#shattered remains

[cyanbeetle]

Trinity thesis

[no-song-so-sweet]

I want to talk about Harry Potter.

Well. Sort of. I want to talk about Harry Potter in a roundabout way, in that, I want to talk about the reaction my friend group had when shit started really going down with That Bitch Rowling.

Because Rowling is a horrible person. She’s a TERF, a denier of Nazi Crimes, homophobic, anti-Semitic, the list goes on and on (and most recently, has been attacking a trans soccer manager, if my dash is to be believed? Somehow, she just seems more cartoonishly evil with each passing day). But this isn’t about That Bitch Rowling, not really. Or if it is, she’s merely a footnote in the story.

Harry Potter was, and I think this is true for many of us, a large part of my childhood. While the writing may be mediocre at best, it was wildly influential. I didn’t know a single kid that wasn’t hoping for a letter to Hogwarts. It was a Big Deal for a lot of people, and that included my friend group. My friend group, which is made up of members of the LGBTQ+ community. My friend group, which includes a young lady who we didn’t always know was a lady. I’m sure you can see where this might be going.

The day I got a tear filled phone call about That Bitch Rowling was, frankly, heartbreaking. She was mad because a woman she had respected up until now didn’t respect her. She wanted to get rid of her copies of the books, but didn’t want to donate them. I never want to hear her cry like that again. So I made a decision.

I told her to hold onto her books for just a little while longer. I phoned the group. I figured out when everyone could get together for a weekend, and when I had hammered out dates, I packed up my car, and drove the six hundred miles back to my childhood home.

In the passenger’s seat, was my set of Harry Potter books.

Excluding my trans friend, there were seven of us. I had made a plan, and my father had the space to enact it - I grew up on acres of land; complete with 200 year old oak tree, creek in the woods in the backyard, and a massive fire pit.

Nostalgia and youth, I find, paint everything with a rose tinted hue; if Rowling had just kept her mouth shut, I’m sure many of us would have looked back on the Harry Potter series with some amount of shame. But I don’t think it would have suffered the sort of fall from grace that led us to this point.

The fire pit is important for several reasons. For example, it had been the popular gathering place for my friend group of literal decades at this point. Small towns mean that you know everyone from a very early age. We lived right beside the woods, so we used the fire pit to burn the leaves, and the branches storms took down, of which there were many. And when the first six of my friends rolled down the half mile driveway that day, I had already collect enough wood to get a decent fire going.

Six of my friends. We told the seventh a later time. We wanted to be prepared, and anyway, we all had the same cargo (six sets of seven books joined mine on a rickety folding table). I put them to work collecting more firewood (is it really a good bonfire if you’re not risking setting the barn on fire?).

By the time our last member rolled up, I had a fire going.

She had her set of those damn books too.

(There is a visceral grief that comes from being let down by your childhood heroes, and I fully believe that That Bitch Rowling embodies the phrase “never meet your heroes,” because folks, as a general rule, I am not a fan of burning books. But I was prepared to make an exception.)

We burned our copies of the Harry Potter books that day, all eight of us. They were well read, beaten to hell and back, with cracked spines, and dents in corners, and pieces of the pages missing where we had bent down the corners one too many times. And I won’t lie to anyone. We cried. Tears of sorrow and rage, for the piece of our childhood that we were choosing to give up, because to keep it would be to disrespect the woman we had known and loved for longer than we’d ever had those books.

Letting go sucked. But it was the right thing to do.

When they were gone, we put out the fire, went inside, and built the pillow fort of our dreams. We marathoned Star Wars, and ordered too many pizzas, and had way too much soda. We fell asleep playing Risk, because that’s what our friend choose, and in the morning, I made waffles with chocolate chips and too much maple syrup.

I wanted to talk about this, not just because this is a fond memory for me (even though it is), but because one of my coworkers confessed to me that they hated Rowling, and everything she stood for, and they refused to have anything else to do with the Harry Potter franchise, but they just couldn’t bring themselves to get rid of the books.

I said I was happy to host another book burning.

But I wanted to write this down because I know that sometimes it’s hard to take that final step, to leave behind that last thing. So for anyone who needs to hear it, it’s okay to grieve the things we loose when we grow up. Letting go can be hard, but I promise you’ll end up better off. It’s been awhile since things really went downhill, but I maintain that, in this case, death of the author is nonexistent, and it is better to have loved and then lost, than to hold on too tight.

Don’t hurt yourself on the shattered remains of your childhood magic.

[zoideramy]

The Origin

This is Shattered Dream, one of my earliest Zoids customs, first done sometime around 2010 and then redone to what he is today in 2011. While this wasn't my first custom project, it was the one that really cemented my love for the craft, and what gave me the confidence to tackle painting an HMM Liger Zero that would become Eve. Theres a lot of history to this little model, I can't believe that its been over 13 years since I created him!

