#i still stand by this post as part of the narrative

[colduncrustable]

the martin antis working so hard to make waves is so funny. like, you are very much allowed to like/dislike any character you please! but making it your whole personality or acting like you’re cooler for it is a little bit silly. you are not morally or intellectually superior for hating on a fiction character.

not to mention all of the characters in tma are very nuanced and complicated, just like real people (!), and erasing all of that to serve a certain narrative is a complete disservice to the entire body of work. jon and martin’s relationship was never meant to be easy, they first and foremost worked closely together as boss/employee, and in a workplace that was actively putting them in dangerous and horrible situations. the whole point is that they’re both super fucked up but they have each other anyway. they both have flaws, they both have gone through a great deal both with and without each other, but they found love anyway. the idea that the dynamic change in s5 is due to martin just being this villain is so wild? like he’s not a doormat anymore but he also loves jon so fiercely and stands by him over and over again?

jon hated him, jon ignored him, was verbally horrible to him again and again, literally sent him on a dangerous investigation and said if anyone had to die might as well be him, jon accused him of murder, screamed at him, jon was on the run, jon died. martin was his number one defender through everything, even when honestly? he didn’t do a lot to prove he deserved it. but martin was strong in his loyalty and did his best to be a supporter anyway. he picked up extra work, he thought of him kindly when no one else did, he mourned him, and he put himself directly in the line of fire for jon. for everyone, yes, but especially for jon, he says that. because after everything, protecting jon is still his number one priority.

it’s so important to his character that he isn’t s1 martin anymore—that he learns to be a real person who has thoughts and feelings and a backbone. jon wanted that, and does it not say something that they don’t work out until martin learns to have a little bite? there’s a difference between being a real complicated traumatized human person, and just straight up being evil, or an asshole. jon had to learn how to be a lot of softer things but martin had to learn how to square his shoulders and stick out his chin. they had different arcs, and that doesn’t make either of them inherently evil or bad. it makes them real and not perfect and very multilayered, yeah.

martin didn’t handle every choice or action perfectly, he made a lot of mistakes, and he never claims to be the best person ever. but jon also fucked up, a lot. it isn’t a competition or a comparison, that’s really not how that works. but they work because of their flaws. that’s a big part of them fitting together. martin represented the humanity they were saving, with all his good and bad. jon was well beyond that, and while that doesn’t inherently compromise his character, it does mean he’s viewed in a much different light.

(meaning i think jon’s sins are seen very very different to martin’s.) (to be clear i think both deserve to be looked at critically, but hating either of them devoutly seems sort of silly.)

i’m not sure how you can listen to tma and all the ways it dissects and reflects on humanity and turn around and run blogs or make posts in the fandom about how you hate one of the main characters for being all of that.

jon never would’ve made it through without martin, even if martin wasn’t the key to everything, he was the reason to push through and not give up. martin is why jon didn’t go full monster mode, why he held onto who he was and his humanity, even with the whole ‘kill bill’ thing. martin gave him a reason to keep going, to try, to care so deeply. obviously there were other factors but jon says it himself, martin you are my reason.

if you can’t handle the fact that martin isn’t a grade a soft boy by the end of the show that’s a lot more about you than it is about him. he grew and maybe not always for the better but he could be a real person for jon instead of some kind of mirror or blank slate to be reflected on. i genuinely don’t understand how he can be misunderstood so deeply.

they’re both fucked up ! and if they are alive Somewhere Else you bet your ass they’re having long talks and going to therapy and fighting and making up and pacing the floors and figuring it all out together. it isn’t clean or easy or necessarily enjoyable all the time, but humanity isn’t either, love isn’t either. they went through unimaginable trauma, and expecting either of them to be holding it together any better than they already are is wild. context, it’s important. but let’s not turn multi-dimensional characters into flat one word answers.

it’s very human to like and dislike, love and hate based off of bias and experiences and perspective. but also opinion does not make fact. everything is relative, everything is subjective, everything everything everything. it’s an open discussion yada yada idk i’m just screaming into the wall about all the nonsense.

and beyond all of that, discourse is so useless. criticism and constructive conversations are really really important but discourse is pointless! oh you ship these people? well that inherently threatens my ship! oh you like this character that i hate? well that makes me feel invalid for hating them. like what you like, hate what you hate, have your feelings. but if you post shit on the internet you will get people who disagree, sorry, that’s how it is. partaking in little arguments over who is right or wrong when it doesn’t actually have to do with anything harmful or unhealthy makes no sense though. posting on the internet about all the hate you have in your heart when the world is already so full of it doesn’t actually do anything but add more bad to an already very large pile of bad.

things can be discussions not arguments sometimes, i promise. it’s not always tooth and nail, and let’s not forget, most of it is over things that never need to be fought over.

[antianakin]

We're gonna revisit that Caretaker Luke AU again because it brings me a certain amount of joy to think about it when I'm in a bitter mood and I just finished Jedi: Survivor, so I'm incorporating that.

Cal and Merrin DO manage to create a refuge for people persecuted by the Empire on Tanalorr and it never gets found or destroyed, so there's this little community of Force Sensitive people and Jedi survivors (and others) already built by the time the Empire falls.

So when Anakin survives and Luke commits to being Rehab for Sith for the rest of his life in order to keep the New Republic from executing Anakin or locking him up for life, there's somewhere else for Jedi and Force Sensitive people to go.

But no one will even tell Luke the NAME of the planet, much less how to get there. Because it's a known fact that if Luke knows it, so will Anakin. And nobody in their right mind would ever trust Anakin with the location of Force Sensitive children or Jedi survivors, that would be madness and stupidity. So for as long as Luke chooses to protect Anakin, he's completely isolated and cut off from all other Jedi that exist, all of their knowledge and history and training.

And even Leia can't know about it or go get training because she refuses to cut Luke out of her life. So Leia is isolated, too. And so is Han. And so is Ahsoka, because let's be completely honest, Ahsoka would 100% forgive Anakin completely in this scenario and refuse to leave him behind all over again.

Anakin hates this. Anakin's instinct is to hunt down the Hidden Path and find this planet to force them to let Luke be a part of their community or kill them all because, well, it's Anakin and someone he cares about is upset, we all know how he reacts to that. Anakin throws this idea on the table at breakfast one day and Luke has to spend several weeks talking Anakin out of committing yet another Jedi genocide, just this time in Luke's name instead of Padme's.

There is no redemption available for Anakin aside from just leaving the Jedi completely alone for the rest of his life. He can give them the gift of his absence and that is it. Same with the rest of the galaxy, honestly. The best thing he can do for the people he's hurt is get out of their way and disappear forever. Luke forgives him. Ahsoka forgives him. Obi-Wan's ghost probably forgives him.

The Jedi on Tanalorr try their very best to pretend he doesn't exist, but when the news breaks that Anakin's finally died and they're finally free and safe from the Sith, there's an obvious uptick in the general happiness among the refugees of Tanalorr. There aren't any celebrations as such, but some people decide to cook a favorite dish to share among everyone, the children are given some time off of lessons so they can go out and play, and there's just a sense of merriment that wafts through the Temple when the last Sith rejoins the Force.

[tovaicas]

I think I have to really digest it a bit, but generally I really enjoyed ShB!

[alteredphoenix]

One thing I will say that I don’t like about Tales of is that for all the talk about how they’re set in unique worlds and how they’re fleshed out by copious amounts of worldbuilding they’re known for, some of the games don’t give you the luxury of exploring the actual world in its entirety.

Zestiria has the excuse that Desolation was largely broken into smaller landmasses and islands post-Berseria but it still takes place on a continent with two interconnecting countries so it kind of puts a damper on the the whole “the Lord of Calamity is about to plunge the world into darkness if he’s killed early/isn’t purified” scenario when it’s set on a smaller scale.

Legendia has a whole mainland that you hear about but don’t even get to explore.

Luminaria is a weird example where it clearly shows there are two/three continents that might be connected a’la Pangaea/Kenorland but we only get an in-depth look at the Jerle Federation and the Gildllan Empire (and an idea of what it was like when it was formerly the Wildlands). OTOH, the northern and southern continents might not even have civilization so they might be excused as being the north and south poles so that leaves the lands outside the Empire and the Federation in an awkward spot from a worldbuilding standpoint (because unless it’s all wilderness out there, and it’d be stupid for the Empire not to capitalize on that, then that means there are settlements beyond the borders, and they have to know there’s a war going on right next door). Then again, they probably wouldn’t play any role in the Anathema War whatsoever in the immediate picture, so that makes Yelsey’s comment about “being in Aedis means you get to see the whole world” rather silly because how can you if the narrative consigns the war to just one big part of the continent and ignores the nations west of the Empire and south of Jerle? Unfortunately at the time of this post we don’t have the good fortune of knowing if future episodes would’ve taken place outside Imperial and Federalist territory so Luminaria is forcibly condemned by capitalism BamCo to have its world take place in just the two countries. Then again, the countries seem relatively large and while we don’t get much of an idea about their maritime history (which there should be because we see boats, and Shayor and Huazar are right near the ocean) we do know technology is advanced enough, at least on the Imperial side, to have train locomotives and a functional railway system (but somehow still no cars?? Even after the technological revolution the Reactors brought on regardless of how Jerle is trying to keep up with their advancements?? In a wartime setting?? Que???) so if we completely ignore everything outside the Empire and the Federation that’s at least half the world right there.

