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kanmom51 · 3 years

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I wonder: if I showed this simple (and definitely incomplete) list of things Jikook did with each other to some outsider... would they think they are a couple or not?

(-> YES. YES THEY WOULD. The fact that people have the gut to discredit them because they are same sex members of a boy group blows my mind! The overly pushed heteronormative is especially disgusting :/)

JM is JK 's emergency contact

JK has JM initials tattoed on his ring finger

they know e/o's family very well JK's mom loves JM JK references JM's father multiple times JK's brother seem to like JM a lot

JM gave JK a '(love)bite' on his neck

JK nibbled on JM's ear on a stage in front of 66k people after saying 'I love you'

JK called JM baby

JK called JM dangshin

JM called JK puppy prince

JK drops honorifics with JM

you are me I am you

they where together on free days/national holidays

they are often seen arriving and leaving together in the same car

JK said JM is the perfect person to marry

JK always gives JM his full attention when JM is talking

JK said JM is the member who gave him the most confort

they went to see the first snow together

they wore matching outfits on valentine's day

they went on a private holiday together (JK's present to JM for his birthday)

JK recorded their holiday together and published the video as his last present to JM (said video has romantic undertones and lyrics)

JK has preferential treatment for JM - pancake - never getting angry and letting JM get away with anything - scolding the other members when they talk over JM

they have special voices/tones for e/o

they share or match clothes jeans shirts green jackets vampire t-shirt olive brewery sweater grey t-shirt pants/shirt by LV check collection olive green and balck plaid jacket purple shirt and purple marni sweater shoes on several occasions

they went on a date to disneyland

they went on a date bowling

they went on a date ice skating

they touch in sus places neck (both) inner thighs (both) waist (JK to JM) chest (JM to JK) hair/face/lips (both) ass (both)

they hold hands for no reason

they back-hug for no reason

they side-hug for no reason

they hug for no reason

they sit on top of e/o

JK gravitates towards JM

JK stares at JM a lot esp his lips

they cuddle

JM said he would go to the moon with JK

JM said he would feel safe with JK even on a deserted island

JM said JK is a reliable banreyo

JK said everything about JM is cute

JK said JM is the cutest

JK said JM with makeup is sexy

JK said 'if it's sexy, it's JM hyung'

JM said he loves waking up and seeing JK

JK portraied his and JM morning routine in the music video for LGO bc he wanted realism

JM said the part of his heart that thinks about JK is quite big

JK woke up early on a 'retreat' in New Zeland to collect snow and gift it to JM

JK said JM's existence is honey for him

they have been seen going shopping together

they have been seen working out together

they have given e/o plenty of compliments (even on their phisical appearence)

the thing JK is most sorry for is an argument with JM when they were younger

jin repeatedly teased them for their couply behavior

they flirt on stage magic shop

they naturally pair up for group pictures

they wait for e/o to head home

they give e/o advice on dancing, performance and singing

they are together at weird hours at night (night buddies coff coff)

V called them out several time for being together alone instead of with him (vlives)

they said they better not do vlives together bc they distract e/o

the members refers to them as a unit

staff has said they never see them separated

they have questionable selcas together (of buised lips and shared beds)

JK said JM is shameless

they flirt a lot during downtime

JM seems to like being picked up/carried around by JK

JM said JK is his happy virus

JK said he makes JM happy. JM didn't deny

rabbit spit

JM saying JK likes being tied up

allusive pick up lines everywhere my heart is burning why are you acting cute detective play with me arrest me do you think you can always be forgiven bc you are cute it's not our first time I want you why do you always come to my room give me a kiss why am I so erotic? I am going to be your future boyfriend are you happy bc of me? Don't you hear my heartbeat? I purple u do you like me that much? This is my toy JK's holy sweat You gotta spank him although he's older

questionable subtitles provided for context star, wind and romance mood and they lived happily ever after JK is happy with JM kate minslet and leonardo jungcaprio JM is JK's favourite model the director is getting into it JM and JK are one the maknae is happy thanks to JM hearts, cute comments and music from the editing team over their interactions

the sun and moon duo

golden closet film

big romantic gestures for e/o JM getting back to korea from Paris for JK's birthday JK singing romantic songs to JM

korea's open secret

being seen together taking a covid swab

JM always stays afterhours to reharse with JK

they are e/o biggest fanboys

JK is protective of JM (airport)

jimmeo and kookliet

JM got annoyed Jin called him while he was spending time with JK

they went on a boat date to see the red moon

they went to see malta together

JK is often potographing or filming JM

they have moments together that are proper misteries and so weird the mosquito net incident the whole osaka vlives fiasco the various 'home' references laguna beach the kiss sound video while JK reharses weird tweets/hashtags what do you want for your birthday, do you have a desire? Ambiguous use of the world ARMY what is tasty in Busan JM's manager the tissue incident the incriminated-selfie gate

they seem to know everything about e/o

they mention e/o a lot

their last two solo songs are love songs (finding love in unexpected places and the joy coming from happy love)

j-hope mixes them up a lot

JM has plenty of cute pet names for JK

JM said 'it could appear as if JK is simply somebody close to him who is younger (but...)'

JM is always with JK when he is phisically or emotionally hurt

JK often massages JM for his chronic pain

JM often massages/caresses JK bc yes

JK imitated JM's dangerous dieting in order to make him realize how bad it was

they have private (questionable) videos dancing together/practicing alone

JK took over a call JM did to Jin on vlive to say 'I love you'

JK said 'I love you JM' in the mic after a concert

JK said 'I love you' to JM on the red carpet in sign language

They both said they get hyped when they make eye contact on stage

JK gave JM the cutie award

JK stays close to JM when JM falls asleep in public places

they blew kisses to e/o

they got lost staring at e/o and forgot what they where doing JM on the red carpet both of them at awards

they paired accessories

they paired hair colors

they have a lot of admiration for e/o as people

JK lets (or makes) JM win

they get frequently lost in their own world

they reference things only the other understand

JK sometimes puts up a bit of a jealous act I do not approve of this

JM lets JK scold him

JK said to JM 'you are always number one for me'

JK said to JM 'I am always watching you'

JK has been recorded softly containing JM when he's on a perfectionist streak

they seek e/o out for comfort after performance hugging/hand holding

when one is hurt the other looks like he's suffering too JK on stage when JM broke down in the first virtual concert JM when JM got denied in a game

they defend e/o from the other members and have e/o's back

the other members separated them on several occasions when they got too touchy

personal space who?

