#this is a self insert I’m Harry

[ssweetiebop]

Disco elysium has literally rotten my brain I’m not joking.

when I think my inner monologue is the skill’s voice (or Kim’s! — fun fact I think I mastered how he punctuated and articulate his words in my head so that’s nice I can conjure his voice to say anything in my head now.)

when something happens to me I imagine the skills chiming in with their opinions (it’s literally me to myself.)

I think about the world of this game daily, the many many head canons I have, dynamics between the characters…

I also get way too excited for seeing disco elysium content, whether it’s art or seeing people talk about head canons they have or fanfiction or memes I just love this game and the characters so fucking much.

[lemonsweettea23]

Yeah I know, everyone wants to be hugged by this Red Guy!

[clownbees]

me n my bestie both retook our house quiz n this was born

… very much inspired by our disastrous chem practicals

[daincrediblegg]

So what if like haha *twirls hair* what if I invented a The Terror/1899 crossover self insert AU where The Terror is one of the simulations on the space expedition and Francis Crozier and I fall deeply in love trying to break out of our simulation? Huh? What then?

[solivagant242]

losing you pt. 5

remus lupin x f!reader

warnings: strong angst, losing a relationship, minor swearing (?)

pt. 1 pt. 2 pt. 3 pt. 4

amberly is used as the MC here since i used to write a lot of fanfics with her, but feel free to self-insert or use whatever name you like <3.

________________________________________

Amberly appears in James and Lily’s fireplace three seconds later, streaked in soot (James forgot to schedule a chimney cleaning) and multiple tears.

She credits the fact that they now have a child that they immediately swoop in with wet wipes and towels to clean her off. 

“You need to give him hell,” growls James, shaking his head and passing Amberly another mug of coffee. She’s pretty sure she can taste firewhiskey inside, but at this point she’s too tired to care. 

“Seriously! How can he talk to you like that?” demands Lily. The redhead throws her hands up in the air. “The fucking nerve.”

Amberly shifts her weight so as not to wake baby Harry, who’s sleeping peacefully on her shoulder. She brushes a raven lock of hair from his forehead, swallowing hard. Even though her face is already coated with sticky tears, she doesn’t want to cry anymore. Doesn’t want to be weak, pathetic and clingy like Remus had called her. 

Lily pulls Amberly into a sideways hug. “Are you okay? Pads called late last night”-

“-emphasis on called,” adds James, giving Lily a pointed look. “She didn’t even hear the phone ring, so guess who got to answer”-

Lily rolls her eyes, swatting at him good-naturedly. “It was your turn for feeding Harry, anyway.” She turns back to Amberly. “He was saying that you didn’t look so great, that Remus hadn’t been doing well?”

“No. No, he hasn’t.” The words come out of Amberly in a rush. “It’s like…no matter what I do, even if I try…it’s not right, or not enough. If I give him attention, I’m being clingy and he wants space. If I back off, I’m abandoning him. Nothing I ever do is right.” 

Hot tears are streaming down her face again as her voice cracks, waking baby Harry, who whimpers and scrubs at his eyes with one chubby fist. Shushing him, James lifts him out of Amberly’s arms, bobbing him gently up and down as he stands. “Well, you are welcome to stay here for as long as you’d like. No questions asked.”

“Maybe now I have someone who can help me beat James at rummy,” adds Lily, shooting Amberly a conspiratorial wink. 

She sniffles, scrubbing at her eyes. “I- I’m sorry to be a bother”-

“Please. You are never a bother here,” says Lily, folding Amberly in her arms. “You’re family, okay?”

“And if Remus comes here I’m giving him a piece of my mind,” growls James, tossing Harry up towards the ceiling. He squeals, flailing his arms happily and trying to grab James’ glasses.

Amberly tries to smile, but her heart isn’t in it.

The house is dark and cold.

Remus opens the door and the sound echoes loudly through the room. 

He sets his bag on the table, runs a hand through his hair, eyes flitting around the room as that pit of guilt opens in his stomach again. He’s checking, checking frantically for any signs of her presence- a stained potholder on the counter, a half-full mug of coffee, maybe a plate full of crumbs or a dog-eared book-

But all there is is the silence, curling forward with greedy claws to swallow him whole. 

Swallowing, Remus flicks on the light. 

“Amberly?”

His voice rings through the house.

There’s no answer. 

He pulls out his phone, glances at it for what feels like the fifteenth time in the last hour. The texts he’s been sending her at work stopped going through an hour ago. 

Remus doesn’t know whether to be terrified or sad.

Right now, he feels both.

Thumbing through the unopened messages, he feels a painful twinge at his heart. Again. She’d sent him so many texts, so many gray messages popping up at all hours of the day- did you eat today, love? Have you had your meds? Do you need me to run by the pharmacy? Can I get you some more of that cream you like?

And then his responses, in blue:

No

Yes

Sure

Fine

He bites his lip. Sets his phone down on the counter. Can’t stop himself from thumbing it open again, just to check.

Nothing.

Checks his calls, even though he’s had his phone off silent for the first time in months all day and hasn’t heard anything. 

Nothing.

Remus runs a hand through his hair again, sinking down on the couch and closing his eyes. Sickly guilt floods his lungs as he remembers the words he’d hurled at Amberly, the bitter spit of them between his teeth.

“Maybe I don’t want YOU…”

He squeezes his eyes tighter shut. Tries to imagine Amberly’s arms around him, the way she’d stroke his hair and hum him to sleep. Tries to imagine the lavender smell of her sweater and her quiet voice in his ear.

Merlin, she was so fucking kind to me and I threw it in her face.

Remus curls up on the couch as another headache, fueled by shame and regret, begins pounding at his temples.

Amberly wishes she could say that she went to sleep calmly and quietly without thinking of Remus at all. She wishes she could cut him out of her thoughts, stop thinking about him, worrying about him, analyzing every single second of their interaction and just wanting him to be okay again.

Even if it was at her expense…

But this time her pride wouldn’t let her back down.

She’d turned off her phone hours ago. She couldn’t remember when. Text after text from Remus had poured in, clogging her notification screen.

Some little part of her was still desperately, disgustingly glad to be getting any shred of attention from him. It was almost enough for her to unlock her phone and respond to him, anything to have him there, talking, even if it meant that she would be pushed down into silence again.

She’d shut that part off with her phone and hadn’t turned it on since then. 

Amberly wraps the comforter tighter around her shoulders, trying to get comfortable in the bed. She’s hugging an oversized pillow, a habit that she’s gotten used to over the last few months. Because she can’t remember the last time she fell asleep hugging Remus. No, he was always too tired or in too much pain or having an awful headache…

A lone tear trickles down Amberly’s cheek.

Her chest tightens. So do her lips as she stares, eyes unseeing into the darkness. 

I’m too clingy.

Okay.

I won’t be. 

And something in her chest goes hard and cold and silent, a part of her shutting off, the lights flickering and slamming into darkness.

[nyxshadowhawk]

A Retrospective on Harry Potter

Why did I like it in the first place? What about it worked? Where do I go from here?

I have decided to give up Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s reputation now stinks to high heaven. At this point, she is quite indefensible. And even if that weren’t the case, she is not someone that I would want to associate with anyway. Meanwhile, the internet has not only turned against her, but against Harry Potter itself. An innocent question on Reddit, about which Hogwarts Houses the ATLA characters would be in, got downvoted to oblivion. Innumerable Tumblr threads insist that fantasy fans should get into literally anything else (suggestions include Discworld, Earthsea, The Wheel of Time, and Percy Jackson). And now that Harry Potter is no longer a sacred cow, there has been a recent slew of video essays that rip it to shreds, attacking it for its poor worldbuilding, unoriginality, and the problematic ideas baked into the original books (like the whole SPEW thing), etc. Those criticisms always existed, but now they’re getting thrown into the limelight.

It pains me to see such an ignoble downfall of Harry Potter’s reputation. If Rowling had just kept her damn mouth shut, Harry Potter would have aged gracefully, becoming a beloved children’s classic. I'd still plan to introduce it to my own kids one day (after Rowling dies and the dust settles). It’s not surprising that not all aspects of it have aged well, since it’s been more than twenty years since its original publishing date, and everything starts to show its age after that long. I acknowledge that most of the criticisms of the series that I’ve seen lately are valid, and I’ve read plenty of better books. And yet, when I return to the books themselves, even with the knowledge of who JKR really is inside my head, I still really enjoy reading them! There’s still a lot about them that I think works!

None of the other things I’ve read have had as collossal of an impact upon my identity, my values, and my own writing as Harry Potter. It’s hard to move on from it, not just because it’s something I enjoy, but because I have to literally extract my identity from it. I don’t know who I’d be without Harry Potter. I don’t know what my work would look like without Harry Potter. I don’t know how to carry it with me as just another piece of media that I like, as opposed to a filter for who I am as a person. So, with all that in mind, I have to ask myself why I liked Harry Potter so much in the first place. If I’m going to move on from it, then I have to be able to define and isolate the things about it that I want to keep with me. Something about it obviously worked, on a massive scale. So what was it?

It’s not the worldbuilding. The worldbuilding is objectively quite terrible, especially in comparison to that of other fantasy writers who knew what they were doing. At best, it’s inconsistent and poorly thought-out, and at worst it’s insensitive or even racist. Is it the characters? The characters are, in my opinion, one of the stronger parts of the story. But I felt very called-out by one of the many online commentators, who said that anyone who identifies with Harry is too cowardly to write self-insert fic. (I do not remember who said it or even which site it was on, but I distinctly remember the phrase, “Reject Harry Potter, embrace Y/N.”) The reason why people get so invested in Harry Potter’s characters is because they’re easy to project upon, and it’s possible that my love of Harry comes more from over a decade’s worth of projection than anything else. The incessant arguments over characters like Snape, Dumbledore, and James Potter ultimately stem from the fact that these characters do not always come across the way Rowling wanted them to. As for the writing itself, it’s decent, but not spectacular. Harry Potter is something of a sandbox world, with less substance than it appears to have and a crapton of missed opportunities, making it ripe for fanfic. For more than ten years, I’ve been doing precisely that — using Harry Potter as a jumping-off point to fill in the gaps and develop my own ideas, some of which became my original projects.

