vilain-herodes

[vilain-herodes]

Do you think harry is more similar to lily or James

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

i think the assessment of harry's character which dumbledore gives to snape in deathly hallows is more or less the correct one:

“He is his father over again -”  “In looks, perhaps, but his deepest nature is much more like his mother’s.”

which i think can be expanded upon really interestingly as an example of something which the series does really, really well - how it obscures the fact that lily is the key to the mystery right up until the last minute.

the things harry has in common with james - not only his looks, but his quidditch talent, his impulsivity, his disregard for the rules, his arrogance, his cunning, his beef with snape, his adoration of sirius, his belief that his uncle is faintly ridiculous, and his bold, flashy courage - are big and explicit and demonstrative, and the text lampshades that they're inherited from his father at every opportunity.

[and not only in how many characters mention that he looks like james. voldemort - for example - mentions james' demonstrative bravery - facing him "like a man" - every time he and harry interact; sirius and lupin never mention lily when discussing harry's personality, even when what they're talking about is how he's not like james.]

the text also goes out of its way to suggest that similarly big aspects of lily's character have not been inherited by her son - the most obvious example of which is that, in half-blood prince, the incandescent talent at potions which has slughorn raving about how like his mother harry is... is actually the result of harry cheating [and cheating from a textbook he's convinced for much of the book might have belonged to james].

the only thing the text emphasises again and again that harry has inherited from his mother are his eyes.

and - in doing this - the series is actually telling us something very clear about what it understands harry to have in common with lily.

eyes are a frequent motif throughout the text, which are almost always connected to the themes of authenticity and truth.

dumbledore's eyes give away his true feelings in goblet of fire - when the "gleam of something like triumph" comes into them after he learns that voldemort used harry's blood to resurrect himself - before serving as a metaphor for the way the information about the prophecy is being withheld from harry in order of the phoenix when he refuses to make eye contact with him.

[dumbledore's eyes also stop "twinkling" after voldemort returns, in a sign of how serious the situation - which the ministry never appreciates the full gravity of - is becoming.]

occlumency and legilimency - the obscuring and seeking of truth - depend on eye contact. the teenage tom riddle's eyes - with their gleam of red - give away his true depravity, even when he's still outwardly charming and beautiful. the teen snape sees the reason for his obsession with the marauders "wrenched from him against his will" at the force of lily's glare [and the adult snape frequently averts his own gaze from harry when he clearly doesn't want to risk seeing anger or pain in lily's eyes]. ginny's love for harry - her "never giving up" on him, her willingness to wait and endure while he goes off on the horcrux hunt - is communicated by a "blazing look". the basilisk kills by looking - but doesn't kill anyone in chamber of secrets, since the truth about the culprit isn't known. and so on...

which is to say - the series regards the eyes as the windows to the soul [an idea which is connected to a verse in chapter six of the gospel of matthew - the verse immediately preceding which, "for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also", is inscribed upon kendra and ariana dumbledore's graves] and to the true, inner nature of a person.

in mentioning again and again that harry looks like james except for his eyes, what the narrative is doing is hinting to the reader that harry's big, obvious, showy similarities with his father mustn't let them miss that the more subtle traits of his personality - his steadfastness, his quiet courage in the face of hopelessness, his ability to love so much it changes the entire course of history - come from his mother, and that what he inherits from lily will be much more important to the resolution of the story than the things he inherits from james.

this is a clue it plays with really nicely - particularly because harry doesn't really care at any point prior to the last third of deathly hallows about what he inherits from lily more than he cares about what he inherits from james.

we - as readers - go through his experience of learning that his mother is the key to the whole mystery in real time - when we join harry in snape's memories - and we walk into the forest with a harry who now knows the whole truth: that he's more like his mother than he's previously realised, and that he'll therefore be able to do the same thing that she did, and die so that others might live.

“You won’t be killing anyone else tonight,” said Harry as they circled, and stared into each other’s eyes, green into red. “You won’t be able to kill any of them ever again.”