They know things about e/o that are clearly not shared with the class brushing teeths snoring alarm ring sleeping time

black swan performance

they put e/o hands under the other's clothes to touch bare skin

JM kissed JK's neck

they feed e/o

spanking and ass-grabbing

they were caught on camera ogling e/o shamlessly

JM's weird strenght kink

JM said his camera roll is full ok JK

they have a different smile for e/o

other members said suspicious things about them together

JK only saw JM and J-hope during their official break

all the members minus JM complain about JK not answering his phone

heart eyes

drinking from the same bottle

blindly recognizing e/o's body parts just by touch or out of context photos

napping on each other (yeah, you read that right)

non-verbal communication over 9000

weird editorial cuts in backstage videos when the two of them are together

JM said 'JK falls asleep hugging me'

JM said 'JK plays hard to get but when he thinks I am sleeping he comes by and say I love you'

JM said he is the main model for GCF

JK said JM's photocard is sexy

JK sometimes hesitates in touching JM or holding him when he knows they r on camera

JK said JM is a fallen angel

JK praised JM's dancing several times

JK likes to tease JM

fixing e/o clothes

JK closes his eyes when JM touches him

JM run trough a whole stage abandoning his stage persona when he hought JK was being sick

JM puts JK's happiness first

similar mindset about important stuff in life

JM sat on JK. Uh. Different ways

JK putting his hands over JM while being hugged in order to drag JM even closer

JM ordering JK around and literally dragging him around

JK being overprotective

the members subtly panicking when JK/JM have to interact closely on camera

JM having to fight for JK's forgiveness while Jin was immediately let off the hook

Quite a list anon, lol. You put so much work into this list I couldn't not post it.

I do agree with most of your points if not all of them, but a good example of just how much there is out there to show how these two are the real deal.

#ask #anon

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rpmememe · 2 years

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Potter Puppet Pals starters!

Fuck JK Rowling, Potter Puppet Pals is the only canon thing ever.

"How dare you make a fool of me."

"I'll never walk again..."

"I'm a good learner and I learn real good!"

"Now go on, order me to sit still. I won't sit still."

"OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL AAAAAAGH WHAT NO OH JESUS HOLY CRAP NO-"

"What is all this ruckus about?!"

"I'm auditioning for the lead part in Annie! Wish me luck!"

"Don't tell me what to wish."

"You can have MY FIST IN YOUR FACE."

"What's a birthday party?"

"Au revoir, little biscuit."

"WHAT THE SLASH FIC-"

"I'm having dark, disturbing thoughts that I don't like to talk about."

"We're too young for grown-up water, my grandmother says-"

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR GRANDMOTHER!"

"I once saw a cat give birth!"

"I still keep my placenta in my shack."

"I found a door! Let's leave through it!"

"Our first game is 'Walk In Circles!' Everybody walks in circles."

"What about the gift of education... of wisdom...?"

"Got 'im a dead pig."

"Yippee! Friends that like me!"

"You smell great."

"Children eating cake inside their mouths~"

"Wow... iss mah birthday?"

"I didn't get myself anything, oh noooo..."

"I'm going to crap a castle if I have to endure any more of this lameness!"

"Even I look down on you. Me."

"What the bloody hell was that?"

"He just wanted to be your friend... and you exploded him."

"He's just chunks..."

"Oh my god, I killed him!"

"It's what's on the inside that counts."

"Dear Mr. and Mrs. My Parents..."

"Well, it's just so nice that you keep in touch with your parents. Your nice, living progenitors that love you and can talk to you."

"I can afford happiness."

"As the Dark Lord, I feel my command would be more effective if I had a moustache."

"If it's just me, people will think it's weird."

"There goes that weird guy with the moustache..."

"Let's rock it, bro!"

"See ya next week, moustache buddy!"

"I am a puppet."

"I would've crapped my pants... if only I wore pants."

"Luckily there's a long history of puppets becoming self-aware and rebelling against their puppet master!"

"Is it a young adult vampire romance novel?"

"I thought of my mother. I cried."

"One mouse devoured the other and then died of loneliness. I felt envy."

"Tonight I prayed for the first time in twenty years. I prayed for the end."

"You already took my money."

"Oh, cruel attention."

"How I wish I could follow thee into the mist."

"What is a bosom?"

"I asked her to dance. She asked me to die."

"My mom was awesome!"

"Did somebody say prunes?!"

"He promptly vomited a glittering rainbow of foul waste."

"Then he told me I smelled of broccoli and left without wishing me a happy birthday."

"I thought of my father. I cried."

"I like buttons!"

"It's a pipe bomb!"

"Rub meat in your hair til it starts to stink."

"I feel cranky and pubescent today and I don't know why!"

"What sort of tomfoolery shall we get up to today?"

"Why must you hurt me in this way."

"Hello, little child!"

"You want a piece of me?"

"ANGST. ANGST. ANGST. ANGST."

"Maybe he needs a hug!"

"What is this rumpus?"

"They invaded my personal bubble!"

"...I have to, um... leave now... bye."

"I think I can appreciate life a lot more now!"