[arolesbianism]

Thinking abt how much I love oni's writing again... In particular, "a seed is planted" continues to be one of if not my favorite logs because despite the troubling details and implications that come with it, it's the one thing in the entirety of the decaying corpse of gravitas that genuinely leaves us with a grain of hope (a seed if you will) and makes oni as a whole a lot more bitter sweet as while earth may not have survived, the dupes did, and after their horrible origins and the shit that many of them went through, in due time they'll finally get to just live, they're free now, and even if Olivia's sleep is end of a tragedy, the world will keep moving forward with or without those who've been lost

[aphel1on]

the longer i look at this panel the more deranged i feel about it. this is environmental storytelling at its finest.

the eodio stand-in doll in particular makes me crazy. where did it come from? did thistle just pop into the village like "hey ungrateful wretches, one of you needs to make me a life-sized mannequin, For Reasons". did he make it himself? seems quite unlikely, yet the possibility haunts me. i mean, i guess there could've been one just lying around the dungeon somewhere. it's the act of replacement itself that really gets to me. (edit: it's been pointed out to me that the eodio doll also could have been left behind as part of delgal's escape plan. slightly different kind of madness but tbh, just as funny-sad to me if that happened and thistle went Ok, Guess That's Eodio Now.)

both the wives are there too. we know very little about them, which makes me tend to assume thistle wasn't all that close to them, but they're still included. when did they end up here? did he kick their souls out of their bodies at some point, or were they among those who left their bodies voluntarily to try and escape? when did yaad become an effective orphan, delgal an effective widower? women in the margins of the narrative, tell me your stories!

and the fact that they're surrounded with the living paintings, which thistle habitually wanders through to relive the past. this truly is his inner sanctum, his place of utmost comfort... and it may as well be a tomb.

that panel is so creepy when you first see it. just a sense of "ohh jeez, there's a lot to unpack there".

and actually, yeah, it remains creepy from pretty much any angle, but the more you think about it the more it's also tragic.

this is where many of thistle's happiest moments took place. everything he had in that picture is now gone. first he lost their warm regard, then one-by-one their bodies became hollow shells. before the end, none of the people here needed or enjoyed food anymore. the dinner table, as a center of both family life and nutrition, became obsolete.

a line from someone else's excellent post about thistle has stuck in my head ever since i read it: "to eat is to live, but to eat together is to be loved". to me, this is the sentiment and symbolism at the core of everything that happens in dungeon meshi.

it makes this bit all the sadder and more disturbing.

there's several things to note here:

thistle has gone from seated and eating with them as part of the family, to a lonely and ominous figure hovering over delgal's shoulder

eodio is conspicuously absent from view, and his body would have been a husk by now, but yaad says parents, which forces me to assume that they are sitting at the table with eodio's soulless body, hidden under yaad's speech bubble

they're not actually eating anything.

those plates are empty. you could assume that they've already finished eating, maybe, but yaad refers to it as sitting around the dinner table. in fact, he compares it to what he's currently doing; sitting at the dinner table watching the touden party eat, not eating anything himself.

it paints a pretty grim picture. for some time even after the fantasy had fallen apart, even after there was no need or desire to eat, they kept gathering around the dinner table. at that point, i'd guess only so as not to provoke thistle's wrath.

but even that last happened a long, long time ago.

this is a callback to what senshi said in the golden kingdom: the reason the people keep maintaining their fields and silverware and so forth is that they need to do so in order to stay sane.

paradoxically, the dinner table is the most striking evidence of thistle's insanity, and at the same time, it's the only anchor to sanity he has left.

he kept enforcing the ritual of dinner together long after it lost significance. when even that was impossible- because almost everyone's souls were gone- he kept their bodies at the table anyway. it's fine. it's fine! he's protected them, physically, just like he set out to. they're all still breathing. at a glance it looks like they could wake up and resume dinner at any moment. like this, it's easy to pretend.

isn't that what being a dungeon lord is, at the core of it? rejecting reality, staying in the prison of one's impossible desires. it's just one long game of pretend.

thistle did all this to protect his loved ones. no matter how obsessive and twisted he became in pursuit of that over the years, his core motivation never changed. this is all he has left of that dream: his loved ones' bodies gathered around the locus of their happiest memories together. like this, he can tell himself he's succeeded.

when eodio's body vanished with delgal's soul in it- when he couldn't even have that anymore... well.

i want to reach through the screen and shake him. no, they're not, thistle. THISTLE, NO, THEY'RE NOT! the doll of eodio is the closest thing to him in this panel, underlining the point. when that final illusion was shattered, he became completely unable to cope with reality.

therefore casually forgetting the creepy eodio doll isn't real.

thistle isn't stupid. eodio's body vanished at the same time as delgal's soul. shortly after, more adventurers came pouring in than ever before. deep down, he knows what happened. if he didn't, being confronted with the truth by mithrun wouldn't have made him panic so hard he summoned chimera falin to the first floor.

yet still...

he absolutely can't admit that to himself. he is clinging to the last scraps of the illusion with everything he has.

this is a dungeon lord at the end of desire. this is a lotus-eater machine left running long after its conclusion. this is mithrun lying listlessly in his bed, his replica lover having given up any pretense of being human. the illusion is all that's left. (an illusion is all it ever was.) thistle and the citizens of the golden kingdom- they're ghosts just as much as the ones who wander the dungeon floors. and if it weren't for thistle sealing the lion away, he would've been eaten by it long ago.

all of this encapsulated by that single panel of the dinner table.

[creatingblackcharacters]

"It takes HOW LONG?" Black Hair is an Art (pt.2)

(This is part two of the hair lessons, focusing on writing/narratives. If you want to know how the styles LOOK, refer to part 1 and its addendum)

Now that you know what our hair actually looks like, we’re going to discuss incorporating that into your writing (original fic, fanfic, webcomics, anything with a narrative). You don’t HAVE to give us a dissertation on "how you studied 'The Black People’s Hair'" in your story. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. I’m just asking you to CONSIDER the effort and existence of it. The same way you put effort into discussing nonblack hair textures? Should be the sort of tenderness and care you put into discussing ours. It does not stand to reason that I have read thousands of stories describing "the silky, black/blonde tresses/waves that fell down their pale back as their lover ran their fingers through them", but Black readers have nothing of the sort to compare to without seeking our own authors out. Our hair deserves some loving and adoration too!

This is a very long post describing hairstyles and how they can correspond to your character's design and decisions, so I'll put a read more here. The sections are organized into 'Twist Out', 'Afros', 'Locs', 'Braids', 'Black Men', and 'Straight Hair' if you Ctrl F. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take your time to read all of this at some point though, as I put a lot of resources and explanation into this. I'm trusting you!

The History

As I discussed in the last lesson, our hair is incredibly important to us, and part of that includes the vulnerability and trust that comes along with access to it. This is due to a long history of oppression. There’s a racist history of making Black women hide our hair, as if it would ‘tempt white men’ away, regardless of it were due to actual attraction or the (more likely) rape of Black women. There’s a racist history of touching our hair, as though we are animals or zoo exhibits. We aren’t just going to let anyone touch our heads, so DON'T write that, unless you are doing so to show that it is a microaggression towards your character. Even now, cultural appropriation is rampant. If I were to wear cornrows with hoops, it'd be seen as 'ghetto' or 'gang-like'. Meanwhile, it is a fashion statement for white women. When Miles G Morales showed up in Across the Spiderverse, animators specifically chose cornrows for him, but many people mistakenly took it to me that he was 'rougher and tougher' than the original Miles. This was a racist perception! Hearing the Fade get hyped up in the news as the 'Travis Kelce', when Black men and especially NFL players have been wearing it for DECADES to crickets... it hurts lmao. Point is, you can describe and respect Black hair without being racist about it. Okay? Okay.

Vulnerability

YOUR CHARACTERS NEED TO BE CLOSE BEFORE ALLOWING THEM TO TOUCH THEIR HAIR!!!

It needs to be someone they TRUST wholeheartedly. Again, do NOT let a stranger touch their hair unless it’s meant to be an uncomfortable situation!

Consider CONSENT! Consent is ALWAYS beautiful! Have your other characters (Black or not) ASK to touch your Black characters’ hair! And not in the ‘Oh can I touch it?’ way. But if they’re really close friends or dating, have them ask to help do their braids, or wash their hair, or even just to stroke their hair and face! Or if your Black character is injured with a head wound, and they have to tend to them, have them ask! The asking shows a level of care and respect for your Black character and their body! At any point the consent may be revoked, and that needs to be respected! If they let them tend their head wound, but then smack their hand away after, that’s not ‘rude’- they’re allowed to do that, especially to signify that they aren’t at that level of trust yet. That's still angsty!

One great example of love from a Black character is doing their partner’s hair, or allowing their partner to do their hair. The ‘Hair-washing’ fic is a common thing in fanfiction; we all understand how that shows the depth of the trust in the relationship between the characters. How would you write about that trust with a Black character, if you don’t know what goes into taking care of their hair? If you don’t even know what their hair looks or feels like? The lack of awareness will show, and what should be a beautiful, deep moment will fall flat for Black readers. I wrote one once for my character with locs, and it honestly made me tear up because I realized that I’d never seen one, at least not in the majority white spaces that the fandoms I was in were.

Think about it- how often have you read a hair-washing fic with a Black character? Was it accurate? Would you know if it was accurate? Have you spoken to or heard anyone Black in your fandom space talk about it? Do you know anyone Black in your fandom space to ask? It’s things like this that we have to consider!

If you have a character that is nonblack in a relationship with your Black character, that honestly reveals even more trust because there’s a long history (again) behind that NOT happening! In life, we can’t go to the same places. I can’t go to a white hair salon or barbershop. They won’t know what to do! People are allowed to go through hair school without learning how to work with different, thicker textures. It’s not right nor fair, but it’s a part of the casual, systemic racism in our lives.

My feelings on what Lestat symbolizes aside, the scene where he plays with Louis’ curls in AMC's IWTV was an intelligent way to show that closeness, and how a nonblack character would affectionately play with a Black character’s hair! How he works with the curl in his fingers, rather than trying to pet Louis or run his fingers through- it was an intelligent move on Sam and Jacob’s part as actors to understand that THAT’S how that would go down!

If you have a character that wants to show a violation of your Black characters’ space, touching/harming our hair is cruelty on a very personal level that will generate an extreme reaction.

Think About Your Character!

When thinking about your Black character’s hairstyle, you need to think about your character themselves! What do they do every day? What are their hobbies? Are they Type A, Type B personality? Do they have a lot of time? Are they always in a rush? Are they noncommittal? Are they self-conscious? Artsy? Serious? Are they in a time period where the means to care for their hair are limited?