So what does Harry Potter actually have that sets it apart? Why are people so desperate to be part of Harry Potter’s world if the worldbuilding is bad? What, specifically, is so compelling about it? I think that there’s one answer, one thing that is at the center of Potter-mania, and that has been the underlying drive of my love of it for the past decade and a half: the vibe.

Harry Potter’s vibe is immaculate.

You know what I mean, right? It’s not actually a product of any specific trope, but rather a series of aesthetic elements: The wizarding school in a grand castle, with its pointed windows and torches and suits of armor, ghosts and talking portraits and moving staircases, its Great Hall with floating candles and a ceiling that looks like the night sky, its hundreds of magically-concealed secret doorways. Dumbledore’s Office, behind the gryphon statue, with armillary spheres in every single shot. Deliberate archaisms that evoke the Middle Ages without going as far as a Ren Faire: characters wearing heavy robes, writing with quills and ink on parchment instead of paper, drinking from goblets, decorating with tapestries. Owls, cats, toads. Cauldrons simmering in a dungeon laboratory. Shelves piled with dusty tomes, scrolls, glass vials, crystal balls, hourglasses. Magical candy shaped like insects and amphibians. A library with a restricted section. A forbidden forest full of unicorns and werewolves. That is the Vibe.

There are five armillary spheres just in this shot. They are unequivocally the most Wizard of tabletop decor.

There’s more to it than just the aesthetic, though. The vibe is present in something that writers call soft worldbuilding.

There’s a phrase that writers use to describe magic systems, coined by Brandon Sanderson: hard magic and soft magic. Sanderson’s first law of magic is, “An author’s ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic.” A hard magic system has clearly-defined rules — you know where magic comes from, how it works and under which conditions, how the characters can use it, and what its limitations are. Examples of really good hard magic systems include Avatar: The Last Airbender and Fullmetal Alchemist. If the audience doesn’t understand the conditions under which magic can work, then using magic to get out of any kind of scrape risks feeling like the writer pulled something out of their ass. It begs the question, “Well, if they could do that, then why didn’t they do that before?”

You may come away from that thinking that having clearly-defined rules is always better worldbuilding than not having them, but this isn’t the case. Soft magic isn’t fully explained to the audience, but that doesn’t matter, because it isn’t trying to solve problems — its purpose is to be evocative. Soft magic enhances the atmosphere of a world by creating a sense of wonder. If your everyman protagonist is constantly running into cool magical shit that they don’t understand, then the world feels like it teems with magic, magic that is greater and more powerful than they know, leaving lots of secrets to uncover. Harry Potter, at least in the early books, excels at this. The soft magic in Harry Potter is what got me hooked, and I think it’s what a lot of other people liked about it, too.

The essence of soft magic is best summed up by this scene in the fourth film, in which Harry enters the Weasleys’ tiny tent at the Quidditch World Cup, only to find that it’s much bigger on the inside. His reaction is to smile and say, “I love magic.”

That’s it. That’s the essence of it. You don’t need to know the exact spell that makes the tent bigger on the inside. You don’t need to know how Dumbledore can make the food appear on the table with a flick of a wand, or how he can make a bunch of poofy sleeping bags appear with another flick. You don’t need to know how and why the portraits or wizard cards move. You don’t need to know how wizards can appear and disappear on a whim, or what the Deluminator is, or where the Sword of Gryffindor came from. You don’t need to know how the Room of Requirement works. Knowing these things defeats the purpose. It kills the vibe, that vibe being that there is a large and wondrous magical world around you that will always have more to discover.

One of the best “soft magic” moments in the books comes early in Philosopher’s Stone, when Harry is trying to navigate Hogwarts for the first time:

There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren't really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk. —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 8

Many of these details don’t come back later in the series, which is a shame, because this one paragraph is super evocative! It establishes Hogwarts as an inherently magical place, in which the very architecture doesn’t conform to normal rules. Hogwarts seems like it would be exciting to explore (assuming you weren’t late for class), and it gets even better when you learn about all the secret rooms and passages. The games capitalized on this by building all the secret rooms behind bookcases, mirrors, illusory walls, etc. into the game world, and rewarding you for finding them. The utter fascination that produces is hard to overstate.

Another one of the most evocative moments in the first book is when Harry sees Diagon Alley for the first time, after passing through the magically sealed brick wall (the mechanics of which, again, are never explained). This is your first proper glimpse at the wizarding world and what it has to offer:

Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad....” A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever —" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon.... —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 5

What works so well here is the magical weirdness of wizardishness juxtaposed against normalcy. Eeylops Owl Emporium is just a pet shop to wizards. A woman makes a very mundane complaint about the price of goods, but the goods happen to be dragon liver. Broomsticks are treated like cars. All of these small moments contribute to the feeling of the wizarding world being alive, inhabited, and also magical. It gets you to ask the question of what your life would be like if you were a wizard. What do wizards wear? What do they eat? What do they haggle over and complain about? What do they do for fun?

In Book 3, Harry enjoys Diagon Alley for a few weeks when he suddenly has free time, and we get to experience the wizarding world in a state of “normalcy,” when he isn’t trying to save the world. He gets free ice creams from Florean Fortescue, gazes longingly at the Firebolt, and engages with delightfully weird people. He’s a wizard, living a (briefly) normal wizard life among other wizards in wizard-land. And that is fun. It’s so fun, that people want that experience for themselves, enough for there to be several theme parks and other immersive experiences dedicated to recreating the world of Harry Potter.

One of the greatest things about Universal was its phenomenal attention to detail. You can hear Moaning Myrtle’s voice in the women’s bathroom, and only the women’s bathroom. The walls of the Three Broomsticks have shadows of a broom sweeping by itself and an owl flying projected against the wall, so convincingly that you’ll do a double take when you see it. Knockturn Alley is down a little secret tunnel off of the main street, and that’s where you have to go to buy Dark Arts-themed stuff. It’s really well done.

Another thing that contributes to the vibe, in my opinion, is that the wizarding world is slightly macabre. They eat candy shaped like frogs, flies, mice, and so forth, and they have gross-tasting jellybeans. In the film’s version of the Diagon Alley sequence above, there’s a random shot of a pet bat available for purchase. In the third film, when Harry is practicing the Patronus Charm with Lupin, the candles are shaped like human spines. In the first book, this is Petunia’s description of Lily’s behavior after she became a witch:

Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school, and came home every holiday with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! —Philosopher’s Stone, Chapter 4

I remember reading this for the first time, and it just kind of made intuitive sense to me. I suppose it fits into the “eye of newt and toe of frog” association between magical people and gross things, but somehow it works. Unfortunately, this is retconned later with the knowledge that wizards can’t use magic outside school, but before that limitation gets imposed, the idea of Lily amusing herself by turning teacups into rats seems like an inherently witchy thing to do.

That association between magic and the macabre shows up elsewhere, as well. In The Owl House, Luz’s interest in gross things is one of the things that marks her as a “weirdo” in the real world. When she goes to the magical world of the Boiling Isles, weird and gross stuff is absolutely everywhere. That world’s vibe leans more towards the macabre than the whimsical, but it works because you sort of expect the gross stuff to exist alongside the concept of witches, and that they would be an intrinsic part of the world they inhabit. You don’t question it, because it’s part of the vibe.

(The Owl House is one of the few things I’ve encountered that has a similar vibe to Harry Potter, but it’s still not the same vibe. In fact, The Owl House outright mocks the expectation that magical worlds be whimsical, and directly mocks Harry Potter more than once. The overall vibe is much closer to Gravity Falls.)

The Harry Potter films utilize a lot of similar soft worldbuilding with the background details, especially in the early films that were still brightly-colored and whimsical. For example, the scene in Flourish and Blotts in the second film has impossibly-stacked piles of books and old-timey looking signs describing their subjects, which include things like “Celestial Studies” and “Unicorns.” When Harry arrives in the Burrow in the same film, one of the first things he sees is dishes washing themselves and knitting needles working by themselves, taking completely mundane things and instantly establishing them as magical. In that Patronus scene with Harry and Lupin, the spine-candles and a bunch of random orbs (and the obligatory giant armillary sphere) float around in the background. One small detail that I personally appreciate is the designs on the walls above the teacher’s table in the Great Hall, which are from an alchemical manuscript called the Ripley Scroll:

It’s all these little things that add up to produce The Vibe.

Obviously, much of the vibe is expressed very well in John Williams’ score for the first three Harry Potter films. The mystical minor key of the main theme, the tinkly glockenspiel, the strings, the rising and falling notes that mimic the fluttering of an owl, the flight of a broomstick, or the waving of a wand. That initial shot of the castle across the lake as the orchestra swells, as the children arrive at their wizarding school:

If you grew up with Harry Potter, just looking at this image gives you The Vibe. The nostalgia hit is definitely part of it, but The Vibe was already there, back when you were a child and you didn’t have nostalgia yet.

In my opinion, only Williams’ score captures this vibe — the later films, though their scores are very good, do not. But the soundtrack of the first two video games, by Jeremy Soule (the same person who did Skyrim) absolutely nails it. This, right here, is Harry Potter’s vibe, condensed and distilled:

This is why I feel invalidated by the common advice “just read another book.” I have read other books. I’ve read plenty of other books, many of which are wonderfully written and have left an impact on me. But there’s still only one Harry Potter. To date, there’s only other book that has filled me with a similarly intense longing for a fictional place, and that is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. That book deliberately prioritized atmosphere over everything else in the story, and actually lampshades this in-universe. The Night Circus has a plot and it has characters, but it’s not about its plot or characters. It’s about the setting and its atmosphere. It swallows you up and transports you to a fictional place that is so evocative and so magical that you just have to be part of it or you’ll die. And even then, The Night Circus has a different kind of vibe from Harry Potter. In this particular capacity, there’s nothing else like Harry Potter.