[vilain-herodes]

Bartylus but they meet at a psych ward and do arts and crafts together

[vilain-herodes]

god bless adam parrish. he's my baby boy. he's an absolute cunt. he's cold and calculating. he is angelic and dusty. he wants anything but to become the hard violence of his father. he refuses to embrace his own softness. he is miserable. he is filled with joy. he is elegantly somber. his grin is elastic and amiable. he is cruel and has killed a man. he sobbed to his sleeping lover and brought him his pet bird as an apology. he is two-faced. he can't hide who he really is no matter how hard he tries because the hiding eats away at him from the inside. he loves his soulmate so innately that they connected on a spiritual plane beyond normal human comprehension. he can see the ether. he is making love to a god. he lets a boy hold his hand. he transferred three times. he is touch-starved and hungry for his lover all of the time. he is peculiarly polite. he is bossy as hell. he never got to take ronan's clothes off that one time. what does his voice sound like when he erased the appalachia from it--empty? blank? can he erase his origins from himself, or will the mountains always cling to him? he tried to break up with his lover while said lover was in a coma but it made him hate himself so bad that he decided to risk his life for him instead. he wants a bigger, showier wedding someday. the federal government fears him. he loves his man no matter how long he tried not to love him. he will love him forever without hesitation. he is an impeccable dresser. he shows up in your dreams. he keeps on making the same mistakes but he will never make those mistakes ever again. or won't he? adam parrish. bitch. magician. god. boy. bless his heart.

[vilain-herodes]

been thinking about barty growing up on a farm and he hated life so much but then one day, the rate phenomenon of a two-headed lamb is born. barty has in undeniable connection to the poor baby. he gives them their own identities, rosie and dora. he cares about them more than anyone else does. and when they ultimately pass, not long after, barty is a mess, begging and screaming and pleading for something good to come again. less than a week later, still wallowing in grief, the rosier family moves into the farmhouse down the road from the crouch family, bringing the twins evan and pandora rosier.

[vilain-herodes]

They will never understand my love for you transfem Remus Lupin. My scrawny, lanky, tall baby with mid length uneven hair that’s all over the place and bangs that obscure her forehead, chipped nail polish, a singular container of rose lip balm but her lips are always chapped, long grandma skirts that hide various sweets and heavy sweaters with flower flats that are missing beads that were sewn in, a lack of ability to keep you nails longer than a couple cm. She’s living the dream of getting picked up by her shorter boyfriend everywhere and ruffling Sirius’ hair like dogs (yk that thing where they raise their heads when you let them) with a fond smile on her face. Growing up playing with their mothers makeup and twirling in their fathers longer dress robes.

Tall girlfriend Remus! And proud short boyfriend Sirius!!

[vilain-herodes]

bonjour cy-lindric, j'ai une petite question. when I was a young person, I read The Three Musketeers and then eagerly started to read Twenty Years After and was so upset at what had happened to my beloved young heroes that I put the book down and never picked it up. what do you think, should I try again?

Bonjour !

After reading The Three Musketeers, I also wasn't sure I wanted to read Twenty Years After, and I took a break inbetween both to read something entirely different (The Locked Tomb, iirc). I think my reason for that was kind of the opposite of yours ; I enjoyed T3M a lot and loved the characters, flaws and all, but by the end they had somewhat crossed over the line into being Too Awful and the lack of retribution left me a bit frustrated. I didn't see it as a failing of the story - on the contrary, their strong character flaws and downfall in the conflict with Milady is one of the most emotionally intense and compelling parts imo - but I wasn't sure I felt like hanging out with these guys for a few hundred more pages at that point.

If your vision of the characters as a young reader was a very positive and perhaps idealized one, I can imagine why you might not have enjoyed entering into Twenty Years after. The illusion of glory has worn off ; the characters have separated, they live unremarkable lives, and their personalities have evolved drastically with the passing of time. It's almost a brutal return to reality.

For me though, it added layers of characterization to the point where now it's clear to me that this version of the Inseparables is by far the one I prefer.

