[goblinchief]

Sent a 12 year old on a fake Hero’s Journey last week and holy shit he actually did it

[hippy-craic]

[teaboot]

One of my favourite parts of working with kids is like… Very Gently subverting their idea of gendered topics… Like if a girl goes ‘no, sharks are a boy thing’ and you go “UM ACTUALLY THATS STUPID AND INCORRECT” they get freaked out, but if instead u go “Are you sure? Cause I think sharks are awesome, here’s a scale picture of a Megalodon” it’ll blow their tiny mind and they’ll be shitting themselves over it for days. 100% effective, 10/10 recommend

[tiny-super-giant]

Good example of this happened in a class I taught recently. Kids were making predictions about a text we’d be studying based on an illustration of the character: boy with spiky blonde hair wearing a pink football kit.

The first kid to respond said, “I think this is a girl that likes to play football.” I said “what gave you the idea that the character is a girl?” Obviously they pointed out the pink, to which I replied how pink was one of my fave colours and they just looked at me wide-eyed. Then the next said, “No it’s got to be a boy. He’s got short spiky hair.” Of course, I then listed all the female people they might’ve heard of who also have short spiky hair and, honestly, the puzzled looks on their little faces were priceless.

Anyway, they continued to debate which gender the character was using phrases like: “but he … and look at his …” or “so why is she … and maybe her …” which was the point I decided to stop them and ask: “If we can’t be sure whether the character is a he or she, should we really be using those pronouns?” And I kid you not, without any persuasion from me and after only the briefest of discussions, these children unanimously agreed that the best pronoun to use would be “they” until they knew their gender for certain. They then continued their discussion using gender neutral terms throughout without any fuss whatsoever. And these are 6 and 7 year olds.

[thoughtparadocs-blog]

Hey the message of this post is great and all but ‘a scale picture of a meglodon’ what the f u CK

[tarantula-veins-deactivated2023]

Honestly my seven year old neice screamed once I told her that girls can have short hair and now shes pestering her mum for short and also blue hair

[dead-immortal]

By the way here’s a scale picture of a Megalodon

[julymp4-deactivated20251125]

🥺🥺🥺

[memewhore]

[slowedclover4]

This will haunt my nightmares.

[andmaybegayer]

Squelch! Squelch is the technical shorthand for noise gating. Your antenna will constantly pick up ambient noise, which is useless and annoying to listen to all day while you wait for a call. Squelch tells the radio to mute the speakers if the overall power of the signal coming through is below a certain level. You twiddle your squelch until it just cuts out ambient noise, and when someone tries to talk to you the extra power from their signal will go above your squelch setting and it'll unmute so you can hear whoever's calling you.

[diane-nguyen-watches-cartoons-d]

You know what? Fuck you. *untwiddles your squelch*

[helloitsbees]

​she twiddle my squelch till i end up abandoned and unidentified at a local museum

[barry-j-blupjeans]

incredibly tempted to make a uquiz called “what memory would you be glad the voidfish erased and then subsequently mad for it to be broadcast”

[barry-j-blupjeans]

here it is

[ourladyinshadow-deactivated2023]

your discord pfp and your tumblr pfp are locked in a room together. what happens?

[luxlightly]