The thing is, I don’t think Rowling was being as deliberate as Erin Morgenstern. (In fact, given many of Rowling’s recent statements, I question how many of her creative choices were deliberated at all.) She was throwing random magical stuff into the background without thinking too hard about it, which works when you’re writing a kids’ story, but stops working when you try to age it up. Actually, scratch that — soft worldbuilding is definitely not just for kids! The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system, for crying out loud, and Tolkien is the original archmage of worldbuilding. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that prioritizing atmosphere over meticulousness is bad worldbuilding. That is a valid way to worldbuild! Not everything needs to be clearly explained, not everything needs to make sense. The problem is that Harry Potter doesn’t balance it well. Certain things do have to be explained in order for the magic to play an active role in the story (and the setting of a magic school lends itself to that kind of explanation), but no rules are ever established for the kinds of magic that need rules. When you begin thinking about the rules, you’re no longer just enjoying the magic for what it is. At worst, you begin running up against the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

It wasn’t actually the “aging up” of the story that did it in, per se, but rather, the introduction of realism. The early books were heavily stylized, and the later books were less so. A heavily stylized story can more easily maintain the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. That’s why, for example, you don’t ask why the characters are singing in a musical — you just sort of accept the story’s outlandish internal logic, and the inherent melodrama of it doesn’t take you out of the story. Stylized stories are more concerned with being emotionally consistent over being logically consistent. The later Harry Potter books changed their emotional tone, but without changing the worldbuilding style to compensate.

In addition to the more mature themes and darker tone, Harry Potter introduced more realism as it went, but Rowling did not have the worldbuilding chops to pull this off. There’s the basic magic system stuff: When you begin thinking about it too hard, something like a Time-Turner stops being a fun magical device, and starts threatening to break the entire story. Then there’s the characters: Dumbledore leaving Harry on the Dursleys’ doorstep in the first book is an age-old fairy tale trope that goes unquestioned, but with the introduction of realism in the later books, it suddenly becomes abandonment of a child to an abusive family. The exaggerated stereotypes of characters like the Dursleys become tone-deaf. The fun school rivalry of the House system is suddenly lacking in nuance. And then there’s the shift in tone: The wizarding world that we were introduced to as a marvellous place is revealed to be dystopian. You start thinking about how impractical things like owl messengers are, you start wondering if Slytherin is being unjustly punished, the bad history appears glaringly obvious, the quaint archaisms become dangerously regressive. Oh, and the grand feasts are made through slave labor! The wizarding world suddenly feels small and backward instead of grand and marvellous. J.K. Rowling’s bigotry throws it all into an even harsher light.

This is why I’ve always preferred the early books and films to the later ones. There’s a lot of things I like about the later ones, but they’re not as stylized — they don’t have The Vibe. Thinking about things too hard is just a necessary condition of adulthood, but it’s still possible to tell a dark, mature story that is highly stylized. I really think JKR could have better pulled off that shift if she was a more competent worldbuilder. But it is painfully obvious that she did not think things through, and probably didn’t understand why she had to. In her defense, she did not know that her story would end up being one of the most scrutinized of all time. As it stands, her strength in worldbuilding was in the softer, smaller, deliberately unexplained moments of magic that were there just to provide atmosphere. And there were less and less of those as the books went along.

Pretty much all the Harry Potter-related content released since the last film — including Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Hogwarts Mystery, Hogwarts Legacy, Magic Awakened, and that short-lived Pokemon Go thing — have been unsuccessful attempts at recreating The Vibe. In fact, the only piece of supplemental Potter content that I think had that Vibe down pat was the original Pottermore, back when it was more of an interactive game. And of course that got axed. That was right around the time things started going downhill.

Some of the art from Pottermore’s original Sorting quiz.

So what now? Well, that’s the question.

I think I can safely say that The Vibe was the reason I liked Harry Potter. It’s the thing I still like the most about it. I’ve spent years chasing it, like an elusive Patronus through a dark wood. If I can capture and distill that Vibe, and use drops of it in my own work, then perhaps I won’t need Harry Potter anymore.

I'm gonna write the story that I wish Harry Potter was, and when I'm a famous author, I won't become a bigot. I'll see you on the other side.

[liliumaze]

ꨄ bf!harry with a taller!reader — headcanons

cw. suggestive content (smut but i didn't end it?), no use of y/n, much of a self insert tbh, girly!reader

wc. +500

note. i always see fics here with a shorter reader so here i am doing this for us tall girlies. besides harry in the movies is kinda short lmao and i am in fact taller than him. not sure if anyone already did something like this. english isn't my first language, sorry for any mistakes!!

ᡣ𐭩. harry isn't even a little bit ashamed about dating a taller girl, in fact he loves how tall you are and there are a few reasons for that.

ᡣ𐭩. when you two hug, even if standing up, harry can bury his face on your chest and he loves it.

ᡣ𐭩. harry has to lift his head/stand on his toes to kiss you. it's adorable and if you point this out teasing him he’ll be a little embarrassed, making it even cuter.

ᡣ𐭩. sometimes you playfully lift harry up while kissing (he likes it).

ᡣ𐭩. you constantly hear jokes around school, about how you should get into basketball or something because of your height. fred and george usually joke about your height difference with harry; it can be funny but you're so used to it that there are times it can be a burden—harry notices when you don't like it so he tells them to stop.

ᡣ𐭩. if you're feeling insecure about wearing heels, harry won't hold back on saying how pretty you are with high heels and how actually iconic you get by being even taller. he doesn't feel any shame about being next to you when you're so tall and neither should you.

ᡣ𐭩. when you tell harry your height makes you feel less feminine and this brings you sadness, he's stunned because he sees you like a graceful doll, with a seraphic aura adorning your girly figure all the time.

“darling, what do you mean by that?” the gryffindor asks, disbelieving your words, because how could you, who were always wearing your cute skirts, high socks and mary janes, say you didn't see yourself as feminine as you wanted to be?

“it's just… next to other girls i feel so big, like i’ll never be delicate like them. i know they think the same, and they're always joking about how no man will be attracted to me when i have this height and it gets so uncomfortable… i’m sorry, i shouldn't have told you this, it's so foolish,” you try laughing it off, however you can't even look away because your boyfriend’s hands are immediately cupping your face, keeping you two facing each other.

“it's not foolish if it bothers you,” harry's words come firmly. “what’s truly foolish are their words.”

no time for answer, the only thing you can do is gasp due to harry's hands already lifting you up and positioning you on the table, his fingers trailing lines close to the end of your skirt.

“should i mark you up, beautiful? so everyone sees how desired you are, regardless of your height? which, really, doesn't matter,” harry starts covering your neck with wet kisses, hands gripping tightly on the smooth skin of your thighs under your clothes.

“harry,” his name leaves your lips in a moan, the boy's efforts to have you forgetting about everything else working.

“so pretty for me,” his mouth is tracing you from your lips to your collarbone, worshiping every bit of your skin. harry's hands raise your skirt, showing your lacy white panties, a small wet spot on them.

“and people still have the courage to tell you you aren't feminine enough, angel? you're literally a doll, princess.”

[adragonsfriend]

Supreme Chancellor Grandpa and his Spectacular Vibes

"'Busy as always, I’m afraid. But very glad of this evening’s reprieve.' He says, smiling warmly, because Chancellor Palpatine is the picture of a harried but caring and active leader."

This is going to be part commentary on canon, part my response to the fairly common supposition that Palpatine acts openly rude or prejudiced as Chancellor, part thought experiment.

(quotes from Biting his own Tale (mostly The Supreme Chancellor's Diary) in purple because if I don't do breakdowns of my own writing, who will?)

I pose the question, what is it actually like to be in Palpatine’s presence?

At the heart of it, it's incredibly reassuring:

He is always solving problems for people—often by taking on extra responsibility! It is genuinely difficult to come out of a meeting with Chancellor Palpatine feeling as though some weight has not been taken off your shoulders. Be it emotional (he has lent a sympathetic ear: gained personal information about you), logistical (he’s offered to mention your problem to someone: gained a tacit, informal favour in return), personal (he’s given you advice: shaped your decisions), or logical (he’s always up for a challenging puzzle: he’s always looking for opportunities to take advantage of).

He's a good public speaker, and his speeches gesture at large goals, out of the individual person's reach (I went to a school that had students give these speeches to the whole school twice a week about what ever (school-approved) topic they wanted and trust me, the fastest way to alienate a general audience is to ask them to do something achievable. depressing i know). People—even senators who are aware of his rhetorical tricks—consistently leave his public appearances with a vague but incredibly strong sense that big problems will all be resolved naturally, or by someone else. "She starts reading over one of Palpatine’s oldest speeches, from nearly twenty years ago. …Our Sector is made strong by its partnerships with our neighbors…Naboo will always maintain those relationships bring Prosperity to young and old…The new trade bill will ensure Peace and Security for decades to come…  It has a familiar, empty quality that makes the speaker sound full of ideas, but really only rouses emotion."

He’s no comedian—his jokes are typically chuckle-worthy at best, indeed they are often a little awkward—but he takes such clear delight in causing joy in the people around him that it is hard to resist smiling even when a joke is stilted or slightly out of touch. "'Knight Skywalker didn’t stir at all, I’m afraid,' Sidious inserts a little self-deprecation into Palpatine’s tone, “But it’s reassuring to know he’s in the most capable hands here, Master healer.' / 'We certainly do our best, Chancellor.' Master Che’s expression is polite, but she doesn’t smile. / Not taken in by flattery for a moment. Palpatine approves, 'And I’d best let you get back to it.' He sighs just audibly, and squares his shoulders, 'And get back to it myself.' He crafts a smaller smile, and this time he catches the faintest hint of amusement in the twitch of her lips."