I hope it's ok if I take the opportunity to talk at length about what I like about TYA below the cut. TL;DR : I love that Twenty Years After is a more realistic look at the big four's personalities and how they evolved while still keeping them thematically coherent, and that TYA makes them confront the reckless and cruel shit they did in their youth.

Spoilers ahead obviously.

We've often talked about how T3M is at its core a story about the end of knighthood. It's a tongue-in-cheek approach at chivalrous initiation, set at edge of the modern world, inbetween the time of ballads about knights in armor and that of adventures about journeying gunmen and soldiers. I think TYA embodies that particularly ; the story of people who have carried the last of these intense, dangerous chivalric ideals in their youths, and who have now grown into middle aged adults who need to find their place in the world.

For a good chunk of the book, the big four are separated into two teams ; that in of itself might discourage some, but imo it's genius. Instead of the natural two-by-pairings, Dumas goes for a d'Artagnan+ Porthos and Athos + Aramis split on opposite sides, which makes for good drama and develops lesser explored dynamics. D'Artagnan and Porthos form a scrappy team of opportunists with money on their minds, and Athos and Aramis a more idealistic duo fighting for a noble lost cause. I think it's a bold choice but also premium sequel writing.

I also love the way the young and wild characters we knew evolve into middle aged men ; at their core, they're still the same, but they've all changed and struggled against the sunset of the golden age in their own ways.

D'Artagnan, after knowing such adventures and subsequent rapid social ascension in his teenage years, has been met in his adult life with the harsh reality that he is, in fact, not a noble knight but a soldier on payroll. His modest origins give him little hope for any further career advancement, and he takes on a new mission in his early 40s for a man he has no devotion for and a cause he doesn't care about, simply because he is bored and broke. D'Artagnan still has his quick wits, his strategic talent, his fencing skills, but he has grown out of the excesses of pride of his teenage years. I loved meeting him again in TYA, and it made so much sense to me that his bouts of anger and aggressivity would be a youthful trait that he'd ended up taming. He also realizes now a lot of what seemed like funny adventures and necessary violence was actually kind of fucked up ; that was a shock to me, as their shenanigans are treated so lightly in T3M, and tbh it healed me a little. Grown up d'Artagnan is cunning, calculating, down to earth and realistic. My foxy little man. I love him.

Porthos, likewise, has been struck by the weight of reality. He has made the sensible choice and got married to the rich widow who sugar mommied him in the first book. Now she's passed, he is rich, but he still fails to earn the respect of the high society he evolves in because he's not high born enough. Like d'Artagnan, he's stagnating and bored and now that he goes back adventuring it has nothing to do with the queen or the kingdom or honour ; it's about getting his damn nobility title.

Athos, on the other hand, is the eternal knight : the only truly high born of the four, and still hopelessly holding on to a time gone by. It's no surprise imo that his storyline brings him into the english civil war, doomed to fail at saving a king who'll end up executed right in front of him. TYA acknowledges more clearly than ever that at 28 yo, Athos was a depressed alcoholic, and an embodiment of what an excess of aristocratic righteousness can do. In TYA, he is sober and moisturized and a DILF, and now he's running around frantically looking for absolution for his numerous crimes. It's delicious.

Aramis is maybe the hardest pill to swallow. TYA confirms the T3M hints that he isn't really the prim and proper romantic boy he acts like he is, and that he's possibly the most hypocritical and ruthless of the four. It might be a harsh one for Aramis fans who like him better as a cute bean, but I love the early onset of remorseless conniving bloodthirsty ambitious Aramis. Another harsh bit might be the evolution of Aramis and d'Artagnan not really liking each other ; they were always the least close combination, and imo it makes sense that their personalities would clash. I think it's clever and compelling conflict.