People make jokes and comments about how Black women don’t like getting our hair wet and dismiss our concerns. But it’s not out of ‘silliness’ or vanity. What you consider ‘just hair’ may have taken days of planning in advance and HOURS of our time! We put a lot of thought and effort into our hair, and it will easily shatter the illusion for your Black readers if you describe our hair poorly or create an unlikely scenario with it. It’s not a joke!

Some Terms:

Protective styles- a style that allows our hair to ‘rest’ with minimal manipulation

‘Tender-headed’- some people’s scalps are more sensitive to the tightness of styles, so it’ll hurt a little bit more and require some more gentleness (Regardless it’s still going to hurt for a bit after a fresh style)

Bonnets- a silk/satin cap of varying lengths that we wear at night to protect our hair and keep the moisture in

Loc Sock- same idea, but for locs

Durag- keeps short haircuts protected; can even help create the wave pattern that many Black men enjoy

Scarf- same idea as the bonnets, except scarfs can be used specifically for straight hairstyles to wrap them up to keep it straight and neat

(It'll seem real legit if you include your Black characters wearing their headcoverings at night! I remember laughing while reading Twilight because I knew that if Edward snuck into my room at night, he'd see me in my scarf or bonnet lmao.)

General Hair Care:

While I don’t completely agree with some of the advertising in this first one (it’s the internet. Can’t go nowhere without someone trying to hawk something) it’s cool in general to explain how our hair looks the way it does.

If you have Black children OCs, it’s important to consider that their parents have to do their hair, and how that will be its own experience! (It can be very stressful for Black children to get their hair done, as it takes a long time and can be physically uncomfortable. There are plenty of stories of burnt ears and tugged tangles and not very nice old women. Children are children! Keep in mind how they may behave while getting the style of your choice.

Moisturizing to keep healthy

Twist Outs

Cute twist out styles

Twist outs are a style that takes overnight to hold, or maybe even a few days! The cool thing is that the twists themselves can be the style! So the tighter you want their curls to be, the longer they’ll wear the twists in. If you want to describe your character with tighter curls, there needs to be a section of time where their hair remains in the twists! If your character has an event, and they want twists… this needs to be done in advance. Your character will NOT untwist them the day of, unless they want weak, limp curls (or you want the scene to compose of them having weak curls).

How long they'll last depends on the activity of your character! If all they do is work a desk job, or they don’t sweat very much, the twists can last some time! But if they sweat, or wear hats or caps, it’s not going to last long. Maybe a week.

Pros: Very versatile! If you have a character that loves trying new looks and enjoy being spontaneous, twist outs are for them! Easy! If your Black character is younger, or haven’t done their hair before, this is a great way for them to start working with their hair! Doesn’t take long (to do)! If your character is in a rush, and they do their twists, they can go just about anywhere. If they’re not self-conscious, this will be just fine.

Cons: It cannot get wet again, or the style will puff up back into your natural texture. It does not last long enough to say “oh my character went on a two year long fantasy adventure with this style.” If you want your character to have a twist out the whole time, they’re going to have to take time to do it. It would be cool if you incorporate a scene where they’re working on their hair, maybe in the background while everyone’s discussing plans or something. Just a reminder that their hair isn’t just staying magically twisted (unless they have the magic to do that).

Afros

Afro Style Guide, Style Guide for Men (works for any gender though)

Wash & Gos are just that- wash it (or really, condition it, you don’t have to shampoo it every time) dry with a t-shirt (to prevent breakage), put some oil and a light crème on it, fluff it up and you’re good to go! Maybe an hour at max and can be done while getting dressed in the morning!

Pros: Easy! If they’re doing a full, combed out afro, it’s not as simple, it will take more time. And at night it has to be plaited so that it maintains its length, otherwise it will tangle. But other than that, that’s still not all that hard. They can show off their curls! Black characters can and should have pride in their hair. It’s beautiful. This is the opportunity that you as an author can describe the pure texture of their hair, how it shines in the light, how the coils look, how soft it is! Romanticize Black hair the same way you do anyone else’s!

Cons: None really! Afros are wonderful! Just make sure that your character has a way to keep their hair from getting tangled. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean there’s no maintenance! A pick, a bonnet, oil and water go a long way!

Locs

Five stages of locs

A person who does locs is a loctician.

Can be palm-rolled or interlocked/crocheted

I cannot emphasize enough that you do not want just anyone doing their locs! They can really mess up someone’s hair if they don’t know what they’re doing. I say that to say, for your character, if they don’t trust the person doing their hair… they should. They should not be walking into anyone’s place to get their hair locked; they’d do research first.

The time it takes locs to ‘bud’ (that is, to actually form the loc) depends on the texture of their hair. But it can take up to 3 months to even a year for them to actually ‘loc up’. So if your character just got locs, they’re not going to look neat. They’re going to be frizzy.

As long as they’re washing their hair, keeping it moisturized, and not using wax products (DO NOT HAVE ANY BLACK CHARACTER USE WAX PRODUCTS IT IS BAD FOR BLACK HAIR) it’ll last forever! Locs are incredibly strong, especially the thicker they get! It is recommended that locs are retwisted every six weeks, but if your character has freeform locs, doesn’t have the money or time right now, or they just aren’t that pressed, they can grow indefinitely.

Something cute to write in your stories: sometimes locs do just… fall out. Not the whole thing! But the same way thin hair gets everywhere… sometimes the ends of thin locs just… fall off! You’ll find little buds on the ground. This happens especially in the budding stage.

Pros: Very low daily maintenance! At most they’ll need a bonnet or loc sock, and oil/water mix to spritz and massage in. Strong style that can hold any look- buns, curls, etc. They can be dyed, though it will take a long time to do so. I say that to say, if you want your character to have bright green locs, go for it!!

Cons: Low daily, but HIGH wash day maintenance! So if your character has a fancy date or something to go on, they should not be getting their hair retwisted the same day, or at least not so close to. It’s going to be shiny, oily, and tight, which can cause discomfort. Give them the day to let the hair settle!

Locs are PERMANENT!! This isn’t a bad thing, as much as it is a ‘KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING BEFORE YOU DO IT’ thing. Technically they can be combed out, but that would take a very long time and very precise effort, and most people aren’t going through all that. They’re just going to cut them off and start fresh. If you have a character that would balk at such a choice, locs aren’t for them. If you have a character that’s picky and choosy, that likes versatility, that can’t make up their mind, do NOT give them locs unless they’re making the conscious choice to commit. (Again, this is subjective! Maybe they have locs because their mother died and it reminds them of her! Okay! That works!) If you have a character that’s vain, or at least doesn’t like looking awkward… unless they’re going to style up the awkward stage, they’re not going to want locs. (Awkward stage: the first two stages get considered awkward because the locs look messy. This is because they’re turning from curls to locs!)

Braids

Styles

How long braids can take depend on the style. Box braids can take 10-12 hours to do! Microbraids? You HAVE to have multiple people or you'll be there for damn near a day (and that's assuming you have a masterful braider!)

How long they last depend on your character! If they're like me as a kid, I didn't care how I looked, so my mom got me cheap braids and let me run free for two summer months. So if your Black character is a carefree child! Go for it. But if they're a teen or adult (or are very concerned about how they look) a month to six weeks is about how long braids can stay in before your new growth shows. A character that is usually trimmed and proper having loads of new growth over their braids may symbolize that they don’t have it all together anymore.

Pros: Protective style! Great way to let your character have minimal daily maintenance; oil and water and something to cover it. SOME braided styles allow for high activity and even rain without changing. It depends on the hair that’s been braided in, as well as the style. Incredibly versatile! They can have multi-colored braids, long braids, short braids, beads, trinkets… if your character is creative and bubbly and likes to experiment, the sky is the limit! That can symbolize their artistic expression, just by describing what they look like! So long as they have the time, they can have any look and style they want. No need to commit too long.

If your character is capable of doing their own braids (and locs, btw), they’re amazing. Like… that’s mad respect for them. If you describe your character being able to do their own braids, they’ve got amazing arm strength, patience, and skill. That skilled dexterity can be revealed as a trait of theirs through that alone.

Cons: They take a LONG TIME. Your character is not going anywhere. If they’re getting braids… they’re not going anywhere. If you write your character doing anything fancy the day of, depending on the type of braids, Black readers are not going to believe you. Even if it did get finished, it would be very tight. I currently have a poll going on, and so far, a good majority of the 10+ answers are braids! It cost MONEY. It is NOT CHEAP to get braids done! If your character is poor as a church mouse, they will be doing those braids with their friend in front of youtube. Because it can be in the hundreds of dollars. (Don’t get me started on hair culture right now; BACK IN MY DAY IT COST-)

Hairstyles on Black Men

I want to specifically give space and applause to these hairstyles on Black men, because we REALLY don’t give Black men enough credit for all the creativity they show with their hair! And again, with The Killmonger being the choice style in all these damn vidya games despite almost no Black man I know choosing it as a look… PLEASE LOOK! WE HAVE OPTIONS! Try describing how gorgeous these looks can be on your Black men characters! It would be very nice.

Straight Hair

Well, I was going to explain, but ol ‘Guest Writer’ here pretty much lays it all out! So just go ahead and read this article lol.

Just to re-emphasize, straight hair is NOT something that just grows out of our head that way! It takes effort! So if you have a character that doesn’t feel like maintaining straight hair, they shouldn’t have it! If your character has natural hair and lives in a rainy or humid city, they’re going to be fighting that weather to keep it straight- make sure that’s consistent with their personality!

My best friend used to wash and flatiron her hair every day. Like, laser focused on looking that good, Type A shit (she’s a top money banker now, so I guess it worked out). If you have a character like that, it’s fine! If they’re lazy any other time of the day, they’re not suddenly going to be waking up at 5am to flat iron their hair. It’s not consistent.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much what I have! I’m not the guru on all things Black hair, and I obviously cannot encompass every potential scenario you may have for your characters. Really, my intention here is to get you to think about how our hair reflects our character and personalities, and how when you write and/or draw a Black character, you have that ability! And when you’re able to incorporate that naturally, it makes your Black readers feel seen, like you actually cared about that character enough to give them just as much description as your nonblack characters. You don’t have to be a master at it! Just… occasionally the little things that we can go ‘oh, yeah!’ at would be nice. An equivalent effort would be nice.

