[clementine-kesh]

the big three questions of media analysis: what the author wanted to say, what they actually said, and what they didn’t know they were saying

[clementine-kesh]

for the last one i don’t just mean oh the author inadvertently wrote in gay subtext or whatever i’m talking about media as a cultural artifact which can reveal a ton about societal norms, biases, ideals, etc. it’s all about positionality and an unexamined positionality is often the most revealing of all

[saintsenara]

What do you think would happen in a Ronarry scenario where Ron notices he is still constantly overlooked by others like how its been his whole life, but knows that Harry is always gonna get more attention than him, and can see that his family do, to an extent, favour Harry more, atleast outwardly?

i mean, this is canon, isn't it?

one of ron's really interesting - and really underappreciated - character traits is the fact that while he's someone who really, really struggles with jealousy over lots of things in harry's life - his disposable wealth, his fame, the attention he gets chief among them - he clearly makes a huge effort to never let harry's relationship with his family be one of them.

to the extent that, even when the locket-horcrux spills that he does harbour a deep, dark fear about harry's position among the extended weasley clan... the text makes clear that this should be understood as an additional strand of his panic that harry and hermione are a couple, rather than a standalone concern about molly's relationship with harry:

"Your mother confessed," sneered Riddle-Harry, while Riddle-Hermione jeered, "that she would have preferred me as a son, would be glad to exchange..." "Who wouldn't prefer him, what woman would take you, you are nothing, nothing, nothing to him," crooned Riddle-Hermione, and she stretched like a snake and entwined herself around Riddle-Harry, wrapping him in a close embrace: their lips met. [DH 19]

indeed, ron is the person who establishes harry's role as surrogate weasley son, when he writes to molly in philosopher's stone to say that harry isn't expecting any christmas presents, and could she please send him some.

[i.e. one of the most adorable things he ever does.]

this is why i quibble with the view taken by weasley bashers [which i'm certainly not saying is what you're doing here, it just leads on from the question you've asked] that molly [and sometimes arthur, but usually she's the only person anyone's talking about... i wonder why...] dotes on harry inordinately in comparison to her other children - because he's famous or special or whatever reason people want to give.

this fails to take into account the crucial context that harry is an orphan who is abused by his adoptive family [which ron - as he makes clear in chamber of secrets - is horrified by]. he needs to be loved by molly and arthur more demonstratively than their other children - and, yes, this includes the ways that molly worries about/wants to protect him - because he doesn't have the security of knowing that someone cares about him without this explicit demonstration.

ron clearly understands this, right from the beginning of the series, and accepts and encourages it.

that doesn't mean that there's not a teeny tiny little morsel of resentment lurking in the darkest recesses of his heart, of course. but then we have to bear in mind that what happens after the locket spills all his secrets is... ron destroying it.

he symbolically banishes his jealously, and then he and harry actually speak openly about it.

in canon, this is mostly about hermione - and harry correcting ron's fear that he fancied her - but it also features ron coming to understand that his jealousy over harry's fame and importance is jealousy over a fantasy:

"You've sort of made up for it tonight," said Harry. "Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcrux. Saving my life." "That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was," Ron mumbled. "Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was," said Harry. "I've been trying to tell you that for years." [DH 19]

and from this point onwards, ron becomes infinitely more comfortable in his own skin, until, by the epilogue, he doesn't care about the attention harry receives, and thinks it's funny:

"Why are they all staring?" demanded Albus as he and Rose craned around to look at the other students. "Don't let it worry you," said Ron. "It's me. I'm extremely famous."

i see no reason why the same thing wouldn't happen in a ronarry scenario.

the reason ronarry slaps as a pairing is because it's about two people who fundamentally enjoy being together. it's not a grand, dark, twisted romantic drama, filled to the brim with tension and angst. it's a laundry and taxes ship. they just like each other!

the canon arc of ron and harry's relationship needs only the most minor tweaks - i.e. you just make it so the horcrux convinces him that he's going to lose harry to hermione, and not the other way round - to turn it into something romantic.

which means that ron's canonical character growth - and him coming to understand that how the rest of the world perceives him in relation to harry doesn't matter, because he's pretty great as he is - would happen just as easily if they were a couple.

meaning that the adult ron isn't going to give a shit that harry gets fawned over at ministry parties and family dinners. he knows who it is that harry will always choose to come home to...

[austenpoppy]

Okay, so first of all, thank you for providing us with truly interesting takes on the characters (and I'll also say very funny and surprising ones for a canon purist like me, given your propensity to enjoy and seriously consider the most outlandish Harry Potter ships one could think of). That said, I am a self-appointed Slytherin locket expert (locket that I sometimes refer to as my archenemy because I am dramatic like that), so you will excuse me if I disagree somewhat with your take and offer my reading of what went on with the locket.

To me, it's a grave mistake to consider the mental torture Ron went through with Voldemort-locket only through the lens of jealousy (or even through the lens of jealousy at all, really), and more particularly romantic jealousy. To me, his fear that Harry and Hermione might end up together is only the logical consequence of his low self-esteem, his deep insecurities regarding his self-worth, his place in his family and in the world, his fear of rejection and abandonment and his fear of invisibility. I will even say that it's secondary, that it's really not what was the crux of the matter here.

You wrote that his fears regarding his place in his own family, his relationship with his mother and how Harry fits in all of this should be viewed as "an additional strand" to his fear that Harry and Hermione would end up together. And yet, the very first thing that comes out of Voldemort-locket's mouth is that Ron has always been "least loved" by his mother, who allegedly "craved a daughter".

The idea that Molly "craved a daughter" was new to us readers, though it's not difficult to imagine how Ron came to that conclusion or how someone made him think that. His complex relationship with his mother, however, has been there since the very beginning, before he even met Harry, something that was hinted at from the very first time we're introduced to him. It's central to understand why Ron had self-esteem issues to begin with.

Before I dive into this, I want to say I'm not here to paint Molly as a bad mother or person; she's fiercely caring and kind, she raised seven amazing children, and she called Bellatrix Lestrange a bitch to her face before eliminating her. But even great mothers aren't perfect, because no one is, and people make mistakes.

Ron, as he said himself during his first encounter with Harry, is the sixth son in a family of seven. That means, as he told Harry, that he only gets the hand-me-downs of his brothers, and that he has trouble defining who he is, in the sense that he feels that no matter what he does, it'll never be good enough to be seen by his parents - so it speaks at once about his difficulty finding his own place in his family, and the fact that he lacks attention from his parents, both in terms of quantity and quality - and more particularly, from his mother, the one parent he spends most time with.

In fact, we're shown a quiet example of that not long after, as Ron looks at one of his dry sandwiches while Harry has all his wizarding sweets next to him and says: "She always forgets I don't like corned beef." Right after, Harry suggests that he could swap some of his sweets for one of Ron's sandwich, but Ron, who's not going to mislead his new friend on food quality, tells him that Harry shouldn't take his sandwiches because "it's all dry". And because that could paint his mother in a bad light in his mind, he adds that it's because Molly doesn't have a lot of time with the number of children there is at home that his sandwiches aren't good.