Now, obviously, if you've cared enough to read all this and if you know me a little, you know that a huge highlight of the book for me was its late-appearing antagonist, Mordaunt. Mordaunt is the son Milady had with her english husband. Because of the Musketeers' intervention, he's grown up in poverty and has been denied his father's inheritance. He's now a Roundhead working for Cromwell, and set on avenging his mother at all costs. Mordaunt, unlike his mother who was this beautiful and dangerous force of nature, is very uncool and pathetic. She was the primordial snake, he's the gutter rat. Obviously, I love that in and of itself, but it's also kind of striking image of the wretchedness of what they've done to her, a fucked up little goblin ghost come back to haunt them as they're trying to make their life worth living again. This time, their enemy is not a cunning political rival with a flamboyance of body and mind akin to their own ; it's a shitty little guy with bad skin who wants to kill the king and punish the murderers. Watch out babes, it's the modern world coming for you.

Of course, they're the Four Musketeers, and they did what they had to do, so they get together again and swear friendship and keep going their way. But they're also old guys with difficult personalities in a world that's never going to be the same. I think it's a cool book.

[vilain-herodes]

Silly stuff & memes from La Dame de Monsoreau chapters 1-12 :^D

[vilain-herodes]

His Majesty's little meow meows (from La Dame de Monsoreau)

[vilain-herodes]

i need the dil bartylus thesis NOOOOWWW

bartylus is the failmarriage of ALL time to me i’ve spoken about this before but to me they contrast jegulus in that jegulus is a relationship with clear beginnings and ends. its tumultuous for sure but its tumultuous in a very defined way. jegulus cant be a failmarriage bc they’d get divorced. they’re too obsessed with defining what they are to each other bc they want it to be real and meaningful and it can’t be anything less than that

bartylus on the other hand…. they couldn’t define what they are to each other if they tried. they’re like the definition of settling for less but ‘less’ in this case is someone who understands you on a very a deep and fundamental level. perhaps better than anyone in the world. perhaps better than you understand yourself!! i wouldn’t say they’re ‘recognition of self in the other’ bc barty and regulus aren’t even other to each other…. they are each others homes and i mean in this context that both of these characters have the most fraught relationship with their respective homes imaginable. they want each other the way they want to go home (not at all — but also desperately). their relationship is inextricable from childhood. they hate to be reminded of their childhoods

and yet they’re not…. toxic per se! they’re obviously not healthy but they love each other in a way that’s very earnest (childlike). barty dreams of running away with regulus. he is the white knight rescuing the princess from the tower (he’s exactly like james in this respect). but unlike james barty doesn’t see running away as leading to a potentially better life for them….. he has no desire for freedom or salvation. barty just wants to do what he thinks will make regulus happier. and bc of this they will NEVER run away together bc regulus does want freedom. he does want salvation. he will never leave everything he knows unless he has the promise of something better, and barty can’t give that to him (and barty would see dishonesty about that as the greatest betrayal imaginable). so they never leave! they’re trapped together forever! stagnation! rotting! being seen this clearly is love but it’s also unbearable! there’s no mystery there’s no intrigue there’s just the cold acceptance of their fate and the comfort that at least they’ll bear it together except it’s no comfort at all because they COULD have escaped. just not with each other

and don’t even get me STARTED on brotherhusband barty…. there are like some obvioussss barty/sirius parallels and we’d be fools to think regulus doesn’t see them. to think regulus doesn’t want barty explicitly because “this person is like my brother if my brother wanted me” ?? regulus is someone who has lived his entire life wanting to be wanted come on…. he fucks barty because barty is like if regulus could somehow make sirius stay. and barty thinks this is sooooo sweet he indulges it he’s like “yeah reggie why would i ever leave you we’ve known each other since we were toddlers… we’re practically bro—” and then 5 minutes later regulus is sucking his dick and he’s like. wow look at regulus self-soothing! i’m such a good friend :)

in a modern setting they’re a category 5 situationship of unprecedented magnitude. like the picture you paint of regulus crying in his car after their 34th screaming-match breakup of the MONTH (how does this even happen. months only have 31 days max. were they timing it by the hour) is so perfect. ppl tell reg to see a therapist and he graciously does and after explaining it the therapist is like “do you think this might have anything to do with your childhood?” and regulus like “no?” and then proceeds to ghost said therapist bc on the way home from the appointment barty called and apologized and invited regulus over. regulus was like “okay but we’re not going to fuck” and barty is like “ofc not do you think i’m some kind of freak that i would be horny right now—“ cut to barty with regulus’s calves on his shoulders