Remember, it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

[shehurtslikehell]

for some reason, pro-israel posts have been popping up on my dash so let me give some of y'all an insider perspective.

have travelled to gaza with my mother, it was not easy getting in, the israeli state restricts citizen access to hide the constant atrocities they commit there. i was continuously hassled, i took off my hijab to make entry easier and still it took three days to gain entrance. when i entered i found the city of gaza in complete and utter apartheid.

we stayed with family friends. there were constant roadblocks and security checks which no one was allowed through, one of which was outside a old man's house, forcing him to travel 10 kilometres to access the main part of town. the military presence was constant and terrifying, looking at a soldier the wrong way would cause a confrontation, one you weren't likely to come out of peacefully.

worst of all, i stood in a market place. it was me, my mother and our family friend. we wanted to try the Kibbeh at a stall and all of a sudden, the israeli military rushed the place. we cowered, we prayed, we ran. a bullet hit the wall mere inches from my head. eventually, we found shelter in the dilapidated room of a house bulldozed by the israeli government.

i will never forget this experience, it has caused me more pain and trauma than anyone will ever know and this is why the misinformation and narratives the west keep pushing vex me incredibly.

i don't like telling this story, i don't like reliving this, i don't like potentially demonising and blaming jewish people, many of whom i know do not support the occupation of palestine.

but it needs to be said: israel is a terrorist state and always has been.

forced sterilisations, rape, murder, abduction and these are only a few of the war crimes they have committed.

my heart will forever belong to palestine, to the palestinians, to al-aqsa and the dome of the rock and the olive trees and the churches.

please stand with palestine, this is not terrorism nor is it unwarranted. this is defence and an attempt at decolonisation.

from the river to the sea.

[schattenhonig]

The A in LGBTQIA+ doesn't stand for aspec because they're not repressed!

(please read the disclaimer at the end of this post)

Ummm, excuse me? Would you mind telling me what your definition of repression is, then?

Because I feel repressed when a doctor asks me about my sex life, and if I say I have none, it gets marked down as a symptom without being asked if I suffer from it.

I feel repressed when my gyn tells me I can't get a hysterectomy yet despite losing so much blood on every period that I need to take iron supplements all the time, because I could change my mind about not wanting children (which is a whole other post, I know, but it's most likely linked to sex).

I feel repressed if I can't use dating apps or platforms because my sexuality doesn't even exist there, and the one time I tried, I got called names because I didn't want to meet for because it was clear where this date would go, despite my explicit "what I'm looking for".

I feel repressed when I think about how recently a paragraph was finally abolished in my country that considered sex a vital part of a marriage, basically entitling the spouses to having sex with their partner (both gender neutral, because entitling people to having sex with somebody else by law is wrong. It's basically a rape permission).

I feel repressed when I can't watch any film or show without it being about love and/or sex, no matter if it fits the narrative and furthers the plot.

I feel repressed when I plot my own stories and automatically put a romantic couple in there as main characters, even though I have no idea why this would be important for the plot. Not even my own stories, my own thoughts are mine.

I felt repressed when I was asked accusingly in a relationship if I wasn't missing something before I even knew asexuality as a spectrum was a thing, and having to lie about this being a side effect of my medication instead of genuinely not feeling attracted to someone in this way.

I feel repressed when I can't tell people I'm not sexually attracted to them because they will take this personally no matter how well I explain myself.

I feel repressed when everywhere I look there's advertising relying on naked skin, suggestive posing and objectification. Why are expensive cars still presented by women considered beautiful and tempting? It's not like that's necessary to convince people of spending so much money on a thing that gets you from A to B. Couches with women in smart dresses and high heels. That's not what a normal person looks like on a couch. But the worst is a truck in the town where I live: it's from a small fruit and vegetable stand, so whenever I see it, it comes from the warehouse, delivering groceries. On it is a woman clad in very little, presenting fruit. I'm sorry, but why? Does a misogynistic picture convince you of the necessity to avoid scurvy?

I feel repressed when I tell people and get the answer "you just haven't found the right person yet", because there are two possible assumptions from that point: I'm either not trying hard enough (so it's basically my own fault) or something about me is not right, appalling even (which circles back to I'm not trying hard enough or frames me as a victim of my genetics, upbringing or circumstances to be pitied).

Do not tell me how I feel. Do not try to tell me everything is fine and I shouldn't complain or ask for acknowledgement if everywhere I look, I'm reminded of how odd, how weird and how not normal I am. How much it inconveniences you to even acknowledge my existence, let alone respect any of my traits, views and choices.

And while I can only write from my own asexual point of view, I wrote this with all kinds of flavours of aspec in mind, so I'm explicitly including aromantics, aroace people and every shade of the spectrum in this. Not all my examples may apply to you, but I hope you can find something to relate to.

ETA: please feel free to add your own experiences of repression!

[goldsainz]

❝ THE INTERNET WILL GO CRAZY ❞

MASTERLIST!

pairing . . . lando norris x reader, charles leclerc x ex!reader

◦∘｡ﾟ. request . . . “Could you write an imagine based on this video https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMM35uygV/ where reader was Lando new girlfriend (Charles's ex) and Alex was her bestfriend. Then reader was doing a live on Instagram and Alex appeared in the background and many fans made negative comments about her friendship and reader defended her.”

◦∘｡ﾟ. summary . . . the internet loves to make up narratives when there are none.

◦∘｡ﾟ. note . . . i changed the prompt a bit because i didn’t know how to write the live part, i hope that’s okay! no hate to the wags or drivers this is all fiction and not meant to represent any real life events 🫶 this isn’t my best work, but hopefully it’s still enjoyable!!!!

liked by landonorris, iamrebeccad and 1,308,297 others

yourusername barthelonaaa 🇪🇸❤️

view all 19,624 comments

landonorris omggg i made it to the dumpppp

⤷ yourusername i put that picture for oscar?

⤷ landonorris have oscar invite you to the paddock then🙄

landofan1 favourite wag ever

landofan2 not lando not wearing shoes

ynfan1 mother and father fr

ynfan2 her glow up since being in mclaren >>>

⤷ landofan3 thank the lord charles fumbled 🙏

ynfan3 she doesn’t know it but she’s my best friend

ynfan4 nobody is giving wag royalty quite like her

user1 how did lando bag her

⤷ landofan4 she’s everything, he’s just a guy who drives in circles

alexandrasaintmleux updated their story!

user21 responded to your story!

user21 get a job!!!! stay away from her!!!!

ynfan21 responded to your story!

ynfan21 not y/n doing charity work

ynfan22 responded to your story!

ynfan22 you could learn how to be girl’s girl 😘

ynfan23 responded to your story!

ynfan23 WHAT IS THISSSSS

user22 responded to your story!

user22 y/n mogged you BAD

ynfan24 responded to your story!

ynfan24 hope you know us y/n stand do not like you

ynfan25 responded to your story!

ynfan25 hope charles was worth fucking over your bestie

liked by landofan31, ynfan31 and 105,248 others

f1gossip Let the gossip begin! As we all know, Y/N L/N used to date Charles Leclerc and then broke up amicably in 2021. In 2023 she was spotted back in the paddock, hand-in-hand with Lando Norris. As for Charles Leclerc, he too, introduced his new girlfriend Alexandra Saint Mleux in 2023.

Now, what is the gossip you might ask? Well, Y/N and Alexandra used to be besties! The pair were very close, from comments in each others posts (even those with Charles in them, messy, we know) to various pictures of them hanging out.

The pair of friend stopped interacting with each other when Alexandra was first spotted in the 2023 Monaco Grand Prix. There had been rumours of the pair, but it wasn’t until there was actual confirmation that Y/N decided to go no-contact on social media (she never unfollowed her, though).

Shockingly, this past weekend they were spotted alongside other WAG’s hanging out! It even went as far as Alexandra uploading a story with her former best friend.

Do we think this is a new beginning of their friendship or is just attention-seeking, now that Alexandra has made her Instagram public? Let us know your thoughts below!

view all 1,578 comments

ynfan32 how coincidental that alexandra opens her account and suddenly she’s friends again with y/n🙄

user31 it’s definitely suspicious timing! maybe they realised it’s better to friends or just missed eachother

⤷ ynfan33 idc how much you miss me i’m not being friend’s with you if you’re with my ex

landofan32 honestly i’m here for this drama, f1’s getting boring we need some action

user32 i think it’s a new beginning, friendships go through rough patches (especially with exes involved)

ynfan34 i’m honestly curious who reached out to who

⤷ ynfan35 probs alexandra, can’t imagine y/n calling her up

user33 good for them if it’s real! it’s really none of our business what they do 🤷‍♀️

ynfan36 there’s a lot we don’t know about, but still this is all so fishy

charlesfan31 neither of them deserve charles, that’s for sure

⤷ ynfan37 girl charles is also a homie hopper, he has his own red flags so stay out of this😭

yourusername updated their instagram story!

responses have been disabled!

[drvscarlett]

Let him cook pt 2

Charles Leclerc x Masterchef!reader

Series Part: 1

taglist: @bookstore-of-dreams @barcelonaloverf1life

CharlesLeclercUpdates posted a photo.

CharlesLeclercUpdates Charles Leclerc appeared in MasterChef Australia episode "Cooking to Survive"

User1 Ariana what are you doing hereeeee??

User2 I thought only f2 drivers were allowed for that, why was Charles wandering around

User7 In his defense, Ollie was with him. Maybe Ollie got invited and Charles tagged along.

User3 Okay but did anyone notice how his eyes lit up when Y/N talked to him. The boy was whipped!

User8 Charles can't get Y/N, he can't even cook User9 Agree User8! Besides Y/N has a long-time boyfriend, they are super cute. Do you all not watch the different challenges she dedicated to him?

