Harry is seven when she writes a story about a man who made humans into piñatas, carefully stuffing them full of candy and sewing them together.
Extremely disturbing, her English teacher writes on it in pretty, swirling letters. Excellent work.
Harry keeps it under a floorboard in her cupboard, and while she always finds a moment to frown at her poor spelling when she pulls it out, the praise ignites something warm in her each time.
Excellent work. It's the first time anybody has ever said that to Harry. She's determined that it won't be the last.
Harry likes to write. English is the only class she allows herself to do well in, because her other scarcely passing grades will balance on the report. She writes fantastical things, horrific things that she does not yet identify as horrific, hopeful things, depressed things. Harry is trapped in a cupboard with a single school spiral and a thousand ideas, and so she creates.
She fills half the pages, front and back, before she realises she needs to write smaller. She begins to fit two lines on a space meant for one. Still, the notebook is filled inside of a week.
Harry waits until her maths teacher isn’t looking, and filches one from his desk. It lasts a week and a half.
Harry becomes used to stealing. Once, she’d only done it to keep away that awfully nauseous feeling of not having eaten for too long. Harry finds, now, that she is more hungry to write than she is for food.
Her English teacher continues marking her papers in pretty cursive.
The most morbid thing I have ever had the pleasure of reading.
A chilling masterpiece.
Very good work, Harry. Take pride in the considerable improvement your grammar has seen over the past several months.
Harry hoards every word of praise, and lets it repeat in her mind when Aunt Petunia rants about what an awful, stupid, useless thing she is. Perhaps Aunt Petunia is right that she’s awful—good girls don’t steal—but Harry does not think she is stupid. Mrs Powers thinks her writing is useful, even if nothing else she does is.
So Aunt Petunia derides her, and as she does Harry begins to make a game of overwriting the words as they’re spoken with Mrs Power’s praise. After a while her shoulder’s stop creeping up around her ears when she is told off, though the one time she accidentally smiles, she’s dragged by her hair and thrown into the cupboard for her disrespect. After that, she still plays her game, but is careful not to let anything show on her face.
She watches people closely at school now, trying to work them out instead of trying to avoid all notice. Harry observes their interactions, and sometimes they’re friendly, sometimes unhappy, and sometimes there is conflict, which is a very important writing device.
Jasmine and Edgar are the most popular kids in her class. Edgar, though, is very unhappy to share a birthday-week with Jasmine, and very unhappy that they both to have parties on the same day, Saturday.
Edgar has never liked Jasmine. It takes Harry a lot of watching the boy to figure out that it is because his father sneers at people with dark skin, and he mimics his father whenever he can.
Jasmine’s skin is the same colour as Harry’s except she is pretty, and nice, and everything Harry is not. She is also hurt by Edgar’s behaviour—Harry can not even imagine being hurt by such mild insults—and Harry finds a fascination in how that hurt seems to change her.
When Jasmine starts crying after three days of Edgar being mean to her, her tears are nothing like Dudley’s. Her sobs are genuine and trembling. It hurts something in Harry’s chest to see her so sad, and she understands the way people try to soothe her upset.
The boys do not like to see a very nice little girl like Jasmine cry, and even some of Edgar’s best friends go to comfort her. Most of the girls do not like that Edgar has been mean to Jasmine when she is always nice to everyone, and they make it known in strange ways. Some yell at him in high-pitched voices, some ignore him completely, and some cross their arms and stare at him with narrow eyes.
Harry watches Jasmine, and she sees the girl looking around with wide, red-rimmed eyes, realising the way her crying has garnered sympathy. Then, Harry sees the steely kind of look that enters her eyes. For the rest of the day and then week she works to turn their entire class against Edgar, and Harry thinks the attempts are clumsy at times, and obvious, but she roots for Jasmine anyway.
Everybody except Edgar’s very best friend goes to Jasmine’s birthday party, and Edgar comes to school on Monday quiet. He still does not like Jasmine, and looks at her with mean eyes, but he also seems like he’s been defeated.
Harry wonders if she can ever defeat Dudley like that.
Throughout the entire week of watching, Harry scribbles out all of the different reactions she notices.
She wants to know more.
She wants to know how people react in all different scenarios: she’s hungry for it, because she wants to write it, because writing is important.
Words are important.
They can make you feel so bad you want to not exist anymore, or they can make you so happy you feel like you can float out of your skin.
One day, Harry talks to Jasmine, just to see what the girl who seems very, very nice will make of a not-nice girl like Harry, with short, messy hair and too-big clothes. She knows she looks poor (she is poor), and Jasmine’s family has money, but they aren't rich. Harry knows the other girls frown at her sometimes, maybe because they can’t braid hair as short as hers, maybe because she’s weird, maybe because she doesn’t claim to be a tomboy like the other girls that wear shorts and tee-shirts and is so still and so quiet and so ominously watchful.
