of the ineffable. By using well-tested ideas such as symbolic visual descriptions, I can make an foray into how we might imagine the path of a particle or a hunch.

What is your research process like?

My process is to draw, fail, evaluate, draw again, erase, redraw, abandon hope, find the path again, read something, draw more, melt something or hammer it together, fuse things, make some bread, draw again, and continue to see what shows up. Often up, sometimes down—it is never a linear process, but one that works by continuing to work with purpose against a plane which cannot easily be scaled.

The Observatory, 2006, Timothy C. Ely. Ink, gouache, and dry pigment on paper.

Sources used:

https://www.annegilman.com/

https://www.annegilman.com/artist-books/limited-edition-artist-books/view/57

https://www.annegilman.com/artist-books/limited-edition-artist-books/view/58

https://www.annegilman.com/scroll-drawings/scrolls-on-and-off-the-wall/1

https://www.annegilman.com/scroll-drawings/scrolls-on-and-off-the-wall/2

https://www.annegilman.com/scroll-drawings/scrolls-on-and-off-the-wall/6

https://www.annegilman.com/scroll-drawings/scrolls-on-and-off-the-wall/3

https://www.annegilman.com/scroll-drawings/scrolls-on-and-off-the-wall/4

https://www.annegilman.com/scroll-drawings/scrolls-on-and-off-the-wall/5

https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/alchemical-book-artists-at-work-part-1-timothy-c-ely/

[hufflly-puffs]

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 

Chapter 28: The Madness of Mr Crouch

“‘Winky is pining, Harry Potter,’ Dobby whispered sadly. ‘Winky wants to go home. Winky still thinks Mr Crouch is her master, sir, and nothing Dobby says will persuade her that Professor Dumbledore is her master now.’” – I wonder if House-Elves can die from heartbreak? Because most of them are truly devoted to their masters and getting dismissed is the worst that can happen to them. I wonder if there is some sort of magical bond created between them and their masters, that can be transferred through family but not to a new master. It would explain why Winky can’t accept Dumbledore as her new master. And why Dobby, despite the abuse, had a hard time criticizing his former master.

“‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ said Hermione angrily. ‘Listen to me, all of you! You’ve got just as much right as wizards to be unhappy! You’ve got the right to wages and holidays and proper clothes, you don’t have to do everything you’re told – look at Dobby!’ ‘Miss will please keep Dobby out of this,’ Dobby mumbled, looking scared. The cheery smiles had vanished from the faces of the house-elves around the kitchen. They were suddenly looking at Hermione as though she was mad and dangerous.” – And this is the problem with Hermione – she means well and I completely agree with her that the House-Elf system should be destroyed. But she acts like she knows better in front of the House-Elves, criticizing their entire culture and way of living, and she deeply offends them by doing so. She patronizes them (and she also acts that way when she disagrees with Harry and Ron) instead of supporting them.

Hermione gets hate mail after the Witch Weekly article written by Rita Skeeter. One of the letters is even filled with Bubotuber pus, causing Hermione pain. It shows how much power media and therefore Rita Skeeter has. None of the people who wrote a letter actually know Harry or Hermione; they simply assumed that what they read was true. Later we find out that even Mrs. Weasley, who does know Hermione, believed the rumours Skeeter spread about her to some degree. But it also shows that misogyny not only exists among men but among women as well. It isn’t actually stated who wrote those letters – but in my imagination I always assumed they were written by other women, young women especially, who might had a crush on Harry. And this is something we see often enough in real life: the harassment wives and girlfriends of male celebrities have to endure. And neither Harry or Hermione asked for this sort of attention. Harry is famous because something terrible happened to him as a child, Hermione only because she is his friend. (That doesn’t mean people who choose a profession in the spotlight owe you anything or don’t deserve the same respect as anyone else.)

J.K. Rowling paints a very negative image of media here, and continues to do so in book 5. She encourages her readers to question everything they read and not to take everything for granted, especially from the yellow press, and shows the dangerous consequences false accusations can have. What is interesting to me is that by the time she wrote book 4 Harry Potter wasn’t as big as it is now and she wasn’t as much in the spotlight as she is today. The big hype started around the release of book 4 and the first movie adaption (2000/2001). So I’m not sure how much of it is based on personal experience, and I remember reading that she wanted to include the character of Rita Skeeter in an earlier book already.