You are a corrupt politician who has gotten in some trouble, but don't worry—your friend Palpatine is there to take care of it. He'll ask a few favors on your behalf, only because he knows you deserve a second chance, and besides he says, what you did wasn't really all that bad in the first pace. He's not doing anything bad by helping out a friend. "'But I'm not! Ventress is getting stronger and I'm still too weak. I should’ve killed her when I had the chance—' [Anakin] cuts himself off, glancing nervously at Palpatine—Sidious arranges Palpatine’s face like a deck of cards so it shows only dedicated interest. Anakin continues, reassured that Palpatine sees no problem with killing his enemies."

You are a leader of your people, worried about how you are going to help them. Palpatine is also a leader, and of even more people than you—but he sympathises, he's made time for you, he worries about his own home planet even as he puts that worry aside to care for the whole galaxy. He suggests someone you might speak with.

You are a clone in the coruscant guard, whom many citizens and senators dislike either for enforcing the law or simply for being clones, but Chancellor Palpatine is always polite to his guards. He confuses you for your brothers sometimes, but he always apologizes and clarifies your name. Sometimes you catch him muttering names and ranks under his breath, trying to remember all of them—he is always faintly embarrassed when this happens, but he keeps doing it.

You are a Jedi, reporting that one of your people has died in tragic, violent circumstances. Out of the many-faced mass of the Senate comes Palpatine to lead the condolences. He maintains a steady sympathy, but beneath it, you can see that he truly feels the loss. Even the seemingly apathetic Senators around him have been moved to nod their heads in true sympathy—in a galaxy that grows cold to your people you more and more, he makes your loss felt to others when you cannot. "[Padme]'s hardly ever irritated by Palpatine when she’s in his presence, only after she leaves, when she’s picked through all the pleasantries and misdirection. Just this week, she’d watched him frown upon hearing about the death of Knight Wu Mengxiang, and caught herself nodding along with his condolences to the Jedi who’d come to inform them."

You are the queen of a planet in danger, and here is someone who is willing to do something drastic to help you. He will take power, and help you fix all the injustice if you will only ask him for help. Yes it may take a few days, but he is doing all he can—it is not his fault the incumbent Chancellor is too attached to his position to realize another could do better in his place. "He’d used them, encouraged them to attack Naboo, and then used the crisis to force a vote of no confidence against Valorum. Only force isn’t the right word is it? He’d made a suggestion, and Padme had jumped at the chance to spare her people."

Body language and charisma are incredibly powerful (random statistics like 'oh 80% of all human communication is through body language' are not sufficient to communicate the extent of this power), and one of Palpatine’s most extraordinary traits is is ability to keep up and act—probably to an unrealistic extent.

Lots of real life advice on how to discover manipulative people is simply to wait and observe their actions over a longer period—eventually, they will slip up and reveal who they truly are. This certainly happens with Palpatine in ROTS, but it takes a very long time, not months or even years, but decades.

And his suspicions behavior in ROTS is a deliberate ploy! He uses it three fold:

To incite cognitive dissonance and uncertainty in the senate—most of whom have regarded him as trustworthy and in accord with their specific interests up to this point—so that he can push through his most obviously suspicious empire-making pieces of legislation.

To cause the Jedi to be suspicious of him in general, so that they investigate and eventually attempt to arrest him, allowing him to label them traitors and usurpers.

To cause the Jedi to be suspicious of him specifically to put Anakin, who either does not register or does not acknowledge any change in behavior, at odds with the other Jedi.

"'The upside,' Padmé counters, 'Is that it means even Palpatine is limited in what he can push through without sacrificing his [public] image—' / Ekkreth cuts her off, 'If you ever do find him obviously suspicious, it is too late. That is his endgame for the Republic.'"

The only point where he compromises his act to his own detriment is in Return of the Jedi with Luke, who has the twin advantages of knowing exactly who Sidious is and only having been in the same room as him for all of ten minutes.

People like the Jedi on the Council and the leaders of the Delegation of 2000 (potentially including) Padmé Amidala who manage to partly pierce the veil and form actual distrust of Chancellor Palpatine as an individual are the exception, not the rule. They are extraordinary in being able to both know the man and even semi-accurately analyze his actions.

I say potentially about Padmé because it is very much the last days when she remarks upon anything, and the delegation of 2000 deleted scene reads to me as though she is being read in on a plan others have already made—ergo she is not one of the initiators.

People who are aware of him only as a public figure are not at any great advantage either. His speeches give much the same air of worn but steady reassurance, and it is difficult to trace any particular wrong doing back to him—he took over of a paralyzed, unpopular leader, he was in favor of unity and so opposed the war, he has a great origin story going from troubled youth to orphan to responsible leader, his greatest scandal is a slightly expensive taste easily excused by his role.

Sidious has a distinct advantage in that any obviously violent or cruel end he wishes to pursue can be achieved through Dooku and the Separatist military (want to kill a Jedi who knows too much? Dooku can have Ventress do that. Want Anakin to suffer extra this week? Dooku can arrange that. Want this or that artifact/weapon stolen or destroyed? Dooku can assign a general to do that. Want a clone army? Dooku can get Syfo Dyas to do that. et cetera), and there is no paper trail of any of it. The only way in which Chancellor Palpatine has to get his hands dirty is making the pragmatic decisions necessary to the Republic. "No matter how much more obscure the methods for obtaining those records has become since the Government Information Acts—which she recalls Palpatine calling a deeply unfortunate necessity of these troubled times—were passed, they are still legal."

Long story short, Anakin is special only in the individual attention he receives—he is the microcosm of what Palpatine does to almost everyone he comes into contact with. Invoke trust, take on responsibility, absolve guilt, corrupt. Palpatine's greatest strength is not in his long-term schemes—many of those are set up for him, or mainly managed by Dooku—it is in his opportunism, and that includes in his ability to become the right person for every given moment.

Long story even shorter, Darth Plagueis did not name his apprentice Darth Sneeky McSneekface so people could try and convince me Chancellor Palpatine is randomly rude to people.

Edit: changed some phrasing--nothing substantive

[starrylayle]

coming on here to quickly rant abt remadora. Okk yess I know ‘another wolfstar shipper shitting on remadora’ here me out okay!!! Just for a sec!! I read the Harry Potter books for the first time back in 2017 and remadora was my shit. Remus was my second favourite male character and tonks was my second fave female character. (Harry and cho were my first faves — yes I self inserted into Harry and had the biggest crush on cho — yes I cried when they broke up — shut up we all had our embarrassing phases!!)

Anyways back to remadora, I just thought they were so cute together, even tho it felt a little random. But one thing that I remember that really pissed me off was the ship name. I never understood why it was ‘remadora’ and not ‘ronks’. Tonks hated being called Dora!! I remember ranting abt this on my Wattpad acc (yes I know SHHHH) when I was reviewing all the Hp ships.

I don’t ship it anymore (obviously lol) and looking back, I think my issue with the ship name is lowkey symbolic for my key problem with remadora — it basically removes everything that made her interesting in the first place and reduced her to just Another Woman Character in the series. When she got with Remus, she became more mellow, more feminine, more complacent — which are fine traits btw — but that’s not tonks!! Now as I’m older, and re-reading the series, I see a lot of subtext for a gender non-conforming and possibly genderqueer person forced into a heterosexual relationship simply becoz jo didn’t want ppl thinking Remus was gay and coz she had this weird thing abt all ‘good’ women being mothers.

Which brings me to tonk’s pregnancy — I wouldn’t mind a storyline for tonks having a child — I just hate how jkr had to fit it into this whole nuclear family model and get her and Remus to get married. I feel like a more compelling, or at least consistent characterisation would have tonks having a one night stand with Remus after they were both mourning their cousin/uncle/lover’s death. Shit happens sometimes. And it would be interesting to see Tonks and Remus grapple with this and what it means for their child.

Another head cannon I saw on tik tok was that Tonks had a threesome with Fleur and Bill and since polyamory wasn’t socially acceptable she asked Remus to be the stand in legal father — and ofc Remus would say yes coz he’s Remus!! This hc sounded wild to me at first but they all gave me queer vibes and it just makes me happy so now this is the headcanon I stick with lol.

Anyways not every woman has to have a husband and 2-3 kids to be a good person jkr!! Families are complex! Women are complex! And Tonks deserves better imo.

P.s. if you ship remadora that’s completely okay!! This is just my opinion!! I’ve seen remadora shippers who don’t water down tonk’s character/subtextual queerness — I just hate how jkr depicted the ship in canon.

[saintsenara]

I’m not sure if anyone else asked this yet (I didn’t see it if they did) but thoughts on Draco/Ginny?

thank you very much for the ask, @riverxsong-ao3!

i might be talking out of my arse here, but I feel like i saw drinny everywhere in like 2006 but now it's a rare-pair.

i have no idea why this might be - obviously the fandom now ascribes more controversy to death eater/non-death eater pairings; obviously the tendency among fans who go in for non-canon stuff is to read and write slash pairings, rather than het ones with other than the canon endgame couples; and obviously the major exceptions to this are dramione [which uses up draco] and harmony [which is - i'll be frank - usually written to get rid of the weasleys as quickly as possible] - but all of these things were true in the 00s too...

[my actual theory is that ginny functions less well as a self-insert - in the way that perfect fanon!hermione is typically used - because she's a smaller and more imperfect character in the books and she could have been played by a chair in the films and lost nothing of her character arc, and that this means that people who are keen on "omg tom felton draco malfoy is interested in little ol' me" fics don't write them with her in the reader role...]

but yeah, i'm actually quite fond of it as a concept. one of the things i think is really underappreciated about the canonical ginny is that she's clearly extremely petty and vindictive [how else was she feeding secrets into the diary strong enough to resurrect the biggest bitch hogwarts has ever known?], but in a really teenage way - harry is forced by his narrative role to be almost preternaturally mature, but ginny's beef even towards the end of deathly hallows is that her mam is being mean and treating her like a child.

that sort of flop energy aligns extremely well with draco's canon vibe [never tells a joke that lands]. i mean, we can all imagine "yeah, zabini, because you're so talented... at posing" coming out of draco's mouth, and yet it's a direct quote from ginevra molly weasley.

i back the two of them to really quite enjoy sitting in front of the telly while some sort of red-carpet coverage is on, thinking their running commentary on the stars' outfits is funny and/or good. and enjoying spending time with each other is, really, all you need in a relationship...