Y/NCooks posted a photo.

Liked by Charles_Leclerc, friend1, and 255,000 others.

YNCooks what a stunning day! We won today as the captain of the red team and coincidentally there was a red team 1-2 as well??? #AlwaysBetOnRed

User1 Mother you slayed!!! I was so surprised to see you at the GP!

YNCooks me too!! This is one of the best team challenges ever.

User2 Charles is on the likes. Charles is on the likes.

Charles_Leclerc Congrats on your win!!!

Y/NCooks Thank you! You too, you did great!!!

User3 The collab of this masterchef and f1 community is not on my bingo list.

User4 Y/N's boyfriend how are you feeling that Charles is stealing your girl away??

"Are you seeing this right now? They thought that I am stealing you away" Charles grumbles over the phone. You can't see him right now but you can actually visualize the frown lines forming and the soft scowl that he has on his face "Why would I steal my own girlfriend?"

"Oh mon ami"

"And did they even watch the episodes? Like couldn't they piece it together that I'm the one that you are referring to I mean the cake and then the adopted italian narrative" Charles continued to rant on

It was adorable to hear Charles like this. How you wish that you weren't just conversing over the phone, how you wish that you could be there for him right now.

"Y/N you still there?" Charles' voice brought you out of your musings.

"Yep, I'm still here. Just a little bit tired" you explained

"You had a really long day mon amour."He says "I'm really so proud of you. You are slowly achieving your dreams"

"As I am very proud of you Charles. You always shine the brightest when you are up on that podium. I wish I could be there on the front lines cheering for you"

"One day you will be"

There is a peaceful silence shared between the two of you. The thing about you and Charles was that you both understand that this is a better situation than being under scrutiny by everyone. Charles had his fair share of public relationship and he learned a lot from it. He just wanted to keep this as his for a little while longer.

"I love you, I'll see you soon" "Love you more honey"

Risotto challenge

You were not always having a good day in the kitchen and this is one of those episodes that you did not do well hence the elimination challenge. The judges commented that there was no problem with the dish that you made but it was simply not as risky as what the others did. So you are really driven to show them creativeness.

Charles was watching the episode with so much dread as he hears that the elimination dish is a reinvention of a risotto. He watched enough MasterChef season with you to know that this dish is the death dish aka the dish that usually sends people home.

He understands the dilemma that you are facing right now, play it safe and stick to the classic which means it won't stand out or play it risky and be booted for elimination.

"I'm making Quinoa risotto" that was your bold decision and Charles couldn't believe his ears.

"Mon amour, risotto is rice. Quinoa is not rice" Charles mumbled to himself

"I know its a big risk but I have to show them that I am a risk taker and that I am a MasterChef winner material"you confidently state in the interview.

It was a stressful few minutes to Charles as he watched how the judges has already decided that the idea of a quinoa risotto would be an utter disaster. Nevertheless, he saw the determination in your eyes and how you defended why you opted to go for a risotto.

"Do you often cook quinoa at home?" Matt asked as he and Jean Pierre White scrutinize your table.

"I don't really" you replied with a shy smile "Well truthfully I don't even know what quinoa is before my boyfriend introduced me to it. It was a part of his diet so I went ahead and learn how to cook quinoa so he could eat"

This was new information for Charles and he felt warm with this new fact. He remembers how every time he visits you, there will be a variation of his diet meals that will ensure that he won't get bored of food and still be on track with his diet. He takes note that he will be grateful for that when she comes back.

"We're looking forward to taste that risotto" Matt says

Time went by and Charles let out a small sigh of relief after knowing that you completed your dish. Charles have full confidence with the dish that you made and he hopes that the judges will take a new perspective with this quinoa risotto.

"Quinoa is not a risotto" Marco Pierre White stated. It was all so menacing how he said it with flat emotions and a monotone voice. Charles could feel himself sweating as they tasted the dish.

"But this is another take that I will welcome" Another sigh of relief for Charles. He knows that you got this in the bag.

Cooking for a special someone

"We're now down to a challenge for the top two spots in the MasterChef kitchen, are you excited?"

Everything was so surreal. Starting from 20 and now they are down to the last 4 contestant. You were so grateful that you are another step closer to your dream of being a MasterChef winner.

"For this week, we will be bringing in some important guests who you will need to impress in order to secure a spot as a MasterChef finalist."

The contestants were asked to step one by one. You started to notice that they brought in their loved ones and you were fidgeting a bit because you don't know who they will bring out.

"Last but definitely not the least, Y/N step forward" Gary says "Are we gonna meet the boyfriend?"

"Oooh the boyfriend. We have been hearing about him for ages now" Matt teased

"The boyfriend is very busy" you replied as you remembered that he is probably in America right now.

"Oh cmon, cant he miss out a day or two"

"Its a job hazard to miss out a few days" you answered. It's all about the points so you really can't fault Charles not wanting to miss a single day at work.

"Okay in that case, our mystery guest for Y/N is............."

The MasterChef door opens and you were surprised to see not one but two Leclercs.

"What are you doing here down under?" you asked as you gave them a hug

"We're going to support you obviously!" Arthur grinned

It was weird because this was the first time that you will be with Arthur and Lorenzo with cameras rolling. You were nearly in tears when you hugged the two of them. Without even asking, you knew right away that Charles sent them since he will be busy with the races.

"And who are they to your life Y/N?" the judges asked

"This is Arthur and Lorenzo, they are very close friends. They treat me as if I'm one of their own" you smiled.

"I'm sure you are going to be inspired to cook now that you have them around"

The pressure was definitely on especially when you were told that there is a need to present 2 dishes, one sweet and another savory in 75 minutes. However, you were pumped to hear the cheers coming from the balcony as Arthur enthusiastically showers you with compliment while Lorenzo takes photos.

Charles, on the other hand, has been constantly checking his phone, now that he is done with free practice. He felt quite jealous that his brothers were able to see you and support you in person. Although, he was quite happy that they are having the time of life supporting you.

Lorenzo texted him about 30 minutes ago that they will be judging and eating the food that the contestants made. He was slowly getting impatient of the results, he wanted to know what's going on.

1 new text message.

Lorenzo: She got in! She's a finalist!!!

[dusterbishop]

two thousand years of chasing taking its toll (and it's coming closer)

summary. || three timelines, you have watched remy lebeau die. you didn't believe you would earn a fourth chance to save him until you find a variant with no memory of his past, lost in a void of existence.

pairing. || gambit x f!reader (past relationship with current enemies-to-lovers)

count. || 2.5k

notes. || posted on ao3 here. warning for character death and violence. i have crushed on gambit since the animated series in the nineties so the new movie brought back a lot of feelings.

part one. || part two.

An endless spread of worlds to wander into, and this is the one you choose: Gambit crouches next to you, his breath staggering out of him in pained wheezes, his hand clasping protectively over the nape of your neck.

It is getting harder to see past the blood dripping into your eyes and the sheen of unshed tears. Your abdomen throbs in intermittent waves of little agonies, needling deep in the pit of your stomach. The shots had gone wide, at first, until you had stepped right into them. Gambit had caught you as you stumbled, swearing too fast for your mind to unjumble past the desperate rush of French.

An endless expanse of possibilities, and you are living in this one, dying in his arms. It almost makes you laugh, except it hurts to breathe, and Gambit is supporting more of your weight than he was just a moment ago.

“Now don’ go doing that again,” he manages in English. One hand on your neck, his thumb pressed over your pulse, and the other pressed tight enough against your wound to make the shadows flicker around the edges of your vision. “Mais la, there ain’ gon’ be next time, chér.”

No. There isn’t. You know it as sure as you know how much he’s hiding his own hurt. He had been blown back twenty-five feet and hit the pavement hard enough that he had laid there, stunned, unarmed. His armor had been designed to take the weight of a blow, but he wasn’t dressed for a fight. Neither of you are. So they had aimed at him, and you had made sure it wasn’t him standing there when the guns went off.

Like one breath and the next. In, and you saw his impact, saw the weapons being raised towards him. Out, and you flickered across realities as smooth as Gambit shuffled his cards, every timeline fanning out before you in a sea of possibilities. Endless, countless possibilities.

This is your last Gambit, and you’re killing him just as sure as you’re killing yourself.

“I’m sorry,” you gasp out. Your voice trembles enough to make your lungs seize up. “Remy, I’m sorry.”

“Tant pis pout toi,” he shoots back. “Help Remy get you up, chér, ‘fore they shootin’ us.”

There is no version of you that isn’t broken that still keeps him alive, so you grit your teeth and let him haul you up, steadying yourself in this timeline. It has always been easier to tether yourself to one timeline when you have something to anchor yourself to. He sweeps you up in a bridal carry, and at this angle you can rest your heavy-list head against the warmth of his broad shoulder. He is a solid port of harbor beneath your tethering weight, a rock standing unyielding to the tide around it.

Your second Gambit had been like this, too. That variant had died with a blazing playing card in hand, his mouth twisted in rage, standing before you and the TVA headhunters with all of the bravado and confidence of a hopeless man. A final stand, he had called it. The two of you had gambled and gone all-in only for Gambit to be dead and you to be thrown into another identity.

You had told yourself that you would be better for this Gambit. No vigilante justice or petty crimes. You had gone on your first date to get po' boys and traded familiar barbs while you spun yourself into the web of a narrative that wouldn’t mark you as an oddity in this world. No strange time-skipping mutant here, only a human interested in a man with blackened red eyes and a smooth talking deck of cards.

Playing the odds, raising the bet. Your Remy would have loved that.

This Gambit, though, he dies holding you just like that, cradling you close enough that you feel the breath knocked from his lungs as the bullets find their mark against his unguarded back. You both tumble forward, the impact rattling your bones, your hands lashing out to catch desperately at the sleeve of Gambit’s coat.