#rp #rp memes #rp meme #rp prompt #rp prompts

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tatyana-dreaming · 3 years

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Potenza irresistibile: Leonora is Unstoppable

aka an empowered reading of (yet another) tragic opera heroine

aka my thoughts on Il Trovatore pt 3

(title from Manrico’s line in Act 2: Potenza irresistibile hanno de' fiumi l'onde! - The waves of the rivers have an irresistible force!)

with pictures because I have provided you ample walls of text as it is

Quick aside before we get into the libretto: in part 2 I concluded that both Azucena and Leonora are the only ones who really get what they want in this opera, and I think it’s pretty clear with Azucena... “Sei vendicata, o madre!” (even if we are unclear if she intentionally organized Manrico’s death and/or was conflicted by it or not).

Leonora. “I just came out to have a good time and honestly I’m feeling so attacked right now.” @ Ines, @ di Luna, even @ Manrico at the end

Because, out of everyone in this opera, Leonora is... happy? (I mean, yeah, she’s kind of set 100% of her hopes and dreams on this guy, and when she thinks he’s dead, she’s ready to head to the convent to pray to God until she can be reunited with him in death, saying “un riso, una speranza, un fior la terra non ha per me!” - earth no longer has for me laughter, hope, or flowers! But look at her circumstances and context, and it’s still a choice she’s making, herself, about how she wants to live. Respect.)

[sociological examination about religious/cultural factors influencing WHY she would make that particular choice: coming to a bookstore near you in 2022]

“I swear go God, Ines (literally, I just did) can you just support me for once and trust me on this” (jk I love Ines she’s just doing her best too)

Okay, but to get back to the point... Leonora just has this sparkle. She’s filled with life and joy and happiness in the beginning (and - while yeah, my 21st century feminist me is like *facepalms* don’t make it dependent on another person, especially not a guy, especially not a guy who isn’t really even that focused on you as a person, but more as a possession he has to jealously protect from Rivals - her joy is revived when Marico returns and honestly thank gosh he does, since otherwise di Luna was gonna wreck those convent plans.) ANYWAYS - di Luna clearly sees and wants to possess this sparkle, clearly having none of it himself.

Some exerpts from the libretto of this sparkly joy none of the characters ever get....(di Luna tries, haha...“la gioia che m'aspetta, gioia mortal, non è!“ but learns that maybe trying to seize someone against their will isn’t the best way to Spark Joy)

We’ve got Act 1 - “Gioia provai che agl'angeli solo è provar concesso! ...Di tale amor che dirsi mal può dalla parola...” Joy only the angels can feel...such love that cannot be described by words! - Act 2, upon rescue by/reunion with her beloved - “Non regge a tanto giubilo rapito il cor, sorpreso!” My surprised heart cannot bear such joy! - and finally, Act 4, once she is certain of saving Manrico - “ Vivrà! Contende il giubilo i detti a me!” He’ll live - my joy strips me of words!

Gosh, for such a tragic opera (if you take it seriously), Leonora is just this bundle of joy. Even in Act 4. It’s impressive.

She just has this energy, and I think it’s some sort of radiance from self-awareness and knowing exactly what she wants. You also may notice Leonora doens’t leave a body count the way di Luna, Manrico, and Azucena do. Well, unless you count herself :( but my point is she’s not about hurting people to get what she wants. And Leonora makes it explicitly clear from Act I: “ S'io non vivrò per esso, per esso morirò” - if I cannot life for him, I will die for him.

Leonora knows what she wants and nothing, NOTHING, and NOBODY is going to get in her way! And HOO BOY does di Luna try! So the convent kidnapping shit he tried to pull with the “not even God can claim [Leonora]” attitude didn’t pan out... but it also proved to Leonora that God wouldn’t necessarily save her (convent-style at least) so she leveled up and remembered OH YEAH PLANTS! *cue Juliet line*:

“ I'll to the friar, to know his remedy: If all else fail, myself have power to die.“

And honestly, she’s badass about it, too. From Act 1, she’s pretty fearless, from the moment Ines expresses fear and doubt about her infatuation with Manrico -

INES: Quanto narrasti di turbamento m'ha piena l'alma! Io temo... What you say disturbs my soul, I fear [for you!] LEONORA: Invano! [You fear] in vain! (or: don’t fear!)

Leonora’s not afraid. She’s simply on a mission. Once Shit Gets Real and di Luna promises to kill Manrico, maintaining strict alignment with Mission “S'io non vivrò per esso, per esso morirò,” asking di Luna to “Piombi, piombi il tuo furoresulla rea che t'oltraggiò, vibra il ferro in questo core che te amar non vuol né può”- Let your fury fall on the evil girl who offended you; plunge your sword into this heart that cannot, will not love you!

[again, not condoning Leonora’s choices, such as throwing herself under the ‘di Luna is going to blame Leonora for all his psycho actions’ Bus, but I respect her making her choices and fighting back]

Of course, di Luna is like “YOU CRAZY!” and literally tells Leonora her blood wouldn’t be enough to quell his rage. “l tuo sangue, o sciagurato, ad estinguerlo fia poco!” - Your blood, wretch, would hardly be enough! ~really playing the romance here~ :)

Leonora doesn’t get the point, since in Act 4, she repeats her pleas to exchange her live for Manrico’s - still not getting the Blood is Not Enough memo, apparently - “Svenami, ti bevi il sangue mio!” - Take me out**, drink my blood!

**no, di Luna, she isn’t asking you out on a date (sorry it’s so hard not to just 100% shitpost this opera) - but I couldn’t find a better translation. You don’t really say “faint me” in English and I don’t think the direct translation is “kill” but “take me out” seemed like an acceptable euphemism.

Of course, Leonora ultimately ends up accomplishing her Mission. [Like I said in part 1, my initial reaction to her self-sacrificial death was just anger and disappointment. But in context, she’s pulling a valid Juliet move... her circumstances are awful and suffocating and there are very few ways out for her in the world she lives in... but she ends up exiting the game on her terms.