Every educational program aimed at informing children about things like alcohol, drugs, hazing, and other harmful things people often get brought into by their peers did everyone a huge disservice by defining 'peer pressure' as 'your peers actively trying to pressure you into doing something' instead of 'the inherent pressure to do something the exists just by the people around you doing it.' Let's take an innocuous example like playing Monopoly: You hang out with a group that plays Monopoly all the time, basically every time they get together. You don't want to play. It makes you super frustrated and you've always disliked it. Everyone is totally cool with that. "Hey no problem! It's not for everyone." "Yeah that's totally fine, honestly I wish I wasn't so into this game sometimes haha." Peer pressure doesn't look like everyone badgering you incessantly until you join in. No one is like "What are you scared? A big baby who won't play Monopoly??" Of course not. You'd just leave because they were being jerks. But it's basically all they do when they hang out. Everyone seems to be having a great time except you. There's really nothing else for you to do. They ask if you want to play once in a while and are always cool when you don't want to, but it makes you feel like the odd man out, just sitting around at every gathering not playing Monopoly like everyone else. You finally decide 'what the heck, I'll give it a try'. Everyone is really happy you gave it a shot and give a little cheer. You feel much more at home in the group. Now, it's important to remember that things like this are not inherently bad. In this case, it's possible that you gain a group activity you really enjoy and it's good you gave the game a second chance. The idea of people tending to gravitate towards joining in with an activity others are doing is often positive, that's why we're so hard wired to do it. It has served us well, evolutionary. The takeaway here is that peer pressure is the fact that you will be pressured into taking part in the activities of your peers, even if they are not actively trying to make you. It can even be when they are going out of their way to make sure you don't feel pressured. The actions of the people you surround yourself affect you whether you or they mean them to. Learning about peer pressure shouldn't be about how to say no to your friends. It's about being aware of who you surround yourself with and how that can influence you, and that extends to all avenues of life for people of all ages.

[engardetoreador]

aren’t we all just trying to be morticia addams just a little bit

[malkavian-rights-activist]

Some of us are trying to be Gomez actually

[engardetoreador]

honorable. respectable. where would we be without you

[blvnk-art]

3 years sketching HP characters and as a way of reinvent my fanarts and myself, I'm exploring the skill and technique to bring them to a realistic aspect of movie frames. I hope you enjoy this new journey! Heres a side by side comparison.

[headspace-hotel]

I suddenly have the urge to do an analysis of what worked and didn’t work with Harry Potter story- and worldbuilding- wise, since most of the discussions I’ve seen about it focus on the author’s bigotry or just don’t delve very deeply

[headspace-hotel]

It would take forever to exhaust everything I could say about Harry Potter, but I’m thinking about the specific kind of shallowness to the worldbuilding that leads it to not question or explore itself at all. These books are so vivid and creative about exploring the “what” of the world and so limited about exploring the “why” and “how.”

In really, really good fantasy, the worldbuilding creates implications that drive the story. Fantasy is about exploring a reality different from our own, and really good examples of the genre get the story-driving conflicts in them from the questions that different reality raises. One of the major ways Harry Potter is flawed, imo, is that in many ways, the main story doesn’t come from the questions the worldbuilding brings up. The story the main plot tells actually actively avoids the questions the world is bringing up.

The reason Dolores Umbridge is a far better villain than Voldemort transcends the fact that she’s just...well, more memorable, and rage inducing. She’s also a lot more relevant to the implications of the world.

Harry Potter starts off pretty strong actually. You have a world where magic is real and there are wizards, but they live in hiding. “What if someone who grew up not knowing this suddenly found out they were a wizard” is a question that sort of world makes you ask. That’s part of why the story is compelling.

But later on the books basically barge on through all of the world’s implications with the delicacy of a combine harvester. The Statute of Secrecy is such a huge part of the main concept—but we only get a vague, hand-wavey explanation for why it exists. Voldemort’s villainous agenda centers on his prejudice toward Muggles and non-purebloods—but the books largely validate the negative view of Muggles; after all, being a wizard is what makes you special. Much of the day to day petty conflict that drives the books has a lot to do with the house system—but its legitimacy as a way of judging character is never questioned. There are potions that can make someone fall in love with you or force them to tell the truth—but we’re not going to talk about the ethics of this? The plot’s conflicts repeatedly return to the pattern of Harry being under the power of authority figures who abuse him—but the people and systems that let those people abuse him are never questioned either??