It tells you a lot of things about Ron's relationship with Molly in a few words. He clearly loves his mother and is protective of her, but there is also a quiet sadness that comes from him feeling somewhat invisible to her. He's internalized the idea that she doesn't have much time to give to him, that he's one among others, and all of those are stated as facts. It's interesting to see that to him, Molly "always" forgetting about his food preferences (or his colour preferences, which he'll comment on at Christmas of their first year), or not having a lot of attention to give to him specifically are facts of life that don't show anything necessarily bad about her, but her making bad sandwiches could.

In fact, when you look at it more closely, the "everyone" Ron refers to when he says "everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it's no big deal, because they did it first" could be in particular applied to Molly. One of Molly's biggest flaws as a mother is her tendency to compare her children and their accomplishments. Five years after that first encounter with Harry, for example, when Ron is appointed Prefect, she is at first shocked before telling Ron that "everyone in the family" was a Prefect, referring to a sort of familial tradition that Ron somehow had to follow to be part of them and be on their level; it becomes something that's not just Ron's accomplishment, but something that was "ought to be", and somehow it becomes... not that big a deal, despite Molly's excitement. Ron then is just "another Weasley" once again, invisible in a mass.

I've seen very few people comment on the difference between Ron and Harry's first year of life, even if I think it had a definitive incidence on their development. Before people take out their scythes and torches, I'm not trying to insinuate that Harry's life was not terribly impacted by the abuse and neglect he suffered at the hands of the Dursleys, or that Ron's experience is comparable - it's more that Harry's life would've been much worse had he not spent about a year and three months being dotted on and adored by his parents for whom he was the firstborn.

Now Ron's first year of life had to be different. For starters, Molly already had five children to take care of when he was born, among which two-year old Fred and George, who had to be menaces even when they were babies. Then, she got pregnant with Ginny, and navigating a pregnancy while she already had children to take care of (and probably at least two rowdy children) means that she logically had a lot less time to give to baby Ron. Add on top the fact that Molly lost her brothers who were killed by Death Eaters in 1981 (so after Ron was born), plus of course the financial issues of the family (which before Ron's third year at school were dire, since just buying hand-me-down school furniture meant emptying their bank account the year before that), and you have a little baby who didn't spend much time truly receiving the attention he needed.

This is of course not Molly's (or Arthur's) fault, but this wasn't corrected as years wore one, and this is how Ron ended up looking at the Mirror of Erised, and seeing himself as a Head Boy and captain of Quidditch winning a Quidditch cup. Those things are only a representation of what he actually craved: being seen for himself, and even more so by his parents. And doing what his brothers had done but all at the same time was the only thing his childish mind could see would grant him what he wanted. He's internalized quite young the idea that he has to earn attention.

Of course, it didn't go that way at all. Ron became the best friend of Harry and Hermione, and became even more invisible. A lot of his formative experiences as a teenager actually worsened his self-esteem issues. In the classroom Hermione was the one who shone, but I don't think it really was a problem for Ron in itself, unlike the way people ignored him or shoved him aside to focus on Harry - even though, as Hermione pointed out, he "put up with it, and he never mention[ed] it" (or he did but in a joking manner, like this time he said the Ministry would have to dig him up first if they wanted to punish him for blowing up an Aunt because his mother would kill him first). There's only one example I can think of in the books of Ron being slightly bitter on screen about Harry receiving attention he didn't, and that was in The Goblet of Fire, right before the Yule Ball when he told Harry that he wouldn't have any trouble finding someone to go to the Ball with (his reaction to Slughorn favouring Harry and Hermione was a bit different, but I'll comment on that later).

However, being dismissed for Harry's sake clearly stung more when it came from family. Ron first comments on it in The Prisoner of Azkaban, when he's shocked and clearly nettled that Fred and George gave the Marauder's Map to Harry instead of him, "their brother".

Then there is also the difference between the way Molly treats Harry and the way Molly treats Ron. Again, this isn't an attack on Molly's character; we can all understand why Molly reacted the way she did to Harry, a kind child who didn't want to be a bother to the family who welcomed him as one of their own, who was orphaned from a young age and treated terribly by his relatives, and kept going through terrible experiences. She knew he needed tenderness, love, family, and she gave it to him whenever she could.

But there is as a result a sort of discrepancy: Molly treats Harry a bit more carefully, more delicately, almost with kid's gloves compared to Ron. It reminds me a bit of the way Fred commented during Harry's first Christmas at Hogwarts that Molly made "more of an effort" towards people who aren't family when he saw that Harry's sweater was more beautiful than his own or that of his brothers. Obviously, in this case Harry became family to Molly, but the point stands: Ron is the kid that Molly raised, the one she is charged to discipline and guide, the one she's responsible for, and it's obvious to her he knows he's loved; while Harry is the kid she comes to love like a son but that she can only show love to a few days or weeks a year, that she's not responsible for, and that she doesn't have to discipline.

There is this scene in the Goblet of Fire that shows a bit what I'm talking about, in which Ron discovers the dress robes Molly got for him. Ron is horror-struck upon learning they're his, and says he'll never wear them. Molly replies crossly that "everyone wears that", and when Ron retorts he'd rather go starkers, Molly tells him she got dress robes for Harry, too, and asks Harry to show those to him. When Harry takes his out, Molly comments fondly that she chose green ones to bring out the colour of his eyes. Ron replies angrily that Harry's are okay and asks why he couldn't have something similar. Molly is forced to admit she didn't have the money for it, and snaps when Ron still says he'll never wear the dress robes, telling Harry to take a picture of him if he goes naked because she could use a laugh, before leaving the room and slamming the door behind her.

Of course, it is also because Ron himself has trouble seeing his own worth and because his school experiences do not help with that it becomes worse. There is a definitive escalation in regard to the depth of his problems. In the Prisoner of Azkaban, Ron comments casually on the differences between Harry and he, and clearly enjoys attention when people give it to him after he sees Sirius above his bed. By the Goblet of Fire, Ron starts to crave attention and validation as a way to reassure himself about his own self-worth: he desperately tries to have Moody tell him that, just like Harry and Hermione, he could be a good Auror, is as I said a bit bitter that Harry will easily find someone to go to the Ball with, even lies after the Second Task for a brief moment to make himself out to be heroic (escalating the tale when he gets more attention, and giving up the act the moment Hermione comments on his lying).

Yet it's denied to him: the fake Moody doesn't praise him, and of course the attention he gets after the Second Task is based on lies so wanes quickly after Ron goes back to telling the truth. On top of that, he faces a lot of humiliations: he’s much more prone to be ridiculous under the power of the Veelas than Harry, discovers how ridiculous his dress robes are compared to Harry's, he is humiliated by Draco Malfoy in the Hogwarts Express, is soaked and drenched in water when he arrives at Hogwarts because Peeves drops “a large, red, water-filled balloon” onto his head, is once again humiliated in the Great Hall by Draco Malfoy who insults his parents, makes a fool of himself in front of Fleur Delacour to his greatest shame, has to go to the Yule Ball in his hideous dress robes and discovers his feelings for Hermione the very moment she's courted and then dates the wizarding Ronaldo (whom Ron was an idol of and spent the little money he had on!).