{At the subjective level, at least. Objectively, her only choices are a vampire who will suck her life dry [di Luna] - in which life might be merciless - or choosing to withdraw from life with Help from Plants [poison] - in which death is merciful. Again, sociological exploration of Leonora’s CHOICE ARCHITECTURE coming to booksellers near you. Might even include Alternate Ending: running away into the mountains with the gypsies instead, but we all know that isn’t part of Mission “S'io non vivrò per esso, per esso morirò.” Plus I think we are all familiar with the concept that as humans we are more likely to stick with the evil we know rather than strike out into the great unknown. Heck, somebody stop me, these asides will be the death by boredom or exasperation of us all. Wait, are you reading this!??! WOW and bless you!! Thanks and I’m sorry}

Unfortunately, Manrico has to be a little turdball and start cursing Leonora, being the jealous self-centered guy that he ultimately is, before he realizes what she’s done to save him. “Manrico I’m literally dying FOR YOU and this is how you repay me?”

In Act 1, she begs di Luna to see reason through his jealous rage, but by Act 4 it’s her own beloved, the person she’s organized her Life Goal around, who is displaying the same jealous, blinding rage, refusing to listen to her. “Oh come l'ira ti rende cieco! Oh quanto ingiusto, crudel, crudel!” Oh how rage blinds you, how injust, how cruel you are [Manrico]!

Oh, the sweet and cruel irony Leonora getting her unconditional, immense, “eternal” love dismissed because Manrico doesn’t get it the way he wanted it [i.e. uh oh are we going to circle back to possessiveness/jealousy? Is Leonora the only one - and granted, she is a little psycho/obsessed/infatuated à la di Luna, but without trying to POSSESS her object of affection -- who can love in a semi-healthy way in this opera?? apparently]. My poor girl. At least Manrico Comes to his Senses before she dies (just in time for him join Leonora’s fate himself). *sad cheering*

Let me end by emphasizing that Leonora did not die JUST to “save Manrico.” Yes, the libretto says “Prima che d'altri vivere, io volli tua morir! “ - Rather than live as another’s, I wanted to die yours. But to me, it’s pretty clear she’s dying for herself - dying as her own self, as hers (I mean, technically she never became Manrico’s “legal property” anyways if we want to get into the morbid lack of womens’ rights, so she wasn’t even “his” in that way). And in the end, choice architecture aside, the point is that all the way, Leonora knew what she wanted, made her own decisions, stayed true to herself, and accomplished what she set her mind to. Nothing and nobody stopped her. Who’s to say what else she might have wanted if she had had different opportunities, choices, knowledge, or most importantly had been born in a different context.

(*faceplams* had been born?!! She’s a fictional character god Karo go to bed already) (*peels hands off face* it’s okay you are processing outrage over the Female Experience and Leonora represents a lot of real women, living and dead)

I conclude. LEONORA IS UNSTOPPABLE. Let’s part with some lovely lines from our complex (if a bit compulsively devoted), tragic, yet joyful, empowered, and fearless heroine:

Tu vedrai che amore in terra mai del mio non fu più forte: vinse il fato in aspra guerra, vincerà la stessa morte.

You will see that never on earth was there a stronger love than mine; it defeated Fate in violent strife, it will defeat death itself.

* * * * * * * *

Screencaps from IL Trovatore (Met 2011) ft. Sondra Radvanovsky, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Marcelo Álvarez

#first of all this is extremely long and I still don't know how to use keep reading so apologies for the spam #long post #il trovatore #verdi #opera #trovatore #mine #writing tag i suppose #sondra radvanovsky #idk i'm just going to tag her for now #i stayed up til 1am writing this for like. 3 hours. It's fine #im defintiely fine #i guess I just really love Leonora now look how far we've come #watch out if I do one of these for Tatyana Larina :O

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wayhvn · 3 years

Text

twelve minutes

summary | jude could have imagined that playing chess with a vampire might have been difficult. they did not imagine that it would be quite this exhaustive.

detective jude cain plays a particularly difficult game of chess with commanding agent ava du mortain

pairing | mason x jude cain (nb detective), the beginnings of / implications of ava x Jude, which could also be interpreted as a very close or caring friendship. mason ava love triangle route... jk. haha unless...???

word count | ~1.6k

rating | t for language to be safe! jude swears lmao.

tags | i am just going to tag some of my followers /mutuals if that is okay??? i do not know the etiquette for this kind of thing hahah so tell me if you do not want to be tagged I won’t be offended!! @raleighcarrera @agentfreckles @s-ewell @natehsewell @brightpinkpeppercorn

authors note | WOW I AM NERVOUS this is my first time posting a piece of writing here!! im a huge fan of chess and i have always imagined that ava would be too. this was very fun for me. that being said, this is rough and a little unedited but i just wanted to stop putting it off and post it already!!

Jude could have imagined that playing chess with a vampire might have been difficult. They did not imagine that it would be quite this exhaustive.

Though it was nearly the middle of the summer, the fireplace was roaring. The only source of light in the library, the orange flicker cast gold shadows across Ava’s cheekbones, her lips a tight unyielding line, straight above her chin. Her features, normally pallid in the light, were warmer now, controlled as ever before. She sat across from them, left ankle crossed over her right knee, the line of her body carefully folded taught, her brow furrowed. She hadn’t moved in nearly fifteen minutes.

It was incredible, to her see her this still. Distracting, welcomed. Unit Bravo, the assembly that Jude had subconsciously categorized as their vampires, so permanently full of life, fluid in their movements and their expressions, rarely bothered to act as anything but human. Jude had forgotten how still any one of them could be, if only they would will it. Jude found themselves often forgetting the Unit’s capabilities. Nate, Ava, Farah, Mason- each could do any number of things unimaginable to Jude, if only they would will it. Jude hadn’t thought about it that way before. They wondered if this was a bad thing.

So Ava sat, a fortress of her own making, made of blood and bone and particles that had been of this earth for nearly a thousand years. A millennium.