(She learned the word 'ominous' last week—she likes it a lot. She thinks that’s what her entire existence is: ominous.)
Jasmine is polite to Harry, returns her hello, and gives her a sort of weak smile before hurrying back to her friends. She’s not kind, not exactly, and Harry guesses it’s obvious that she’s a freak, and even very nice girls like Jasmine know it’s better to stay away from such unnatural things. She does not try to say hi again.
She starts writing about people in her classroom, using different names. Jasmine is her favorite to write about, though Harry calls her Lily, which is Harry’s mum’s name. She makes her bold and a bit more careless than Jasmine is in truth, makes her say what she thinks, and do what she likes, and not care about whether other people like her.
Harry begins to write about herself, too, a character named Alias that doesn’t let feelings play across her face, even though she feels a lot. She tries to make them friends, but they can’t be.
Alias is self-contained and Lily is too powerful in her own boldness.
She sets them against one another in conflict, instead. Writes how she might react to bold, brash declarations, too-big gestures and careless actions that nonetheless show care. She finds herself snickering into her arm to muffle her amusement at how very outraged Lily is by Alias. They are the opposite of each other.
Harry wonders, sometimes, if she is that to her mum. Perhaps it would be good to be: after all, her mum was silly enough to marry a man who got into a car drunk and killed them both in a crash.
The next paper she submits to Mrs Powers gets a new kind of a remark. Excellent characterization.
The blankness Harry pulls around herself falters. She grins down at the paper, blatantly proud in the middle of class.
Mrs Powers hums softly and places a hand gently on her shoulder. Harry’s gaze jerks up in alarm, and Mrs Powers offers her a kind smile that has sharpness underneath, and nods her head in what looks like—like approval.
What is your rationale for disagreeing with the fanon that the horcruxes affected Voldemort's sanity?
that it's literally canon that they don't!
i obviously don't have an actual problem with people using the idea that the horcruxes affect voldemort's sanity as a trope, if that's what works for their story, but what irks me is that this idea is often repeated by voldemort enjoyers as canon fact, when the impact of horcruxes on cognitive function is spelled out clearly in half-blood prince:
Harry sat in thought for a moment, then asked, “So if all of his Horcruxes are destroyed, Voldemort could be killed?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Dumbledore. “Without his Horcruxes, Voldemort will be a mortal man with a maimed and diminished soul. Never forget, though, that while his soul may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact. It will take uncommon skill and power to kill a wizard like Voldemort even without his Horcruxes.”
in half-blood prince - as in every book prior to deathly hallows - dumbledore functions as the "word of god" character, which is to say that the information he provides us - as long as it relates neither to harry nor himself - isn't up for interpretation, it's understood within the narrative as correct. we can also be sure that he's done his research on horcruxes, knows exactly how they work, and is speaking as an expert when it comes to their impact on the mind - and we can also note that slughorn [who also seems to know what he's talking about when it comes to horcruxes and their function] doesn't mention them causing any cognitive damage when discussing them with the teenage tom riddle.
but nobody has ever made as many horcruxes as voldemort! maybe one doesn't affect the mind, but seven certainly could.
except this doesn't align at all with how the series understands the relationship between the soul and the will.
one of the central themes of the harry potter series is the value of choice. all of its main characters have narrative arcs which hinge - in some way or other - on them making a choice, very often the choice between what is right and what is easy. ron chooses to leave and then chooses to come back; hermione chooses to stay. sirius chooses to take a stand against the life his family expect of him. snape chooses to repent of his sins and work forever to atone for them. harry chooses to walk into the forest and die. lily chooses to ignore voldemort's request for her to stand aside.
all of these choices are made of the character in question's own free will - and the same applies to everything voldemort does in the series. he chooses to kill and to keep killing of his own free will, with the full capacity to understand his actions, and he refuses, right until the very end, to show the slightest bit of remorse for what he's done - and it is this, in the narrative's view, which makes his behaviour so heinous and which causes his behaviour to have such an impact on the state of his soul.
if we assume that voldemort's grasp on rationality declines with the number of horcruxes he makes, we are also assuming that his capacity to understand the full wickedness of his actions also declines - but his motivation for killing myrtle to make a horcrux and his motivation for killing frank bryce to make a horcrux are exactly the same: he wants to, and he doesn't give a solitary fuck about the life he's just taken.
and this stands in contrast to something else we see in canon - the idea that killing does not automatically have an impact on the soul:
“And my soul, Dumbledore? Mine?”
