#I rewrote this like five times. really in my 'trying too hard with post phrasing' era | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jhaernyl · 7 years

Text

Have you ever had a phrase or a concept get stuck into your head?

Like, I am nowhere ready to make the post my mind wants me to make

But I am haunted by the beginning phrase

And it's not even that good

Like, it's run of the mill normal shit but it's keeps popping up

@gallusrostromegalus : like a writing earworm?

Yes

'Now, let's talk about how a war in magical Britain should have played out and which consequences wars ought to have.'

Because, as I explained to my mother, JKR tells us there was a war, eleven years before and that it was terrible and bloody and that there were attacks and families disappeared and it lasted eleven. fucking. years. but we never see the consequences of the war in the social and cultural fabric of her wizarding world.

We never see the influences it came from, the philosophical and ideological currents, we never see memorials or art or anything that remembers, commemorates, damns.

Kids at school with Harry in Harry's first year lived through the end of that war, some of them old enough to remember relatives dying in it, but we never see it.

Because that war was eleven years long, ended eleven years priors and the Seventh years at Hogwarts when Harry arrives, where six years old then, the Sixth years were five years old, the Fifth years were four years old.

Maybe the magical world is so little now because of that war, that began in the years after Voldemort's return and his climb to power (apparently there was one, not that we are ever told anything relevant about it) by sinister disappearances and then exploded in so many murders, tortures and disappearances that the Aurors were overwhelmed.

Maybe the pureblood in Malfoy's circle still believe in their purity because they stick to their circles and their circles are the ones who emerged the most unscathed, for obvious reasons, but all the other families they considered beneath notice? They were wiped out or went into hiding or left or were maimed and lost family members and they won't forget and they cannot forgive and they are few when once they were many.

They still believe they are strong, but if the eleven years of terror Voldemort rained on the magical world (which means that the whole time James and Sirius and Snape and Lily and Remus and Regulus were at Hogwarts, their world outside was one of terror) did anything, it was to cull the magical populations blood until magic had no recourse left but to start pouring into kids they would call 'mudbloods'.

Where does the magic goes, where there is no 'pure', no 'half' blood to come alive into?

Down the squib lines, down into blood that will be stronger because it's new and not crossed over and over again until it has become harmful to those who mean to cross it again.

But wouldn't the pureblood notice?

How?

They are wrapped in their own little world and acquaintances, because no one decent will have someone of their ilk over at their place or welcomed into their celebrations.

Imperiused or not, the killer of your children, of your sister, of your relatives, will never be welcomed at your table.

Lucius Malfoy is a Governor of Hogwarts, but he is not a student and most student who walk the Halls are not willing to spill the beans or try to inform to curtail the favour of someone like Lucius Malfoy.

Because, If Malfoy wasn't Imperiused, he was a liar.

Because, if he was Imperiused, he was either willing enough to do what he was told to do to not struggle that hard or he was too weak to break the hold of the Imperius on himself or both.

How is that someone you want to associate with?

Let him pour gold in your pockets, if you are the type to be bribed, yes, do him the occasional favor if you don't have any grudge against him yourself, sure why not, but trust and support and advice and inform?

Nah.

He is not the kind of wizard you want to be that in cahoots with, Malfoy, especially not when he will take and sneer and condescend and, seriously, fuck the Malfoys.

Those students, their families, they have lived through the war and they know better.

They are teaching better to those who join their world without being in the know yet and most purebloods kids of the people in the Malfoy's circles have learned to keep their mouths shut at school and about school, because there are those who have been so scarred by the war that they are just spoiling to be given an excuse to lash out righteously.

They have lived through the war too, and their parents came out on the losing side.

Their future depends on the good will of the victors, regardless of what their parents seem to think it’s going on.

Where are the memorials to the fallen? Where are speeches on days they ‘cannot afford to forget’?

Where are the consequences of an eleven years long war that supposedly destroyed generations of the magical world?

JKR never wrote them, not really, never stopped to consider what her words could mean, how long eleven years can be, never thought of the individual stories or the oversweeping, long lasting influences on society and art and expression.

Draco Malfoy calling someone a mudblood in public should have garnered far more than Ron attempting to make him eat slugs.

Especially from the older students.

Especially from his own House that has tried so hard to disavow the actions of those that came before them as a survival tactic.

Especially from the muggleborns and halfbloods and purebloods of his own House who do not stand for Voldermort's shit, will not stand, have never stood.