Reality warps and trembles around you. You can sense the unfurling of this world’s integrity, like smoothing your hand down the ridge of Oliver or Lucifer’s back and feeling them arch expectantly beneath your touch. Of all your cats, Figaro had always preferred Remy, much to his triumph. This Gambit didn’t have cats; he admitted to being allergic during your third date, and you had to quash the rush of disappointment that rose in you. You had thought to find good foster homes for the boys, at least, in exchange for the sacrifice of loving Gambit. There is some sort of intrinsic symbolism in the fact that they exist just as you two do in every timeline you share.

Not that it matters, now.

“No,” you groan, dragging yourself towards Gambit’s body. Pain lances through your abdomen in arcs of lightning. It’s nearly as debilitating as the sight of him. He’s hunched over on his side, one hand still outstretched limply towards you, the other awkwardly twisted beneath his body. Your voice wretches out of you in a pained wobble. “No, no, no.”

You take his hand and close your eyes at the fading warmth. This is the third time you’ve watched him die. You don’t know what to do anymore. The pain in your abdomen is a vicious throbbing ache in beat with your heart, a clashing crescendo descending upon your head just as disorienting as the footsteps picking their way towards you. They will shoot you in the back and call it a well-fought battle. They will destroy your body with Gambit’s and never speak your names to anyone in this world’s timeline again. As if you are nothing.

As if this version of Gambit, with his purring accent and smooth-striking dealer hands, is nothing more than an obstacle in the way of the true prize of killing you where you lay bleeding.

“I’m so sorry,” you whisper to Gambit. You have to let go of his hand so you don’t take his body with you, and then you let reality shift and expand around you, demanding the timeline to come to heel, shuffling the next five minutes into a ribbon-spread of flashing images.

One minute: you come to your feet. This is almost the hardest part. You have to find a version of yourself that is stable enough to handle the staggering weight of the transition. Your body has been operating in survival mode for far too long, especially in this timeline where you met the new Gambit in the throes of angry grief. You hardly recovered before you threw yourself into society with a desperate hope to attract him back into your orbit. This version of your body feels calm and refreshed, which must mean it’s from right after your second date with Gambit, when he escorted you home and wished you goodnight and you fell asleep with a smile on your face.

Two minutes: you see Gambit. His eyes are half-open and glazed with death, staring far into a horizon you can never reach. He would still be alive if you had never crossed timelines to search him out. This world’s version of you had been killed while you were still young and unpracticed in hiding your power. It had been easy to slip into the vacant space and fill it up with a new identity. He had never known your real name, just the mask you wore to allure him closer to you. You see him, laying there, and all you can remember is his shocked laugh when he noticed the way you ate your sandwiches with a fork and knife. Chér, ought’a you honte, non?

Three minutes: you kill them all.

Four minutes: every single one of them. This is the easiest part.

Five minutes: you have to exchange your borrowed body with your current one, and that is the hardest part. You can feel the seams of your borrowed self strain under the weight of your rapid time-skipping, further stretched thin by the pain of your current self. A wounded body decays far faster when you aren’t occupying it. It’s a reluctant exchange, and you stumble beneath the sudden weight of your current self as it wraps around your consciousness. The impact to the ground is faster than your changing, too fast to feel the echo wave of pain. You retch blood and bile, turning your face to avoid choking on it.

You will be nothing more than another corpse beside Gambit’s in a minute. You can feel the timeline of death fogging your mind, muffling your reflexes. You have exacerbated your own death by orchestrating theirs. It’s not a surprise: when Gambit fell, his breath knocked right out from him, you had felt that same jarring finality.

Only this time, only for you, when you close your eyes in death, you open them in another world entirely.

It's a battlefield.

Not surprising. Your hand automatically goes to the small of your back, fingers curling around the cool polished wood of your bo staff. With one fluid flourish, you pull it out from its sheath and extend the length, timelines humming in your hand with the same buzzing tempo of Gambit's kinetic energy. Unlike his power, your staff doesn't glow blazing violet. In one moment and the next, it simply snaps into its full length, the air hissing with displaced energy.

Once, with your Remy, he had settled himself in an armchair in your shared apartment, half-drunk with one of the cats in his lap, and he had demanded to watch you cross timelines. It took small objects, at first. A coffee cup across the room, a pair of your underwear from the bedroom, the cat purring underneath his very touch. You had been a little less drunk from your night out together, but it had been exhilarating to perform for him in a way that affected you far beyond the influences of alcohol. The weight of his black-red eyes lingering over the curve of your figure could take you apart as sure as any timeline.

He had been mystified yet delighted at your display of prowess. Y’a natural Houdini, eh, chér?

 That wasn’t quite true, though. You didn’t disappear, you simply… rearranged yourself to exist in a state of your choosing, from a time of your choosing. You had explained it to Remy like this: like choosing the channels on T.V. until you found a show you liked. Except instead of old reruns of some sitcom, you were settling on a state of existence.

Your weapon of choice - the bo staff, much like the one Remy trained you with - comes from another version of yourself. It weighs a perfect balance in your palm because it was made for you, even if you were not the one to personally commission its design. The staff whistles sharply as it cuts through the air, singing its anticipation as you swing into action, adrenaline from the fight with the hunters still raging in your veins. It’s a relief to be distracted from the last image of Gambit, dead.

Instead, you revel in the finesse of an unfair fight.

There seems to be four men surrounding you, their faces a blur of distant familiarity. Some part of you had met them, before, in another time. You could have tried to find the names to their faces if they weren’t fully committed to trying to kill you. Battle comes to you easier, and perhaps you are indulging in the violence when you could have stepped away and gone to another time.

But, perhaps, you are so fucking tired of being anything other than a violent, selfish thing.

It’s all smooth motion, to fight like this. Alone. No need to worry about a Remy LeBeau by your side in case the reckless fool got himself killed trying to protect you. You think to your Remy: I told you nothing was going to happen to me, LeBeau. I exist in so many timelines that it doesn’t matter what happens to me.

It doesn’t matter what happens to you. Not even when one of them strikes you across the face with the sharp bend of their elbow, cutting your cheek against your molars and filling your mouth with blood. You merely shuffle the deck, pull another card, draw a version of yourself with no blood and just as much battle-hardened pain tolerance. So many versions of you can handle the aftershocks of pain that your stride hardly stutters as you swing your staff and sweep his feet out from under him. Another swing, a sickening crack of a wood impact to an unprotected skull, and you keep moving to the next target.

Another hit to your ribs, hard enough to knock the breath from you. Shuffle, pull, draw. Your new borrowed body takes the hit without notice and crushes the faceless attacker’s windpipe, cutting off his shriek of pain in a gurgling wheeze. The next one tries to make a move while your back is turned, and you move to meet him, staff swinging, mouth twisted in a grimace. You can feel the timeline bending to stretch thin around you, taut with the rapid succession of your draw. Your blood thunders in a raging crescendo in your ears. There is a limit to how much you can take before you splinter apart.

You just don’t know if you care to heed that limit, anymore.

Another swing. Shuffle, draw, pull. This version of you switches from the long reach of your bo staff for the more intimate versatility of twin blunt-ended sticks. It works well for close combat. So well that your opponent has to keep to the backstep to avoid your blows, shuffling out of range.

So well, that you forget that there were four.

The pain that cracks across the back of your skull sends you to the ground in an instant. Your hands spasm and release the sticks, but not fast enough to soften the blow of your sudden fall. The timeline whines a high-pitched whir around you, unsteady in the relentless time-skipping.

Too bad, you think distantly. This is a quick life for this timeline of yours. A violent, lonely one. It is grim, but there is a quiet relief in the end beckoning you closer. The quick ones are the easiest. It only really kills you when you have to linger in the shadow of your self’s presence. A living ghost. That’s all you really are. You just haunt the narrative of your own lifetimes.

You, and Gambit.

Blazing purple flashes across your vision, and the timeline whirs again, except it isn’t, because you haven’t used your dealer’s hand. It isn’t your power charging the air with magnetic energy. It is all Gambit’s. Of course it fucking is.

How ironic for you to find him now, in this timeline where he has never known your name, when you are already dead? You close your eyes to silently curse out whatever pathetic higher being found fit to orchestrate your life into this circus sideshow.

“Cherchez la femme,” he says. His accent is lilting in its coyness. “Found ya’, chér.”

[blusocket]

I've seen some people express some confusion about what Fortnight is about, why it opens the album, what's happening in the video, etc, so here's my attempt at an analysis. For the most part I'll be referring to the characters in the video with the names of the people playing them (Taylor and Post) but at times I'm going to be making direct reference to the events of Taylor's personal life and referring to the muses by their names (Joe and Matty) for the sake of clarity and simplicity.

The song itself uses the suburbia conceit as an extended metaphor for the beginning of her relationship with Matty (he's the neighbor she runs away to Florida with, Joe is the cheating husband.) For more eloquent and detailed thoughts on the narrative of the song you can check out Jaime @cages-boxes-hunters-foxes's post here.

The video is really dense, and I'm not 100% confident in every aspect of my interpretation, but I feel pretty sure that it's making extensive use of visual metaphor in order to tell roughly the same story as the song, just in a different setting. To start, Taylor wakes up chained to a bed in a white dress.

To me this suggests that she's been driven mad by being left at the altar, and is now trapped, surveilled and controlled, in a type of asylum. This represents the end of her relationship with Joe--waiting for a marriage that never came, feeling trapped, mentally unwell etc.

She then takes 'forget him' pills which reveal Post's tattoos on her face when she looks in the mirror.

This represents Matty (the "miracle move-on drug") and shows that he made a mark on her while she was still in the asylum--that is, still in her relationship with Joe. Additionally, in the wide shot where we see the mirror, its size and shape are very reminiscent of a one-way mirror, often seen in interrogation rooms and psychological experiments, further reinforcing the idea that Taylor is imprisoned here.

She then is able to go to the typewriter room and do her work, creating art about how she's feeling, shown by her repeatedly typing "I love you, it's ruining my life" on the typewriter. She's still in pain and feeling trapped. While there, she encounters Post and they create art together, which creates beauty and color in her life. The blue and gold obviously reference her writing about Joe, but the fact that her work is gold and Post's is blue may be a deliberate choice to draw parallels between Matty and Joe, as she does on numerous songs throughout TTPD.