“You alone know whether it will harm your soul to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation,” said Dumbledore.
this - the set-up to snape's mercy-killing of dumbledore - suggests that your soul is not harmed if you know without question that the death you cause is justified.
snape kills dumbledore of his own free will, but this suggestion also implies that it would be perfectly possible for the soul to remain unharmed if a killer was understood to be non compos mentis. that is, if someone lacked the capacity to understand their actions were not justified, then their soul would see them as "not guilty by reason of insanity" and not splinter.
voldemort's ability to make so many horcruxes in the first place, then, must depend on his capacity to understand exactly what he's doing - to know he could choose not to kill and then still do it anyway.
and we do actually see in canon that - while he's shown to be someone who kills with the slightest provocation in the films - the voldemort of the books is clinical and methodical in his violence:
“Nice costume, mister!”
He saw the small boy’s smile falter as he ran near enough to see beneath the hood of the cloak, saw the fear cloud his painted face: Then the child turned and ran away... Beneath the robe he fingered the handle of his wand... One simple movement and the child would never reach his mother... but unnecessary, quite unnecessary...
the canonical voldemort's known kill count is actually surprisingly low, and each of his victims is clearly selected with a rational [in the "does he have a disorder of thought?" sense, not in the "is this morally justifiable?" sense] motivation driving his decision to attack them - even if his actions are also affected by an emotional trigger [he does not, for example, kill his father or massacre the goblins who tell him that the cup was stolen for reasons which are irrational or delusional - incandescent fury or fear that your secret is out are not insanity].
voldemort kills and makes his horcruxes out of choice, and the series is clear that his capacity to understand that choice does not degrade across the course of his life.
ok, but you have to admit that he's definitely not... all there, personality wise...
sure. but i don't think this has anything to do with the horcruxes...
the idea that voldemort runs around shrieking and cackling to himself is an invention of the films. the canonical voldemort is shown to be lucid and thoughtful even in deathly hallows, he remains a formidable strategist right up until the end - and i think it's also worth noting that the films really gloss over just how successful his takeover of the government is - and his prodigious intellect and magical talent are acknowledged by the order throughout the series.
his more volatile personality traits - his fondness for monologuing, his rapid switching between being superficially charming and feral, his tendency to get lost in his own obsessions, his emotional brittleness - are all ones the eleven-year-old riddle is shown to possess, and i think it's much more interesting to explore the idea that they remain aspects of the person he once was which the adult voldemort cannot hide behind the mask he has constructed.
but - yes - its certainly true that the resurrected voldemort of order of the phoenix onwards is more paranoid, harder to soothe, crueller to his death eaters, more inflexible in his thinking and so on than he is implied to have been in the 1970s, and so i understand why many readers interpret this as evidence that his last two horcruxes [harry and nagini] - plus the arcane horror of his resurrection ritual - might have sent him round the bend.
but i think that the implication of canon is that this behaviour has much more mundane causes.
in october 1981, all the evidence we have is that voldemort is about to win. he is an unassailable terrorist kingpin with an army of highly-trained, highly loyal minions and - we can assume - widespread popular support.
and then only four of these supporters try to find him.
it's clear - as we can tell from the fact that barty crouch jr. is so shocked to discover that he didn't massacre the reassembled death eaters where they stood - that voldemort is livid that none of his "loyal" servants came to rescue him from the tree in albania his soul piece was hiding in, choosing instead to pretend they were under the imperius curse and that they'd never have been seen dead supporting him had they been in their right minds. it's also clear that he has no choice but to welcome these death eaters back to the fold once he's resurrected because he'd have no core supporters otherwise.
but it's also clear that he doesn't trust any of them one single bit once their commitment is proven to be so fragile - and that it is this, this evidence that he's just a human being with human feelings, rather than a creature of pure magic whose mind has been warped by that magic, which provides a much, much more interesting explanation for his increasing volatility as the war draws to its conclusion.
voldemort is at his most interesting - in my opinion - when his humanity [and his failure to outrun it] is foregrounded. this isn't incompatible with his creation of the horcruxes at all. but it is, i think, incompatible with the idea that they warp his mind.
We've done it again! A Tomarrymort fest in which our writers anonymously submit a story and guess who wrote what! This time, the theme is all things BLOOD AND/OR WINE.
These authors have used all manner of wily tricks to avoid detection, including but not limited to bluffs, double-bluffs, imitation, gaslighting, manipulation, bribery, or general miscreant behavior.
But the time has come for our authors to drop their masks and proudly claim their beautiful, bloody, and sometimes slightly tipsy work!
Greenest when groves are gaunt
by @cindle-writes
Word count: 5000
Rated: M
When Voldemort starts coughing up white holly petals, he is in serious denial about what it means…
…until he can no longer ignore the potentially fatal implications.
A Hanahaki disease AU
A stunning subversion in the Harrymort Hanahaki world in which Voldemort is the one with Hanahaki.