[vilain-herodes]

dil do you have any spare thoughts on jegulus 🤲🏼

jegulus is like a years-long social experiment i keep expecting someone from harvard university to pop out of nowhere and be like Jegulus was a an engineered mass-hallucination for the purpose of seeing if a harry potter yaoi ship between two characters that have never interacted on account of being dead for years at the start of canon could make it to the top 20 most popular ships on ao3

lmao no but in all honesty jegulus is my favorite… if you couldn’t already tell from. the 100k+ words of fanfiction i’ve written about them. they’re the doomed love affair of All time to me. and like… the doomed aspect is very important and compelling to me. not to plug my own fucking fic but this will always be a core part of my jegulus thesis:

He worries that he’ll always wish to be back there, waiting for Regulus’s call. Decades will pass, a lifetime, and the wish won’t fade. He could love a thousand people and nothing will ever compare to the frightening, purposeful way he loved the first time. No one will ever know him so bare and uninhibited as he was at sixteen. The thought scares him so much that he almost throws up again.

it’s the first love and the first end of love that changes you so fundamentally. you can never love like that again bc you’re no longer capable of it. you are a fundamentally different person now bc of that love. it’s this

jegulus is also the love story that wasn’t meant to happen yk? i joke about this all the time but also it’s so serious to me. in a canon setting their love story is always woven through the gaps in the Narrative. they love each other despite the story they’re supposed be living out… and they have no choice but to live that story out! regulus has to take the dark mark. he has to die. james has to marry lily and have harry. he has to die. all in all their love changed nothing about their story but it also changed both of Them so fundamentally. just not in ways that are apparent to anyone but themselves

we also cannot ignore sirius….. sirius!!! sirius might be more important to jegulus than james and regulus themselves. he is the inadvertent crux the accidental catalyst. he would never ever dream of james and regulus falling in love he would actively stop it if he could but he CANNOT bc he’s the reason it happened. regulus and james are only aware of each other’s existence because of sirius. they’re bound to each other by the fact that they cannot separate themselves from sirius.

but i don’t think that james wants to save regulus because he saved sirius. i think james is aware of the fact that he Didn’t save sirius. sirius saved himself. and therefore james understands the differences between regulus and sirius and wants to save regulus himself. he wants to be the white knight rescuing the princess from the tower. he wants to give regulus a better life. and regulus wants that more than anything…. but he doesn’t believe in it. he can’t let himself hope that james is telling the truth bc if he is then it means that Sirius was telling the truth and regulus can’t bear that. it’s this endless misunderstanding……

i think a lot of jegulus fans make the point about how “love isn’t enough to save someone” and while i do think this is a correct statement… the only thing that can save regulus is love. there’s nothing else for him there’s nothing he’s been denied in life except love and connection and if he let himself believe he could have those things…. he could walk out!! james COULD save him!!! love CAN be enough

send me ships/characters !!

[vilain-herodes]

addicted to thinking about regulus black as a living wound. he’s an erased act of history. he’s defined only through three separate acts of betrayal, first his brother, then his family, his friends. he is a massive scar on the life of anyone who was close to him and he leaves those marks on everything he touches. the reader can only really get a sense of who he was by tracing the exit-wounds he left on the lives of other people… he isn’t haunting the margins of the story because he walked away from it, with purpose, a long time ago. he’s a fragmentary text of which translation will always be approximate. he is the fact that even the oldest, healed-over, invisible wounds will be reopened through exposure to scurvy, too much time spent at sea. he’s the burnt edge of a manuscript! he’s the scar that unknits itself when proteins denature!!