And while we are talking about J.K. Rowling and the media: I’m neither a fan of stan-culture nor of ‘cancelling’ people. Obviously J.K. Rowling isn’t perfect and she sure has her flaws. But she is not the worst person ever either. So there is that.

Also, if you think Hermione getting hate mail is bad, just imagine how much worse things would have been in times of social media.

“‘These’re Nifflers,’ said Hagrid, when the class had gathered around. ‘Yeh find ’em down mines mostly. They like sparkly stuff … there yeh go, look.’” – And thus, the perfect merchandise was born.

“‘Must be nice,’ Ron said abruptly, when they had sat down and started serving themselves roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. ‘To have so much money you don’t notice if a pocketful of Galleons goes missing.’” – Money doesn’t matter only to those who have enough of it. And of course, money isn’t everything and money doesn’t equal happiness. But those who say it isn’t important probably never experienced real poverty. And the way it affects every aspect of your life. And it is a reminder that Harry is quite privileged, through the money he has inherited, through his fame, his gender etc. And that Harry is unaware of that privilege. Because that is the way privilege often works, we only notice we have one when it is taken away from us. Or in this case, when somebody points it out to us.

“All those substitutes for magic Muggles use – electricity, and computers and radar, and all those things – they all go haywire around Hogwarts, there’s too much magic in the air.” – Is it only Hogwarts then where electricity doesn’t work? Would it work at a normal wizarding household where there is less magic? Do Muggleborn wizards and witches still use Muggles inventions? Do some Pureblood wizards and witches use them as well, because some of them are quite useful? Does Ron (in present time) has a Netflix account?

When Harry encounters Barty Crouch, what is interesting in the moments Crouch seems to talk to an imaginary Percy is that he mentions his wife and son (who gained twelve O.W.Ls, so he must be around 15 or 16), mixing up two times, because obviously by the time Percy started working for Crouch his wife was already dead and his son a prisoner at his home. But I think in his mind he might wishes back to an easier time, when his family was still intact, his son still innocent. It’s a safe place his mind provides.

“‘I’ll be havin’ a few words with her, an’ all,’ said Hagrid grimly, stomping up the stairs. ‘The less you lot ’ave ter do with these foreigners, the happier yeh’ll be. Yeh can’ trust any of ’em.’” – Oh Hagrid. Don’t be xenophobic asshole. Because Hagrid at times has weird double standard. He says you shouldn’t judge anyone based on the family they are from and yet he did the very thing with Draco (I mean before he knew Draco is an idiot). He deeply loves and cares about monsters, because they are different, because he thinks people are prejudiced against them, but he is full of prejudices himself.

[pinespittinink]

11 Writer Tag

Saw this on @cookiecuttercritter’s blog and thought it looked like fun!

1. Do you prefer writing things chronologically or just whatever you want in that moment?

I prefer chronologically, but I do write out of order sometimes-- usually it’ll be a handwritten scene scribbled in a journal or in the margins of some unrelated papers, but by and large that doesn’t happen often. 

2. Favorite font and why?

Times New Roman, 12 pt. I’m a basic bitch, it’s how I’ve always written. Though I’m about to give Comic Sans a go. 

3. How long do you usually make your chapters?

I like mid-length chapters. Nothing that drags, but I’m accustomed to length. It also is pretty standard in the fantasy genre, where I make my home. However, I have written stories before with much shorter chapters, some just a few pages at a time. The Witch Market is a shorter book and some of it’s chapters are only about 1500 or 2000 words, but Bloodlines averages at about 5k a chapter.

4. Does outside noise distract you from writing?

Sometimes. It definitely depends on what it is. I don’t mind white noise or music. 

5. Can you explain an abandoned WIP?

OkaY SO ! I wrote The Powers when I was in middle school and sent it off to a bunch of agencies when I was 14 to the point that I actually got a bite on the whole manuscript-- needless to say it was rejected, but it was an incredible amount of progress. The entire Elementers series is a long and old pet project of mine, with three arcs following three subsequent generations of elemental-magic based people. It has a large cast and the first three books (of which I finished one), deal with a rotating 4-way POV between four girls, each with one of the classic elements. I have so, so, so much information about this universe, but it needs a tune up and some big decisions to be made before I can ever fully commit to it again. The setting for most of it was at a school called the Great Ash Academy and it was made up of a group of enormous, sky-scraper big trees that housed the students. 

6. Quality or quantity in your first draft?

Quality. I edit as I go, so my first drafts are very polished compared to most. They still need work, but I put a lot of time into them. 