[ihearthes]

Christmas Thyme part 1

Author: @ihearthes

Pairing: Harry x Reader Insert (1st person)

Rating: Smut (NSFW, 18+ Only)

Word Count: 2665

‘Tis a week before Christmas, and just as I am preparing to twist the “Open” sign to its “Closed” side, the bell over the door jingles. Inwardly, I groan. Outwardly, I paste on my brightest smile as I pivot towards my (hopefully) final customer of a very long, very exhausting day. 

I freeze. 

Because standing there in the doorway of my boutique is Harry Styles. THE Harry Styles. You know. As It Was. Watermelon Sugar. Sex on a stick. That last one isn’t a song. Just a description. 

“Um, hi,” I mumble, not knowing what else to say, but then I quickly tack on a “How may I help you?” 

His eyebrows draw downwards, and he looks around at the merchandise which, after a long day of Saturday sales in the last few frantic days before the most important gift-buying holiday of the year, is scattered everywhere. 

I’ve no idea if I want him to decide to leave immediately or if I should beg him to stay and shop. I do neither. 

But only because I spot another person on the street outside, pointing at one of the most sought after and most frequently purchased soy candles. She and her friend appear to be heading towards the door, so I summon the last of my energy and lunge for the door ahead of them, pulling the shade while simultaneously rotating the lock. My panicked movements mean I jostle the popstar as he stands nearby. 

“Oops! I’m so sorry. I just…” 

“Are you open or closed?” He asks, worry etched on his forehead where it peeks out underneath his black beanie. I take him in, recognising his face instantly. With a pair of joggers, he wears a black Pleasing crewneck, and I’m briefly jealous of how cosy it looks. I wouldn’t mind snuggling close – to the crewneck, of course. 

I am, after all, a competent businesswoman. Pfft. Okay, I’m trying to be one. 

“We’re closed now, but if you don’t have much to shop for, you’re welcome to look around while I tidy up in preparation for Tuesday’s maniacal clientele. 

He grunts, and I assume it’s affirmation that he’d like to look around, so I nod. “Are you looking for something in particular? Or shopping for a certain someone?” Wracking my brain, I attempt to recall if he’s currently dating anyone, but I’ve no idea. Since opening up my pop up last month, I’d not had time to do much more than work daily until exhaustion forces me to crawl into bed with a heating pad on my back and warm peppermint compresses on my feet. 

“Just looking…” He smiles, and I’m nearly blinded by the left dimple. 

Holy shit. No wonder he’s so popular. 

I have the silly idea that I should sniff him. It would be easy to make a tonne of money from bottling his scent and selling it. Then I would have enough money to set up a permanent shop to sell my organic candles, soaps, and lotions. 

Resisting only because I have managed to maintain some self-respect after being yelled at and cursed at by customers all day long, I decide to provide him some privacy. 

“Absolutely. Let me know if you have any questions.” 

He nods once, and I swear my insides melt into a puddle like Frosty the Snowman when the sun has come out. 

Stepping to the counter, I fiddle with the sound system, turning off the grating holiday tunes that permeate the atmosphere this time of year and sliding instead into some soothing jazz from Alfa Mist. As soon as the first song starts playing, Harry’s head whips around and he stares in my direction. 

“Excellent choice.” His voice is gravelly and kind with a bit of surprise in it. 

“It’s the kind of music I prefer,” I shrug, not knowing what else to say. 

“Me too.” 

It’s such a surprising thing for him to say that I do my own double take, but he’s returned already to smelling the candles on the wall display. 

Shrugging, I move to the first shelves to the right of the register, straightening products, and making mental notes of what I need to restock. When I move to the next set of shelves, though, it’s clear that a mental note isn’t going to be of any help. There are simply too many hand lotions, soaps, and other products that need to be replaced. Sighing, I move behind the counter again, withdrawing a pad of paper. Quickly, I jot down what I need to replace on the first two shelves. 

Turning my head, I see that Harry has barely finished sniffing one shelf of candles. “Um…” He glances up at my utterance. “...would you mind if I stepped into the back to grab some more stock?” 

“Whatever you need to do.” His voice is so silky that I could easily wear it and nothing else against my skin forever. 

In the small stockroom, I remove my shoes, wiggling my toes that have been screaming at me for the last two hours. Grabbing a basket I keep for just this purpose, I fill it with the items on my list before stepping back onto the main floor. The coolness of the tiles under my toes is soothing, and I sigh at the pleasure of it on my hot skin. Quickly, I restock the first two shelves, giving my feet a workout as I have to rise onto my toes multiple times. My knees also get to practise squatting so I can place items on the bottom shelf. 

After I slide my protesting feet back into my shoes, I sneak a peek to check on Harry. He’s moved on to the next set of shelves, opening the sample shampoos and smelling them one by one. 

At this rate, he’ll be here another hour at least. 

Surveying the third set of shelves, I jot down the merchandise I need to pull from the back for this one. It’s the shelf of eye compresses I’ve made that include differing herbs to soothe the skin around the eyes and quiet the mind. With a quick glance at Harry, I return to the storeroom, trying to recall where I’d placed the box holding more eye compresses. 

Spying it on a higher shelf, hiding behind a box of the scented rice neck pillows I’d designed to be heated and worn next to the skin, I stand on my tiptoes in order to reach. Just — one — more — inch — CRASH! Both boxes clatter to the ground, the sides splitting open on the box holding the neck pillows, and I sigh. 

“Are you okay?” 

His voice startles me, and I jump like that time I’d been forced to watch a horror movie by my previous boyfriend. The arsehole. 

Placing my hand on my chest to calm my pounding heart, I smile at where his head has emerged through the curtain separating the sales floor and stockroom. 

“Thank you for checking on me. I’m okay. Just knocked off a couple of boxes.” 

“Shit. That looks annoying. Let me help.” He muscles his way past the curtain, assisting me by setting the box right side up. I locate the roll of packing tape I’d used earlier to package some items for a customer who wanted them delivered, handing the tape to Harry as he repairs the box. “I’m Harry.” His introduction is endearing, and I share my name too. 

“No one else working tonight?” His hushed tones do things to my body that are inappropriate for work. 

“No one else is working ever. It’s my shop, and I couldn’t afford to pay for help this year.” 

“Damn. How do you manage?” 

“Well, I take it slow on nights like this with the restocking and tidying because I know I’ll get the next two days to soak my feet and relax.”

“But how do you do it during the day with all the customers?” 

“I think that’s clear from the state of the front. I muddle through.” My shrug is intended to communicate that there’s no real answer to that question. 

“Can I help?” 

“YOU?” I yelp, clamping both hands over my mouth at my shriek. 

“Why not me?” 

“Um, cause you’re Harry Styles.” 

When he smiles this time, his eye crinkles come into focus, and I’m lost in him. I could stare at those crows’ feet all night, I think. 

“And that means I can’t help?” 

“It means that you probably have plenty of plans that don’t include stocking shelves.” 

“Hmmm… tonight, I actually do not have plans. My sister and I were supposed to shop for our mum, and then my sister ended up ill, so…” Trailing off, he raises both hands to the side in imitation of a shrug. “You can pay me by helping me choose gifts for my mum and my sister. And my manager’s wife. And maybe the wives of my friends.” 

“That’s silly. I’d help you with that for free.” 

“Ah, well then, you can take me out to dinner after we’re done.” 

My jaw drops. Dinner with Harry Styles? 

Is he asking me out on a date? 

“Just as repayment, right?” I ask. 

“For starters,” he smirks, and my panties become uncomfortable as I rub my legs together. “I’ll take these boxes out front.” Bending his knees, he picks up the box of neck pillows with the box of eye compresses on top. Striding through the curtain, he drops the boxes on the floor and immediately starts artfully arranging the merchandise. Occasionally, he brings a pillow to his nose and breathes in deeply. 

Mesmerised, I watch from the door to the store room. After a few minutes, he removes his coat, carefully draping it over the counter, smiling at me as I straighten the bottles of lotion on the table, ensuring that the rosemary mint doesn’t get mixed up with the rosemary thyme. It’s easy to get them confused as the labels are similar. 

“How long did it take you to prepare all of this?” Harry asks, his hand encompassing the entire shop. 

“All year. My dad –” I pause as emotion invades my throat, layering it with sorrow. Finally, I swallow, clearing the grief. “My dad was ill for the last couple of years, so I quit my job to move in and take care of him. I started growing the herbs in his garden. And then I needed something to do with all of the herbs I grew, so I started making soaps and selling them at the local farmer’s market. Demand was swift, and I’ve been expanding the line for the last eight months or so.” 

“That’s amazing!” His face has lit up like the Christmas tree that’s in the corner of the shop, and his grin takes over his entire countenance. “And how’s your dad doing now?” 

I wince. “He actually died in July.”

“Oh. I’m sorry for your loss.” 

My watery smile hopefully conveys my gratitude. “He was ready to go. At least that’s what he told me. And I needed a project after his death to keep me busy while I cleaned out the house and prepared to sell it.” 

“Sell it? Why?” 

Moving to the next table, I straighten the bars of soap. Wiping a tear from my eye, I answer his question. “Too many memories. I’ve had a lot of loss in my life, and now I’m the only one left in my immediate family. So when I’m in the house, all I can see are the people no longer with me.” 

“That must be hard.” His hand rests on my shoulder, and I’m startled because I hadn’t realised he’d approached. 

“It’s life. Lucky for me, I have my dreams to keep me going.” 

“Dreams of expanding beyond a popup shop at the holidays?” 

“Something like that,” I nod. 

“Sounds lovely. Listen, I’m done with these shelves, and those over there look pretty good. I, um, straightened them earlier when I was testing the product. Is there a broom so I can sweep up?” 

Astonished, I blink at him. “No. No. No. I draw the line at having a number one pop musician sweep my floor.” 