[makedonsgriva]

I’ve been reading a lot of posts where people talked about watching Yuri On Ice for the first time back when it was airing in 2016 and it really feels so heartwarming and heartbreaking because can you imagine loving a series so much and being there for it from the start only for it to get cancelled.

I watched YOI for the first time back in mid or late 2019 (don’t remember very clearly), after a friend on tumblr urged me to watch it and it just altered my brain chemistry. I watched the whole thing in a day. And then I proceeded to re watch it very soon. I was obsessed. As a baby gay who was still struggling a lot with their sexuality, never comfortable with the labels, the pronouns, all the nuances and always thinking how do I fit myself into this Queer cardboard box with neat little labels, that show rocked my shit.

Viktor and Yuri didn’t need any labels. There was no grand coming out scene, no need to fight against the world for their love and no struggle with their inner self about wtf am I doing or am I right or wrong. They literally just skated and did their work but they fell in love side by side and it was so so beautiful for me.

A part of me was also dismayed because the kiss scene was censored. The touches, the love they showed was subtle. I felt that this meant many could brush them off as friends. That maybe, just maybe, the love wasn’t as strong and maybe I was just deluding myself. It was only after I rewatched it yesterday after years, I realized how wrong I was to think that. And that in turn helped me realize the progress I’d made in my journey to accept my own queerness. Love is not about grand romantic gestures. It’s about being there for each other and lifting each other up and not caring about how the world perceives you. Especially so in queer relationships. It doesn’t matter how some people might perceive Viktor and Yuri as old pals, we know that they are in love.

They don’t have to be incredibly loud. That love is abundantly clear when Yuri asks Viktor to coach him till he retires and Viktor oh so sweetly replies that he hopes Yuri never retires. It’s clear when Yuri changes a jump in the China Cup to show his love for Viktor. It’s clear when Viktor decides to be with Yuri every step of the way from his journey from the rock bottom to the Runner Up of the Grand Prix Final.

We call everything on this ice love and oh YOI you’ll forever be iconic for giving us queers so much love.

[platoapproved]

- - -

hey quick question: you ever read something so fucking sad it gives you a stomachache?

[vaguely-sinister-ray-of-light]

if melanie and georgie are What the Girlfriends then daisy and basira are All Cops are Lesbians. send post

[eightyuh]

sometimes i think like 'oh glen and freya's dynamic is perfect they're like ruby and sapphire' but it's more like they're a rose quartz and an agate

[silenceismychoir]

oh children of palestine, oh people of palestine – we have all let you down

[id. screen caps of a documentary that shows a child in palestine saying: "Is it right that children around the world can live and play in comfort and safety while we live in death and destruction?" he is in a building and looks on outside, with tears streaming down his face. end id.]

[legendarydreamer4ever]

the longing looks...the fact he is not the "lucky" man **cries**

[curlytsunamiart]

chosen undead & bearer of the curse

[aflockofravens]

THE SOUND I JUST MADE AT THE ENDING AGAGDJAHAGDKSHA

[spiderwarden]

reason 1837748283 on why I don’t think for a second Minthara is truly without faith: her realizing her oath is in place and doing everything she can to keep true to it.

[ghosthorse]

Benoit Blanc meets Philip on a case, and he is trying so hard to be impartial and not let his massive crush influence his judgment that he ends up in a Mr. Darcy situation where Philip is like well shit this guy hates me and is maybe kind of an asshole. Crucially, Benoit has no idea what kind of impression he's making and only gets more suspicious when Philip clams up around him. When it becomes obvious that Philip is actually in danger from the killer Benoit has to very awkwardly apologize for suspecting him AND being a dick.

[darkfictionjude]

Would Dante love an innocent and cutie MC? Or would he be bored of them?

At first he’d find it fascinating because he’d think Luce is just kind of crazy? But when he realizes it’s not insanity, he’d honestly get bored and kind of annoyed. It’s basically like… how do you expect to survive in his world being this way? It’s like you can’t pretend to be innocent when your husband does horrible things

[nineblades]

I think the worst part about bg3 for me is the way I see a character I was not intending to romance smile or say the saddest fucking thing or their romance trigger cutscene pops up and I go. I need to romance you right now. and make a new character. and then I see a character I was not intending to romance smile or say the saddest fucking thing or their romance trigger cutscene pops up and

[robotnikholmescomicblog]

Copy Robot is swiftly dealt with thanks to the Robot Masters returning, choosing to help Mega Man in the most logical way they could without having to think too hard on morality xD For all intents and purposes, that's pretty smart!

Man, to think they could have utterly destroyed Mega Man like that if they had the proper drop on him...I'm surprised he's not more afraid!