The next scene, where Taylor's hair is down and she and Post are wearing the same black coat and pants, takes place inside her head (symbolized by the shape of the papers they're laying on.) She is dreaming about them being free and creating art together, represented by the papers surrounding them and book she's holding, which has the word "us" written on the cover. She's writing their story before it's begun.

She then reaches for his hand in her fantasy, accepting and asking for this relationship

Then we see that she's being studied and experimented on--the results of the lie detector test read "I love you, it's ruining my life." Her pain is an object of fascination.

Interestingly, Post is part of the group experimenting on her, but when the experiments begin to cause her pain, he liberates her.

This inspires Taylor to destroy the place where she's been trapped, which we see through her opening the filing cabinets that cover the walls and destroying the mirror. I also find the shot of her standing still while papers burn around her interesting and significant; I interpret this as Taylor destroying her own work about Joe. By choosing to leave, she is metaphorically burning--rejecting--the story she wrote about them.

Finally, Taylor and Post enter the dangerous outside world together; the rain echoes the lyric "I chose this cyclone with you" on the album's title track. While I do feel the meaning of Post being in the phone booth is somewhat ambiguous, the framing and the accompanying lyric--"I've been calling ya but you won't pick up" suggest that he's attempting to communicate with her but can't reach her. They are free of her prison, but still separated.

Then, he hangs up the phone and reaches for her hand, and she takes it. The final shot of the video is a close up on their linked hands, presenting us with a cautiously optimistic ending--they are lost and vulnerable in the middle of a storm, but they have each other.

I feel this is a somewhat less sinister, for lack of a better word, portrayal of the start of Matty and Taylor's relationship than is suggested elsewhere on the record, though I believe Post's character being part of the group experimenting on her is significant and the editing creates some ambiguity about exactly when and why she decides to break free. But I hope this clarifies how the video sets up the beginning of this story, the fallout of which is then chronicled over the course of the rest of TTPD.

[sgiandubh]

News from Birmingham, 2: 'we're out of battery soon'

ACHTUNG, BABY: these pics do NOT belong to me. Please do NOT steal them, Mordorians, as you usually do. I don't want to see them chez Marple, BIF or Purv, I do not want them on X and I certainly do NOT want them on Brazilian Instagram accounts who also charge people, or ANY OTHER Instagram account, for that matter. I will come for you with feather and brimstone if you do. Fuck ye and yer clan if you show no respect - this is a legit casus belli situation.

Heroically reporting from the Q&A panel, our girls are running out of battery juice in their phones, because -as loyal C mainly - they took a bajillion pics. I am selecting them as I write.

First thing, C specifically asked the minder (whom many people I have talked to, today, described as a 'nasty pox of a man'/'un asco de hombre') to let the fans sit next to her and ask their questions as they feel, no tedious standing in line needed. C, always the politician of Those Two, LOL:

Before anything else, I was entrusted with a FULL audio recording of the Birmingham panel. As per copyright regulations and attendance contract I am NOT allowed to post it and I do not want to harm my two wonderful friends in ANY way, shape or form. That being said, I will take my time, tonight (and lots of Nescafe Brasero Strong) to listen to it and give you all the juicy parts, in transcription. Short transcribed bits, we can do. Thank you for your understanding,

And boy, do we have juicy parts, babes. For now, I will just share the best pics and the on the spot reactions.

First question was 'how do you feel as a real mom?' Her solution was to simply say ' Sophie, where are you?' I will check with the audio and repost, but it simply goes to say: a) she won't address anything Blonde Bambino related and b) she/they are still very close to Skeleton, whom they seem to have adopted. Sort of. Sophie knows many secrets. Trust.

✔️Will she stay/remain in Scotland after OL is over? 'Well, my husband is Scottish and so are his parents'. Lip service to the narrative all the way.

✔️A fan asked something she did not understand/catch well, while Steve the 'Asco de Hombre' minder was fumbling around with the mic, so she informally went 'whaat?' So Steve dutifully barked, in a LOUD voice 'IT'S ABOUT TONY, YOUR REAL HUSBAND' (🙄 - I would fire that dick on the spot, he simply makes her look controlled and a fool). I was also told to listen carefully to the audio, for context and I shall give you my honest sentiment, as always. Note to self: to be found around the 25' mark.

✔️Turns out the fan asked if she and Tracula share the same musical tastes. She answers du tac au tac/on the spot, 'who, me and Sam?' (CAITRIONA!). And this is when Steve 'Nasty Pox of a Man' interjected, 'NO, TONY, YOUR REAL HUSBAND'. Like father, like daughter: remember that Tydavnet interview for the public Irish radio, when she was promoting Belfast? Well, there we go ('And Tony!/ 'And Tony' - zero enthusiasm, Mr. Balfe, bless your big 💖in Heaven).

I will come back with more. Our friends' batteries died, but they still managed to share with me the entire audio panel.

And I swear to God - if I ever see one of your sock accounts (@homechef, anyone?) come to steal from here and then tell the world it was the Team or who the hell else who found it while you were having your tonsils polished/an umpteeenth root canal mended/dinner with Brad Pitt's Sunset Boulevard lookalike/whatever, you shall be reported.

And yes, I have more pics. In fact, I have about 35 of them, in all and for all.

I LOVE MY FRIENDS AND THEY LOVE ME. TAKE THAT, HATERS.

[alittlebitofloveliness]

Misogyny in the fandom: let's talk about it

Not gonna lie, the level of interalized or even just blatant misogyny in this fandom is really disheartening sometimes. There is already VERY few female characters in the book, even fewer with speaking roles, and yet I see all of them being hated on in some way. People hate on Cherry for standing up for herself when Dally was harrasing her, and for not seeing Johnny in the hospital, which bullshit to begin with but also, you can't tell me that if the roles were reversed and Cherry sat down behind Dallas and starting talking about how stupid and classless greaser boys are, and Dally threw a coke at her, that the fandom wouldn't love him all the more for it. People hold her to this impossible golden standard, expecting her to literally be perfect instead of a conflicted and grieving teenage girl, when they embrace the flaws and give a lot more grace to much more violent and 'bad' male characters. It's a very 'boys will be boys' and 'girls mature fatser so they should know better' double standard that I really can't stand. Marcia gets a level of the same treatment, with people occasionally calling her vapid or shallow when the book makes it clear she and Two-bit actually really hit it off, and the number she gave him being fake was only Two and Ponyboy's speculation. But I digress. Moving on.

Misogyny and classism intersect when it comes to the few female greaser characters we get a little insight on. So many people LOATHE both Sandy and Sylvia because they're cheaters, but honestly, how is cheating worse than stealing? (And don't pretend they steal because they need to survive Ponyboy makes a point of claiming Two-bit doesn't really need or want half the stuff he shoplifts) How is it worse than jumping little kids? How is it worse than sexually harassing girls? How is it worse than the plethora of immoral or illegal activities the greaser guys partake in? If we're being 100% honest, it isn't. "But-but Sandy cheated on Soda, who really loved her". Yeah, she did. That was shitty of her, I'm not defending that, but she was also a sixteen year old girl in a tough situation she was trying to navigate the best she could. She could have lied and told Soda it was his and trapped him in a marriage raising a kid he definitely couldn't afford if she wanted to- but she didn't. Hell, she told him the truth and he was still ready to do that and she wouldn't let him. I don't think those are the actions of a completely terrible person, I think they're the actions of a scared kid who did some shitty things, but is trying her best and trying to do better. At the VERY least they're the actions of a multifaceted character who deserves the same level of grace and insight afforded to the male characters. (If anyone wants to read more of my thoughts on Sandy and her narrative importance, I have a post here). There's also something to be said about the poor 'greasy' girls facing harsher vitriol than the soc girls, and while part of it is because of Ponyboy's biased narration, it's clear to see that readers very much took his views at face value. Soc girls are 'good girls' and have to be perfect to deserve credit from the fans, but greasy girls are 'trashy' so it's ok for them to be judged and shit on. Spoiler alert: it isn't.

Sylvia is similar to Sandy in that her cheating and 'loose' behaviour earn her a lot of hate, which again, I'm not defending her cheating, but we need to give her the same analysis and benefit of the doubt given to Dally. Dally is NOT a good person. Ponyboy says this and makes it clear plenty of times. He's a hurt character, so we can explien why he is the way he is, but he isn't a GOOD character. he values loyalty, so he never cheated on Sylvia, but it's clear based on how he treats Cherry and casual comments he makes that he doesn't really respect women. I can't imagine Sylvia's experience dating him was one where she felt very adored. Again, not an excuse for cheating, but I can understand WHY she'd try and take back power within a dynamic and a society where she never had any, and I don't want to vilify her for that. She's also a poor woman growing up in the sixties- the book makes it clear life is hard enough for poor guys griowing up at that time, but it was probably equally if not more hard for poor women. I think, like the gang, she does what she had to to survive. If you can understand why the gang does bad things, and still be humans who can be considered good, you can extend the same understanding to Sylvia (and Sandy.) I think people need to also keep in mind that everything we know ABOUT Sylvia (and the rest of the female characters) we know from Ponyboy, a fourteen year old boy who's narration is INCREDIBLY biased and who doesn't have the full details of any of the relationships in the gang. Ponyboy sees Sylvia and Sandy as these terrible, loose women who have hurt people he cares about, so a lot of the fandom does too, but it doesn't change the fact that by doing so you're accepting and embracing Ponyboy's internalized misogyny and making it your own.

Anyway, I don't think I'm articulating this as well as i want to, and i spoke a bit more about this in this reply to one of the posts on the confessions page, but yeah, I just wish people could accept that fact that if they bend over backward to find ways to defend or explain immoral actions from male characters, but refuse to even attempt to do the same for female characters, they've probably internalized a bit of misogyny they should maybe work on.