Redacted Hogwarts Parchmentwork
by @theladygia
Word count: 876
Rated: E
An excerpt from the parchmentwork of Alastor Moody¹, Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor 1994-95, later discovered and annotated by Professor Severus Snape on 31 October, 1996 as he polished off his second bottle of elven-made wine².
¹Read this fic.
²Read this fic.
Red Hair, Red Eyes
by @gryphonfeather
Word count: 2361
Rated: M
Ginny does not cope well with having Tom ripped out of her. She drags Harry down with her.
Fics that make you howl and bark and roll on the ground.
Separated from Thee let me never be
by @vdoshu
Word count: 727
Rated: M
“Lord, I give unto you my devotion. I am Your mouth, I am Your hand, I am Your vessel upon the world.”
Never been so into religion. And religion has never been so into Harry!
Spice
by @cannibalinc
Word count: 1260
Rated: Not Rated
After his resurrection, Lord Voldemort finds himself craving blood. But none of the blood that his followers provide can satisfy him.
Picking up notes of tortured hero-boy in this wine.
And special mention to @the-wig-is-a-metaphor and @cindle-writes for tying for the most correct guesses!
Thank you so much to our writers for creating these lovely stories! Each is a delight in its own bloody, grapey way!
Banners and fest title art created by @cannibalinc.
So so glad to be able to write for this fest! I had tons of fun putting together my submission and (incorrectly) guessing who wrote the other stunning pieces.
There should be a fanfic writing game called the showrunners challenge where someone writes a story and partway through someone else can play things like "actor leaves after 4000 more words" or "topic now too politically sensitive due to unforeseen world events" or "lost rights to that reference"
Enough people have said this that I'm musing on logistics, here's what I've come up with:
Blog where participants can submit their completed chapters, and then are randomly assigned a stipulation picked from a list compiled from spectator submissions
Synchronous event like kinktober: the stipulation is for everyone and there's a new one every set period of time (week? two weeks?)
Google doc compiled and then people challenge themselves by using a random number generator, on the honor system
Google doc compiled and people can do it with a buddy, who chooses the stipulations on purpose
I like the idea of a Google doc you can use for the last two options, because then you could also make yourself a deck of cards from those to draw from if you wanted to play alone. You could also play it in a realtime chat -- have the "show runner" start with a pitch for a story, and say every (designated time period) they are given a new challenge to incorporate into the description of the story they would be telling. Winner is the person who finally makes them admit defeat, which they do by saying, "and then we do the clip show episode".
(for those raised in the Netflix era of two-season cancellations, a clip show is where the show has run for so long that they do an episode where the characters do nothing but reminisce, interspersed with clips from previous episodes, giving the crew a break from filming.)
the friend who received this is too nice to say something about it but i have reached a point now where i have seen them receive so many messages like this that i just can't keep my mouth shut anymore
this is straight up evil behaviour. whatever lighthearted tone this anon thought they were sending this with, i don't care. it's gross in every sense.
i'm speaking directly to whoever sent this now and frankly, if you follow me, non, unfollow me right fucking now because i don't want this energy anywhere near my blog. it hurts enough that you've targeted my friends with it.
listen up because apparently it bears repeating for the millionth fucking time -
FANFICTION AUTHORS ARE HUMAN BEINGS. they have lives and jobs and school and things they struggle with. maybe they've even spoken publicly about their struggles in the hopes their readers would understand them a bit better because at the end of the day this is a community and they have every right to use this space however they fucking want to.
"don't start a fic you can't finish" - literally shut up. shut up! we are not paid to do this, i will start and not finish whatever the fuck i want.
and holy shit, anon. as if this message wasn't disgusting enough, please let me state plainly something you "desperately" need to hear: no robot can give you what a human writer can. and the fact that you even threatened to just go to AI at this point shows how little you care about storytellers and all they provide for you.
again, i don't care if every word of this message was sent in jest or meant to be read playfully. it's not fucking cute. this shit hurts writers and ya'll need to realize that.
if you take time out of your life to send messages like this, you're a bad person. period. this is not how fanfic works, it's not how the world works. if you can wait two-three years for a movie or a new season of your favourite tv show, you can wait a few months for a fanfic to update. or you can wait forever. we literally owe you nothing.
Anon and others like them need to learn to stop dehumanizing others. Unfortunately, that extremely important lesson isn't taught in school because it's assumed "everyone knows" not to do that. I could fill entire books with stuff "everyone knows" that everyone doesn't.
All the Regurgitation Algorithms out there today adds another tool to their arsenal. The end goal is getting whatever they want. At any cost. Dehumanizing someone? Insulting their abilities? Doesn't matter as long as they're happy. And if they can't be happy (because, in this case, we all know RAs fucking suck at writing) they can at least make someone else as miserable as they are.