7. Who is your favorite antagonist in your writing?

I’m admittedly not great at writing antagonists. I can do it, but they aren’t where I put much of a focus at all. I’m looking forward to writing Abaddon however. He’s the antagonist in Star White, a immortal being of sentient dark matter roaming the universe. He’s searching for someone capable of understanding his malevolent nature, and finds it in Daemyung. 

8. What is your least favorite setting you’ve ever had the pleasure of describing

Anything mundane tbh. Transient space as well I’m not a big fan of. Anything with a technical or sterile feel to it. However, I really like to sink my teeth into settings, so I take a lot of care with them and really enjoy writing them more often than not. 

9. When do you write?

HhhhhhhHhhh, when I can. If I’m really in the zone, I’ll write anywhere. In class, on the bus, at break on work, but that’s rare. I really like writing in my uni library, it’s got a good environment-- otherwise, at home, when I can be unbothered. I’m really looking forward to getting back into my writing now that I’m done with school this semester. I didn’t have a heavy workload at all, but there was definitely a mental detach. 

10. Where does your main WIP take place?

Helmi af i Verold, “the pearl of the world.” It’s the large island continent where Bloodlines takes place. Specifically, the story takes place in southern Helmi, in the respective lands of the Gelkins and skin-changers. The Gelkins are slightly more northern, so their land is more temperate compared to the skin-changers, who get humidity more often. 

11. Why do you think your current WIP is important?

I write for myself, first and foremost, so bear that in mind. I do think Bloodlines is a bit of fresh air though, especially within the new adult fantasy genre. It’s a return to original races and distinct cultures, and Victory and Enfriator are both very dear to me. 

I’m gonna tag @kclenhartnovels, @sheeplymade, @yuutfa, @the-real-rg, @astaera-writes, and @writerightmegpie, as well as anyone else who would like to!

[tk-observer]

Scandinavia + Netherlands

It’s been two years since I wrote in here! Gasp!! There’s been one more trip to Japan in that time with Joanna too!

Anyway, before I get too caught up in that—this year’s trip!

Copenhagen!

WAS A BEAUTIFUL BIKING UTOPIA. I loved biking there so much! Even though it was cold and around like 6–10°C the entire time, the city was so flat and the bike lines so well thought out. We never got close to hitting anyone or in the way of anything. Even when we were confused, the bike lanes were made such that you couldn’t cross traffic and get in the way if you stayed in the lines.

We ate so many pastries. I also ate the world’s most beautiful chocolate croissant at Andersen & Maillard. Ugh, it was so beautiful. That cafe was so beautiful.

Lydia and I stayed in Nørrebro, the cutest little neighborhood. We also got to enjoy someone’s tiny apartment, which they shared with a kid?? We don’t know. We had two theories going:

1. They have a baby that comes to visit often, or 2. They’re moving out of the apartment.

Because the apartment was smaller than my studio, and they had maybe 1/3 of the things that I own. Just wow. Really makes you re-evaluate the amount of stuff you have…

Anyway, we biked around, visited Assisten’s Cemetery, which apparently is a place people go to hang out in during the summer. Half of it is public, with grave sites from like the 1800s or something like that, the other half is an active graveyard, where there are memorial services. We visited Hans Christian Anderson’s grave and Niels Bohr’s grave. Niels Bohr!!

Went to Nyhavn, visited the beauuuuuuuuuuutiful public library, went to the royal Danish museum which had a cool exhibit on what “modern” life is like in Denmark now with submissions that were voted on by the museum’s FB group. Also a surprise Pika Pika booth. Visited Christiania in the dark, the time when people are there to actually buy drugs instead of be tourists, Lydia biked with a flat for like four miles (two different bikes!). Food hall was amazing, went to a Zara home I think (dat Scandinavian design tho). Also walking around the Halloween themed Tivoli Gardens at night!! They had all these cute kiosks where people were selling their wares and glögg.

Also randomly while walking around Kastellet after visiting the Little Mermaid statue, we stumbled on a drum core practicing. Copenhagen is really beautiful, especially with all the fall leaves changing colors.

I think my favorite part has to be coming home and watching Pitbulls and Parolees on our AirBnB’s TV. That and Say Yes to the Dress which I surprisingly love to watch. 

Amsterdam!