This tendency eventually turns the Harry Potter world into a fridge horror factory, as a lot of the everyday accepted realities of the wizarding world are actually horrifying and completely insane, and I’m actually convinced that this is part of why Harry Potter’s worldbuilding feels so authentic. The Dementors being used by the corrupt Ministry of Magic to condemn people to a fate worse than death, the fact that slavery exists and no one talks about it, the apparently constant and widespread use of memory-altering to maintain the Statute of Secrecy—

—these things aren’t as glaringly obvious as they should be because they’re perfectly in line with the fact that the real world is filled with things that are horrifying if you look twice at them—the many forms of abuse that are normalized, the institutional violence of the prison system, the gigantic problems we have, culturally, with consent. Let’s be real, a lot of the abusive authority figures in Harry Potter are so effective because people actually behave that way and abuse is actually excused that way. The wizarding world is just like our world—corrupt, unfair, just fucked to the core, but if you have certain privileges you might not quite notice.

The problem is that this isn’t an astute and intentional feature of the worldbuilding; that is, the story doesn’t seem to notice a lot of the fridge horror things are fucked up either, which is where it falls flat.

Returning to the main point about the plot, though—Voldemort is a pretty forgettable villain. I’m honestly struggling to remember much about his motivations, but I don’t get the sense that the world of Harry Potter created Voldemort; he’s the big demonstration of Harry Potter’s lack of self awareness because he doesn’t really emerge from any of the questions the world makes you ask.

Voldemort’s quest for immortality is a big part of him, and the exploration of death connects with the Deathly Hallows, but the Hallows always came completely out of left field as a piece of worldbuilding for me. Voldemort’s quest to conquer death is shown throughout as being pursued through deeply unnatural and evil means, but in the broader context of the worldbuilding, there’s no...reason for that to necessarily be the case. Harry Potter is not exploring an implication of the quest for immortality, it’s just making it so that in-story, you have to do it in a horrible and evil way, which is ass-backwards in terms of making a compelling villain.

But the real problem with Voldemort is that the world of Harry Potter extensively shows institutional corruption, but then the villain is a guy who wants to upend the status quo, and the heroes protect and defend the status quo. (Also, the theme that abusers are often ‘respectable’ people that others will defend keeps coming up, but the main villain is described as having a face like a skull with like...demon snake eyes.)

[colalexander-deactivated2021010]

I hope you don't mind me derailing this a bit, but it's so frustrating to me that Dumbledore is genuinely one of the most interesting characters, but in a way that's completely accidental.

Going back to his childhood, he was a genius. A prodigy. He was expected to do great, world changing things after graduating from Hogwarts. But his whole world came to a halt when he was suddenly orphaned after his younger sister had a magical outburst that killed their mother.

And the whole story there is that his sister, Ariana, became an obscurial due to abuse from muggle children who caught her doing magic. Their father was then sent to Azkaban for seeking revenge on these muggle children and intentionally demonstrating magic before them, and he dies in prison. Their mother was left caring for and hiding this young girl who was so traumatized by all of this that she didn't have proper control over her magic, and tried to repress it.

So Dumbledore returns home to care for Ariana, as well as his brother, Aberforth, who is a bit more independent.

And that's when he meets Grindelwald. Regardless of whether or not you believe them to be gay or just friends, (I'd argue that it's more interesting if you view this as a romantic relationship, but I'm not giving JKR credit for a sloppy, last minute attempt at queer rep) this relationship has a huge impact on Dumbledore's life. Grindelwald and Dumbledore instantly become close due to their shared intellectual bond, regard each other as equals, and think they're smarter than everyone else. But what they really bond over is Grindelwald's plan to collect the deathly Hallows and have wizards rule the world with Dumbledore at his side. Grindelwald's belief is that wizards are superior by virtue of magic, and that muggles have forced them to live in fear and in hiding, and because muggles are a danger to everyone and are destroying the world. Now, Dumbledore has just been forced to give up his studies to return home after losing both parents because some muggle children hurt his sister so badly that she was traumatized for life. He totally agrees with Grindelwald, partially because of grief, and partially because, selfishly, he just doesn't want to give up his whole life to staying at home.