You know what's even worse than someone using a program to try and get an ending to a fic? Someone going to an author and threatening to do just that. The first is a combination of arrogance, entitlement, and ignorance, but the latter adds maliciousness into the mix. Especially if they aren't actually planning to feed the fic into a program: they just want the author to know they could. That's hatred right there. That's wanting to hurt someone else. And most often that's because they don't see their target as a real person. Why bother with basic levels of respect and understanding when it's just some thing on the internet?
A wise woman once warned us where the "people as things" mentality leads. That still applies here, even though I'm sure Anon would disagree. The "little" things are just the start to the path, and it's all downhill from there.
All of this. Life happens to people and it happens hard. And the thing about PTSD and trauma that I never knew? Your brain physically rewires itself to deal with the things you need to do to survive. And in general, fic is not a thing you need to do to survive. I'm not talking about "my soul will wither and die without my art" survival. I'm talking about "I need to make it through this shift without crying or breaking down so I can get money that I need to pay my rent and buy food" survival. Everyone is different, so I can only speak to my experience, but In my case, years of workplace abuse was the windup, and the sudden and traumatic deaths of my Mom and my cat within weeks of one another was the one-two punch that shattered me. The part of my brain the stories came from had been faltering during those years of abuse, but after those deaths, it was just gone..
I can still safely say there is NOTHING in my A03 account that I look at and say "no, I'm never going to finish that." Everything was started with the intent that it was a fic I'm going to finish. And I'm genuinely optimistic that the progress I've made will continue and someday they'll all get an ending. Think about the fact that for many, those unfinished stories are motivation to keep going on what can be an incredibly long and difficult healing journey sometimes. And no amount of prodding or threats of using AI to finish them will make those neurons reconnect any faster.
(Also threatening to use AI to finish a fic is like threatening to finish frosting that delicious cake with wallpaper paste. Mmm. Yummy. Enjoy your paste cake.)
I’ve been thinking about this lately, since I’ve gotten comments asking a much milder version of this question.
We write fanfic for fun, we post it from the goodness of our hearts, and at least for me personally, as soon as there’s an ounce of obligation about it? My brain’s done. Can’t… I already get enough of that “you must write” energy from my day job.
I can look at time periods where I didn’t write fanfic and those times correspond exactly with times I barely had enough energy to do laundry, let alone clean the house. I wasn’t about to update fic because I was running on empty.
Readers, most of you are stellar people and I love you. <3 But if you have it in your head and I should update or finish anything I’ve written because I’m obligated to you, please do me a favor and keep those thoughts to yourselves.
one of my favourite things about tomarry is how it's a relatively innocuous-looking gateway drug into full-on snake-man hemipenes monster-fucking
you get into the tomarry ship thinking... well, at least you're not a harrymort shipper. you're not one of those unhinged cackling voldemort groupies who for some reason think that a monstrous bald man is fuckable. you're just into tom and harry. which is very different. tom hasn't murdered harry's parents yet (in most fics) and is still undeniably attractive and, let's face it, still somewhat sane. and they have incredible chemistry. of course harry's into him. of course. right?
but here's the thing. here's. the. thing. you think you're being offered a blue pill vs. a red pill, but... hey, psst, hey. THEY'RE BOTH THE RED PILL
like you think you're getting into a couple of cute, maybe slightly fucked-up fics about a hot young dude with whom harry understandably has foe yay--particularly appealing to foe yay fans, e.g. drarry fans--and next thing you know it's 3:45am and voldemort is balls-deep in a pregnant, lactating harry potter and nagini may or may not be getting used as a sex toy and your hands are trembling as you question every decision you've ever made in your life that led you up to this point
@monsieurclavier Please do share the link of the "voldemort is balls deep in a oregnant, lactating harry potter and nagini may or may not be getting used as a sex toy" fic. 🥺
@racfoam and @adreamoflovingstars: LMAO Y'ALL ARE PROVING MY POINT. WE'VE PASSED THE VOLDEMORT GROUPIE STAGE. WE'VE REACHED TERMINAL VELOCITY IN OUR SYNCHRONISED JOURNEY TO HELL
uh this is the lactating!harry fic, i think? loved it. one of my first harrymort fics. can't remember now if harry was actually pregnant or if there was just roleplay/language about pregnancy... probably the latter, contextualised in tom's lactation kink. also, just as a warning to those of you who aren't into this, there is waaaaaaaaay too much mommy kink in this fic for most people to survive, let alone enjoy, and nothing in this fic is remotely consensual. but it's hot for some of us ig *shifty eyes*
re: nagini as a sex toy, that's more a half-formed fantasy of voldemort's from my recent fic, which goes something like this:
Potter, undressed and entwined with a sleeping Nagini upon satin sheets, his lustrous skin glowing as Nagini’s scales reflected the light from the fireplace, a river of diamonds draped over Potter like jewellery over a courtesan—Potter, spreading his legs around Nagini’s weight like the whore he was and undulating languorously against those smooth, warm scales, pleasing himself, keeping his half-lidded eyes on Voldemort as Voldemort watched from an armchair across the room—
i might write that scene as its own story one day, perhaps as a sequel to the above fic, because i have a really fucking weird kink for boys rubbing themselves off against snakes, a kink that, unbelievably, actually pre-dated my harrymort shipping days by several years. no wonder i ended up shipping this pairing, huh?
