What do you think as Hermione's career would be post battle of Hogwarts? To me her being minister for magic really doesn't make sense. She does not have patience or tact to wade through murky waters of politics 😭😭

So hard to say! The Trio are so, so young when we leave them, I find it almost impossible to project their futures farther than a few years out. The job that suited me at 17 would be radically unsuited to me now. That's why of all the Trio, Ron's ending strikes me as the most realistic — he jumps straight into the save-the-world business again, burns out, realizes he's actually Done The Fuck Enough, Thanks, and pivots into a low-stress career where he gets to see his family a lot. Feels accurate! The others are weirder to me because they do seem to just... pick a lane and stay there.

With Hermione, you could spin her a couple ways. You could say that she leans into her bookish side and does research or teaching, which is not my preference for a couple reasons (namely, I don't think Hermione would like academia as a profession; she finds her classwork interesting and enjoys intellectual validation, but she'd be stifled and wasted in a DPhil program, and she'd be infuriated by the administrative politicking of your average higher-ed faculty). You could say that she gets disaffected with politics and ends up as a barrister or a lobbyist of some kind, but if anything that requires more political finesse, because you don't actually have institutional power, you're just handling the people who make decisions and trying to persuade them of your goals. This is not Hermione's preferred method of influence. She's not even particularly good at persuasion, she just happens to be smart enough (and right often enough) that people take her ideas seriously.

Or you could say her brashness fades with the years into a softened flavor of tell-you-like-it-is honesty, which some politicians actually do successfully trade on; as we see in British politics today, you don't have to be all that charming or clever to get ahead, you just need to be really driven and well-connected (which Hermione completely is; she fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the first postwar Minister and her bestie, the Literal Messiah, runs the Auror Office.) But I don't know if Hermione especially wants to be Minister, after the war. She's just watched years of horrendous bureaucratic incompetence plunge the country into a violent civil conflict. She's had not one, but two Ministers of Magic try to bully or shame her friends into complicity with fascism. Her view of government is... likely extremely dark.

But Hermione also isn't the kind of person who sees her life as a quest for happiness. Babygirl has a savior complex that makes Harry look selfish. (She basically kills her parents — yeah, obliviating is a form of murder, #changemymind — "for their own good," and justifies every batshit, vindictive, mean-spirited move she ever pulls on the grounds that it "helps" one of her friends.) She is a mean, lean, dragon-slaying machine, and she needs a dragon. After Voldemort, the Ministry is the no. 1 threat to muggle-borns and non-wizarding Beings. As a war heroine with basically infinite political capital, I'd be surprised if she didn't try to do something there. That said, Hermione is so vivacious and dynamic that she could potentially grow in a hundred different directions; it's possible that all of this, while true of her at 18, becomes completely inaccurate by 22. That's why I'm not too fussed about any particular fanon interpretation.

I see there's a new post on AO3 on AI and data scraping, the contents of which I would describe as a real mixed bag, and the sheer number of comments on it is activating my self-preservation instincts too much for me to subject myself to reading through them. Instead I'm thinking about how much daylight there is between does or doesn't constitute a TOS violation and what does or doesn't violate community norms, and how AO3 finally rolled out that blocking and muting feature recently, and how I think it would be good, actually, if most people's immediate reaction to seeing a work that announces itself as being the product of generative AI was to mute the user who posted it.

That's my reaction, anyway!

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“What do you think the passcode could be?” one of the heroes asks, tilting their head down to look at the phone in front of them. The villain lets out a loud, dramatic sigh but it goes entirely unnoticed in the chaos of the team’s panic.  The villain knows exactly where the missing hero is, of course, but they’re not exactly inclined to help. 

“Wait! When’s their birthday?” 

“Um, well, it’s definitely a month,” the youngest grimaces, looking guilty at their lack of knowledge. The other members debate over the birthday for a seemingly infinite amount of time, before they’re interrupted. 

“Gods, you all are pathetic,” the villain remarks casually from the corner. They somehow manage to look unbothered, despite their wrists and legs being bound by ropes. 

“Shut up,” one of the heroes hisses. Not a single member of their impromptu huddle turns around to look at the villain. “We don’t have time for this. Someone has to know.”

“Sorry, I don’t remember!”

Assorted variations of the same message sound from throughout the room. The villain can be seen biting the rope around their wrists, which is unseen by the group huddled around the hero’s phone. A few moments later, the villain is entirely free from their bindings. They put their hands on their hips and watch in silence as the group fumbles around aimlessly.  “It’s 0411, jackasses,” the villain eventually says, after an immeasurable amount of time is wasted on trying to guess the passcode. They shake their head in disbelief. The team members look at each other, wariness in their gazes. Shrugging, the youngest takes the phone in their hands and types in the passcode. To everyone’s surprise [except the villain’s,] it works. 

“What do we do now?”  The heroes all look at each other helplessly. A few of them are tapping the phone furiously, but they can’t seem to find whatever it is they’re looking for. The others seem more interested in debating with each other than with finding their missing teammate. 