That ALONE is so much more compelling than Voldemort's "I want to be immortal, also, muggles suck because I have daddy issues." This is genuine "we're forced to hide because muggles don't understand us and fear us." And it's even more interesting that Dumbledore's genuine desire for equality could be spun into Grindelwald's desire supremacy and power. Things like the Salem witch trials are canon in HP universe, wizards are hurt by muggles for using magic, and thrown into jail and left to die by other wizards - there's plenty of reasons for wizards to want to fight against that. Harry, the protagonist of the story, is abused for showing any signs of magic! His parent's death, his magic, all of it was hidden from him for years! He has every right to be outraged!

But instead, every character that seeks to fight against this system is painted as evil!

Grindelwald and Dumbledore have an argument, Dumbledore thinks Grindelwald is taking things too far and being too extreme, they duel, a misfired spell hits Adriana, she dies. Grindelwald flees, Aberforth holds it against Dumbledore forever, Dumbledore loses the only family he had left and is haunted by the possibility that he was the one who performed the spell that killed Adriana, he has to chase down Grindelwald and stop him. Interestingly, he cites this as the reason he doesn't ever become minister of magic despite being offered the position multiple times.

Instead, Dumbledore goes to Hogwarts and works his way up to headmaster. His students generally adore him, he bonds with misfits especially, Harry being the most notable.

But the first time we see Dumbledore call on a student for help, he's still just a professor. He asks Newt Scamander to help him chase down Grindelwald, as he can't do it himself due to the blood pact he made with Grindelwald in his youth. Newt looks up to Dumbledore and agrees because Dumbledore was the only teacher who stood up for him and kept in contact after he was wrongfully expelled from Hogwarts.

Then there's Hagrid, the half giant who was already treated as an outcast, expelled for similar reasons to Newt. He's invited to teach at Hogwarts as an adult. As are Lupin, suffering from the taboo of lycanthropy, and Snape, a former death eater. He houses Trelawney after she's fired, helps Sirius hide when he escapes Azkaban, and generally seems to come to the aid of the oddballs and outcasts, including Harry, who lost his parents to Voldemort.

All of these students, of course, have use to him. Newt helps him defeat Grindelwald, Hagrid is willing to follow Dumbledore through anything, Trelawney is a prophet and unknowingly aids in the fight, Lupin, Sirius, Snape, and Harry are all willing to die for him.

Even in the books Aberforth tells Harry he's being used, and that Dumbledore has a history of using his students 'for the greater good.' He has no issue sacrificing his students for what he deems to be a good cause. But that's the true reason why he denied the position of minister of magic - he has far more power as headmaster. He got to know every young wizard in the UK for generations, and was able to leave a positive impression at a young age, so that, when he needed it, he always knew just who to go to for the job. And they always agreed, because they felt as though they owed their kind old teacher a favor.

Voldemort attempts to go down the same route, but Dumbledore recognizes his plan and refuses to hire him. Dumbledore is the only man that Voldemort fears because he basically has control (or, at the very least, some major influence) over every wizard in the UK. He could squash Voldemort. But he doesn't. He sends an 11 year old to do the work for him.

But forget Voldemort, the idea of Dumbledore gaining this amount of power with the right amount of charm, kindness, and manipulation is one of the most interesting things in the story! Imagine if it had actually been utilized! Dumbledore already had a whole arc about his bad experiences with muggles, his desire for equality, imagine if he had quietly pushed generations of students towards revolution! And JKR does nothing with this! She builds up this story of oppression, abuse, and dedicated a huge chunk of the last book to Dumbledore's rise to power - and throws it all away.

Harry questions it all for 5 minutes, becomes a cop and upholds the broken system, names his kid after one of his abusers, the end.

[sainttempest]

your vibes, what are they?

[incorrectzukka]

we're getting closer to December so I just want to remind everyone in the fandom that characters in the a:tla universe are not Christian or Western. making Christmas aus IS whitewashing.