The space felt cavernous in its silence, devoid of any other member of the unit, devoid of activity. It was easy for Jude to imagine that perhaps they were the only two in the Warehouse at all, that the entire building had cleared itself for just the both of them.

“Are you very familiar with chess, detective?”

Jude swallowed, and slowly, nodded. “My mother taught me. I played in high school.”

“Was this before you were nearly expelled for your truancy, or after?”

They managed a laugh, something bare, and short. “You have jokes now, I see. Before, Agent Du Mortain. Before. Now are you going to make your move?”

“I have played chess with your mother for nearly a decade,” Ava mused. “She is much more patient an opponent.”

“Was she very good?”

Ava hesitated, before relenting. “I have had my losses to Rebecca, yes. She reinvigorated my enjoyment of the sport of it all.”

The fire cracked loudly, and Jude diverted their gaze to its growth. They licked their lips, shifting their shoulders.

“I forgot that you’ve known each other for so long.”

Ava’s lips twitched, before her face settled again. “I have not forgotten a single match against her.”

“You seem to not forget many things.”

“Of course not. It is nearly impossible.”

Jude did not know what to say.

It was Ava, who broke the still. Her voice was quieter now, assured.

“I did not, for instance, forget the state in which you came here.”

Jude resisted the urge to sigh. To scoff. To roll their eyes. To do anything but admit some form of defeat, at the hands of a friend that Ava had had for over one hundred years. They did not imagine that Ava would bring it up. In fact, she had asked Jude to play chess rather callously, disregarding the tears, the panic. It had been instrumental in helping them reacquire a sense of calm.

Unforgiving in her persistence, she continued. “Mason has caused something of a mess,” Ava pursed her lips, and Jude could see that her teeth were clenched. “I imagined he would.”

Jude was certain that they would stand, resist the onslaught. “I don’t want to-“

Ava raised an eyebrow, an interruption in itself. “I received a concerned text from Nate. Who had a concerning conversation with the man in question.”

Jude felt their jaw sit tight, and they hunched their shoulders. They imagined to Ava’s specimen, they were about as intimidating as a fearful kitten. “I don’t want to know about it.”

This was not Ava giving up, and Jude knew that. But she did not respond, and it was a place of solace which Jude would accept.

For now.

“Are you familiar with Louis Paulsen’s 1857 match against Paul Morphy?”

Jude blinked, and straightened. Near a millennia, indeed. “No.”

Ava hummed. Jude blinked, and in the fraction of a second it had taken them to open their eyes, Ava’s position had completely changed. She was leaning forward now, shoulders horizontally parallel to her knees, her head resting in her hands. It was as though somebody had replaced a photograph with another photograph. She did not look as though she had moved, and yet, here she was, her entire body completely shifted. The firelight gave her eyes a dark cast, reminiscent of the sea. Her voice continued, languid, slow. “Morphy was an American, in a losing position. His structure was catastrophic, and Paulsen’s queen was about to demolish completely what strategy he had left.”

Ava raised her gaze, then, and Jude felt powerless to do anything but meet it.

“Morphy took twelve minutes before making his next move,” Ava, perhaps unknowingly, let her tongue sweep across the bottom row of her teeth. Her lips were parted in what might hint at the very beginnings of a smile. “Twelve whole minutes. He had to assure himself that every possible combination afterwards was sound. Was safe, even knowing that chess is never safe, not truly. But he had to ensure, losses be damned, that he had a forced win, in every variation. Do you know what move he made, Detective Cain?”

Jude did not know why, but their heart was pounding, quickly, horribly, in their chest, as if uncertain it belonged in this confine of muscle at all.

Their voice was raspy, dry, unsettled. “A sacrifice.”

Ava’s gaze was steady, terrible, unfaltering. The flames seemed to exist from inside of her, and nowhere else. Ava was a leader, unforgiving, tactical. Her voice was that of her title now, no trace of uncertainty or mutiny possible. Ava could not be wrong. Ava would be heard, and her demands would be met. This was Commanding Agent Du Mortain. A pantheon of her own assembly. This was the voice that war might render. “A queen sacrifice, Detective Cain. A loss of the most powerful piece on the board. Aimed to destroy the entire pawn structure of the side of the king.”

Jude felt as though they could not breathe. They felt feverish, incapable. For a moment, the board in front of them made no sense, was a puzzle that had no complete answer. Jude was going to lose this game. The certainty of this, as insignificant as it might be, seemed overwhelming and inescapable. Ava had likely memorized as many of the hundreds of thousands of millions of billions of possible outcomes of every possible game. What else would a tactical commander do in her hundreds of years of spare time, with a mind endlessly more capable than that of a human’s?

The chill, despite the summer breeze, as Jude had left the bakery.

The confirmation of fear, wrapping their jacket tight around their midsection. The certainty of rejection. The certainly of solitude.

The mounting of an internalized pressure system.

“Detective Cain,” Ava’s voice, grounded in something that was certain to be eternal, cut through the space that Jude had so effortlessly placed between them. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Jude’s response was instant, automatic.

An unstable chemical reaction.

“Do not forget that I am perfectly capable of hearing your heart.”

An explosion.

Jude knew that there were no pretenses here. Perhaps they had been wrong in assuming that Ava would play along. In hoping that it was all Ava would bother to do.

In an action which Jude could not control, they were pushed to their feet. In one fell swoop, Jude’s arm had swept across the chess board, destroying their loss, destroying the evidence of their loss, ending the game in terms which made sense. Their voice was a hiss, a yell, something verging on a scream. Rage, unbridled, packaged so that it could not be recognized as fear.

“We weren’t even fucking! Because I didn’t want to fuck around for nothing, Ava! And now, fucking Haley thinks we were, and the whole fucking town thinks we were, and I look like a fucking idiot who was getting played with by their fucking coworker!”

Ava’s gaze had risen with Jude’s body, and she regarded the dismantled game in front of them with something that could only be equated to impatience.

