feeling incredibly fond of the characters from my first novel i wrote when i was around 15-16 so here's an art dump from like the past decade. you do not know these fictional teenagers but i do and they're all ridiculous

a sanders sides analysis of “far“

far, if you’re not aware (which honestly you probably werent) is an album by regina spektor (the same one as ‘one more time with feeling’ from logan’s playlist) and regina spektor has songs that work weirdly well with sanders sides so i’m going to give each song on the album a side. i might do this again with ‘what we saw from the cheap seats’ but its not as weirdly perfect as far.

this ended up being really long, so it’s under the cut.

the calculation: logan, no question. it’s basically about trying to 'calculate’ love from what they saw around them, mostly in media, because don’t understand it. they’re desperate to make it work, so they try again and again “beating their hearts against each other” and eventually, it sparks. intrulogical if you’d like someone to pair it with, since roman has all the romance with thomas.

eet: this one was more difficult, but i think its a lot of patton. after all, the summary on genius literally says “’Eet’ is a wistful, introspective song brimming with nostalgia. The overarching themes seem to be about a person’s development of morality through their experience in their childhood.” it connects a lot to ‘moving on’ in that respect, where thomas wishes he could go back to the times he remembered in patton’s room. if you don’t already know, eet is the backspace key on a typewriter, but since it actually prints letters, you can’t really go back. i also think the line “using your headphones to drown out your mind” is perfect for virgil. i think in “someone’s deciding whether or not to steal/he opens a window just to feel the chill/he hears that outside a small boy just started to cry/’cause it’s his turn, but his brother won’t let him try” janus could be the thief, trying to decide what thomas should take for himself, and obviously remus would be the brother that’s crying because he doesn’t get his turn to be listened to.

blue lips: janus or logan. part of it is kind of like an analysis of society, but it’s mostly about death and aging, which i think both of them will have thought about. the line “the pictures in his mind awoke/and began to breed” definitely reminds me of remus, intrusive thoughts and stuff. its preceded in one verse by “and no one saw and no one heard/they just followed lead” which i think could be about how thomas won’t let himself talk about remus’s thoughts, or janus’s lies, or even logan being tired of how thomas just tries to do everything everyone else does.

folding chair: roman, i think. part of it, patton, maybe. it’s hard to articulate exactly what i mean, but i think a lot of it has to do with being tired and lonely. i think maybe what i’m thinking with roman is that he’s been living so long one kind of way, but it’s not a happy kind of way. like he wants to do something (maybe flashbacks to ‘broadway here i come’ mayybe) or become a dark side, but he’s scared. “now i’ve been sitting on this abandoned beach for years/waiting for the salty water to cover up my ears/but every time the tide comes in to take me home/i get scared, and i’m sitting here alone.” i’m still not completely sure why this came off as roman to me, but maybe someone else would see it better. i don’t think it fits nearly as well as the other songs, but hey, i said i’d do all of them.

machine: janus or logan. kind of surprised it’s not a definite ‘logan,’ with its name, but it’s a lot about society and there’s a transition from “pre-war apartment” to “post-war apartment” which doesn’t fit logan very well at all. and rather than being ‘i am a machine,’ it’s “i’m hooked into machine.” i think that implies that the machine is society (forgive me if that doesn’t make much sense, genius doesn’t have much on this one) because we’re so intertwined, so connected to each other and functioning as a society, possibly how the government wants us to. some of the lyrics make me think it’s about some alternate universe, like “I collect my moments/into a correspondence/with a mightier power/who just lacks my perspective/and who lacks my organics/and who covets my defects,” which is the only reason i didn’t take logan out of the characters completely.

laughing with: janus, if he’s singing it sarcastically. i think he would be making fun of the people who ‘laugh at god.’ also the line “no one laughs at god on the day they realize/that the last sight they'll ever see is a pair of hateful eyes” which i think would’ve resonated very well with janus before svsr. not gonna say much else bc i can barely listen to the song as it is, much less analyze it.