He giggles, his laugh growing until he’s slapping his knee, his full body moving with glee as he heartily releases his mirth. “So if I were the number one classical musician or number one jazz musician or number one country musician, you’d be okay with me cleaning the floor?”

Seeing the humour in my comment, I laugh along with him. “Okay. Okay. You’ve found me out. Only pop musicians aren’t allowed to sweep up. Everyone else is fair game.” 

Bopping me on the nose, he grins. “Good thing I’m not a number one pop musician tonight. I’m just a customer who is quite taken with your goods.” 

And the way he rakes his eyes over my body lets me know that he’s not talking about the merchandise on the shelves. 

Dammit. Why don’t I keep a pair of spare knickers in my bag in case I run into the handsomest man alive? Because the ones I’m wearing right now are ruined. 

Sticking his head through the curtain and peering into the back, he joyfully exclaims, “There it is!” Seconds later, he’s pushing the broom around the shop floor, and I am both pleased and appalled. 

Reluctant to let him do all the work, I watch him and squirm. Using the broom as a partner, he dances to the music, and I can’t help the giggle that escapes. 

“I remember when you couldn’t dance at all,” I reveal, then clamp my hands over my mouth at my rudeness. 

“Some would say I still can’t.” 

“Screw ‘em.” I grin. “Listen, I’m about to count up the money for a night deposit. Are you planning to pay with cash or credit?” 

Wincing, he bites his lip, resting his arm on top of the broom handle. “Oh yeah. I was having so much fun that I forgot I was here to shop.” He looks around at the merchandise. “You’re taking me out for dinner, right?” One eyebrow raises while the other stays in place. It’s a talent not many have. 

“I believe that was the deal in exchange for your labour.”

“Then let’s eat first. I can tell you about those I need to shop for, and you can decide what would be most fitting for each.” 

“Hmmm…” I tease, “Are you trying to get out of buying products from me?” 

“Nope,” he grins, stepping closer to me. “Trying to let you get to know me more.” 

“Who's to say I don’t already know everything about you?” 

“Ah, I see.” The expression on Harry’s face is smug. “You wanna have a quiz? Find out what exactly you know and don’t know?” 

“Sure,” I smile, “but somehow I’m not sure I trust you. You could easily say all of my answers are wrong, and I wouldn’t be able to contradict you.” 

“Let’s start. What colour are my eyes?” 

“Are you taking the piss? They’re green. That one’s easy ‘cause I can see them.” 

“Okay, okay. You got one right. What colour are my lips?” 

Which of course drags my eyes right to the body part in question. And they look lush. Soft. Slightly chapped, but not enough to keep me from… 

Shit. I’ve gotten lost in staring at his lips. 

“I didn’t hear your answer.” 

My tongue dips out to lick my own lips, and he steps closer, his eyes locked on my tongue. Shaking my head, I dart my gaze back to his eyes, and I can feel his breath on my cheek. Leaning forward, he reaches his arm to my left, and I briefly wonder if he’s going to wrap his arm around my waist and haul me to him for a snogging session. 

Which is when he grabs his coat from the counter. 

“Let’s count the money so you can make your deposit. I’m getting hungry.” 

Really? I'm experiencing a powerful thirst.

Author's note: Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it, please reblog. I know not everyone reblogs, but it really helps writers out.

READ PART 2 HERE

[chubbycelebs]

Big Fat Boyfriends (pt 5 - final)

“Look what you’ve done to me.”

“You?! Look at me. I’m fucking huge.”

“You’re so sexy fat though.”

“And you’re sexy obese my piggy.”

Harry and Louis had fully changed now for the better. From starting off as two slender in shape men who anyone would want to get their hands on, they had fully transformed into two massive fatties. That first night when they laid outside the fridge after raiding it, little did they know that in a year’s time they would be struggle to cover their hugely expanding bodies. Their once toned legs had swollen into thick sausages that trousers struggled to contain. Their perky asses ballooned into globes of soft flesh, threatening to break through any item of clothing that claimed to contain it. Their once’s impressive large dicks had now started to shrink into their bulging fat pads, turning their once 6 inch monsters into just over 3 inch chubs. The most shocking change was displayed on their once tones stomachs. Their abs had been ruined by their fatty appetite and left them with huge large guts that jiggled and wobbled with every movement. Their chubby chests laid atop of their bellies, their fattened nipples sensitive to touch. Even their faces had blown up, their cheeks filling out, their jawlines gone and double chins thickening. They truly had ruined their once perfect bodies but they couldn’t help it. Once they got a taste for being full, for fucking on a full stomach, for encouraging each other to be fatter and fatter, they couldn’t stop and they wouldn’t ever stop. The two pigs were unstoppable in their life goal of becoming huge.

One evening Louis and Harry were in the kitchen, both stood just in their underwear (as all clothes were either too small, uncomfortable to wear or had broken) and slowly munching on some left over sweet treats; brownies, cookies, cupcakes and so on. Louis looked at his boyfriend’s figure and actually could believe what he had turned into. “Harry you’re so fucking fat” he said with a grin on his face.

“Damn alright you’re not slim your self fatty” Harry said throwing Louis a shady look, putting down his brownies he was eating.

“No babes I don’t mean in a bad way. It’s just shocking to think how slim you once were. And now you’re unrecognisable.”

“Really? Does it turn you on?”

“Oh beyond belief. Nothing makes me hornier than fucking my fat boyfriend.”

“Well I must say that you aren’t the slim figured twink I was once dating. I mean look at this gut you’ve got going,” Harry said grabbing Louis hanging belly and shaking it, causing his whole body to jiggle.

“It’s your fault I’m like this. You said what you wanted and I made it reality. You should be proud of my devotion to ruin my body for you.”

“Oh I’m more than proud. I want you on display at all times. Showing off how much you ruined your self for me.”

“And same here. You were so sexy and fit and now you’ve turned into a hog for me.”

Louis was smooshed up against Harry at this point, both of them feeling their huge fat bodies. Harry reached down and slipped his hand into Louis tight underwear. He started playing with his fat ass cheek, squeezing it and fondling it. He moved his hand closer to Louis ass crack, slowly starting to wiggle his fingers deeper and deeper into his hole. Louis reached over to the kitchen side and picked up a can of whipped cream. Harry saw and took it off Louis chubby hands. Harry pushed Louis against the side, getting him to lean over the counter top. As if on queue this caused Louis tight underwear to give way and split light along his ass crack. Harry giggle and slapped Louis fat ass, then ripping the rest of his underwear off. Harry squirted the cream around Louis ass, and then proceeded to lick him clean of it. Harry then concentrated the cream around Louis hole, followed by slowly cleaning it with his tongue. Harry then slowly inserted the can lid into Louis ass hole and squirted. The cream filled up Louis ass. Harry carried on squirting it into the hole until the can was empty. Louis ass was leaking cream. Harry got to work cleaning it up. He dug his tongue deep into his hole, licking around the rim and deep inside. Harry kept going until all the cream had gone. Louis was moaning as he felt Harry deep inside him, his cock leaning cum all over his hanging belly. Harry then slowly started to push his own cock inbetween Louis globe like ass cheeks. Louis couldn’t hold in the loud moan they this caused. As Harry pushed deeper, he grabbed a cupcake that was on the side next to them. Harry picked it up and shoved it into Louis fat face. Harry then started to pump harder and harder into Louis, causing Louis to muffle his moans into the stogy cake. Harry was going harder and harder, unable to stop, driven by his dick to fuck his obese boyfriend. Harry dug deeper and deeper pushing harder, making Louis moan even louder. Louis couldn’t hold it in anymore. He exploded all over the underside of his gut, even squirting onto the cupcakes, covering them in his seed. Harry wasn’t far behind, soon releasing his hot sticky eruption into his hogs ass hole. Harry pulled out whilst Louis caught his breath. Louis was panting over the kitchen side when he saw the cupcakes he had came all over. “Stuff your face with these fatty. Every last one.” Harry looked at what Louis was talking about. He saw the cupcakes and almost instantly got a boner again. He picked up the first one and licked the frosting clean off, then stuffing the rest of the cake into his mouth. The followed a second and a third and before you knew it he had polished off all 6 cupcakes, all covered in Louis sticky cum. “You're such a pig” Louis giggles rubbing his boyfriends belly. Harry smiles before leaning in and making out with Louis. These two had a long life ahead of them filled with fucking and feeding. They are going to be two very fat, very happy piggies.

Last part of this story. Hope you guys enjoyed I loved writing it. Let me know about request for new stories. I might struggle with getting images for new stories from now on however as I have no way of making new photos (see my post “Updates” for info on this). Anyways thank you for the support!

[mister-tom-a-dildo-lover]

Secret Agent Boy-Who-Lived

Writer: Watermelonsmellinfellon Ship: Tomarrymort TAGS: AU-HBP, Humor, Crack, Voldemort/Horcrux Shenanigans.

~.O.~

‘Subtly inquire about his plans for the future and his thoughts regarding blood status.’

It wasn’t a difficult task. It wasn't something that Harry could not achieve. But could he achieve it with the best results when he was trying to be sneaky?

No.

If his life or the lives of others weren’t in danger, Harry was abysmal at pretending/sneaking. He usually got caught when he did so.

Dumbledore had asked it of him because of the new student. Well, ‘new student’.

Marvolo Slytherin, who was sorted into Slytherin. Harry had recognized that face anywhere. Tom Marvolo Riddle. Apparently, Voldemort had either gotten a new body, or he had made someone take the shape of his younger self. Either way, a young Dark Lord look alike roamed the halls of Hogwarts freely, having been sorted into Slytherin and taking up reins there.

Dumbledore had been rightfully wary and had asked Harry to befriend the ‘teen’. Voldemort should not know that Harry knew what his younger self looked like, according to Dumbledore. Harry should definitely be able to slip into the ‘teen’s’ life without much trouble.

Problem. Slytherin and Gryffindor were opposites. Their tables rested on opposite ends of the Great Hall. Their dorms on opposite ends of the school. Even in their shared classes, they sat on opposite sides of the room because Merlin forbid the students tried to mingle, let alone those from the most competitive Houses.