I'm in a mood, so I've decided to break down my thoughts on this topic and I'm putting it in the tags for anyone who is interested. With a suitably melodramatic title.
The rules here are simple: if you know you won't like this, don't read it. If you read it anyway and don't like it, that is the definition of a you problem. Okay? Okay.
So let's talk about why I think it is incorrect and, frankly, offensive to claim that Voldemort|Tom bottoming is inherently out of character.
In order to have this conversation, we're actually having a bigger conversation about sex. Because that's really what this is about.
Something that has popped up in a handful of comments on my own fic is surprise that Voldemort wants to suck Harry's cock. Now, I'm going to be charitable and assume that the people who say things like this don't realize what they're implying. But the reality is that they are operating from the assumption that a man sucking another man's dick is, at least to some extent, weak and degrading. A subservient act.
This is both homophobic and factually untrue. A significant percentage of people who like dick also like giving blowjobs. It's an enjoyable, pleasurable thing to do. And even if the physical act of sucking cock doesn't turn someone on, there are so many other reasons to want to do it. Getting off on being the source of your partner's pleasure, for one example.
But let's move on to the elephant in the room: anal sex. Specifically, the act of being penetrated. The interesting thing about bottoming is that, contrary to what some people seem to believe, it's the more powerful position. Penetration is only happening because the person bottoming is granting permission. Even if that person has ceded total control of the encounter, the fact remains that they made that decision in the first place and could un-make it at any time.
If that agency does not exist, the sex is not truly consensual. Full stop.
Moreover, a strong, dominant personality =/= topping. There is no innate correlation. This is where misogyny really comes to the table. Bottoming seen as a feminine act, and femininity conflated with weakness and submission. Do I think (most) Tomarrymort readers are consciously thinking this way? No. But that doesn't mean the underlying bias isn't present.
There are so many ways penetrative sex can play out. Yes, you get the "classic" version of the person topping being dominant and the person bottoming being submissive. But you can also get topping from the bottom, where the dominant partner in every way is the person being fucked. Or maybe no one is taking a dominant role. Et cetera. This is a broad overview, not an exhaustive list.
Do you see what none of these things have? An assumption that topping=stereotypical masculinity and bottoming=stereotypical femininity. Even with a couple that likes playing with that flavor of gender roles, it's a choice they're making. And before someone willfully misunderstands me, there is nothing wrong with that choice. But don't mistake it for something it's not.
So now that we've clarified that being penetrated is not weak, degrading, or even inherently submissive, let's bring this back to Tomarrymort.
First of all, have you read the books? Voldemort is campy as shit. High drama and a surprisingly great sense of humor (his jokes are fucked up, but also pretty funny). He's not this hyper-masculine figure. On the flip side, Harry is not an effeminate man. He's a jock who will fight you.
So from whence comes this zealous dedication some people have to a fixed dynamic that puts Voldemort|Tom in the masculine role and Harry in the feminine role? Yes, we've established that sex positions are neither of those things, but we all know that's the assumption simmering toxically in the background.
I can't say for sure, but my instincts tell me that it comes from a shallow read of both characters. Voldemort is a powerful man who commands a terrorist organization. Harry is the good-hearted hero, defined by his capacity to love. And this can get twisted into Voldemort|Tom taking and Harry giving in a very reductive way. Even when the relationship is meant to be consensual.
Obviously, I don't think this is universal. I've read a lot of incredible takes on sex in this fandom, with different top/bottom/switching dynamics. And this is fanfiction, which means you can play with characterization to your heart's content. What I'm talking about is people insisting that Voldemort|Tom must top and Harry must bottom and anything else is wrong.
Why are you so adamant about that? Have you ever given it a moment's thought? If you prefer it, you prefer it, that's all fine. But when it morphs into claiming that bottom!Voldemort|Tom is out of character and bad, things have crossed over into the arena of the absurd. Like what you like, but be aware of what you're really saying when you talk about sex.
Not conflating bottoming with weakness and topping with strength would be a good starting point. Understand that there are myriad reasons a person might want to bottom. It can be a source of relief, allowing someone else to take control so you don't have to. It can be an act of manipulation. It can be a form of domination. And sometimes it's just because bottoming is what feels good and they have more fun that way. Or it's just the kind of pleasure they're in the mood for on a random Tuesday night.