human of the year: maybe also janus, but then again maybe moreso roman or patton. i say janus mostly because it has a very creepy vibe to go with the fictional award of “human of the year.” but roman or patton fits more with the receiver of the award. at least roman would probably give up anything to be deemed that great person, that hero.

two birds: anxceit babyyy. or roceit. it’s really weird because i can’t really tell whether virgil is leaving the wire or janus. the obvious option would be virgil, leaving for the light sides, but the subtler option is the callback. then again, i’m not sure if the one on the wire would change to roman or the general light sides if it was the callback. i also don’t think that virgil wanted janus to come with him, which doesn’t make sense for how the one bird would ask and the other would lie (hehe deceit) and say he was going to come. then again, that could just be a different interpretation of how virgil left the dark sides. in my opinion, though, roceit is much more fun. “i’ll believe it all:” roman. “i won’t let go of your hand:” janus. roman is lying to janus, he’s saying he wants to go to the wedding. janus is trying to just get him to go to the callback. roman’s tempted by it, tempted by how janus is treating him. the line “one more or one less, nobody’s worried” could maybe be janus trying to convince them that it doesn’t matter if they go to the wedding, that lee and mary lee won’t really care. anxceit’s also fun, though.

dance anthem of the 80′s: doesn’t really have a side that it fits in canon, but i think it’d be interesting to put it with patton in an AU. the character is peppy and innocent at first, but it descends into a more depressing tone. i also think the heteronormativity does it a favor in its context. again, it has nothing to do with canon, just thought it’d be cool in an AU.

genius next door: logan, or remus. this song hurts me every time i hear it, since i’ve started associating it with logan. it’s pretty much about this kid, the genius, who’s presumably depressed and goes into the lake each night, holding his breath until he comes back up. this ends up being a bad idea, because at one point he holds his breath too long, and dies in the lake. mostly as i’ve thought about it, i’ve considered logan, but honestly it kind of fits remus better, like how he “didn't care as long as he was able/to strip his clothes off by the dumpsters/at night while everyone was sleeping/and wade midway into that porridge/just him and his secret he was keeping” (the porridge is the lake.) in addition to that, they describe his death as “and the genius next door was sleeping/dreaming that the antidote was orgasm.” sorry for y’all having to catch me referencing other songs, but in the mountain goat’s “amy aka spent gladiator 1″ he says “do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive/do every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away” (which i think is also a very remus song) so he’s describing how it feels good to risk your life. the adrenaline will make you “feel alive,” which is probably why the kid in the song did it (which i saw in the comments someone compared to being the ‘orgasm.’) and while this is not a good idea, considering what happened to the genius next door, i do think it’s a very remus thing to do if he was depressed.

wallet: patton. it’s a very cute song, and it’s pretty much just about how the singer found a wallet, looked at it a little, then returned it to the owner. the singer says “i have no wallet/i keep my cards together with a blue rubber band” and i think that would be something patton does. “you'll never know me/i'll never know you/but you'll be so happy/when they call you up” is probably how patton would feel returning it. finally, something not depressing.

one more time with feeling: i don’t need to choose a side for this one, it’s already logan. i do want to share my thoughts on it, though, ‘cause it seems i disagree with a couple people (plus i didn’t analyze his playlist so i haven’t said anything about it before.) “everyone takes turns/now it's yours to play the part.” he’s supposed to help thomas, as he did in dwit and tried to in svsr. “and the misery inside their eyes is synchronized and reflecting it to yours.” they didn’t listen, though, in svsr and it took half an hour in dwit. for the chorus, “hold on/one more time with feeling/try it again, breathing's just a rhythm/say it in your mind until you know that the words are right/this is why we fight,” i think maybe he’s trying to be interesting to them. to just get through it, and practice and practice until he has the words that they’ll like. that’s just my little hc, though. “you thought by now you'd be/so much better than you are/you thought by now they'd see/that you had come so far.” these lines hit the hardest for me. remember how logan was in the beginning? especially in moving on, he seemed to have no compassion for thomas’s feelings. but hasn’t he gotten better? i think he’s trying to be better to them, to be kinder about emotional problems. and he has come far, but not as far as he would’ve liked, especially considering that he hasn’t seen them appreciate it. he was hoping that they’d notice, that they’d be glad he was doing better. that they’d be proud of him. but they aren’t. they just disregard him even more, unable to forget about who he was, unable to consider how far he’d come (maybe projecting a little.) i also think that the “this is why we fight” could be him talking about how because they don’t listen, he’s exhausted from getting angry at them each episode, and they get annoyed but their ignorance is why they fight.