The villain lets out a long suffering groan, which is entirely unheard amidst the argument brewing between the hero’s teammates. They murmur something along the lines of “Just going to rescue them myself,” before promptly escaping the room. The hero’s teammates don’t notice the villain’s absence for several minutes, at which point the villain has already found their missing hero. 

©2022, @defectivehero All Rights Reserved. 

I love the idea of hero’s teammates being so hilariously incompetent, to the point that the villain just decides to take matters into their own hands. And now, I'm just imagining them getting grilled by the agency CEO, sat down in a meeting and being forced to watch the security footage of the villain escaping from right under their very noses... Haha. 

[Also, the villain can be heard muttering under their breath about stupid heroes and annoying agencies as they walk out of the building. Teehee]

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something something a fanfic in which Ian is best friends with Yevgeny and then he timetravel and falls in love with his best friend's father.

I like to think that in this version he was raised by Clayton cause Monica obviously couldn't, and canonlike she wasn't in the picture much. He then lives with his father, stepmother and siblings but doesn't quite fit with them. Yev was raised by Svetlana and never knew his father cause he left when Yev was a baby.

When Ian travels back he is saved by Mandy. He says he's a Gallagher and she's like "I know the Gallaghers but I never saw you!". He's introduced to his "cousins" who immediately take he in like a brother? Who he is cause of Monica.

Then because of Mandy he gets to know Mickey and younger Svetlana and baby Yev and it is extremely fucked but... my dick's in your dad mouth, sorry Yev!

Gallavich: they start as friends cause Ian quickly hits off with Mandy, and soon Ian gets to understand the difficult situation that led to Yevgeny's conception and why Mickey probably left them when Yev was still a baby. Then, feelings come along and Mickey's deep in the closet but Ian's nothing if open-minded so with time it works out. Ian doesn't lose interest even though Mickey has a wife and baby, he isn't scared off easily, and Yev Svet and Mandy all like him so that's a turn on. Ian likes older guys so the fact that Mickey's an old soul in a hot young body who listens to dad music and is grumpy is what attracts Ian.

The future is forever altered. Ian now actually has a family of Gallagher's he actually likes and fits. Ian came along so Mickey never left the picture and now Yev was raised with his father around. Which changed the way Yev grew up to be, so he's not the version Ian knew, but that's alright cause then Ian gets to meet him again. And yes, they end up being best friends all the same, after all, Yevgeny watch the type of cartoons and listens to the kind of music and plays the same videogames Ian grew up with so they're very close.

*vaguely frustrated noises* tag yer fics properly peopleeeeeeee I wanna be able to filter out crossovers but if you only tag *one* of the fandoms it's fucking useless!

rereading kip by fleeceframe my best friend kip by fleeceframe. bursts into tears

I deserve to get paid to play my silly little video games and not have to traverse the already fucked world of post-university job searching as a disabled person with a fucking sociology degree

While I’m waiting for the date to get closer to the release of the next volume for fire in his fingertips it’s got me thinking of a childhood friends to lovers au with fireman Seungcheol

It’s a sweet and spicy thought to marinate on

Imagine Luciano coming back to the future but in like the 2020s and Nick having to be the one to explain the progress that has happened except he still doesn't really get technology

girl help, the imposter syndrome is coming after me and the fanfic I'm trying to write >.<

I think this would have been a great time for Zelda to punch Impa

do you ever write a longfic where the things you really care about are maybe 5% of the entire narration and everything else is just shit you have to write in order to set up the things you care about and justify them

since I've seen it talked about in several places recently:

if you are going to do a whump- or kink- or ANY-tober or other similar challenges please please please don't post them as one fic with 31 chapters unless it actually is one coherent fic. if they're 31 completely separate fics or ficlets then please just make a collection for them or just post them as separate fics. it doesn't matter if they're only 100 words or if you think they're too small or insignificant to post alone, they're not.

and why this?

because if you post all 31 of them in one fic the tagging is absolutely useless. if I look for things to read on ao3 I'm gonna look at the tags, and if the tags include something that's a dealbreaker for me, i won't even click on the fic. I might not even SEE the fic because I've filtered out the nope-tag! so I'm gonna lose out on reading 30 perfectly nice fics because of one fic that my nope-tag applied to.

ao3 is about archiving. it's about clear tagging and being informative. there is nothing informative about it if the tags in the fic apply to random chapters while others have nothing to do with it. it makes so much more sense to have each work as an individual fic with its own individual tags and warnings, so readers can make informed choices.

of course, you do you. I can't police what other people decide to do. but personally, I find it incredibly frustrating to weed through 31 chapters to find the ones I actually want to read. so I don't. I automatically scroll past all works posted like that. and I know some others do, too.

there is absolutely no shame in posting short things on ao3. there is no minimum word count. no one is going to look at you funny if you post a small ficlet on its own, I promise. it's just going to make some readers very happy when they can actually find the things they want to read.

so, please. at least consider the upsides of posting each work as their own fic.

signed, one very frustrated fandom grandma.

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