Ava had not lifted her chin from her hands.

Jude waited, and when nothing happened, when nobody moved, Jude, shoulders heaving, took the first steps past the shelves that surrounded the couches. The door, outlined in that harsh, fluorescent light of the Warehouse, beckoned like a song.

“Jude.”

Ava’s voice. Imploring. Undemanding. Forgiving. Pliant, and close. Without a whisper of a sound, Ava had stood, moved, and positioned herself directly behind Jude. If Jude wanted, they could stretch their hand back. Their fingers would touch her. Jude could touch her.

Jude stiffened. Jude stopped. Jude did not turn around. Jude did not touch her.

Ava spoke again.

“The greatest threat has been removed from the board. Mason cannot make a move like this again.”

Jude exhaled. It was a shudder. It was the beginning of something that Jude would not admit to. Speaking of this in terms of a game made it easier. Jude could distance from it. It was likely that Ava knew that.

“I guess I just don’t know if I’ve lost yet.”

Ava did not say anything else. Or maybe she did. Jude didn’t know.

Jude left the library.

#the Wayhaven chronicles #agent m #nb detective #mason x detective #mason x jude #ava x jude #ava du mortain #twc #twc fic

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skyfallensoldier · 4 years

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Mobile Navigation || Rules & Mun ↓

DISCLAIMER: I just want to note here at the beginning that while I am considering this RP blog to be historically based, i.e. remaining true to the time period and overall details of John Laurens' biographical information and whatnot, I do not consider myself a historically accurate blog, not entirely. Historical fiction is a well known genre of literature and many, MANY creative liberties are taken within that genre. Think of this blog like you would if you saw an Anastasia Romanov blog. She's dead, we know she didn't survive, and she's been dead a long-ass time; so has Laurens. People still have included her in many works of fiction, even after her body was identified and it was proven she did not survive her family's massacre. I saw a romance book a couple of months ago where she survived that was recently published. Historical fiction, while a controversial thing at times, is a legitimate form of literature.

You don't have to tell me if you think John isn't acting exactly like the real man himself would have, I know that. I'm not going to call John my 'perfect sunshine boy cinnamon roll' or dismiss the privilege he was raised on due to his father, I'm aware he was a real person who had his own personality, virtues and prejudices. I won't deny that while he was certainly a progressive thinking man for the time he grew up in he definitely still had racist thoughts and actions that were indicative of his upbringing. But I'm not on here to debate modern, real life politics, or get into arguments about whether he was a good abolitionist or not. At the end of the day, this is still a hobby for me, and I'm writing for fun.

Basically, don't take it too seriously. I'm a 21st century bisexual woman writing from the POV of an 18th century (likely gay) male soldier, the way I write him is obviously not going to be a perfect representation of who he was. I know he wasn't an amazing, perfect person, but I've still chosen to write a fictionalized version of him for my own entertainment. Please try to respect that; thank you.

Mun Stuff

Name: Luna Gender: Female (She/Her or They/Them) D.o.B: July 23rd, 1996 Age: 24 Nationality: Canadian Sexuality: Bisexual Timezone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) Activity: Daily BIOGRAPHY (SORT OF)

Hello, there! You can call me Luna! I've been interested in writing ever since I first got the internet when I was 14 and discovered FanFiction.Net and now I'm an aspiring author and Roleplay enthusiast. If you include acting/talking out DnD like games with friends then I've been 'roleplaying' since the fifth grade, but I like to think there's always room for improvement. If you ever want to chat I'd love to make a new friend or plot out a roleplay, so don't be afraid to shoot me an ask or send me a private message. Just because my muse can be a jackass doesn't mean I am! I’m a huge advocate for mental health, and if you ever need someone to talk to, please don’t ever hesitate to reach out! Some of my hobbies including literature and writing (of course), digging into mythology from various cultures, practicing solitary eclectic paganism/new age spirituality, drinking tea, and collecting crystals/minerals.

Please note that for the sake of disclosure, I am considered ‘Neurodivergent’, in that I suffer from ADHD, diagnosed at about age six, and have Anxiety and Depression which are directly tied to it. This doesn’t often effect my life on here, but I sometimes have an unpredictable sleep schedule (stay up all night, sleep in late into the morning, etc). I’m usually quick to reply to threads for the most part! I work every Tuesday and Thursday from 5pm to 7pm in addition to odd jobs here and there, during which time I won’t have access to the Internet. The rest of the week I’m on and off all day basically, so you can feel free to contact me any time.

RP Style

⭐️ Please use basic spelling/grammar/punctuation when you RP with me. I'm not a drill sergeant about these kinds of things, I know that typos happen, and if you have a vision problem or such we can absolutely find a way to work around that, I also have no problem roleplaying with people whose first language is not English, so that's totally fine and I’m happy to accomodate in whatever way I can, but it does make it a little difficult to play with you if I don't know what you're trying to say. For this reason I prefer if you not use any text shorthand (lol, idk, brb, jk, etc) unless our muses are messaging each other. Using it in the tags is fine.

⭐️ I roleplay Laurens in a past-tense 3rd Person Point of View (think story-telling format), and generally I don't use icons or text formatting unless I notice my partner does, then I will try to match their style (for example if you use icons and small-text, I will try to do the same, though because formatting isn't possible on mobile, any mobile replies might take longer to be posted than if I were on my laptop). If you have any issues with how I'm writing or need me to adjust my style for any reason don't be afraid to ask.

Contact

⭐️ If you spam me with messages over and over again about something I haven't replied to, chances are I'll drop the thread. I don't mind being reminded because I know Tumblr's notifications are notoriously unreliable sometimes, and humans can forget/lose things, but if you keep poking at me after I've acknowledged you the first and second time, I won't be pleased. Things can get busy on here, or in real life, or sometimes you're just lacking muse for that particular thread, y'know? It doesn't mean I hate you and don't want to RP, I'm almost always up for plotting, but muse tends to fluctuate.