Durmstrang in a bit of dialogue by Viktor Krum in book 7 shows more realistic consequences of Grindewald's regime on the psyche of it's students than Hogwarts does for Voldemort's eleven years long war on it's own population.

@gallusrostromegalus: THESE ARE ALL EXCELLENT POINTS AND I;D READ THE SHIT OUT OF A FANTASY BOOK DONE BY YOU

@gallusrostromegalus: i'm listening in attentive silence

@gallusrostromegalus: also it's 5AM and i am short on words but yes good.

I have been working for years on maps and timelines and stuff. It all started because I wanted a Hufflepuff!Harry and I wrote down a complete roster for his first year of school.

I made stories in my head for everyone as I wrote down where they live, their blood status, their ethnicity, their religion, if they are prefects or not.

I made Quidditch team lists.

Then I realized that I was looking at it in a 'normal school way' and that was neither fair nor realistic.

So I ripped my heart out and made a 'War Adjusted' version.

Blacked out names.

I drew black lines with the Open Office highlighter tool on them and rewrote my numbers and suddenly I wanted to tell their stories, I wanted to know how and why they died and I wanted it to have meaning.

It slowly snowballed into making maps of magical places based (except in a couple of cases) on runes as bases.

Recently (I blame all the visits with my mother at the Tate Modern during the last four weekends) I started thinking about art pre-war and art of the war and art post-war.

I thought about Grimmauld Place not as a dark mausoleum infested by dark creatures but as an elegant, aristocratic palace.

With white marble and elegant gold, with portraits of aristocratic wizard and witches on the walls and beautiful vistas that are only beautiful as long as you don't know that the field you are watching has breen drenched red with the blood of peasants in the Reinassance because a village was standing in the perfect place for the new Black estate.

It needed to go and the mudbloos needed not to know where the estate would be and why waste time Obliviating mudbloods when you can just kill them?

Make it a family outing!

Dark does not mean 'mad' or 'ugly' or 'rotten'.

You can be the most beautiful man those you see as inferiors have ever seen, of perfectly sound mind and without a stain on your soul, because you live by the Code of Honor of your family and those are ants who are in the way of a grandiose new achievement, and you'll still be Dark because you use your magic in certain specific ways, with certain intents.

@gallusrostromegalus: rolls happily in meta while sobbing IT'S SO GOOD

I made notes about wands and elemental wands and families who made pacts with the Fae and other creatures. Marcus Flint may have a troll's teeth, but does he also have a troll's strength? Resistance to spells? Sacrifice beauty for defense and power, now that's a bargain to make.

I wrote down family trees from canon and then made my own to fill in (part of) the rest.

And I keep going back to the war, to the Rise of Voldemort and then eleven years of fear and how would that warp a society?

Wouldn't the children at Hogwarts, especially those who were five when the war ended, who were four, who were three and have vague memories of the fear and have been taken every year to the memorials and had family ceremonies, close ranks around Harry Potter?

Because if the Slytherin monster wants anyone, it would be the halfblood kid who was supposed to have ended the line with Voldemort.

They will not let that happen.

I have one character, who lost family in the war and was in an attack when that family died protecting him, when technically he was the reason they were attacked. His family is notoriously neutral, has always been, but then their people were also never touched.

Ever since that attack, the whole family swore a blood feud on their magic never to rest until all Death Eaters and their leader have been brought to justice.

He is a Slytherin prefect, burning with the ambition of avenging his mother and aunt and sister and he is a Duelist, which is not someone who is good in a duel of wands.

Being a Duelist is a state of mind, a way of life, is being trained into a mindset, is changing the way you see a room, the way you consider people, it's warping yourself into a lethal someone and he is the brightest star of his family.

Do you think such a prefect, who burns from within with righteous fury and has a blood feud singing in his veins, would ever stand aside if a Malfoy came strutting in and called someone a mudblood? Said in the common room 'I hope Granger is next' ?

And where is the society too? Where is the theatre and the music, where are the muggleborns bringing innovation and spreading it beneath the noses of the conservative purebloods, so busy congratulating each other that they fail to notice how it's insidiously spreading?

I have a boy, oldest of a brood of twelve all wizard and witches and all born to Squib parents, who has finished Hogwarts and has put on a commerce of enchanting beads to play music. Each bead is a song. A bracelet is an album. A necklace is a discography.

He is planning to make beads available on demand for 'Make your own set of songs'.

He began his commerce by Geminio-ing newspapers and magazines at school, asking his parents to send them to him so he can multiply them and sell them to muggleborns and halfbloods who want to keep in touch with the muggle world. Selling them to curious purebloods.