There's also this moment of humiliation that comes right after finding out that the money he gave to Harry to reimburse him at the Quidditch World Cup disappeared because it was Leprechaun gold. At the Quidditch World Cup, he was embarrassed but still happy when Harry offered him the Omniculars, upon the condition that Harry wouldn't give him any Christmas gift. And he was really glad to have the opportunity to give it back to him. So of course it touched him in his dignity when he found out that this money was fake; it's at this moment that Ron comments: “Must be nice…to have so much money you don’t notice if a pocketful of Galleons goes missing", and says "I hate being poor" - it's less about being jealous of Harry's money, and way more about feeling your dignity being taken away from you because of your poverty.

So when Order of the Phoenix arrives, it is already cemented in Ron's brain that he's unworthy, and clearly less worthy than Harry and Hermione. When he's appointed as a Prefect, he doesn't quite believe it's true, the Twins make fun of him and say out loud that to them it was obvious Harry would get it (especially Fred who says that "no one in their right mind would make Ron a Prefect"...sorry Fred I still love you), he doesn't defend himself from them, and though he's a bit defiant when Hermione is also shocked and has a lot of difficulty to recover from it but doesn't treat it as a mistake on her part, he never forgets her surprise (the "Always a tone of surprise" comes from that moment !). He admits that he never thought he could get the Prefect badge when Harry finally congratulates him, but even after he makes a lot of effort to ensure Harry isn't left out, conscious that it hurt Harry even if Harry didn't tell him so; there's this moment right before getting on the Hogwarts Express when Ron at first doesn't want to look at Harry when Hermione tells him they have to go to a Prefect meeting, and goes on to say that he'd rather be with Harry, that it's a pain to go there.

Then he feels presumptuous even trying to get on the Quidditch team - and this word is important, because it's the same one the locket will say to him three years later, albeit in a more general sense. He doesn't tell his best friends that he's training in secret, and when he's found out by Harry he expects him to laugh at him and even blinks when Harry doesn't. You should look at this moment and see a parallel of what the locket told Ron, when he took on the form of his two best friends and had them saying they were mocking him behind his back - it's the same idea.

During his first training, he apologizes every time he drops the ball. And his anxiety days before the first match spikes to a level that's worrying: he shakes from head to toe when he's mocked, drops his things, goes to the toilets to throw up. Of course, the first two matches go terribly, because of the public bullying and humiliation he's forced to endure. This moment isolates Ron: after the first match, he spends the day alone in the snow, depressed, and no one comes looking for him (except Hermione, but she didn't find him); after the second match, he's left on his own during the Gryffindor Party, while everyone looks from afar, sorry for him but some are also sure it'd be best for him to quit. And Ron believes that, too, and thinks it'd be better for the team if he quit (only Angelina doesn't let him...I love Angelina).

You don't see the parallel with "We were better without you, happier without you" ? You don't see a pattern forming ? The entire Quidditch arc in the fifth book is a microcosm of what went on with the locket, with of course much less big stakes, and way less dramatic circumstances (no war, no family in danger, no hunger, no cold, no near-death injury to recover from without medication, and no mental torture).

The Half-Blood Prince is only a continuation of the now established fact that Ron thinks himself less worthy, less lovable, ridiculous. Slughorn embodies on his own Ron's insecurity of being invisible, since he literally treats Ron as if he wasn't there while fawning upon Harry and Hermione: it's what truly stings for Ron; it's not just Harry and Hermione receiving attention he doesn't, it's him being deemed unworthy of it, and excluded as a result.

For about three to four weeks in this book Ron masks his internalized feelings of unworthiness/self-loathing/hurt feelings due to thinking others deem him as inferior with anger, engaging in a self-destructive pattern that will find its way back when he'll be tortured by the locket in the tent and starts a fight with Harry. The best example of that for me is when he "bellow[s] at everybody" so much during a training session that Demelza Robins cries, and yet sags the moment everyone leaves before saying "I resign. I'm pathetic." There's also him shouting at a transfigured Goyle/Crabbe after his fight with Ginny during which he felt humiliated, him getting snarky about the Slug Club in herbology, also him imitating Hermione after she said that him saving all his goals was evidence Harry had put Felix Felicis in his drinks.

I'm not going to go into why Ron dated Lavender because I wrote a lengthy essay about it, but all the paragraphs I wrote so far go to show this: Ron's mental torture with Voldemort-locket was entirely focused on his feelings of unworthiness, his fear of invisibility and rejection, and I'd almost say that his fear that Harry and Hermione would end up together is an afterthought in all this, definitely small potatoes compared to the rest.

The locket took the forms of Harry and Hermione for several reasons. One, they're the people Ron loves most in the world. Two, they're the ones he'd left (though it's not his fault) and the ones he was coming back to. Three, Harry is the one he's been compared to the most during all his teenage years, the one he felt he always fell short to, an embodiment of his feeling of inferiority; Hermione is the girl he loves, and she represents his hope for love in general as well.

When the locket tells Ron that Harry and Hermione were mocking "his stupidity, his cowardice, his presumption", that's because that's the way Ron saw himself, and because there's a part of Ron that expected them to - not because they'd be together as a couple, but because Harry and Hermione as individuals had to despise him. When the locket has Riddle-Hermione saying right after "Who could look at you, who would ever look at you, beside Harry Potter? What have you ever done, compared with the Boy Who Lived ?", that's because he thought he was worthy of no one's love and that he was invisible in general - but it hurt most if it came from Hermione.

When the locket had Riddle-Harry and Riddle-Hermione say they were "better without [him]", "happier without [him]", "glad of [his] absence", it was because there was a part of Ron that genuinely thought this was true in general, and not because he imagined Harry and Hermione would spend all their alone time making out.

And when the locket started by commenting on Ron's relationship with Molly, and carried on with the way Harry could maybe replace him, that's because his relationship his Molly is the basis upon which his self-esteem issues developed, the very origin of Ron's insecurities: Ron thought he was less worthy of his mother's love, and based on his inferiority complex towards Harry, his feeling of being invisible inside his own family, and the way Molly treated Harry with fondness, there was but a small step before figuring that maybe Harry would be someone whom Molly would finally feel proud of to have as a son (I do not want imagine how much Molly would've sobbed if she'd been there...).

But Ron destroying the locket isn't Ron banishing "his jealousy" - it's not about that. Why would he fall in the snow and sob if it was a moment of triumph ? No, if you remember, Ron got temporarily possessed right before destroying the locket, and Harry thought Ron would kill him. That's what it was all about: Ron wasn't banishing his self-esteem issues, he was saying that no matter how much they affected him, they'd never be bigger than his love for his family and friends, of his desire to do what was right.

And no one can tell me that this is the reaction of someone who's well mentally:

Partly to change the subject, Harry said, "Speaking of Dumbledore, have you heard what Skeeter wrote about him?" "Oh yeah," said Ron at once, "people are talking about it quite a lot. 'Course, if things were different it'd be huge news, Dumbledore being pals with Grindelwald, but now it's just something to laugh about for people who didn't like Dumbledore, and a bit of a slap in the face for everyone who thought he was such a good bloke. I don't know that it's such a bug deal, though. He was really young when they -" "Our age," said Harry, just as he had retorted to Hermione, and something in his face seemed to decide Ron against pursuing the subject. A large spider sat in the middle of a frosted web in the brambles. Harry took aim at it with the wand Ron had given him the previous night, which Hermione had since condescended to examine, and had decided was made of blackthorn. "Engorgio." "The spider gave a little shiver, bouncing slightly in the web. Harry tried again. This time the spider grew slightly larger. "Stop that," said Ron sharply, "I'm sorry I said Dumbledore was young, okay?"