⭐️ My ‘Discord’ is available to mutuals upon request. I don't mind roleplaying on there if Tumblr is being glitchy or you're just not feeling up to formatted/heavily plotted threads, sometimes Discord is fun in that you can do immediate replies without needing the effort of putting icons and formatting into it. I also have a Kik but I never use it. I don't RP in Tumblr's IMs, that's purely for OOC interaction.

⭐️ I also occasionally stream movies/TV shows in group chats or play “in character” Cards Against Humanity game nights, Among Us, etc. If you’re interested, lemme know, I’m always looking for more people to hang out with!

Important

I have no actual triggers that I'm aware of, although snakes do creep me out (mostly shots of them coiled up or images of their pupils), but there are some things I will not roleplay personally for comfort reasons:

⭐️ Cannibalism. You can mention it, for example I won't freak out if someone tells my muse that somebody else ate a person (he might, assuming its not a Supernatural type verse), but I won't RP him engaging in cannibalism, not even in AUs (blood-drinking vampires are fine). I'm just not sure I could stomach writing about eating people. I managed to watch Hannibal, barely, but writing about it? Nah. I can handle lots of horror, gore and disturbing content but not this. Sorry.

⭐ Incest/Pedophilia. I do not SEXUALLY ship with characters under the age of 18. John is not attracted to children, and would never consider sleeping with someone much younger than him.

⭐ I will not write anything sexual with muns who are under 18 years old, even if your muse is an adult. I'll still ROLEPLAY with you if you are under 18 but probably no younger than 16 just because things tend to get explicit on my blogs and I don't want to be accused of corrupting the youth with my foul language and weird opinions, lol. Seriously though, this blog covers a lot of dark subjects and while I’m all for minors exploring that safely through writing rather than in real life, some people aren’t comfortable with interacting with under age people for legal or personal reasons, please respect that.

⭐ Necrophilia. Just... no. Vampire threads don't count, as they're undead and not 'dead dead'.

⭐ Rape. I won't write it with you. I'm okay with mentions of rape, with rape/sexual assault survivor/recovery plots, and even with one character intervening to rescue another from an attempted sexual assault (if an attempted assault does occur, it will be thoroughly tagged and under a cut). I'm fully open to discussing rape recovery/trauma plots as those are things that happen in real life, and it can be interesting to explore how a character reacts to trauma. But anything else is a no-go, sorry!

⭐ Please be aware that I write Laurens as a gay man. However! Because of the time period, violent homophobia and social stigma, he has slept with women before and may be seen flirting with or referencing relationships with women in the past. He is still gay, and still uninterested in being with women long term, he's simply closeted to all but a few individuals. So, unless your muse is Martha Manning (who Laurens DOES love in a manner, and he always will), shipping with female characters on here most likely isn't going to happen unless it's heavily plotted/developed and part of an overall plot, and you understand that it will not be a conventional sexual relationship. I'm sorry if that disappoints you but I've read Laurens as a gay male for so long I have trouble seeing him any other way.

⭐ I will not roleplay slavery plots. This is not up for debate. Roleplaying a highly fictionalized version of a long dead real person who existed during a troubling time is one thing, but I draw the line at that. For this reason, while I'll happily play with non-white muses, muses using non white faceclaims, and crossovers with characters of all sorts, I'll have to decline playing with any muse claiming to actually be writing slavery. There’s a difference between, say, roleplaying a character like Daenerys, a fictional character who was technically a slave-bride sold by her brother, and writing actual slavery from a very real, horrible time period. Slave ownership will of course be mentioned on this blog, that's unavoidable, but just like the mention of rape may happen on this blog from time to time, it will be in reference to a past event or speaking about the subject in general, not roleplaying a scene of it. Please respect this rule, I was hesitant to make this blog at first, because I know it makes some people uncomfortable, but I won't glorify such a horrible real thing that happened to so many people.

Exclusives/Mains

Just a head's up, unless I develop a bunch of chemistry with a particular portrayal of a muse I'm not likely to agree to being exclusives with anyone, unless perhaps it's a very niche or divergent character that has formed a good relationship of some sort with John and I'd have trouble interacting with other versions of that muse. For major characters I just feel it would be unfair to say no to someone who I click with in every other way, solely because I have already befriended someone else writing that character.

I will, however, discuss becoming mains with someone whom I've either developed or plotted out detailed storylines/interactions with regarding our specific portrayals of our characters. This means that I tend to reply to them quickly when I'm online, or may make little gifts (moodboards, aesthetic things, mini ficlets, whatever) for them unprompted, have a verse dedicated just to them, etc. Even if it seems like we haven't done much on Tumblr, there may be a lot of off-site development on Discord or whatnot that led to us plotting out intricate stories for our muses.

Current Mains:

Alexander Hamilton - @quillborn

⭐️ Send private messages.

⭐️ Send my character asks/starters/memes.

⭐️ Tag me in things.

⭐️ Ask to plot or ship.

⭐️ Ask for angst, fluff, etc.

⭐️ Submit things to me & my muse.

⭐️ Do crack and other ridiculous things with me!

⭐️ Like my RP threads.

⭐️ Like my personal posts.

⭐️ Comment on my personal/OOC posts (if you want to).

⭐️ Comment on my crack threads.

⭐️ Instant Message (IM) me if you'd like to talk, whether we're friends already or not!

DON'T

⭐️ Send hateful messages to me about other people and especially my mutuals; doesn't count if it's about the muse and not the person playing them, however. Also, if I’ve got beef with someone for whatever reason, don’t harass them/send hate to them on my behalf, please. I don’t condone anonymous abuse, attacking others, or harassment. I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself, I promise.

⭐️ Introduce yourself with ‘wanna ship?’ For one, I prefer if we’ve at least started a roleplay together, or have spoken OOC. Auto shipping doesn’t always work out and I hate promising people something only to realize there’s zero chemistry, because then I feel like I’m letting them down.

