Chatting with HP support because after an update my scream stopped working on my laptop that I haven’t even had for a full year yet and this man I am chatting with asked me if I’ve tried turning up the brightness

oracle over comms: can someone show red hood how to use the printer in the batcave

cant believe jkr created a prison that forces you to relive all of your worst memories, put a fairly major character in that prison for twelve years without a trial, and then just... didnt make it a commentary on the justice system OR the prison system. just like "lol thats a quirky thing that happened just for plot reasons, no bearing on reality tho"

Good boy✨

"Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve."

smoustart on insta

Inspired by Way Down We Go by @xiaq 🪄

Draco and Harry found a way to snuggle together while remaining as clueless, platonic best bros and it's a bit hilarious and very sweet, so I had to draw it :)

Barty: Yeah, but Regulus is the kinda person that if they stabbed me I’d be like, yeah probably deserved it

James: uhh I would love to be stabbed by Regulus

Evan (staring into space wondering what he did to deserve this)

The fact that she sums up being Black as cornrows and Motown offers great insight into why in Harry Potter she gave her only Irish character the name Seamus Finnegan, the most notable Black character Kingsley Shacklebolt and the only East Asian character Cho Chang. Part of me wants to engage with this line of thinking and explain why race and gender are structurally very different despite both being social constructs and then I remember that none of these people actually care about that shit.

Just thinking of Regulus who chopped his long hair off because he was tired of feeling feminine...of feeling dysphoric. He thinks James will be upset that regulus is 'trying to be a boy' or something but James just opens the bathroom drawer and pulls out the scissors with a small smile

"how short, love?"

And regulus has to swallow harshly against the lump in his throat, has to hunch over and sob for a minute as James rubs his back

James softly grabbing pieces of his hair and cutting it silently after regulus calms down

James tenderly brushing regulus' choppy hair back, scissors in one hand as regulus sits there quietly. James humming as he cuts his hair and asks regulus all types of questions

Why did you cut your hair?

Are you a boy then?

Do you have a new name?

Is there anything else you need ?

Do you need help telling the others? Are we even telling the others?

Just....sigh yea

current situation

they

how poor are the weasley’s?

i think this question really just encapsulates jkr’s shitty world building because there are so many interconnected elements.

oh and as always fuck jkr for the antisemitism, transphobia, racism, holocaust denial, barely veiled misogyny and the rest of her sins.

why is there poverty in the first place?

in a world with magic where you can create practically anything but food out of nothing why are people poor. especially when the you can’t create food rule has the caveat if you already have food you can just duplicate it. moreover in a world where theoretically you can get everything you need with the right spell why do you need money? the answer in all likelihood is probably convenience because most people don’t have time to find the spell for this that and the other. but if you don’t have money theoretically there is still a away to provide for yourself. also i’m pretty sure there’s no lore against just conjuring gold so theoretically there’s no reason to be without money.

the weasleys and mismanaging their money

in harry and ron’s first train ride we get the introduction to the weasleys poverty and the frankly ludicrous mismanagement of their funds. first of all we get that percy got brand new robes not because he had grown out of his old ones but because he was made a prefect and that he also got a new owl. then we get ron who has bill’s old robes, charlie’s old wand and percy’s old rat and no money for the trolley just his least favourite sandwiches. now i’ll come back to my thoughts on the robes in a bit. now charlie’s old wand is a known plot hole but still why did he get a new wand especially considering that charlie graduated from hogwarts in the summer of 1991 if you have money to buy a wand at that point in time surely it should go to the child who needs a wand and doesn’t yet have one. but say charlie just really needed a new wand then use the spare cash you spent on percy’s robes and owl. like it just gives irresponsible to not dedicate money to the kid that needs it the most.

what are the indicators of the weasleys poverty?

i ask this because while poverty certainly manifests differently in different situations i find that the way the weasley finances are described and how they are portrayed to live don’t quite match up. now the big one is when they go to gringotts in CoS when all that’s in the weasley vault is a small pile of sickles and one galleon. but i’d also say that that is the only real indicator of the weasleys being poor because the two main other factors are the hand me down clothes and books. now i personally don’t find this to be an indicator of poverty at all i actually find it entirely normal. as some who had a school uniform (i went to state school in the uk) they are not cheap one full set of my uniform (blazer, jumper, shirt, kilt and socks) cost upwards of £200 and in a pair of shoes that will last at least the year and that’s at least another £50 or so. so it was the unquestionable norm in my school that if you had an older sibling who had spare uniform because they were graduated or had grown out of it then you would wear it (provided it was in good nick) and it was the same with textbooks the syllabus barely changed unless the entire national curriculum was updated so if you could inherit a textbook or set text you would, in fact you were at an advantage if it was for something like english lit because the annotations would already be there. and even if you didn’t have an older sibling in my school we were actively encouraged to buy second hand books. like i’m sorry but i just don’t accept hand me downs especially in this context as being a sign of poverty. now there are very big indicators of poverty that the weasleys don’t have (and obviously irl you can still be poor and not have these apply to you i just think it’s worth mentioning) which are food insecurity and housing insecurity.

now i would like to make it clear that i don’t think that the weasleys are particularly well off i just don’t think that they’re destitute in the way jkr wants the audience to believe (possibly because she’s never interacted with poverty on a significant level) which leads me into my next point.

comparative poverty

most of the times that the weasleys poverty is being examined it’s in the context of a comparison to either harry or the malfoys who are all significantly wealthy (the malfoys more so than harry) which provides a very skewed perspective of how poor the weasleys are because i’d wager that hermione (who is implied to be upper middle class considering her parents are dentists) would look poor certainly next to the malfoys. with harry it’s harder to say just because we really have no clue how rich harry actually is.

class vs money

now this is both related and unrelated but partially because of jkr’s very inconsistent writing of the weasleys being poor and her world building or lack there of but the weasleys very much come off to me like an upper class family. and this is a reminder that in the uk money and class are very different and that one does not inform the other. money can help you present your class but that’s about it. it is more than possible to be upper class and not have a pot to piss in (or in the forever iconic words of beverly: not have a pot in which to piss). and i think that the weasleys being an upper class family that lost their fortune at some point really informs some of their decisions like the fact that they are a single income household when after ginny goes to hogwarts i don’t really see why molly wouldn’t get a job. and the fact that when when arthur and lucius fight it’s generally about money and arthur being jealous of lucius’s fortune which would make even more sense if at one point the pair were equals in the social hierarchy. not to mention that the weasleys are part of the sacred twenty eight and class and blood status are very closely linked in the narrative.

all this to say that when you examine the nature of poverty in the wizarding world especially when your case study is the weasleys it makes very little sense. not only the first question of why is there poverty in the first place (and why the hell is there inflation i could write a whole separate think piece on this tapped fucking money system). but since it does exist how does it manifest itself? like bills aren’t really a thing because houses are powered by magic and rent isn’t really mentioned i don’t think, the weasleys own their house (another class indicator). it just really doesn’t make sense to me. also i haven’t really included ron being bullied for being poor by draco because the majority of people are poor compared to draco and draco is a dickhead eleven year old like i doubt he even knows how money works.

barty: I barely look passable right now. I'm shocked Evan even likes me

regulus: me too

barty: what was that?

regulus: what

barty: me too, what?

regulus: no im saying like yeah you're right, I'm on your side

barty: on my side with what?

hermione’s off to do some light reading

Snapetober Day 21: Paradox