[incorrectzukka]

if you want to draw these characters in a festive season, here is a list of eastern festivals off the top of my head:

- lunar (or chinese) new year eve / spring festival

- lantern festival (yuan xiao)

- omizutori

- gion matsuri

- donghzi festival (held in December for the winter solstice!)

if any Eastern Asians and Natives can help expand/correct this list, I'd be much obliged

[vietzuko]

the lunar new year is not unique to china, and many asian cultures have variations of a lunar new year celebration at different times according to their calendars.

Chinese New Year (Spring Festival)

Korean New Year (Seollal)

Japanese New Year (Shōgatsu)

Mongolian New Year (Tsagaan Sar)

Tibetan New Year (Losar)

Vietnamese New Year (Tết)

[lytefoot]

Am I the only one who feels more sorry for Dudley Dursley every time I read through the books?

Like, this poor child. He has incredibly toxic parents, and has been encouraged to relate to people in ways that can’t ultimately be pleasant. He has a completely disordered relationship with food and his body, which will only be made worse by the absolutely torturous diet his school puts him on (as a 14-year-old no less). Smeltings sounds like an utterly horrific experience overall.

And then, on top of that, he’s got absolute evidence throughout his childhood that his parents’ love is most certainly conditional–and that it’s vitally important to stay on their good side. And then every time he encounters magic, it’s Dudley, as the person in the equation with no power, that gets beat up by it. (Hagrid giving him a tail. The twins’ slipping him that toffee. The dementors. About the only thing he didn’t get the brunt of was Dobby hucking the pudding.)

Meanwhile, this poor kid is not very bright (that’s not his fault!), and he just wants to have a quiet life, play video games, watch TV. Like, during the bit with the letters when Uncle Vernon goes totally unhinged, and Dudley’s getting dragged all over the countryside? And he’s missing his TV shows and his video games and hating being trapped in the car forever with nothing to do? Frankly #relatable.

Just, poor kid. Why the heck does this fandom go out of its way to woobify Draco Malfoy and ignore the heck out of Dudley? (I mean, we know why, but seriously.) Like Draco, Dudley is an awful child… who has been raised to be so by parents who are frankly horrible people. And unlike Draco, he actually realized, in the text, he’d been awful, and he tried to be better.

There’s no such thing as “deserving” a redemption arc, but if anyone ever deserved one, it’s Dudley Dursley.

[divagonzo]

You bring up a very valid point in that their love of Dudders is conditional. While he’s spoiled rotten and grossly entitled, he’s not woobified because he’s viewed as not thin or attractive but rather portly. While he might rail against his father, the toxicity comes from his Mum and her utter loathing for anything magical.

Which is why I absolutely adore the HC and instances in many fics where much later on, Dudley has a magical child and it’s much to the chagrin of Petunia and she’s ghastly while D reaches out to Harry to make inquiries but also realizes how much of a git he was towards Harry.

(And I love the community fic where he’s got 2 girls and one is magical and one isn’t and he works his arse off to make sure they are both immersed in both communities so there’s no resentment or issues, unlike his Mum.)

Though I admit I’d love to read a ‘Dudley confronts his parents on why they treated Harry so horribly and mucked up things for him, too” and there’s a blistering row and he storms out and has that epiphany how much of a tosser he was to Harry and decides to change his ways for the better.

Admittedly, it’s brutal on a child to perform to expectations, knowing the love from your parents is conditional. But I’m sure that didn’t happen ‘til his 20s.

[lytefoot]

(I mean, it’s very clear that Dudley doesn’t get woobified because this fandom hates fat people nearly as much as JKR does, but I wasn’t going to say it.)

In my niche-verse, his blow-out with his parents is part of his first marriage breaking up… 

He married someone very much like his mother, that his father approved of, who was thin and blond and who he met when he was obsessed with losing a ton of weight as vital to his redemption. She raised a hand to their child and Dudley discovered that was a road he was not prepared to go down, grabbed the kid and left her on the spot. It wasn’t a good time for him, but he ended up settling somethings for himself.