[saintsenara]

What parts of canon do you find the most frustrating/that you are dissatisfied with/wished that was handled better/explored more? Mine is the inconsistency of Voldemort as a character. How he is described as being perhaps the most talented student that Hogwarts has ever seen and so powerful and intelligent but regularly made such dumb decisions e.g. in the final battle where he still uses Avada Kedavra despite seeing it not work before. I like the explanation that Horcruxes rotted his brain

thank you very much for the ask, @sarafina-sincerity!

the parts of canon which i find the least satisfying all have the same thing in common: their morality is individualist.

the harry potter series has - at its core - a really profound and very black-and-white belief that good and evil not only exist but are rooted in the individual. and while i understand why this is the case - the later books in the series are governed by the genre conventions of folkloric epic and, especially, of christian folkloric epic, which means that the whole seven-book narrative arc ending in a battle between christ and satan after which all is well is only to be expected - i don't like it.

so here we are... ten things i hate about canon, for fanfic writers to win my heart by interrogating in their work...

i hate the series' insistence that everything is fine once voldemort is dead

the middle books in the series - especially goblet of fire - do a really interesting job at hinting at the endemic rot in the ministry of magic, and the ways that the state and its enforcers perpetuated harm during the first war that was indistinct from that perpetuated by the death eaters - above all the use of internment without trial for suspected death eaters [which is a reference to something the british state actually did in the 1970s!].

they show how widespread blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy is, even among people who don't openly support voldemort; how the wizarding population is kept deliberately ignorant by what appears to be state-controlled media; and how no serious efforts have been made to eradicate the conditions which enabled voldemort to attain such power.

this is then forgotten completely in deathly hallows, where the fact that almost the entire civil service keeps working for a government which is committing genocide is hand-waved away with "oh, people are scared", and both the epilogue and jkr's post-series writing take the view that kingsley manages, as minister, to preside over a government which easily sheds all its old prejudices and starts working properly.

i don't like this! i think it's just much more interesting for corruption to be impossible to fully eradicate from the government, for blood-supremacy to have long-standing causes which actually take a lot of very hard work to untangled [especially the fact that the wizarding world not appearing to have a welfare state means that those whose lives are poor or unstable are prime targets for radicalisation], and for kingsley to have the same capacity for leaning on the prophet and worrying about his polling numbers as any other politician...

i hate that the series changes how the death eaters are written between half-blood prince and deathly hallows

connected to this shift from the series hinting at the broader issues in the wizarding world to a flat battle between good and evil is that the death eaters, their aims, and their modus operandi are written very different between half-blood prince and deathly hallows. in the former, the death eaters can be situated very easily as anti-state sectarian terrorists who have all sorts of complex analogies within british history and politics. in the latter, they're just caricatures of pure evil - which is why the death eaters introduced from the latter stages of half-blood prince onwards, especially the carrows, are considerably less interesting as characters than those, such as lucius malfoy, barty crouch jr. and bellatrix lestrange, who are introduced earlier.

it's also why the voldemort of deathly hallows feels so uninteresting. i don't like the fanon that the horcruxes render him insane at all - when he's shown outside of the epic battle between good and evil in that book, he's shown to be as lucid and cunning as always - but he ends up having to flop because his only purpose in the overarching narrative is to be killed. in the earlier books, in which he's a paramilitary kingpin poisoning and corrupting a society which was designed to exclude him because of the fact of his birth in revenge for its treatment of him, rather than satan and hitler's lovechild, he is so much more interesting.

i hate the series' belief that slavery is fine

obviously, one of the biggest examples of state malevolence in the series is that wizards own slaves. like many readers, i loathe that the house elf plotline ends up being reduced from its potential for radicalism in chamber of secrets - in which dobby mentions whisper-networks of elves who decry their treatment at wizards' hands - to what we see from goblet of fire onwards - in which elves love being enslaved and think that any attempts to free them from their subjugation is cruel.

i also hate that elves' freedom is then hand-waved away as part of the general race towards "all was well" with the implication that hermione found it easy to undo what appears to be centuries of state-sanctioned oppression without any pushback at all.

the house elf plotline is one of the clearest distillations of the series' individualistic morality. harry abhors the treatment of dobby at the malfoys' hands entirely and only because he doesn't like the malfoys. he abhors voldemort's treatment of kreacher, but sees absolutely no issue with sirius' because he likes sirius - and he clearly sees no issue at all with his own legal mastery of kreacher, seeing as, literally minutes after the end of a war in which the good guys fought for the rights of muggles and muggleborns to be seen as fully human... he is considering ordering his slave to make him a sandwich.

i hate that the series doesn't show the realities of resistance

the reason i think the whole "why does voldemort keep using avada kedavra, isn't he supposed to be clever?" question arises is because the series is incredibly resistant to the idea that the good guys must have to kill as well, which makes it look like it's only the death eaters using it while the order use lots of clever magic that the stupid terrorists are too thick to think of.

this is idiotic - not only because the killing curse is canonically flawless unless the thing you're blasting is your own horcrux and so the order would use it for efficiency's sake alone, but because the reality of being a resistance fighter is that, even if you're on the "right" side, you are going to have kill people or they will kill you.

lupin is completely right in deathly hallows that harry is breathtakingly naive to avoid shooting to kill and that - without the protection of genre conventions allowing him to be preternaturally merciful - his resistance to killing is going to result in him being destroyed by the enemy. it is inconceivable that the rest of the order don't using the killing curse - and the question of what this does to their souls [is it murder if you believe yourself to be justified in your actions?] and their senses of self post-war is so interesting to think about - and i wish we were shown this in the text.

especially because molly absolutely blasted bellatrix with it.

but i also hate that the series thinks that violence is fine when the good guys do it

this is primarily another example of the black-and-white "this is fine because harry's good" theme which runs through the series, which we see in things like harry using sectumsempra on draco malfoy in half-blood prince or the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow in deathly hallows. harry's overarching response to committing attempted murder is to sulk that the incredibly minor punishment he receives is reducing the time he could spend hitting on ginny, and his response to torturing amycus is "lol. lmao."

the series thinks - again and again - that cruelty and violence are completely fine when the person they are perpetuated against "deserves" it, and it does not bang.

and that the series allows the good guys more complexity in characterisation

the role played by the house system in the story - and, above all, the fact that our heroes are all connected to one particular house with straightforwardly admirable associated characteristics - means that the villains receive less opportunity to also have positive traits intermingled with their negative ones - and, therefore, complex and interesting personalities.

i also dislike that when non-gryffindor characters - especially slytherins - do reveal themselves to be brave and loyal etc., instead of recognising that this is because bravery can be multi-faceted the series suggests that they should be recategorised as "belonging" to a "good" house.

or, in other words, me and dumbledore's "i think we sort too soon" line in deathly hallows are enemies for life.

i hate that the series blames merope gaunt for dying

and - of course - the main way a villain isn't allowed as much complexity as a hero is that the series never examines the impact of voldemort's childhood on his adult self. while we see hints throughout canon of just how profoundly affected he is by his institutionalised childhood and the weight of his grief over his parents [his mother especially] - such as him learning as a baby never to cry for attention because it's futile - this is hand-waved away throughout the series by dumbledore-as-the-voice-of-god as irrelevant. the eleven-year-old tom riddle is straightforwardly evil, that he grows up in an orphanage is used as nothing more than narrative colour to underline how creepy he is, and dumbledore's spectacular mishandling of their relationship is viewed by the series as undeniably correct right up to the very last moment [when harry imitates dumbledore by - and we should call it what it is - deadnaming voldemort in their final confrontation].

but the most egregious thing that dumbledore does when discussing the course voldemort's life takes is blame merope gaunt for her own death in childbirth, by implying that witches are immune to one of the most common causes of death throughout human history if they just try hard enough and then saying that a nineteen-year-old girl whose life appears to have been nothing more than unrelenting abuse and misery [perpetuated both against her and by her] lacked the moral fibre to try hard enough.

and this infuriates me.

i hate how the series treats female characters who don't fit its narrow spectrum of "correct" womanhood

merope is but one victim of the series' general issues with treating women who aren't its heroes - all of whom are exactly feminine and beautiful and clever and talented enough that we know they're good people, but not any of these things in an extreme which could make them vapid or arrogant or defiant of social norms or so on.

the series takes a very low view of women who exist outside of narrow boxes - whether they are interested in a hyper-feminine aesthetic [lavender brown, rita skeeter] or a more masculine one [marge dursley]; conform to stereotypes about being bitchy, flighty, or vapid [pansy parkinson, romilda vane] or refuse to adhere to social expectations to be polite, meek, and demure [fleur delacour]; are unmarried, are not inherently maternal, and/or are cruel to children [bellatrix lestrange; petunia dursley; dolores umbridge]; are unrestrained emotionally [cho chang; moaning myrtle] and so on. and i don't like it.

and i also hate that - connected to this - the series uses physical appearance - especially weight - as a shorthand for [female] characters we're supposed to dislike.

what it says on the tin, really - if the series doesn't like a character, especially if the character is a woman, you can almost guarantee that they will either be fat or be unusually thin.

and finally...

i hate that the series prioritises one form of love - love as suffering and as sacrifice - over all others

part of the series' march towards the epic two-person showdown between good and evil is that harry is made to endure trial after trial - including his death for the salvation of mankind - in the name of love. obviously this is because he becomes, by the end of deathly hallows an allegory for christ, but it also fits into the series' view - articulated most frequently by dumbledore - that love, suffering, and sacrifice are all synonyms.

the acts of love the series foregrounds - snape's willingness to endure anything because of his love for lily; sirius' willingness to rot in azkaban and caves and grimmauld place because of his love for james and harry; harry giving up a love that's like "someone else's life" with ginny so he can go die - are all sacrificial, and the series generally takes a dull view of love that is fluffy, silly, carnal, selfish, soothing, transformational and so on. lavender and bellatrix's open adoration of their lovers is mocked; dumbledore's sexual desire for grindelwald is punished by his sister's death; tonks and lupin's uncomplicated happiness in the birth of their son is not to last.

but happy endings and silly jokes and forehead kisses are love too. and the hill i will die on is that they have even more potential to bring about the salvation of the world than constant suffering and abiding.