Harry knew he would have his work cut out for him. He contemplated the various ways he could stalk the teen but came up with nothing that wouldn’t get him a face full of flying bogeys or something worse. 

Certainly the Slytherins would notice the Boy-Who-Lived skulking about them. He needed a way to insert himself into Slytherin’s day to day life. A way that actually made sense

And so he had come up with this plan. He was a Gryffindor and he was known for diving right in while the water was boiling. He couldn’t think of anything else to get him the results he desired, so this plan would have to do.

He had a map of Hogwarts, an Invisibility Cloak, and knowledge of secret corridors and tunnels he’d found on his own that weren't listed on the map, because they changed often.

In the middle of the lunch hour, when the students were stuffing themselves silly, Harry stood from his position at the Gryffindor Table and made his way across the Hall. Some people quieted down when they noticed he was going into ‘dangerous territory’. Harry ignored them, because he had to get this introduction done before he lost his nerve.

Stopping a foot away from the group of Fifth Year Slytherins who had all been in quiet discussion before his interruption, Harry waited until he had all of their attention, before speaking.

Voldemort - or should he just call him Marvolo for now? - was also looking at him and his dark blue gaze held obvious interest and some confusion, which was perfectly understandable. This wasn’t Harry’s usual behaviour after all.

“Hello, Mr. Potter.”

Slytherin’s voice was incredibly smooth and sounded so much like the Diary had. Harry took note of how equally handsome he was as well. Voldemort was an attractive bloke, that was for certain.

Fixing the act onto his face, Harry allowed a bright and beaming smile to shine down upon the Slytherins. “Hi!” he said, enthusiasm almost too much for him to control.

The Slytherins exchanged wary looks. He’d never acted in such a way toward any of them before, so he couldn’t blame their mistrust. 

Keeping Slytherin’s gaze, Harry added, “I’m going to be spying on you.”

There was a collective hush at the table, which made the rest of the hall quiet down. Everyone was watching the interaction.

“O-kay?” Voldemort nodded, though he sounded questioning.

“Just thought you should know that I’ll be watching your every move!” Harry gave another blinding grin and traipsed back to his table, ignoring the looks, the whispers, and the questions his friends were shooting at him.

From his seat, he could see the shaking heads of the fellow Slytherins. Malfoy rolled his eyes for good measure. Marvolo Slytherin did not look worried in the least. 

That was the idea. If Harry blatantly said one thing, but did another, it would cause… suspicion. Hopefully, they’d be too unnerved by his declaration to consider he’d have ulterior motives. He was a Gryffindor after all. He couldn’t possibly be capable of thinking that far ahead.

~.O.~

Harry began his journey on the weekend. After he was called into Snape’s office and pretty much taken to task over his lacklustre plan and ‘completely idiotic ruination of the original plan with his Gryffindorish tendencies’, he set to stalking.

Harry slipped the Invisibility Cloak on and opened the map. Voldemort’s name - which actually came out to Tom Marvolo Riddle-Slytherin - was in the library. Not shocking, as the man most likely wanted something in the Restricted Section. Also, from how he’d sounded back in Second Year, the man was probably a swotty know-it-all.

Harry traversed the corridors silently, avoiding groups of students and any ghosts. They could apparently feel people when floating through them and would know he was there, even if under the Cloak. He was not taking risks with this.

Harry ducked behind an aisle that was a few feet from Voldemort. He slipped the Cloak and map into his bag and made it look as if he was browsing like others normally did. He nabbed a book on Runes and flipped it open to a random page.

Sowilo. Sigil. Sol. Something to represent the Sun. The shape of the rune on the page made him think of his scar. How interesting that this was the page he opened a random book up to. In fact, he’d never wondered why his scar was the shape it was, and suddenly wondered if there was a deeper meaning to it.

“Potter?”

Harry looked up, finding himself confronted with Slytherin. The other ‘teen’ looked surprised to see him there. Like it was impossible for Harry to set foot in a library. He withheld a scoff, because he’d set foot in this particular one, seven times, including this time. That was way more than the typical Gryffindor.

“Hi!” he said cheerfully, masking his annoyance with practice he’d learned from dealing with the Dursleys. “What are you in for?”

His eyes landed on the book about… Magical Illness? Why did Voldemort need such a book?

“Some light reading.”

For a second, Harry thought of Hermione. The book in those slim hands was not ‘light’ in any way. It could probably knock Hagrid out if thrown hard enough. Probably over a thousand pages as well. He shivered in terror at the thought of sitting down with such a book.

“And you?” queried the Slytherin.

Harry’s arms were already moving to turn the book around, displaying the rune for the man/teen to see. “Doesn’t this look like my scar?”

It was the best he had on such short notice. Lying on the spot wasn’t his best when he wasn’t in a hurry.

“Indeed. It could mean that you are blessed with great luck or success.”

Harry snorted. It didn’t specify which kind of luck though, did it? And his luck had been historically terrible.

“You don’t concur?”

Who even said words like ‘concur’ anymore? Unless it was Snape, Harry was definitely sure that this was Voldemort.

“No, I think it pretty much spells out the story of my life. Just that it never specifies what sort of luck I am ‘blessed’ with.”

With a shake of the head, Harry placed the book back on the shelf, uninterested in pursuing anything on Sowilo further.

Marvolo gave a nod. “As long as you’re certain.”

Yes, he was.

~.O.~

Slytherin had just left the Great Hall to head to Double Potions! If Harry was quick, he could make it there before him!

To the left of the Entrance Hall was a secret passageway that opened when someone sang Little Miss Moffat. The passage led to a portrait that was about ten feet away from the Potions Classroom. It was not common knowledge and Harry intended to keep it that way.

He brushed himself off and skipped ahead to wait in front of the door, knowing it would be baffling to see him already waiting. A moment later, Marvolo rounded the corner and paused mid stride to take in the fact that Harry was already there when Harry had obviously just been at breakfast and had even caught his eye as he was leaving.

Harry had to withhold his giggles because this was becoming fun! Who knew stalking Voldemort would bring him such entertainment?

This should have been a relatively serious situation, but he couldn’t help but feel a bit light over it. It’d been a while since Hogwarts was this fun.

What else could he do to throw the Dark-Lord-Turned-Teenager off his guard?

~.O.~

On Hallowe’en night, Harry had trailed after the Slytherins and managed to enter their Common Room with a group of First Years. He then stood beside the fireplace - which was alight with green flames - and waited for the perfect opportunity. Never had he been more grateful for his Invisibility Cloak.

In fact, he realised that he, Hermione, and Ron could have just used that to get into the Common Room in their Second Year and probably should have done just that instead of stealing potions ingredients. 

Well, it was in the past so he couldn’t really do anything about it now.

This part of the operation included subtlety. As subtle as Harry could be really. Every now and then he would reveal his head and then hide it again, while he chose a new side of the room to hide in. It was funny to see people double take or even triple take.

Of course, there was no chance of the possibility of Voldemort summoning the Cloak, even if he knew about it. The Cloak could not be summoned. A nifty little feature that Harry was ever so grateful for.

Eventually, someone went to a Prefect, which got a wider level of attention, and eventually, Marvolo became involved as they searched the room for the mysterious Harry Potter head. 

Harry snickered quietly to himself and proceeded to wait by the door for someone to leave so he could sneak out. It was far too easy to rile the Slytherins up.

Distantly, he was aware of how this was not the plan to get information out of Voldemort, but it was the most interesting things had been since Fourth Year, so he’d rather keep doing things his own way and hope for the best.

~.O.~

A/N: An idea from a very long time ago. I decided to share it here to tide everyone over while I have to deal with personal problems irl.

[physalian]

What No One Tells You About Writing 8— “Anyone can write a book”

Yes. But actually no. I say “writing is easy” in that it doesn’t take a degree and textbook learning to understand. You can get an English or lit degree if you want, but writing is incredibly subjective. It’s not even like an art degree that has you study different mediums and historical styles. “Writing is easy” in that it’s about feeling, and instinct, and a little bit of common sense. Anyone can do it in that it doesn’t take financial investment to start. Steal a tchotchke pen and paper from a hotel room—you’ve got all the tools you need. I have a communications degree and 9 years of experience, and I'm about to publish my first supernatural fantasy novel.

Writing is not easy, however, if any of the following applies to you:

You want to make enough money to do this full time

You want to appeal to mass audiences

You want to be a NYT bestseller**** or get an adaptation

You want to be regarded as the best of your generation and fill bookstore shelves

1. It takes a healthy dose of self-awareness and a reality check

 I beta’d for an author who thought that he was comparable to GRRM, the author of A Song of Ice and Fire, because both have adult themes in their book and if GRRM can do it, why can’t he? The sheer vastness of the divide between ASOIAF and this awful, awful manuscript wasn’t worth putting into words for the amount I was being paid, though I tried.

Yes, you can write whatever you want. Yes, you can write to please yourself and stroke your ego. You can write the hammiest wish-fulfillment author insert that you desire. But you can’t expect anyone else to want to read or pay money for it. It’s great to have confidence as an author and envision your success, but starting right off the bat with “everyone will love this book because I’m really smart and I love this book” is only going to leave you bitter and penniless.

2. You might be an expert in your given field, doesn’t automatically make you an expert at storycrafting

I really, truly want the above godawful toe wart of a human (who tried to justify pedophilia in his book with the Israel-Palestine conflict) to stop featuring in my writing advice, but I know he’s not the only person out there who thinks like this. You might have a doctorate in engineering, medicine, political science, chemistry, physics, history, paleontology—any field you want. That does not mean you can successfully translate your expertise into a well-crafted and compelling narrative. It means you can write a college textbook lecturing your readers for 300 pages. Heck, if you can't explain what you do like I'm 5 years old, then you're not an expert in your field.

Elements of good storytelling include well-rounded characters, solid pacing, compelling themes and motifs, an engaging main conflict and character arcs and edge-of-your-seat action, romance, debates, and arguments. It’s so much more than “I’m going to write a textbook, but have my character tell it to you, and everyone will love it”.