No one is telling you to read things you don't enjoy. And no one is saying that fixed top/bottom dynamics don't exist in the real world. But it's ridiculous to apply a fixed dynamic to such a degree that you get upset when other people write something else and consider a fic "ruined" by it. You really should put some thought into your biases. It's good for you. But even if you don't, when you claim a sexual dynamic is inherently out of character, you're actually just wrong. So stop doing that. It will be a net gain for all of us, including you.
I've also seen arguments from people who prefer Voldemort/Tom never bottom that they don't personally believe that sexual position has any inherent power position but that it is Voldemort/Tom himself who believes that topping=power and bottoming=submission. A sort of in-story character explanation, and I do think that's an interesting discussion to be had. Voldemort was of an era and culture of baseline misogyny and homophobia. Socially, he runs in very traditional circles. "I'm not a misogynist! Voldemort is!"
But I would argue that there's just as much text to support the opposite. Or rather, lack of text to say one way or the other that isn't speculation and interpretation.
Voldemort's reigning philosophy is POWER. (You know, the power in power bottoming). And over and over, he is about committing taboos in order to attain that power. Non-traditional sex acts is fairly low stakes compared to the other things he's been willing and enjoyed to do.
Sex is a tool like any other. We saw him do what needed to be done to charm Slughorn, Hepzibah Smith, his peers in school, his peers' children, and every other death eater. His aspirations weren't small, he didn't want to be class president, he wanted to be ruler of the wizarding world. He came from nothing, and if the only thing standing in his way was using his body to get to the next step, I don't see any reason he wouldn't use it.
And lastly, Voldemort is a hedonistic parasite who gets off on exerting power over the people who used to exert power over him (Muggles, Purebloods, authority figures etc). Pillow princess material. Lay back, be worshiped, make young Lucius Malfoy pleasure him and milk prostate for hours while a furious and humiliated Abraxas Malfoy is forced to watch.
But the biggest point of contention I see is the issue of tagging. Fixed shippers who feel betrayed and tricked when they are enjoying a story up until the "wrong" person bottoms. I've seen accusations that authors who don't tag are doing it so they get more "engagement," I've seen people say it violently triggers them, I've seen it being compared to sexual assault.
I'm pretty familiar with AO3's Terms of Service, so I'll remind any readers and writers who use the platform:
You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled.
The only tagging required by the archive is the rating and the warnings (should they apply). Everything else (EVERYTHING ELSE) is a courtesy and at the writer's discretion. Many authors chose not to use additional tags at all. Anyone may request to add or remove a tag on a work, and the author is within their rights to say no. For any reason or no reason at all. You (general you) will have a better overall fandom experience if your expectations are reflective of this fact. Expecting all other writers in your fandom to adhere to your specific tagging preferences is setting yourself up for a very bad time.
And let's be real. 95% of all Tomarrymort works, Harry is the bottom. There were 3 omega Tom/Voldemort fics last time I checked, and I wrote one of them. There is so much creativity and amazing art this fandom has to offer, it isn't going to kill anyone if Voldemort bottoms the other 5% of the time.
This morning, I was delighted with a series of fascinating screenshots.
I'm being smeared on Twitter! By someone I don't know, who hasn't even read Lover's Spit, because I do not want to spoil aspects of my own fic.
And it didn't stop there, friends!
Obviously you can tell by the "18 Likes" there were at least 19 people outing themselves as haters. 😔
Let's be clear: if you're twiggered 👉👈 by seeing Tom Riddle bottom, block me and move on
Not because I'm out here publishing smut left and right (I'm not even a smut writer), but because there is absolutely no way you could possibly enjoy my content if you're a fixed shipper.
Is it about who tops and who bottoms? I don't know. Really, at least half of the time, I prefer top!Tom. My enjoyment of a fic is not contingent on whether one character or the other gets dicked down. Of my top favorite fanfics that I can think of offhand, Tom doesn't even bottom in any of them.
That said—I am drawn to stories where Tom Riddle is in a central role, and nobody fixated on bottom!Harry could ever possibly deliver. So yeah please go ahead and block me. ಠ_ಠ
Also, the accusation that I "want engagement" is goofy
If I was driven by engagement, the fic would be straightforwardly on the Top Tom tag, feature a lot of smut, and probably have twice as many hits.
I don't write for engagement; of the 6 fics I have published, 2 are rated G and only half of them even have ship tags at all.
And regarding Lover's Spit specifically, it would absolutely spoil the story if I went on Tumblr rambling about how they're going to fuck. I have more respect for the lovely people who read the story as it is than random potential readers who feel they cannot engage with a story on the off chance their t/b preferences aren't met after 150K of non-smut content.