His siblings inherited that commerce and he used the money from that to fund his own music shop, bringing muggle music into the wizarding world.

If you buy a complimentary enchanted earring, the music will only play in your ear rather than out in the air. Buy both earrings and you have a portable player.

Draw a circle with your wand on the bead and left to right the volume will increase, right to left the volume will decrease. Tap once to play, twice to pause, thrice to stop. If you tap on the first bead of a bracelet or a necklace, all the beads will play one right after the other. If you want to listen to a bead in particular again just tap it and the cycle will reset from there. If you want to listen to a bead on repeat, tap it once and hold a steady pressure for five seconds.

You have accessories that play music now, how cool is that?

Where is the conservative culture, with their outdated ways, with their young artists drawing as of old and using ‘raditional’ mediums that contrast with what muggleborn and halfblood artists are doing?

Where are the conservatives’ young musicians composing in the way it was once done, for piano and violin and magical orchestra?

Who is in the production line of household items, where do they live? Who enchants the beautiful items, who crafts them? How do self-repairing charms affect the market? Are certain items enchanted to resist any Reparo,and similar or derivative spells, to assure a continuity of market? Who imports? Who exports?

What kind of books and plays and stories are written and narrated? What sort of entertainment is played over the radio in between Celestina Warbeck's songs?

What books would you find, in Grimmauld Place, in their beautiful and airy library, with plush carpeting and so much Lore?

What kind of version of Beetle the Bard's stories rests in a forgotten bottom corner of Regulus' bedroom's shelves, stolen from his one-year-older brother the year that Sirius went to Hogwarts, so that Regulus could read the stories and imagine Sirius quietly making the voices for him so that Mother would not overhead and punish them for indulging such flight of fancies?

How much did narrative and the kind of books sold change from before Voldemort's eleven years of terror to during-in-the-beginning to during-in-the-middle to during-at-the-end to after?

How much did art and style and clothing and decorations change?

Accessories, colors, hairstyles, wand holsters?

What potions were more popular before, in the various moments during, after?

Drinks and food?

Popular games?

What proverbs and way-of-saying and slang and turn of words fell out of favor and which ones emerged? How much did language change?

What was the pureblood vs halfblood vs muggleborn composition of the magical world before those eleven years? Did the purebloods come to believe they could do away with muggleborns with semi-impunity because they were the majority? Did they think that they could prune away opposing purebloods because there were so many of them and they mistakenly thought that enough would always be left?

Did they think they could entice more 'pure' blood from outside and have it be subservient to them as they were the ones who were there beforehand? Was it this how the Malfoy family, whom I headcanon as once having been French, first arrived in the UK and was this how they thought they could position themselves better? Move to a primacy position from a subordinate one?

You can sum it up in 'eleven years of war' and a couple of phrases here and there, as JKR did, but you are not going to make it real and it galls at me to think of all the ways I was never showed that there had been a war and that said war had had consequences.

What if Slytherin has a bad reputation now, but when Tom Riddle went to Hogwarts, Slytherin was for the cunning and ambitious and intelligent and Ravenclaw was the one with the nasty reputation?

The last big Dark One had been a Ravenclaw, maybe, and their friends had banded with them.

'All intelligence, all knowledge and all ruthlessness. No soul to them.'

Maybe it had been a Hufflepuff, a century or two before and everyone still whispered in whispers of the loyalty of the followers, of the hard work they had put into trying to change things.

And why would Tom Riddle put himself in the 'evil' houses, then?

He might have wanted that loyalty, he might have been burning with a thirst for knowledge but no.

Better play it safe.

Better be Slytherin, the smart ones you could rely to think their way out of a problem.

What if, shocking idea I know, it's the actual events of the world you lived into or your parents lived into that warps House reputation and changes it through the centuries?

'Hufflepuff only look out for their own' turns into 'No one capable of empathy ever came out of Ravenclaw' becomes 'There's not a dark wizard who has not been a Slytherin'.

History is changed, shelved, warped, forgotten, repurporsed, remixed by those who follow and their own experiences, in an endless cycle.

They used to whisper 'Gryffindor forges conquerors who will stop at nothing, don't trust them, they will use you in their charges as an expendable wand and toss you aside when your core is spent', and it was at the height of British Magical Colonialism.

Addendum: how many professions there used to be in the Magical World before Voldemort's eleven years of war? How many professions went lost? How many wandmakers? How many scholars and researchers?

Is the Ministry such a mess because they went from having a reasonable workforce to being incredibly short staffed, once purebloods and halfbloods started dropping like flies and muggleborns were either dead or driven into hiding, except for a couple of cases?