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K.Rowling

Like, how can Ron think his best friend is going to punish him by enlarging a spider, knowing he's arachnophobe, and all over a minor disagreement, if he's now comfortable within himself and confident about his place in the world ?

This quote, "Don't worry, it's me, I'm extremely famous", is often quoted by other Ron fans as proof that after the locket, Ron was fine. I never saw it that way, because Ron had already made that kind of self-deprecating joke in the past. I offer another reading of it: it was Ron shielding his children, nephews and niece from unwanted and uncomfortable staring, taking himself as the butt of the joke. And the reason neither Harry, Ginny, or Hermione laughed is because they knew exactly the story that'd gone on behind that joke (I'm sorry to make this funny quote a bit sadder, but well...).

As an aside 1 after that lengthy reply (sorry can't help myself), I'd like to say that you're right when you wrote that Ron always buried his insecurities toward his family's possible preference of Harry in the deepest of his soul because he knew Harry needed his family and wanted him to be part of it, but I'd also like to say that Ron actually makes a lot of effort in general not to let his insecurities "burden" his friends - there's a reason Hermione said that "he always put up with [being put aside]" and "never mention[ed]". There are very few examples of Ron showing that he was jealous of Harry's money/possessions (and they're nearly always brought on by a moment of humiliation), and very few examples of Ron showing Harry he was jealous of his fame and attention.

There are in fact more moments of Ron just not mentioning his problems/bad things that happened to him to focus on someone or something else.

As an aside 2, I'm sorry for all my friends on here, from my now two fandoms, who wondered about my disappearance. Years of fighting against myself have caught up to me in the last months, and well, I've been quite sick. I'll do my best, but I don't want to disappoint anyone if I don't answer or reply right away.

[starsworth]

canon sirius this canon sirius that canon sirius knew a man who canonically cross-dressed (even if for convenience) & did not bully him, did not mistreat him, did not approach the subject with malice or negativity. canon sirius said, verbatim, "if you want to know what a man's like, take a look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." canon sirius asked remus for forgiveness for not believing in the best of him. canon sirius instantly, without hesitation, forgave remus for believing in the worst of him. canon sirius expressed sympathy for barty crouch jr in regards to his father's neglect and entertained the possibility that barty may have been "in the wrong place at the wrong time" when discussing his crime. canon sirius, when he thought he would be a free man, immediately offered his godson a home and a place with him, even without being aware of the neglect his godson faced, even before he had a home to offer, and he did so by prefacing that he would understand if his godson didn't want to, making it clear he would not try to force him. canon sirius could be cruel, and insensitive, and vengeful, and obstinate—but that's not all he was. canon sirius could also be compassionate and sympathetic and forgiving and accepting. canon sirius was complex, and it goes both ways, in the direction of his faults as well as his virtues. btw.

[pangaeaseas]

Sirius Black: The Perfect Scapegoat

made a post like this once but it wasn't very good so i'm going to say again that Sirius being framed as Voldemort's right hand man, which seems obviously ridiculous on the face of it, actually makes sense.

Like yeah, anyone with any detailed knowledge of the war (so order members, probably ministry workers highly involved in the war effort', and death eaters) would know that Sirius's real crime wasn't being Voldemort's right hand man--that title would more accurately go to someone like Lucius Malfoy (poor imperius victim) or Bellatrix Lestrange (seems to have been captured after Sirius and sexism works against her)--Sirius's real crime was being a spy for Voldemort and betraying the Potters, then killing witnesses in an effort to cover this up. So on the face of it it seems odd that the popular imagination would call Sirius the right hand man of Voldemort. Especially considering that it seems unlikely someone who graduated Hogwarts in 1978 would have a prominent position in Death Eater hierarchy when you remember the war had been going on for eight years by then.

However, no one with knowledge of the 'real' situation would actually have any interest in correcting the narrative of right hand man Sirius once it emerged (and it's entirely possible the Ministry had a hand in this misconception emerging, because it's a very convenient misconception).

The Death Eaters would have known full well that Sirius wasn't a prominent member of Death Eater leadership, and might have even suspected he wasn't even the Order spy, but no Death Eater was going to stand up and say 'hey, as a Death Eater, I know Sirius Black wasn't one!" It's very convenient misdirection for them: Sirius's associates, which by the time of his arrest would be unlikely to include actual Death Eaters as he'd left his real Death Eater relatives behind years ago, would have public opprobrium and suspicion fall on them. Anyone investigating Death Eaters starting from the assumption that Sirius Black was a prominent member of the leadership will go barking straight up the wrong tree. Sirius the motorcycle-riding rebel against pureblood hierarchy is a useful person to accuse of being a Death Eater: the real problem is men with long hair who love Muggles and hate our family values. The problem is societal outcasts, not upstanding citizens. And Sirius is just believable enough as a Death Eater too: he has a history of doing dangerous things at school, his family is famous for its use of Dark Magic, and he looks pretty guilty because he was caught laughing in the blown up street. It's also helpful if you are a Death Eater using the Imperius Defense for there to be a 'real' Death Eater caught. You could blame Sirius for imperiusing you, and you can also point to him if anyone says 'hmm, seems awful strange all the accused Death Eaters got the Imperius Defense, maybe some of them are lying' because he's the exception that proves the rule, the one real Death Eater who can be used to deflect accusations of faking the Imperius Defense.

In the context of only a few people being found guilty of willingly being Death Eaters, it also makes a lot of sense that the public would see Sirius as a prominent Death Eater: there simply aren't many openly known Death Eaters to pick from! Sirius's accused crime seems to have made a strong impression on people. And the other Death Eaters we know were sent to Azkaban or publicly just weren't as exciting, I guess--Rookwood was boring, a spy within the Unspeakables, Bellatrix was a woman, Barty Crouch Jr was a poor innocent baby, Karkaroff was a foreigner and a spineless worm, Snape was a spy for Dumbledore, the Lestrange brothers are just boring I guess (and Sirius seems to have been arrested before BCJ and the Lestranges so he was first. Yay priority.)

Dumbledore doesn't have any reason to correct the idea that Sirius was a prominent figure in the Death Eater hierarchy either. He thought Sirius was a spy, so had no reason to intervene on his behalf. I also think it would have been embarrassing for him to have trusted the spy and gotten his Order members killed, so why would he publicize his own failure? It's a pride thing. Sirius the right hand man is way less embarrassing than Sirius the spy even Dumbledore missed.

And in the Ministry's effort to restore public order and avoid panic, Sirius was a very useful instrument. Here is a successfully caught Death Eater! No need to worry! Also he's just crazy and Not Like Us. He's not normal. Normal people aren't Death Eaters. Everything is under control. They also wouldn't want to publicize Dumbledore's vigilante movement either since that weakens their claim to be leaders of Magical Britain.

The public narrative of Voldemort's first defeat goes something like this: after years of war between Dumbledore and the Ministry against Voldemort, by mysterious unknown magical means, baby Harry Potter was able to defeat the Dark Lord Voldemort. This freed his many, many, MANY Imperius victims from their curses and allowed the Ministry to establish safety and security for the populace, after rounding up a few stragglers who in their madness committed isolated atrocities. Something like this broad idea is how people not heavily involved in the war would have understood it.