(Harry found out about all of this about a good decade later, while Harry–whose “Who is Dudley as a person?” file hadn’t been fully updated–is having a completely-reasonable-from-his-point-of-view reaction to Dudley’s (much) younger child being magic.)

[marisatomay]

Did you see the moon is wet?? I think that's why people aren't handling things well

i found out like this

[f1rstperson]

I went to look this up and this was the first article

[goodzillo-deactivated20220127]

Love that everyone collectively and without words agreed to not be normal about this

[eucalyptus-sage]

im sorry what do you mean harry potter is an auror you must be mistaken don't you mean professor potter who loves and cares and treats his students kindly and with respect

don't you mean professor potter who has tea every week with professor longbottom and every time someone goes "but sir, don't you think he's...kind of strange?" harry just smiles and says "i think we all are."

don't you mean professor potter who has stashes of chocolate he gives out if you ask and who never, ever, gets angry, except for the times he sees bruises on a kid's arm after winter break and storms off to see the headmaster about the kid's parents

don't you mean professor potter who is known for being loyal to gryffindor to the end, but still congtatulates the other houses when they win because he knows that they're all just kids and that it really doesn't matter at the end of the day

don't you mean professor potter who is known for being fun and kind and happy and everyone knows the stories, the first years whisper, and the fifth years just shrug because after a while, he stops being the boy who defeated voldemort and he becomes the professor who tells silly jokes and constantly tells stories about what he and the Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley, a quidditch reporter, used to get up to

don't you mean Harry Potter, a boy who was born into a fight he didn't want, turning his wand into a quill and teaching future generations of students kindness and decency and unwavering strength

[cheeseanonioncrisps]

I'd like to add to that penultimate point that Harry absolutely tells tons of stories about him, Ron and Hermione at Hogwarts, but none of them are about fighting Death-Eaters or facing Voldemort.

Like, that stuff is not even mentioned in passing. Kids in Harry's classes get stories like, The Time He Played In His First Quidditch Match And Nearly Swallowed The Bloody Snitch. (Usually told to any First Years who are nervous about flying for the first time, or any Quidditch team members— of any House— who are worried about messing up on the pitch. "At least you won't look as stupid as I did", says The Famous Harry Potter.)

Or, The Time When He And His Friends Started An Underground Defence Club Because Their Teacher Was Crap. (The exact role that Professor Potter played in the club is left deliberately vague, as is the reason why it was so important to learn defence.)

The Time He And Award Winning Quidditch Reporter Ron Weasley Flew A Car To School In Second Year, The Time He Totally Fucked Up On His First Date (useful for dealing with older students who are having troubles with their own love lives— the story usually gets a laugh at least), or even The Time He Had To Attend The Funeral Of A Giant Spider (no mention of any ulterior motives for going there that day).

If you just heard the stories, you'd have no idea that Professor Potter ever fought in a war. In fact, by the time he's been teaching a few decades, most of his students don't.

Or, rather, they know who Voldemort was, and that The Famous Harry Potter fought against him, but they all sort of assume that that stuff happened later. Professor Potter went to school with his friends and had all these wacky adventures (did you know that he once fell off his broom and had all the bones spelled out of his arm? Or that he and his friends used to sneak into Hogsmeade through secret tunnels?) and then later on, after he left school, he volunteered to fight in the war.

Fifth Year History of Magic, when they first cover the details of the Second Wizarding War, is always interesting. When students realise that all this stuff was happening while Professor Potter was still at school, they always look shocked and whisper to each other, asking why he never talks about this when he's telling them about his school days. Then, at the end of the lesson, The Famous Harry Potter co es in to do his annual Talk about the War. And, afterwards, nobody wonders why he never brought it up before.

Most people agree that his stories are more fun without it.

[anakin-skywalker]

She says I’ve got all the makings of a true Seer. I saw loads of stuff.

Shefali Chowdhury as Parvati Patil in the Harry Potter series (2001 - 2011)

[jiilys]

i’ll see you

A/N: happy birthday grace @prongsno. ur the only one i would wear a bad hat for. 