as a whole, i think he’s just trying again, and again, and again, and i thought, maybe he’s trying with feeling. like, he’s trying to feel for them, trying to care. maybe it has to do with what he did in svsr, where he hinted at his feelings, how he felt like they didn’t care. and they didn’t say a thing. they only could’ve reinforced the idea that even though they’ve tried to tell him that he feels, they don’t care. i went on a whole rant about patton, roman, and thomas in svsr and i could again, but that’s not related to the song.

man of a thousand faces: roman, loosely. at first i was like “man of a thousand faces?!?! janus?!?” but it actually barely fits him at all. it might actually be about drugs, but we’ll ignore that. “his words are quiet like stains are/on a tablecloth washed in a river/stains that are trying to cover for each other/or at least blend in with the pattern” could represent his mistakes, his ideas, maybe stuff that didn’t turn out. and maybe the better ideas will cover up his mistakes. “good is better than perfect.” it could be that his perfectionism is driving him insane, and he needs to start reminding himself that it’s better if he starts reaching for at least just good. “and i’m crying for things that/i tell others to do without crying” is such a roman line i...

anyway that’s the album. if you read through this i’m... impressed.

Chapter 13 - The Very Secret Diary

Harry Potter and the Sacred Text word of the day: Cowardice

What’s with these themes having so many complicated connotations to them lol. At face value cowardice is just lacking courage to do something, but as I found while reading this chapter, it can be a tricky thing to label sometimes. Like do you count Ron’s hesitancy to pick up the diary in the bathroom cowardice? Or is he only being cautious because of stories he’s heard about bewitched books? Should Harry be counted as a coward when he’s confronted by the Valentine’s dwarf? Or is he simply acting like an adolescent boy who has no idea how to handle romance? Is Tom Riddle a coward for putting blame on Hagrid or is it simply a means to an end? Honestly I think it’s both sides. Like some of the previous themes in this book, acting cowardly isn’t necessarily a harmful or bad thing.

So to summarize: yes I think all these situations are cowardly by definition. Ron doesn’t want to take the diary because he’s afraid something bad might happen to either him or Harry by doing so. Thus Ron lacked the courage to face this possible danger, but it wasn’t an illogical fear. In fact, it’s quite logical, because they had no idea what the book was or why someone tried to flush it down the toilet. And Ron wasn’t wrong either, the diary is very dangerous. Also I want to take a moment to say that whole scene in the bathroom was peak humor and I would love to see it in comic form. It’s just, Ron: *freaking out about all the things a book can do* and Harry: dude. it’s a book 😂 A missed opportunity in the movies if they weren’t so focused on making Ron look like a doofus. 

Ron is also weirdly perceptive sometimes, often when he’s not trying to be. Like in B4, he writes random stuff about Harry for Divinations that end up happening. He was right about the diary being dangerous, just not in the way he expected. And he was right about Tom Riddle murdering Myrtle. And it was just a flippant comment. Speaking of that, I want to reproach Ron for saying killing Myrtle would’ve done “everyone a favor” because wishing death on someone is never ok. He probably didn’t understand the meaning behind his words, but I hear people say stuff like that so often that I wish they thought about how such negative words affects others and themselves, whether it’s about someone else or themselves.

We’ve been officially introduced to our first Horcrux! It’s interesting reading about Harry’s behavior around the diary knowing that 1) the diary is a Horcrux and 2) Harry is also a Horcrux. He notes how it seems he can’t throw the diary away and how it feels like Tom Riddle is some long lost friend, which can only be explained by those two things respectively. 