Every element of this narrative has a purpose. Open conflict between the Ministry and Dumbledore benefits neither of them, so the existence of Dumbledore's vigilante organization separated from the Ministry would not have been publicized, and many people who knew about it vaguely might well have assumed what Dumbledore was doing to gather fighters against Voldemort was under Ministry auspices. Harry inexplicably being able to defeat Voldemort discourages people from digging into dangerous magic to understand what happened and gives the public a nice feel-good story--and a baby is a more politically beneficial hero than young vigilantes Lily and James, who, to the Ministry's thinking, might be risky symbols especially given their mixed-blood marriage (if youbelieve that Lily intentionally sacrificed herself to kill Voldemort, the pureblood supremacy motive for this narrative is even more important). Prominent citizens accused of being Death Eaters were actually Imperius victims, which allows the Ministry to avoid reckoning with the depth of Death Eater penetration of British society. The Ministry had everything under control once Voldemort was dead, with Sirius and the Lestranges being isolated exceptions motivated by fanaticism and insanity.

Sirius's easy capture allows the Ministry to claim it had controlled Voldemort, and that he would never return. There was no ongoing war, and thus nothing to be dissatisfied with the Ministry about. The Ministry didn't fail to contain Voldemort, because it had successfully captured Sirius. Sirius may have committed an atrocity but capturing him (initially) wasn't difficult, allowing the Ministry to demonstrate its power and the correctness of its harsh anti-Death Eater policies.

And Sirius and the Lestranges are also ideal poster children for framing the Death Eaters as politically isolated crazy Dark wizards and not a movement with broad support. It's no accident that Sirius is called a madman, a Dark wizard without parallel. He's a mystery. He acted alone even though he was supposedly a prominent Death Eater--because there weren't many Death Eaters! No one supported Voldemort! Of course, there was actually far more sympathy for Voldemort's cause than anyone post-war would like to admit, and much of the upper class was heavily involved in the Death Eater movement. Using Sirius as the scapegoat allows for this to be ignored, because of instead of analyzing the ideological content of Voldemort's movement, which the Ministry absolutely wouldn't want to do because we know Voldemort was anti-Ministry, it can just claim that all of its opponents were crazy, like Sirius supposedly was. Instead of having to say that the call was coming from inside the house, Sirius the scapegoat allows deflection of any criticism of the Ministry, its response to the war, and Magical British society as a whole.

We can assume this is where the right-hand-man story came from, because the Ministry repeats this exact story--Sirius the madman acting alone--when it needs a scapegoat again, in the canon era. By GoF Dumbledore is no longer convinced Sirius was the spy, but we see both the Ministry and the Death Eaters, who don't want to act openly yet, using the idea of Sirius for their political advantage, making it easy to see why the false narrative of him as Voldemort's right hand man was so convenient earlier.

[vivilove-jonsa]

Hey!!! I dont know if you remember this jonsa fic.....but it was written back in 2019 and so and was sort of influenced by clueless film. The plot was like Jon was the secret prince but suddenly news came in media but Starks already knew it and it was all hilarious. I searched around but was not able to find it?? And the author was pretty active in tumblr and ao3...do you have any idea?

So sorry to say I don’t recall it at all 🙈. I’ll drop it into the tag and see if anyone will comment who does!

[lakshmisaisworld]

Thanks for posting the ask!!! And thank you so much everyone for the answer!!!

[seeyoumondaydevi]

Sliding down the wall screaming and drinking bleach 

[chdarling]

So first off, this is possibly my favourite chapter so far. Truly incredible I could read it endlessly. Secondly, and I have to ask even if you can't answer, was Lily the inspiration for the development of the Wolfsbane Potion? My mind is swimming with possibilities around this theory. Thank you for another wonderful chapter. Take care, resuming classes after a break is TOUGH (I'm in the same boat atm)

Thank you so much, love!

The Wolfsbane Potion won’t be invented until much later, of course, but I liked the idea of Lily putting the bug in Belby’s brain at a Slug Club party because I think it’s an example of how much impact she could’ve had if she’d lived.

After her death, the Wizarding world tended to flatten her memory to that of the sweet, kind martyr mother who died for her child and saved the world — which was admittedly a pretty important thing to do! But the Lily Evans that was alive was prickly and passionate and political about things that weren’t popular (that’s so much alliteration and I didn’t even do it on purpose). She wouldn’t have been seen as beloved for campaigning for more humane treatment of werewolves, she would’ve been seen as a political radical, a suspicious Muggle-born, not to be trusted.

I like to imagine that after her death and subsequent martyrdom, Belby is reading one of the many articles that the fawning Daily Prophet had been printing about James and Lily, this one a tribute to Lily, calling her “kind and caring, gentle and patient, beloved to all who knew her…” and he finds himself thinking of a rather prickly dinner several years ago…no one would’ve described that girl as gentle or patient…

And not long after that, he gets to work.

[lakshmisaisworld]

YES!!! exactly what i thought......also James giving that inspirational "quidditch should be for everyone" lesson to valmai.......

Like i can imagine Valmai, 18 , in Holyhead Harpies locker room , reading Daily Prohet which mentions James Potter who tried to protect his family and faced voldemort even without his wand and remembering pureblood ponce James who was not really a prat and was not only the one who believed she could play good quidditch but also the one to DO something about it. Remembering golden (okay maybe she had a bit of a crush but who wouldn't)cool, funny, goofy, dead at 21 James.

[owlpostagain]

Why Ron/Hermione Argue

As some people might already know about me, I’ve never been one to shy away from a good debate. That’s a trait that I share with Hermione.

There are some people who don’t particularly like arguing or disagreeing. Some people genuinely do. Hermione falls into the second category, and since I do as well, I wanted to try to explain what’s up with all of the arguing between her and Ron.

I don’t think there are that many people who would say that she isn’t an argumentative person by nature. In addition to Ron/Harry, Hermione clashes with Lavender over her rabbit, Luna over her theories, Umbridge over Ministry rules, Snape over the lesson plans for Lupin’s DADA class, Professor Trelawney over Divination, Parvati over Divination, Draco over Hagrid/Buckbeak, etc. And she argues with everyone about house-elves. Hermione is argumentative, and that’s how she prefers it.

Hermione finds it intellectually stimulating to argue, and needs someone who’s going to argue right back.

Genuine Friendship

Hermione is not the sort of person who’s afraid of being the person reading the book while everyone else is having fun. When she fights with Harry/Ron in PA, she doesn’t buddy up with Lavender/Parvati or apologize to the boys just to have someone to sit with at lunch. She sits by herself in the common room and goes it alone. In other words, Hermione is not the kind of person who chooses a bad friend over no friend at all.

If she did not enjoy spending time with Ron, she would have no problem sitting on the other side of the common room reading a book while waiting for Harry to return. And yet, we constantly see her in Ron’s company, even when Harry’s not around.

In every book after CS, she arrives the Burrow/Leaky Cauldron/Number 12 before Harry does. Harry takes it for granted that Ron and Hermione will be sitting together when he shows up in the common room, but that’s not a small thing. In PA, the two of them return from Hogsmeade “looking as though they’ve had the time of their lives.”