How many children were homeschooled or withdrawn from Hogwarts because it simply was not safe for them to be in there?

How many families do not trust Hogwarts, because yes Voldemort (and why should they still fear the name so many years afterward? Why shouldn't they boldly go ahead and use the name, to spite the dead monster? To refuse him their fear? He is dead, ding dong the Wicked Wizard of the UK is gone) might have never gone against Dumbledore, but Dumbledore let the youngest wannabe Death Eater stay there and get away with doing 'foul' things to students, to a point where even muggleborn students were aware of who those people were going to be?

(See Lily and Snape's discussion in Book 7).

If there was an active group of terrorists who wanted nothing more to kill you and your children, would you leave your children in the same school as those monsters? Let them have leeway to torment and come to know their faces and habits and friends?

Hell fucking no.

How were the markets influenced by the war? Which items were in high demand? What was used to make them? To bring back the potions point from above, which ingredients became scarce or rare because of the demand for them? How much did it inflate prices? What alternative solutions were found, if you couldn't afford them / couldn't afford them anymore?

Which professions were bolstered and soared and which ones fell in disrepair because they were unneeded? How many people changed job track because their chosen profession was not what was paid for anymore / because they thought they needed to specialize differently?

How did all of this influence Healers and Healing as a profession? The stockpiles of St.Mungo? How many healers are around who know how to counter dark curses and have earned to do brutal triage when necessary and how to pull off miracles on a fly? How many Healers died? How many Healers exhausted themselves into dangerous low levels of magical energy, just to save one more? How many were killed, because they had become targets for being too good at their jobs?

Where are Mad Eye Moody colleagues?

I have a muggleborn Hit Wizard who lives right next door to the Ministry and and works in his office and has since the war, when his muggle wife and not-even-two-years old daughter were killed by Death Eaters as a 'warning' to him to stop doing his job as an auror.

Where are the aurors still surviving at the end of those first eleven years, kids who became veterans, veterans who were hollowed out, the people who would not stand if even a whiff of Voldemort's return went past their noses, those of them who still have working ones?

Those who saw Pureblood Maniacism develop as a cultural current of thought and felt plagued by the 'if I'd seen it sooner' 'if we acted more swiftly' 'if only' 'if only' 'if only'?

The ones who swore 'never again' and 'not in my lifetime', where are they?

Eleven years of peace are not enough to heal eleven years of war, coming on the heels of a build up of a handful of years marred by disappearances, coming on the heels of Grindewald's war in Europe.

#HP #Harry Potter #HP meta #Harry Potter meta #my meta

208 notes · View notes

brandbaskets · 6 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://brandbaskets.in/maddie-hasson-on-her-youtube-red-series-impulse/

Maddie Hasson on Her YouTube Red Series Impulse

With a pilot directed by Doug Liman (who directed the feature film Jumper, which was set in the same universe), the YouTube Red original series Impulse follows rebellious 16-year-old Henry (Maddie Hasson), who after a traumatic event discovers that she has the extraordinary ability to teleport. This power, which proves difficult for her to get a handle on, not only confirms her belief that she’s different from her peers in the seemingly quaint small town that she lives in, but also makes her the focus of those who would want to control her.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actress Maddie Hasson talked about what made Impulse appealing to her, why she loves her character, what makes Henry less of an angsty teen and more of an angry teen, having the freedom to swear when necessary, the physicality of the role, exploring the trauma that brings on these powers, shooting the teleportation scenes, having Missi Pyle play her mother, and the amount of answers vs. new questions you’ll have, by the end of the season. Be aware that there are some spoilers discussed.

Image via YouTube Red

Collider: When I spoke to Doug Liman at WonderCon, he told me that he had a very different idea for the character that was going to be at the heart of this show, and that if that had ultimately been the character, you wouldn’t have been able to play her. But he also said that, through auditioning you and loving what you did, he redesigned the character so that you could play the role. Did you have any idea that any of that was going on? Is that something he ever told you?

MADDIE HASSON: No, I didn’t know that. I met Doug once, for the screen test, and then months went by, before I found out I got the part. And then, I met him months later, when we finally decided to shoot in Canada, and I had no idea. He mentioned it, in passing, to my manager. My manager visited the set and said, “They rewrote this for you.” I was just shocked. I was fully shocked. I had no idea. The less I know during the whole process, the better.

If you’re going to be on a show, it must be awesome to be on a show where the character was rewritten for you.