Was warmer! But there was a mix up at our Hotel Not Hotel which was a little annoying, but still kinda cool. It’s a very gimicky kind of hotel. Our room door was a bookcase. One thing I like nightmare dreamed about was a fire and then for the rest of the time I was worried that firemen wouldn’t be able to find our room if they needed to… Well, there was no fire.

The canals did make it difficult to navigate since the city was shaped in concentric rings. Also, when you were around the neighborhood that was known for selling weed, you would just smell it everywhere. I don’t smoke bc I am small and I don’t like the way it makes me feel, and I really don’t like the smell. @___@

We had dutch pancakes, ate a lot of pasta, discovered Yogurt Barn which was SO GOOD. Biked some more, but in Amsterdam it’s a bit more chaotic. The bike lanes are clearly marked, but that’s kind of it. They cross each other a lot more, so it’s easier to get startled. Also on the smaller streets along the canals, it’s not clear who has right of way, so a few times there was a car coming from my left or right where I did not know if they were going to stop or if I should stop or what.

Visited the cat boat!! Walked through the Bloemmarket, also went to this BEAUTIFUL, fancy restaurant called De Kas. It’s a greenhouse in the middle of a big park, so it’s just magical because you can see all the park around you outside. Also the food was so good. It’s a set course, but my favorite was the salad. They served it with a raw egg yolk, and I don’t know where that egg came from, but it is the best egg yolk I have ever had.

Museum of the canals was super cool! A great little museum executed really well, had tons of cute stop-motion animations to illustrate how the city was built (they put logs in the ground! Just tons of logs that they imported from Scandinavia), and this dollhouse which was my favorite. One of the rooms of the dollhouse you could look into was the room where the dollhouse was. So meta.

Anne Frank house, jeez man. I don’t think I’ve read the book, so I bought it, and I’m going slowly through it.

Moco museum, a modern gallery kinda deal. Lots of Bansky which eh, I’m never really into since I can’t shake the feeling that he’s kind of arrogant, but the Icy and Sot exhibit was so good. I bought their book even though it only goes up to 2016 and doesn’t have their environmental pieces, which I think are amazing. 

Tea at the smallest house in Amsterdam! IT’S SO FUCKING CUTE. Also our host was a surprise historian! He taught us about the history of the house and was a great local host. He told us about how his family was like the fourth/fifth? people to own the home since it was built. Also a proper tea house since it seems that Scandinavia and Netherlands is really into coffee over tea.

Stockholm!

I think this is the point where we were kinda tired from going out all the time. Stockholm again was way colder and even the city bikes were taken in for the season. We took a lot of busses which were expensive (~$5 for a one-way ticket for 75 mins), but the central bus station. THE CENTRAL BUS STATION. Was so gorgeous. It looked kinda like ancient greek pottery.

Stockholm is gooooorgeous. It’s the in-between of the two cities to me. I think Amsterdam was old smashed with new, Copenhagen was mostly old, but Stockholm was like modern old. It didn’t have as many narrow buildings, and way more cobblestones streets and hills. I think biking there regularly would be more difficult. But also, Stockholm is a archipelago city, spread out over small islands. The water’s never far.

Fika everywhere! Unguarded coffee!

We ate Swedish meatballs, walked around the super cute neighborhoods Södermalm and Ostermalm (I think), visited the ABBA museum which was really fun, and the Vasa Museum, which has a 17th century ship preserved from the sea. Like they literally dragged the whole thing out of the ocean and restored it. It’s crazy.

It was also at this time that I discovered that season 2 of Castlevania came out so I ended up watching it with Lydia since she was interested despite all the gore and violence. Season 2 had much more plot going on, way more people, but the animation was kinda stilted. Since it had 8 episodes, it felt like they saved up all the budget for the fight scenes, which were still really good, but I like my dialogue scenes with more than just shots of people eyes. Also, plot was a bit more messy (poor Godbran!). Still, fun to watch! It was interesting to see more of Dracula’s perspective in this one since he was missing the entire first season. I’m really glad they didn’t skimp out on the background artists though. They were A+.

Went to IKEA on the free IKEA bus from central station, which was soooo much fun ahahha. Ate at the nice restaurant (more meatballs!) there and then just walked around. I don’t think we even bought anything, just had fun sitting on things and looking at all the cute children’s furniture and toys. It was so big. So, so big.

And then home!!

I’m so jetlagged rn. It’s like 2000 but it feels like 0200. Waiting on my last laundry load, and then I’m going to SLEEP