Despite how much they fight, it’s very clear that Hermione genuinely enjoys spending time with Ron.

Comfort with Conflict

Harry was raised by the Dursleys, and sees arguing and conflict as associated with strife. He also doesn’t feel comfortable expressing his emotions, so he tends to bottle things up until they explode.

Hermione frequently nags Harry, which Harry does not particularly appreciate. He basically has three strategies when being nagged by Hermione. The first is avoiding/ignoring her, the second is lying to her, and the third is exploding at her. Examples of the first and second include occulmency, sneaking into Hogsmeade, his doubts over Dumbledore’s past, the egg clue, his homework, his feelings about Ron’s absence, Voldemort’s visions in DH, his grades, etc.

Nagging is simply Hermione’s style, and while she might learn to tone it down, it’s always going to be part of who she is.

When he can’t lie/avoid/ignore, Harry will explode at Hermione. At which point the balance of power tilts sharply toward Harry. When Harry explodes, Hermione crumples. She will cry, shrink back, speak “in a small voice,” etc.

The problem is that Hermione needs feedback. Because Harry doesn’t engage with Hermione’s nagging, it’s hard for her to know when she’s entering the danger zone.

Like Hermione, Ron is pretty comfortable with the idea of conflict. He was raised in a house where such behavior was acceptable. He knew that just because his mother shouts or his brothers tease doesn’t mean that they don’t love him. He might be insecure about his worth, but he never has to worry that his family will simply stop loving him if he crosses some kind of invisible line.

Both Hermione and Ron wear their emotions on their sleeves and give each other instant feedback. If Hermione is upset with the boys, she tells them exactly why. Ron is the same way. Even when Ron fights with Harry, he chooses to immediately engage with him that night rather than giving him the cold shoulder and forcing Harry to work it out on his own.

Tne conflicts over each other’s romantic partners (or potential romantic partners) are a good example as well. When Ron sees something developing with Hermione/Krum, he immediately reacts and Hermione reacts right back.

When Hermione sees that Ron has a crush on Fleur, she wastes no time talking about how Fleur “really thinks a lot of herself” and “scowls” when Fleur gives Ron attention. Hermione reacts to Ron kissing Lavender not by sulking but by sending a flock of birds flying at his head. Neither of them are great at hiding how they feel.

There is a brief period in HBP where Ron decides to give Hermione the cold shoulder after finding out that she kissed Krum. Hermione is quite visibly rattled and upset by this behavior, saying she “doesn’t know what she’s supposed to have done.” Because normally when Ron is upset at Hermione, he tells her why.

A lot of the problems in the later books regarding their romantic lives stem from the same thing - for the first time, they’re not being honest and upfront with one another. Which creates a comedy of misunderstandings and poor decision-making.

Arguing as Conversation

There’s not really anger between Ron/Hermione’s arguments. I know that sounds odd, but to them it’s a cross between a rational discussion and intellectual exercise. Ron presents an idea, Hermione counters, Ron counters, and so on and so forth. It’s basically just a way to pass the time and exchange perspectives.

The morning after Ron/Hermione’s heated argument about Krum after the Yule Ball, Harry notes that they were being “quite friendly to each other, though oddly formal.”

In other words, they’re bending over backwards to be polite to one another and it’s making things weird. It’s totally different from their normal behavior.

There are many times in canon where they will segue from an argument to a normal conversation with no visible ill-will.

Even with Scabbers and the Firebolt, when an argument is finished, it’s finished.

PA:

Hermione flung her arms around Ron’s neck and broke down completely.

Ron, looking quite terrified, patted her very awkwardly on the top of the head.

Finally, Hermione drew away.

“Ron, I’m really, really sorry about Scabbers…” she sobbed.

“Oh — well — he was old,” said Ron, looking thoroughly relieved that she had let go of him.

“And he was a bit useless. You never know, Mum and Dad might get me an owl now.”

They’re perfectly capable of stopping in their tracks in order to focus on Harry or something else that’s just happened.

For another example, look at OP:

“Poisonous toadstools don’t change their spots,” said Ron sagely. “Anyway I’ve always thought Dumbledore was cracked trusting Snape. Where’s the evidence he ever really stopped working for You-Know-Who?”

“I think Dumbledore’s probably got plenty of evidence, even if he doesn’t share it with you, Ron,” snapped Hermione.

“Oh, shut up, the pair of you,” said Harry heavily, as Ron opened his mouth to argue back.

Hermione and Ron both froze, looking angry and offended.

“Can’t you give it a rest?” said Harry. “You’re always having a go at each other, it’s driving me mad.” […] The vision of Ron and Hermione’s shocked faces afforded him a sense of deep satisfaction.

Ron/Hermione are shocked, offended, and angry at Harry’s remark, because they don’t see anything wrong with their behavior. This is just how they talk.

Harry leaves the table and goes straight up to Divination, and Ron joins him a few minutes later:

The rest of the class arrived over the next five minutes. Ron emerged from the trapdoor, looked around carefully, spotted Harry and made directly for him, or as directly as he could while having to wend his way between tables, chairs and overstuffed pouffes.

“Hermione and me have stopped arguing,” he said, sitting down beside Harry.

“Good,” grunted Harry.

“But Hermione says she thinks it would be nice if you stopped taking out your temper on us,” said Ron.

“I’m not -”

“I’m just passing on the message,” said Ron, talking over him. “But I reckon she’s right. It’s not our fault how Seamus and Snape treat you.”

So in a matter of minutes, Ron and Hermione resolved their argument and discussed the best way to handle Harry. Notice that Ron doesn’t actually apologize for arguing with Hermione, he just tells Harry they’ve stopped.

An Expression of Trust

When you get to know someone, you learn that there are certain things they’re sensitive about, and you try to steer away from those topics. This is no different with Hermione/Ron. They both know what’s safe and what’s off-limits.

Hermione can call Ron tactless numerous times and nag him to do his homework, but she’s not going to take a shot at his family’s finances. Ron will tell Hermione to stop nagging and call her a know-it-all, but he would never insult her appearance.

That’s how they operate. And Hermione knows that if she accidentally strays into the danger zone, Ron will let her know. And vice versa.

Keeping Things Balanced

The movies turn Hermione into this perfect superwoman and Ron into a cowardly idiot who’s the butt of the joke, but the truth is that both characters are flawed in their own way.

One of Hermione’s more abrasive qualities is her tendency to be a bit of a know-it-all.

To be clear, being a know-it-all is not the same as being smart. Being smart is knowing the answer. Being a know-it-all is being unable to resist telling everyone else the answer. Essentially the way that Hermione and Ron negotiate a balanced relationship is by Ron engaging her when she nags him or acts like a know-it-all.

Hermione cannot help telling him that he’s not pronouncing something correctly. Plenty of people are offended by that kind of behavior, even when the other person is right. But Ron, instead of ignoring her corrections or acting as though he’s been gravely insulted, just calls her a know-it-all to keep things even. This evens the scales between them and prevents their relationship from becoming Hermione bossing Ron around.

It’s important to understand that Ron does have a huge amount of respect for Hermione’s abilities. He’s not always the best about coming out and saying it, but he takes it for granted that she’s the cleverest person in the room.