She brought a dead thing back to life. She forgot she wasn’t meant to be able to do that.

“You can’t fucking say anything.” Lily said immediately, staring at James who was looking at her, wide eyed, mouth parted. She felt her pulse going in her neck, the only sound in the street.

“I-“ he said, strangled, staring. His body is so still, only his chest rising and falling, and she can’t believe this, can’t believe how she’s fucked everything, can’t believe- “The cat” he finished, disbelieving, “It was dead” he almost gaged, chest heaving.

“James. You can’t tell anyone.”

“It was dead.” He pointed at the street where the cat had been minutes before. “I- it was” he gestured to the front of his car, inches from them, “and then you-“ he waved his hands, “and then- it was-” he mouthed wordlessly, unable to say alive again.

“Yes. I was there. I know what happened.” She couldn’t help herself. James’ eye twitched, and he shut his mouth before holding a finger up, accusatory.

“Don’t fucking-“ he grasped for the word “sass me, Lil, You just-“

Lily snorted. “Sass?”

“How long have you been able to do that?” he asked. Her throat closed up. She hadn’t ever, not once, talked about this aloud. It feels so wholly unnatural to be standing here in the middle of the street at eleven at night next to James’ car, over the spot where there used to be a dead cat two minutes ago.

Since forever. Since before I knew my own name. Since before I knew yours. That long.

“A while.” She said. He stared at her again, and it’s only with the street lamp on that she can see him, cheekbones illuminated by light, hair sticking up like an electric shock. He is giving her a look she can’t quite place, but she isn’t scared, even now, when he could yell and anyone could come running, because of course its James who would be first to know. It could never be anyone else.

“I wanted to tell you.” she said, truthfully. “But what if you’d-“ she stopped herself. She had been about to say but what if you’d never spoken to me again, and the thought is to be awful to be said out loud.

There is a long silence, and for one awful minute she thinks he’s going to get back into the car and leave her, never come back, and then she’s thinking about how much it’s going to be so fucking hard to never speak to him again, how much it’s going to suck to not be in his front seat again, late night driving, stealing fries, laughing about his mother and the fact she hadn’t done her chem homework in months.

“I would never say-“ he started, then stopped, looking at the streetlamp and then back to her. “you must know. I’d never say anything. I’d never do that to you.”

She’s flooded with relief so fast it almost knocks her over. It’s all through her, like she’s been filled with sea water, and all at once she’s calm. He’d never say anything. He’d never do that to her. How could she have doubted him.

“I know.” She said because there was nothing else to say. The world is such a quiet place, serene. In her dreams where this happened it was always lighter, during the day, she was always bringing back a person, he was always less shocked. It didn’t matter. None of it did. She brought back a dead thing and he still loved the same.  

“Do you think-” he asked into the silence, “If I hit a cat and it died but then my best friend bought it back to life a minute later, I still have to report it to my driving instructor? I’m asking for a friend.”

She laughed. He was so good. He smoked and interrupted her in English and speed on city roads and kept trying to add her mother to their groupchat but he was good the whole way through. He was looking at her, half smiling, like she was something else. A piece of art. A star in a classroom. A thing too hardly be believed.

“Tell the friend he should try avoiding hitting the cats, and then he wouldn’t have this problem.”

“The friend said to tell you that it was dark and he was trying his best.” He opened the driver’s door.

“If the friend stopped speeding-“

“Oh my God! The friend was going fifty!”

“The friend obviously can’t read. The speed limit is forty.”

Later- she knows- they’ll talk about it. Skipping class or eating food or in the music room at lunch where students aren’t supposed to go, he’ll ask her and she’ll tell him. the whole pointy, uncomfortable, strange thing of bringing things back to life when they should not be. But now- laughing. Now- arguing about the radio station. Now- the dark, the stars, the road. Now- her heart aching like a broken bone for him without her knowing why yet.