[vilain-herodes]

mute!barty at his mother's grave, bringing her her favorite flowers and sitting in silence bc he can't tell her about his life

deaf!regulus at his mother's funeral trying to keep up with the interpreter, but his eyes keep unfocusing as he zones out

...they meet and fall in love ofc

[vilain-herodes]

what if making the wrong choices was so intrinsically a part of who you are that the second you try to change that by making one single righteous non-selfish choice you don’t survive the attempt. this is the life of regulus black

[vilain-herodes]

Guys please stop making regulus Jughead 2.0🙏🙏make him an actual freak weirdo😭

[vilain-herodes]

out of all of them, bella’s always been the leader; the example; the perfect daughter, never veering from the route of duty. she’s the one who scolds her little sisters when their mother isn’t there to do it, the one who reminds them what being a black means, the importance of upholding tradition. she knew, better than anyone, what the future held for her after school: betrothal. husband. heirs.

still, narcissa can’t quite bring herself to believe her sister’s smile. it sits like a doily thrown over a tea-stain, something that bleeds around the edges. 

[vilain-herodes]

the nice thing about moony—well, one of several—is that he’s not a bad person to not talk to. he’s not uncomfortable with silence. he can let things be, in a way that james has never been very good at. it doesn’t bother remus that you’re sad, not because he doesn’t care, but because he understands that sometimes things can’t be fixed. they just need to be felt.

[vilain-herodes]

Me and the bad bitch I pulled by framing his brother of murder .. so fucking real pls continue

absolutely let's get into it....

'me and the bad bitch i pulled by framing his brother for murder' specifically comes from my idea of like. if regulus survived the cave and the war ended as per canon and then he went on to hunt for the remaining horcruxes whilst peter is also looking for a horcrux to bring voldemort back with. they could meet. and they could have the most fucked up philosophically twisted situationship everrrr bound by this fragment of voldemort's soul that both of them Need for opposite reasons. both of them feeling that cruel twist of irony that once again they are bound by voldemort, a man they cannot help but respect and fear even while viewing him as a little beneath them. both of them having a vague disgust for the other that can Only manifest in psychosexual torture.

more broadly i like regulus and peter in the sense that they are diametrically opposed to each other. they are incapable of liking each other because they represent to each other the Worst Possible Choice either of them could have made (from their perspective -- regulus cannot imagine loneliness like peter has willingly chosen, and peter cannot imagine powerlessness like regulus has willingly chosen). and for that exact reason, they cannot ignore or forget each other! they're fascinated with each other the way ppl are fascinated with gruesome suicide. the way ppl are fascinated with how their lives could've played out if they had approached the crossroads of their life and chosen the Other path.

and unlike pairings with sev, i like how both regulus and peter's personal angst is not wrapped up in how they existed on the Outside of adoration and respect and admiration. they are not characters who stewed in personal loathing, both of their arcs hinge on action and choices and the desire to assert themselves upon the world. in my opinion, although reg was lonely and peter was resentful, they both were fairly comfortable with who they were -- there's a degree of arrogance in that, and they both recognize that in each other, and they perversely enjoy recognizing it.

i think they fuck a few times in a sort of high-handed hand-jobby (laugh reel) way. they're playing gay chicken but it's "you lose if you acknowledge the unspeakable tragedy that exists between us without which we would have nothing to say to one another" it's fun for them to pretend that the only thing they have to argue about is their Philosophical World View. they think they're recreating the dialogues of plato as they give each other uncomfortably dry hand jobs but it always falls a little short because of the Thing. The Thing They Don't Talk About. and then voldy's soul is just sitting there like a freaky little homunculus

here are some images:

bonus: if you have read tgcf you will already know this but the main antagonist of tgcf has this weird 800-year-long obsession and carefully cultivated power dynamic with the main character that stems from the fact that their characters are Direct mirrors of each other. and the dynamic involves the antagonist meticulously creating scenarios that he hopes will destroy the protag's faith in humanity and love and compassion and the novel ends with a confrontation of those ideals in which the protag says their similar pasts have Nothing to do with the way the antagonist turned out. and that him losing faith in humanity was a choice he made and not inevitable at all. and the protag proves this by refusing to choose anything except love. this too is regpeter