PS:

“But we’re not six hundred years old,” Ron reminded her. “Anyway, what are you studying for, you already know it all.”

GoF:

“But Hogwarts is hidden,” said Hermione, in surprise. “Everyone knows that… well, everyone who’s read Hogwarts, A History, anyway.”

“Just you, then,” said Ron. “So go on - how d'you hide a place like Hogwarts?”

When the O.W.L.s arrive and Hermione looks slightly unhappy and says that she did “not bad,” Ron takes the paper and announces that she got 10 Outstandings and 1 Exceeds Expectations and then playfully makes fun of her for being disappointed given how impressive her scores are. When Ron and Hermione take their apparition tests, he tells Harry that Hermione was “perfect, obviously.” Even when he himself fails, he doesn’t seem to bear any ill-will toward Hermione.

Ron’s not threatened by Hermione’s intelligence, and he’s not too prideful to do exactly what Hermione’s told him to do. But his teasing and his unwillingness to automatically agree with Hermione is what creates a balanced relationship between the two.

And Hermione genuinely needs this in a partner. She needs someone who will volley right back when she argues with them. She needs someone who will understand that her tendency to be a know-it-all is an instristic part of her personality. She needs someone who finds it endearing rather than annoying.

[harrypotterconfessions]

Don’t even care that it’s long cause yes

[pretentiousfilmperson27]

#harry potter#perfection#goddamn this is such a good analysis#a breakdown of their relationship and also points out how Harry is NOT like them#Harry has a very short temper in a way that is not like the way they get annoyed#and that’s why Ron being so nasty in DH really throws Hermione because he is genuinely bitter and angry#which he rarely was especially not directed at her#and Harry forgets and thus sometimes the reader forgets that Ron and Hermione are friends OUTSIDE their friendship with Harry#i liked the point that Hermione spends even more time with the Weasleys than Harry does#the only time she doesn’t is when she’s specifically on holiday with her parents#this is so good#i can’t get over it

[theartofangirling]

“Okay, okay, I’m going to tell you what Hermione sees in Ron. A trio is a balancing act, right? They’re equalizers of each other. Harry’s like the action, Hermione’s the brains, Ron’s the heart. Hermione has been assassinated in these movies, and I mean that genuinely—by giving her every single positive character trait that Ron has, they have assassinated her character in the movies. She’s been harmed by being made to be less human, because everything good Ron has, she’s been given. So, for instance: “If you want to kill Harry, you’re going to have to kill me too”—RON, leg is broken, he’s in pain, gets up and stands in front of Harry and says this. Who gets that line in the movie? Hermione. “Fear of a name increases the fear of the thing itself.” Hermione doesn’t say Voldemort’s name until well into the books—that’s Dumbledore’s line. When does Hermione say it in the movies? Beginning of Movie 2. When the Devil’s Snare is curling itself around everybody, Hermione panics, and Ron is the one who keeps his head and says “Are you a witch or not?” In the movie, everybody else panics and Hermione keeps her head and does the biggest, brightest flare of sunlight spell there ever was. So, Hermione—all her flaws were shaved away in the films. And that sounds like you’re making a kick-ass, amazing character, and what you’re doing is dehumanizing her. And it pisses me off. It really does. In the books, they balance each other out, because where Hermione gets frazzled and maybe her rationality overtakes some of her instinct, Ron has that to back it up; Ron has a kind of emotional grounding that can keep Hermione’s hyper-rationalness in check. Sometimes Hermione’s super-logical nature grates Harry and bothers him, and isn’t the thing he needs even if it’s the right thing, like when she says “You have a saving people thing.” That is the thing that Harry needed to hear, she’s a hundred percent right, but the way she does it is wrong. That’s the classic “she’s super logical, she’s super brilliant, but she doesn’t know how to handle people emotionally,” at least Harry. So in the books they are this balanced group, and in the movies, in the movies—hell, not even Harry is good enough for Hermione in the movies. No one’s good enough for Hermione in the movies—God isn’t good enough for Hermione in the movies! Hermione is everybody’s everything in the movies. Harry’s idea to jump on the dragon in the books, who gets it in the movies? Hermione, who hates to fly. Hermione, who overcomes her withering fear of flying to take over Harry’s big idea to get out of the—like, why does Hermione get all these moments? [John: Because we need to market the movie to girls.] I think girls like the books, period. And like the Hermione in the books, and like the Hermione in the books just fine before Hollywood made her idealized and perfect. And if they would have trusted that, they would have been just fine. Would the movies have been bad if she was as awesome as she was in the books, and as human as she was in the books? Would the movies get worse? She IS a strong girl character. This is the thing that pisses me off. They are equating “strong” with superhuman. To me, the Hermione in the book is twelve times stronger than the completely unreachable ideal of Hermione in the movies. Give me the Hermione in the book who’s human and has flaws any single day of the week. Here’s a classic example: When Snape in the first book yells at Hermione for being an insufferable know-it-all, do you want to know what Ron says in the book? “Well, you’re asking the questions, and she has to answer. Why ask if you don’t want to be told?” What does he say in the movie? “He’s got a point, you know.” Ron? Would never do that. Would NEVER do that, even before he liked Hermione. Ron would never do that.”

— Melissa Anelli THROWS IT DOWN about the way Ron and Hermione have been adapted in the movies on the latest episode of PotterCast. Listen here. This glorious rant starts at about 49:00. (via atouchofdestiny)

[austenpoppy]

Perfect.

[vvingcolleen]

The Prophecy is fulfilled

[giuls233]

Can you re-draw Ron and Hermione as Jake and Amy?

I frickin love both these pairs so this was totally so fun!!!:

[iamtheocean-deactivated20211023]

[thatdisasterauthor]

Oh this twitter account is a FANTASTIC resource for writing children.

[cobraskai]

I want…I wanna be a father to you. I really do. I try to protect you. I try to be there for you. I just suck at it. I really suck at it. But I want to so bad.

[sayruq]

sansa’s ableism on the night of her wedding, which she did not consent to, where she was molested and almost sexually assaulted by a grown man who happened to be disabled, is apparently more insidious than ableism exhibited by jon, robb, bronn, jaime, etc. based on the number of essays written about it meant to condemn sansa

[riahchan]

When she was 12.

[fortunatelylori]

It’s more insidious because it means that it’s actively stopping Tyrion from getting what he wants: sex. Deny an insecure man sex and you are a superficial, ableist shrew who needs to learn her lesson, dang it!

What breaks my heart in all of this scene is this line:  Look at him, Sansa told herself, look at your husband, at all of him, Septa Mordane said all men are beautiful, find his beauty, try. 

This line is so sad because it shows just how conditioned Sansa was from a young age to accept her destiny as a brood mare for whatever man her family deemed acceptable for her to marry. And all this conditioning is being done by people she trusts, like Septa Mordane. She’s essentially preparing Sansa for marriage to a man who might be old, ugly, disfigured and in essence to someone she is not attracted to. And if Sansa is unable to find his “beauty” this is her fault, her flaw. It’s she that needs to try to find beauty in whatever man ends up in her bed and essentially accept her fate and it’s on her if she is unable to. 

That’s a very insidious mindset to hoist on a little girl because the society she lives in needs to use her as a bargain chip in petty land disputes. 