Yes, fixed shipping preferences can be sexist and homophobic
If your preferences are informed by your belief that Tom Riddle is "too powerful" to ever bottom (!!!) and "submit" to Harry, you're embarrassing and regressive.
You're tacitly admitting that women—that people without penises—are fixed in a state of submission; and you're also insinuating the same of gay men who prefer to bottom.
Sex is a lot of things - not just a power exchange. Sex, as I see it, is about intimacy, vulnerability, and expressing love. That is how I write it, and why I do not want to share "spoilers" about how sex will play out in my fic.
Ultimately this slander is just the product of entitlement
Though Lover's Spit has a lovely, inspiring, and engaged bevy of readers, it is by no means a popular fic. It's a wee little niche fic.
I can see no reason why someone would bother publicly slandering me except that they're just deeply entitled and butt-hurt that I'm not complying to their whims, even though I am a teensy weensy small-time fic writer with no following whatsoever. It's so batshit.
If fixed shipping matters to you, block writers who don't tag. Simple as that.
They are entitled. That is the perfect word. They think they are owed entertainment, to their specific taste, for free.
It's not about the tagging. I tagged one of my fics with 'bottom Tom' and they still whined about it on Twitter and in the fic's comments. They simply can't imagine an author has the audacity to write something they don't like, tagged or not.
I get having preferences, I obviously have my own; I get someone's frustration with a character that is portrayed so differently than canon that is almost unrecognisable, as I saw someone complained in one of the tweets. But everyone should draw the line at insulting an author or a fic on a public forum. Simply stop reading, or go rant to your friends, in private conversations.
These people were raised in the wild, with no sort of common sense or manners. They can't seem to understand how functioning in a civilised society works.
@metalomagnetic is the queen of compelling portrayals of voldemort, and the writer who first springs to mind when i was think about how ludicrous it is to assert sexually 'bottoming' must indicate a character has relinquished power in a sexual encounter.
"I get having preferences, I obviously have my own; I get someone's frustration with a character that is portrayed so differently than canon that is almost unrecognisable, as I saw someone complained in one of the tweets."
Very well-put. Few of my preferences are compatible with your average Tomarrymort shipper. In fact, I'm full of hate; that's what pushed me into my twink extremism. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
I think what's rather rich is when people want to go the route of saying a character acts way differently than canon, while their understanding of said character is so steeped in fanon, or archetypes, they could not possibly fathom them being portrayed accurately.
None of you are prepared for a Tom Riddle whose manic evil laugh ricochets off the cold stone of the Chamber of Secrets; who bestially smiles when a smidge too excited; who talks in third person, who rambles about his past, who says, "as though Hagrid had the brains - or the power!"
We all take from canon what we take, and invent stories to entertain and to connect with others. If your form of 'connection' is built on neurotically hating aspects of fics you don't even read . . . reconsider.
Dear Tomarry fans (and I am calling out Tomarry fans, Harrymort folks seem to be more chill and ilu <3 ) the point of fandom is that we’re here for fun and we’re making things that make us happy. Do we need to go over the rules again? SALS, the back button exists?
1. Tags are a Courtesy. I tend personally to lean towards overtagging, bc I’m a bookmark/filter nerd, and I want folks to be able to find hand kink if they want it lol. But as long as writers set up warnings and tag the pairing, they’re set! You are not entitled to tags, period.
2. You’re Entitled to Headcanons And So Am I. They’re fictional characters from a children’s series! My characterization of Harry is between me and Satan lol, it’s definitely not God. Same with Tom/LV. If you want to read stories with a specific version of a character, you can curate your experience (by apparently only choosing bottom!Harry stories), but whining that other people have their own opinions about characters is literally showing up to a potluck and being mad that people brought dishes other than jello salad. It’s fandom! People create things out of their own brains (and other body parts ;).
3. Let’s Not Police People. If the Tomarrymort space starts to look like the marauders space I’m going to cry. And then pull away and only talk to people I know are chill. Writers and artists can make whatever they want. Readers can read whatever they want. What we don’t get to do is get mad at folks who don’t write or art the exact way we want them to. This is how you drive people away, this is why people stop writing. Let’s build each other up, folks!!
OP, I’m so sorry this is happening to you and I can’t wait to catch up on your fic. 💖 I’m going to look at my drafts and see if I can’t crank out some bottom!Tom fic just for shits and giggles now.
Since the frog theme I made earlier was light mode, I decided to make a dark mode skin as well. This one is galaxy-themed and in shades of purple, pink, and blue.
You can get the code and instructions for how to use it here.
Summary: How did Voldemort find himself in this situation? A shortage of good omegaverse porn was dire indeed. It turned out that ruling the wizarding world using actual delegation skills left one with a lot of spare time.
ellievsbear