They won’t.

3. “I’m gonna be a millionaire like JKR”

The frustrating thing about making money writing is that at the end of the day, you are still selling a product. Which means that it doesn’t matter how amazing you think it is, if it’s not what sells. The Fifty Shades series is hardly a poetic epic with deep, meaningful characters and themes, but it sold. It got adaptations. Why? Because it was a product people wanted and its writing style appeals to mass audiences who aren’t entertained by fluffy, antiquated prose. I hated the Divergent books. They soullessly and shamelessly fed off the success of Hunger Games. But they sold because “teen dystopia HP houses” was what audiences craved and what Hollywood was pushing to make movies out of.

Personally I don’t have any nostalgia for Harry Potter and I both wish I did so I could have one more beloved series and fandom to participate in, but also am glad I don’t because of JKR. HP is chock full of plot holes and “fuck it we’ll do it live” worldbuilding and so many concepts that look cool on paper until you really start thinking about it.

JKR didn’t make a million dollars because she wrote the greatest fantasy series. JKR made a million dollars because she wrote a book that sells every goddamn piece of lore for $15.99 or more and collects on all those sweet, sweet royalties. She understood that she’s selling a product, not just a story, selling everything from Slytherin ties and wizarding robes to golden snitches, sorting hats, wands, chocolate frogs, and every other prop seen in the movies.

You sure can chase trends and I’m sure Divergent is somebody’s favorite book and you can hock chocolate frogs. Everyone’s writing goals are different.

4. “But GRRM did it” (or, adhering to genre expectations)

Circling back to this one. Once again, you can write whatever you want, no one is stopping you. However, books are products and if what’s in the summary and on the cover isn’t what’s on the pages, you’re going to upset and annoy your readers. For example, if I slap a chiseled six-pack of man meat on my book cover with flowy calligraphy for the title that reads something like Sex and Pink Champagne and my summary is all about how protagonist girl gets the adonis of her dreams, you’re not going to be happy if, 200 pages in, the plot detours and Mr. Sexy fucks off to sell NFTs.

It doesn’t meet genre expectations.

GoT kicks off with incest and child defenestration. It tells you *exactly* what you’re getting into immediately. You can subvert plot expectations all you want. You can subvert tropes and archetypes and throw in all kinds of twists and turns. But if you’re writing a YA novel and 100 pages in after campfire songs and the power of friendship, Protagonist gets assaulted in a 7-11 parking lot because you wanted to be ~edgy~ you’re going to piss off your readers.

Take Mulan for example. It has a dramatic tonal shift so powerful, the musical stops being a musical because it’s traumatized. Mulan doesn’t drop in the grizzled and horrifying wasteland of a battlefield with thousands of dead soldiers in an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. It’s already a war movie, the possibility is already there.

If you want to write adult content, then write a book for audiences who are prepared for and want to read adult content. Otherwise you’re setting yourself up for failure.

5. “Okay but it’s not entertaining”

Your first job as an author is to entertain (your second is to do it responsibly imo). There’s millions of books out there—why should someone read yours? Whether that’s entertainment through a feel-good romance or a gut-wrenching tragedy, you need to keep convincing your readers to stay invested in the story, otherwise they can and will put it down to read something else. No one is obligated to read your book to the end.

So, yeah your protagonist might have all the elements of your own personal tragedies and it sure is meaningful to you, but the way you wrote it is incredibly boring and no one will care. It might be the most brilliant heist plot ever conceived, but you focused on all the wrong elements, the pacing is whack, and your protagonist is annoying, so no one will read it.

Very few individual elements can be good enough to carry the entire manuscript and the likelihood of an author being really good at one thing and awful at the rest is slim. Readers can quit a book over the most arbitrary reasons. Do you want to die on a hill of “I’m not changing my annoying protagonist, I’m right and they will see”? They won’t. The arguments authors get into with me over how I hated their protagonist or I told them which parts were boring and dragged because I “didn’t understand the story” are pointless. If it’s boring or confusing or annoying, no one will read it.

6. First Drafts are drafts for a reason

Actually writing is less than half the time and effort spent on getting a book to publication. Probably less than a quarter. The rest of that time is spent editing and rewriting. Some first drafts will be better than others, not arguing that, but your first run through your story has a non-zero chance of needing revisions, even for something as small as typos and punctuation.

You have to edit for pacing and tonal shifts, erroneous details and entire scenes, character inconsistencies and goals. You have to make sure your conversations flow believably, that you hit every talking point that scene requires. You have to make sure your character’s motivations don’t create plot holes and that they’re always on track like a real person and not a creation of your imagination. You have to make sure your action scenes and sex scenes are legible and as thrilling for a reader as they are for you. You have to make sure your worldbuilding is consistent and logical and easy to understand.

Some people outline heavily before starting page one. Some people have a sticky note of “beginning middle end” and run off that. Some have whole folders of different documents to keep track of all their elements. Everyone’s writing process is different, but it is a process, not a one-and-done. It requires revisions, seeking feedback, implementing that feedback, and more revisions until it’s as good as it can be.

Yes, you need to edit. No, you’re not the writing god who penned perfection on your first try. Maybe a piece of your story is perfect on the first draft, but not the whole thing from start to finish. It’s okay that your story isn’t what you thought it would be when you started, and it’s no failing of you as a writer to need edits or even massive changes. It happens to everyone.

7. “Writing is easy, thus it’s not a real job”

Really the notion that creatives are lesser than corporate business people solving problems that their business created. But specifically for writing, the idea that it’s just putting words on a page, thus it’s easy and anyone can do it, so it’s not impressive or deserving of praise and you really need a real job (you probably will because writing doesn’t make much money for most people, but that’s just how it shakes out).

I know ENNS won’t appeal to everyone. I know there will be people who hate my characters, who don’t understand them or don’t agree with their philosophies or find my writing trite and too lean and not ~immersive~. I know there’ll be homophobes out there who won’t even read it but hear about it and make assumptions and will leave me crap reviews. I know it’s not the greatest supernatural fantasy novel ever written.

I’m not in it to make money or get a movie deal and see my merch all over the shelves and get my own theme park. I write so that even one reader might see themselves in my characters and know they’re not alone. So that even one reader has one of my characters as their favorite and that character motivates them to do the Thing or keep moving forward or be brave enough to finally do whatever they’ve been too afraid to attempt before. I want to help people, even if at the end of the day, my writing only helps myself.

Yes I need supplemental income (who doesn’t these days). It’s the way of the world. But I’m doing what I love in my free time and it is a real job because it takes work, and it might not have monetary value but its value to me is priceless.

[lemonsrosesandlavender]

Get to know me better!

Tagged by (deep breath): @kimberbohwrites @ladyofcrowsandcoffee AND @commander-krios , thank you! Consider this an open tag, because I truly think I’ve seen ALL of my moots get tagged in this one!

Three Ships: Rolan x any one of my OCs lol. I am ALWAYS thinking about them. I won’t list it three times, but I could. From BG3? I love the Moon Lesbians, and of course Omelurg. GOOD SHIPS.

First Ship: Maybe Jane Eyre and Rochester since I read that aged ~11 and fell in love. I was definitely in agony over the thought that she might marry St John. Honestly, I am often a sucker for canon ship pairings; I loved Elizabeth and Darcy in my early teens too. One of the notable exceptions to this was that I hated Ron x Hermione. And Harry x Ginny. *that author* couldn’t write romance for toffee. I liked Hermione and Krum though.

Last Song: Pulled Up, by Talking Heads, since I was listening to ’77 in the shower.

Last Movie: Regrettably, Gramps Goes to College. We watch bad movies a lot in our flat, and sometimes we watch ones that *could* have been good, that had a vision or a heart or something to love and enjoy as you heckle. And then… sometimes we injure our souls with horrible right wing American Christian films, like “Fireproof” and “I’m in love with a Christian Girl”. This was the latest horror in that category, and my god it was BAD. Lots to heckle though. You gotta love people constructing themselves the strangest self-insert fantasies. (Oh, you’d be so smart that the hot atheist lady professor wants to fuck you, Gramps? But of course you’d turn her down and convert her? S u r e)

Before that, the last good movie was probably I Saw the TV Glow and it goes SO fucking hard. Watch it.

Last TV Show Hasn’t changed since last time I did this prompt - my flatmate went on a long holiday and so we STILL need to finish Strong Girl Nam Soon!

Currently Reading - It was evening, and no longer summer, a modern BG3 AU by elo_elo. I love their woozy, dreamy style, and the friendship between Tav, Lae’zel and Shadowheart in this, as well as the modern interpretations of their world. I’m also still not bloody done with The Left Hand of Darkness, which got really good but I just haven’t been reading much at all! (And I need to give it back lmao). OH and Dracula Daily! I love Dracula so I’m really enjoying it - thank you to Tumblr for introducing me.

Currently Craving - sleep? My sleep schedule has been fucked more or less since I got back into fanfic. There’s always another paragraph I want to write! So many ideas to post! Argh! (But also yknow sometimes staying up late to finish something is super satisfying so swings and roundabouts. I do need to get back on top of it though…)

Currently Eating: well, I finished a ready meal coconut curry dinner and have strawberries in the fridge. Looking forward to those.

[harrypotterfuryroad]

Have you ever seen an online Harry Potter fan who has a whole paragraph to explain that they still like it like “Harry Potter — the book where the main villain is a demagogue for a thinly veiled allegory for white supremacy, where it’s explicitly stated that power systems can be corrupted and the only recourse is to overthrow them and to defy them, and the media frequently lies to discredit those who challenge power — meant to much to me as a child. That’s why I’m reclaiming it from JKR, who is a fascist because she suggested the idea that women are defined by liking makeup might not be feminist.” Makes you wonder if they actually like. Read the books….

no yeah i’m convinced that harry potter fandom is largely self-insert fics rather than actually reading the books, like they treat the series as a dnd sourcebook for hogwarts as a setting instead of a story in its own right

it’s the only way i can explain how they ignore every single point she made