What makes it even more insidious is that apparently people living in 2018 feel the same way. 

[winterrose527]

THIS. 

In truth, there should need to be no argument besides “She was 12″. She was a child. She was not ready to have sex with anyone but let alone a man three? four? times her age. 

I am so fucking sick of the hate Sansa gets for denying Tyrion or the Hound or Littlefinger. 

Good little girls do not exist for the redemption of bad men.

[kallypsowrites]

Say. It. Louder!

[alayne-stone]

“Good little girls do not exist for the redemption of bad men” 

[galvanizedfriend]

Director’s cut of Hoe Fic (or Vice & Virtue)… the piano scene 😭😭😭😭😭

Hi, friend! 🥺

(Yes, I still have some of these here 🥲🥲)

I know there was something I was watching that made me go 'there should be a piano scene in this story' but i can't remember what it was. 🤣 Maybe it was Emma? It just seems like the lady at the pianoforte is such a classic moment in those regency stories that I had to get one there. But i thought it would be interesting if this was something Caroline isn't good at, and then her perfectionist ass would go spiralling at the idea of embarrassing herself in front of everyone and making her chances of escaping the Viscount Whitmore's proposal even slimmer.

I actually spent HOURS on google researching the etiquette of piano recitals in the regency era. 🤣 And also what types of songs would be performed and so on. That song in the story is one that was popular at the time! lol And I read about duets and everything. It could be frowned upon for a young woman to perform a duet with a man she didn't know, but in some circles it was a big honor to have the most prominent guest offer a musical performance, and as the Duke's brother, that would definitely be Klaus' place.

So the fact he keeps finding rooms to hide in during those social gatherings and also that he's grumpy and hardly ever truly interacts, the fact he offered a duet with Caroline would be a *big deal* and have everyone's attention. If that had been Bridgerton, Lady Whistledown would write an entire column about it the next day. 🤣 He felt for Caroline in that moment because a) he was extremely intrigued by her, and b) she was somewhat in the same position he was in, being thrown to the wolves without really wanting to. Except he didn't care, and she was desperate to do well. In that moment, he just wanted to protect her. He knew his brethren would be vicious to her if she proved to be a failure and he suddenly didn't want Caroline to get thrashed by them. At that point he's got no idea why, but he just enjoys her and doesn't think she deserves to get judged by *those people* he loathes so much. So he just went out and offered to help her, even though he absolutely did not believe she would be such a success. lol He'd been to enough of these parties to know that most girls liked to toot their own horns a bit too much. And then it turned out Caroline was actually being *modes*, because she is a GREAT singer. He was fascinated!

My boy doesn't know yet, but he's goooone. 🤣

Thank you for you multiple asks, friend. 🤣❤️🥺

[foreverfeelslike]

Obviously Red (Taylor’s Version) is empowering for so many reasons… but the vault tracks and new All Too Well lyrics show us that the original Red album was so censored.

Nothing New is a twenty times more devastating version of The Lucky One that shows her crippling insecurities and how they manifest in her in some unhealthy ways. (OG Red Taylor NEVER talked about drinking, nevermind admitting she’d had too much to drink.)

The blatant admittance in Run that Taylor distrusts her friends who don’t support her romantic relationship and she’d rather escape into isolation to be with her partner and how that is textbook victim of abuse who doesn’t realize it.

Forever Winter highlights how toxic and abusive her relationship was, that her lover was falling apart, wasted at 5:00am and she’s calling to check up on him scared for her life that he’s going to leave her.

And All Too Well (10 Minute Version) shows us how earth shattering that breakup was for her. We don’t just hear her searching for her old self and feeling like a crumpled up piece of paper, we hear about her lifeless, maimed corpse.

Whether by force or intense pressure from the men in charge of her at the time, the original Red album held back so much of the raw, intense emotional struggles Taylor was experiencing at the time. For Taylor to release those thoughts and feelings now, fully uncensored, is a glorious doubling down on the power and strength of her vulnerability.

So basically, fuck the patriarchy.

[galvanizedfriend]

Klaroline Fic: Vice & Virtue [2/6]

Summary: As the second son of a Duke, Klaus Mikaelson has the means and all the time in the world to indulge in every manner of wild activity with very little respect for the regiment of polite society. That is until his brother decides he's had enough of his vulgar ways and gives him an ultimatum. Caroline Forbes is a young debutante in search of true love and adventure. Except her aunt wishes for her to marry a somber Viscount who's already buried three wives. When their paths cross, they realize they might yet strike a deal that could satisfy their relatives and benefit them both.

[AH Regency!AU inspired by Bridgerton and a dozen other period novels I have been reading lately.]

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Chapter 2: Unexpected Allies ✨

As soon as Bonnie is done, Lady Fell will expect her to take her place for a rendition of Haydn's Concerto in G Major to follow Bonnie's perfect Irish folk tune. Aunt Liz promised Caroline would do a fantastic job.

Well, not only will Caroline destroy her marriage prospects, she will also be an embarrassment to her dear aunt. She has no idea why Auntie Liz would lie so unabashedly. She was there through Caroline's painful practice hours. She knows how poorly a musician her niece is. It's incomprehensible why she'd want to bring shame upon her house of her own volition.

This is something out of a nightmare. Caroline feels sick to her stomach, anxiety eating away at her like a fever. Her palms are sweating, her head feels airy and she wouldn't be surprised if she were to faint before she even made it to the piano. Which of the two is more favorable: to be widely acknowledged as a terrible entertainer or to be of such fragile health? Both make her poor marriage material, she supposes, but at least the second won't be no fault of her own.

When the door to the library flies open, Caroline half expects it to be her aunt, ready to drag her out if need be. Bonnie's music booms loud and fatally beautiful into the room as she stares blankly at the man standing with his hand on the doorknob, the two of them locked in a staring contest, both of them taken aback by the other’s presence.

Slowly, however, the man's stunned expression morphs into a slow smile, lips curving into a smirk that puts dimples into his cheeks. Caroline can’t remember ever seeing him and yet he looks terribly familiar.

"We have to stop meeting like this," he says, taking a bold step into the library and shutting the door behind him.

Read the full chapter here on AO3

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Thank you so, so much to @diaz-eddie for this stunning, stunning moodboard! 😭❤️ And for sprinting this chapter with me! And also to @recyclingss, who read this a billion years ago and gave me her thumbs up gif 🐑👍 when it was still a first draft. 🥺 Hope you guys enjoy it ! ✨

[lakshmisaisworld]

I just read this and this is so amazing I can't even-

The banter, the pacing and the characterisation??? I was grinning like a fool the entire time!!!

I love that Caroline is not the "diamond of the season" and is not Mary-suish. I adore the way you wrote her!!!

And NIKLAUS IS HILARIOUS!!! I love this version of him. So playful, so dramatic and his inner monologues are the BEST!!! The amount of times that I laughed at his commentry!!!

The way you describe the ton and social dynamics and all the supporting cast is just.... AMAZING.

Honestly it's going to live rent free in my mind and I am going to think about it all the time and I AM GOING TO PINE AND GO CRAZY BEFORE THE NEXT UPDATE AND I AM GOING TO LOVE THIS TORTURE!!!

But honestly can't wait to see what's next!!!