I also want to get into Tom Riddle himself and the memory he showed Harry. Tom Riddle/Voldemort is very much a coward at his core, he’d rather go the easy route and connect with others by fear than having any meaningful connections with others. He values himself above anything else to the point of a complex and that to me sounds like someone who’s trying to overcompensate for something. Tom grew up at a muggle orphanage, and besides having magical powers he could control really well, he was completely powerless about his situation. Which is probably why Tom antagonized the people at the orphanage, to feel like he had power. And that extends to his life at Hogwarts, including opening the Chamber of Secrets. The only reason he closes the Chamber up is because it jeopardized Hogwarts as an institution, a place he considered as his home. I wonder how he found the Chamber entrance though 🤔 It’s interesting that both Harry and Dippet assume Tom to be muggle-born, so I wonder if he constantly had to explain that he’s actually half-blood. And I’m sure that would’ve irked him a lot. Tom must have so much self hate for having muggle blood in him.

As much as Harry and Tom had similar beginnings, they have such opposite personalities. They were both orphaned as infants and taken into hostile homes, were isolated and alone for much of their lives, and for Tom, he became resentful, pessimistic, and formed a superiority complex. Yet Harry remained hopeful, caring, and formed a high sense of morality. One internalizes blood purity while the other befriends muggle-borns. One is incapable of love (and rejects it) while the other has so much love in him.

I feel so bad for Hagrid, an innocent bystander, who unknowingly took the fall for Tom Riddle. I also can’t believe Harry truly thought for a bit that Hagrid opened the Chamber. And I wonder why Dumbledore didn’t intervene when he saw all these disturbing signs around Tom that he may fall into the dark arts. He couldn’t have accused Tom of opening the Chamber bc there would’ve been no proof, but Dumbledore was the one to visit Tom at the orphanage when he was eleven and watched him grow up. Dumbledore was “friends” with Grindlewald, so he must’ve recognized those signs in Tom, but he chose to do nothing until it was too late. Was Dumbledore in denial and overlooking those details in hopes they weren’t true? Did he just not know what to do? I guess those are things for me to look for as I get into the later books.

Backing up a bit, Harry Brave In Face Of Danger Potter, is freaked out at the prospect of receiving a Valentine lol. I mean, he’s like a typical middle school kid but he also has Zero experience with this type of stuff. And he also values his privacy as someone who’s famous. So Harry’s first reaction is getting out of the uncomfortable situation since he has no idea what to do, and the second when he can’t do that is asking to receive the Valentine somewhere private. And also poor Ginny, who can’t properly talk to Harry without tripping over her own feet, resorts to sending him an anonymous Valentine only for it to go completely wrong.

I also want to talk about Ginny. I think in previous posts I’ve been treating Ginny like she’s always been completely aware of her actions, but it’s probably more like weird and hazy dreams she has that end up aligning with the attacks on students. Which idk which is worse, being aware and not having control over your body in those moments, or waking up and later realizing the things you’ve done. And 3 months (and 3 attacks) later, Ginny finally pieces together that all of it happened bc of the diary and tried to throw it away. Which is also an act of cowardice, because instead of going to Dumbledore or McGonagall about it, she attempted to rid herself of the blame and the problem. I’m not trying to fault her since she just a confused and scared child and for all Ginny knows, she’ll be expelled if she reveals that she opened the Chamber. I mean, she was so scared at the prospect of Harry figuring this out that she stole the diary back. But also thank god Ginny chose Myrtle’s toilet and the diary was washed up, or else the diary would be at the bottom of the lake and impossible to find again when Harry’s on his Horcrux mission.

Small things:

Bless Madam Promfrey (again) for saving Hermione from the embarrassment of being seen looking like a furry

Also bless Harry and Ron for visiting Hermione in the hospital wing every day

I can’t believe Harry’s first use of Expelliarmus is to get back the diary. And he used it successfully on the first try, with only seeing it used once owo

I feel like “lucky I recorded my memories in some more lasting way than ink” is an understatement

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