HASSON: Awesome is a good word for it. It’s very, very humbling and nice. I’m happy with it, for sure.

This story can be very big and epic sci-fi, but it’s also just a simple coming of age story, for this young woman. When the opportunity to do this came your way, what was the most appealing aspect of it for you?

HASSON: I loved Henry, from the very beginning, even when she was very different. They had her written as a skateboarder and she was a lot more of a typical stoner, but I loved how closed off she was. I loved how fed up she was with being ignored, and I loved how very much herself she was, and is today. They didn’t ever once try to stifle that, in the writing process. When you see female characters, at least when I’ve seen them, in the past, you can see how people try to bend female characters who are strong, to try to make them more likeable or less “annoying.” Some people seem to think that when women have emotions, it’s annoying, for some reason. That’s frustrating, rightfully so, but they never tried to do that with Henry. That was so lovely and refreshing to see, and to get to experience. People will describe Henry as angsty because she’s a teenager, and the word angsty is very commonly used, but it’s also belittling and dismissive. Just because she’s a teenager, it doesn’t mean that her experience in life isn’t real or valid. She’s not angsty, she’s angry. I think that’s changing, in the way people write teenagers now, which is good.

Image via YouTube Red

What do you think it is about Henry that makes her such a strong character?

HASSON: Henry really knows who she is, which I don’t think is necessarily all that common for somebody who’s 16 years old. She knows who she is and what she wants, and she doesn’t take any shit, for lack of a better phrase.

(aybollads=window.aybollads||[]).push(id:"91015553-3");

That’s definitely an appropriate phrase, for sure.

HASSON: Oh, my god, the note that I got the most on set was, “Could you say the F word a little bit less? We wrote it in for you. You don’t have to add more fucks. There’s no reason.”

This show gets dark, it gets a little weird, and you’re able to swear. Was it nice to feel that sense of freedom, especially knowing that you’re doing a show about a teenager and there aren’t too many places that you’d be able to get away with doing that on TV?

HASSON: Oh, my god, it was so nice! It was so nice to be able to say the F word. I know that may seem kind of silly. YouTube is so great because they didn’t try to meddle in our show to make it specific to YouTube’s brand, or anything like that. They gave us a lot of freedom, which was so nice. There are so many situations where it’s necessary to swear in this show.

What have you most enjoyed about getting to play Henry?

HASSON: I loved just getting into that space that is Henry because she walks differently than I do. She has this slouch, and she has a wider stance. She walks up with confidence. She’s not confrontational because she doesn’t want to talk to anybody. She hates everyone. She just has this power to the way that she stands, that I admire very much. Even though I’m the one doing it, it’s something that’s not very me, in my opinion. So, just getting into the space that is her has always been really fun for me.

Henry gets sexually assaulted, and then to make things even worse and even scarier, she teleports. As a character for whom trauma sparks this power that she can’t control, what was it like to explore that aspect of the show, as well?

HASSON: It was difficult to explore the assault aspect. It was difficult and painful and challenging. I met with a therapist that specializes in sexual assaults. She meets with a lot of victims, and I sat down with her, before we started shooting, and spent an hour or so with her, talking. I actually spoke with her, throughout the shoot, because I knew it was going to be hard and painful, and it was so important to get it right. If you live long enough, you likely know somebody, personally, who has been assaulted, and I do. Everybody probably does, at this point, and that’s very sad. It’s something that you have to be careful about because you want to speak to a terrible experience in a way that is real and authentic, and makes people feel heard that have been so hurt by something so awful, which I hope we did. It’s also interesting that we really explore that family of men, as well. You explore the consequences of being assaulted, and of being the assailant. You get to see both sides of the coin, and what happens to you after you commit such a terrible act. I think (showrunner) Lauren LeFranc really carefully and strategically did that, in a way that is very interesting to me.

Image via YouTube Red

At least, in the beginning, the teleporting seems to be quite violent for Henry. What was it like to shoot those scenes, especially with the mass destruction going on?

HASSON: Oh, my god! It began with the seizures, and the physicality of doing a seizure is not natural. When you shoot something, you have to do it from five different angles, and you have to do those five different angles about 50 different times, so it hurts. It’s painful, and your body is very sore. That was an experience in itself. Then, adding the effects was really cool. For the car scene, we did physical effects, so pieces of the car were rigged so that it could move and have the very gritty, real effect that the teleportation does. We did visual effects and live effects.

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function() n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments) ;if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '1628636477376373'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); (function(d, s, id) var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); (document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Source link

0 notes