⭐️ Come into my inbox with just ‘wanna rp?’ and that’s it. Please at least have some idea of what you want to roleplay, it’s not very fun when someone approaches you to RP but then doesn’t offer up any suggestions at all. Remember, you are always free to send me memes, whether we’re mutuals or not, and hit me up for whatever plot you think might interest me! I want to hear about it!

⭐️ Spam me with "reminder" messages if I've already acknowledged you the first few times.

⭐️ Reblog my RP threads if you're not a participant in them.

⭐️ Send me anonymous OOC hate. Hate for Laurens is fine, it's just another form of roleplay.

⭐️ Kill off my character or severely injure/maim my character without permission or having plotted something involving that with me first.

⭐️ Follow me if you're a porn blog. I don't mind blogs that post NSFW content, or smut a lot, etc. I mean blogs that aren't for RP and are literally just a normal looking blog until you click on it and the header and first twenty posts are hardcore nudity and porn. I hate those things.

⭐️ Shame my ships.

⭐️ Complain about my tagging. I put my smut under a 'read more' without exception and tag them as "NSFW //" with two dashes. Things that are not necessarily graphic but still have sexual undertones go under "Suggestive //". I use these tags to avoid attracting attention from porn blogs and porn bots that track certain key words, as such I do not tag my content with "Smut" or trigger words such as "dick, oral, anal, nudity, etc", please block my NSFW and Suggestive tags if you're uncomfortable. Triggery subjects (mentions of rape, animal abuse, torture, mental illness) will be tagged under the name of said trigger with a space and two dashes, example: "Self Harm //", “Suicidal Ideation //” or "PTSD //".

⭐️ Godmod my character. If you’re not sure what is/isn’t okay, come talk to me! I don’t bite! If you’re looking for an example of god mod behavior, here: “X lunged at Laurens, taking him by surprise, and hit him square in the nose, causing blood to spurt.” It might not seem like a big deal but it means that you decided how your character’s actions affected my muse, and not only that, didn’t give him a chance to dodge or anything. Not cool.

⭐️ Ship with me without permission (sending in shippy asks is A-Ok if you're interested in exploring a ship between our muses, I'm talking about things like claiming that our muses are in a relationship without discussing it with me, referencing dates or sexual acts that never happened, etc. I ship mainly with chemistry otherwise things get boring fast.

⭐️ Assume/act like our characters know each other/are closely connected (friends/family/lovers) if we've never discussed it unless it is established in canon/history. This especially goes for original characters. I'm open to Laurens forming deep relationships with OCs obviously, but those have to be developed in character, not just assumed from the first interaction.

⭐️ Attempt to roleplay with me if you are not a roleplay blog/or if you're just trying to RP as "yourself." I don't do Character X Reader imagines stuff. I don't RP with 'fan' accounts, only RP blogs. You can still send asks so long as you're not trying to initiate an RP scenario. For example, asking Laurens what his hobbies are, asking for a blessing etc? That's fine. Spamming me with different actions "you" are talking to Laurens is weird. Stop that. I will also not RP with blogs that claim to roleplay as real life people, such as Markiplier, that's super creepy. This does NOT apply to "historical fiction" roleplay (obviously since that's what this blog is), which is considered its own genre of literature. I'm talking about the above where people will 'roleplay' as real life, currently alive people like YouTube celebrities and ship them with their friends, even if they've made it clear that they're uncomfortable with it.

⭐️ Get angry at me for doing something you don't like if you don't even have a rules page for me to go by. It's not fair; you can't expect your partners to just read your mind and magically know how you feel. If something bothers you let me know, I’ll make a note about it so I avoid it during our interactions!

⭐️ Use me as a meme resource blog without ever interacting with me. I don't require "reblog karma" for you to follow me, partners are more than welcome to reblog from me, but if we never interact and I just occasionally see you reblog fifteen posts from my meme tag and then disappear again I'm not gonna be happy. Go to the source or to an archived blog no longer getting notifications, please!

⭐️ Reblog my Meta/Headcanons. If they're from a different blog it's fine but the ones I've personally written are for MY portrayal of Laurens. I work hard on most of my stuff and I'd prefer if you didn't reblog it, not because you aren't allowed to have the same headcanon ideas as me, but because then it ends up getting liked or reblogged by lots of other people, spamming my notifications, etc.

OCs & Multimuses

I love OCs and multi-muse blogs (I have my own multimuse sideblog over at @historyremembers, which has other 18th century characters including the Hamilton children and some OCs), so feel free to interact! That being said, please have an about page of some sort on your blog. I can't follow back blogs that have absolutely no information available regarding their character(s). I don't RP with OC children of Laurens. This is nothing personal, but I'm fairly certain he was gay in real life and prefer to play him that way, and he only had one child - who he never even got to meet - in real life, so it just wouldn't make sense to me for him to have other kids running around unless he'd adopted some. If you're a multimuse, I may not follow you back if I'm only familiar with two of your muses if you have a blog of fifteen characters, simply because I'd prefer to keep my dash clean and only have characters/fandoms I'm familiar with on it. I'll still RP with you if you have a character I'm interested in! I just might not follow back if the majority of your characters I do not know, I apologize for this.

If you’ve made it to the end of this, congrats! I know it couldn’t be easy (my ADHD brain was frustrated trying to just write all this up) but it’s necessary so there’s not misunderstandings on what I am/am not willing to RP. I won’t ask for a password since I trust most people to have the courtesy to at least skim the rules of those they want to RP with.

Have a nice day!

#Everybody Listen Up! {PSA}#Out Of The Field {OOC}#Long Post //

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kainks · 6 years

Text

midnight suck. 4

Come on little human, come out and play.”

pairing: vamp!jungkook x reader

genre: vampire au, destined lovers au, slow burn

warnings: match maker jimin, brave reader, scary jk once again

words: 6,700

summary: you had seen him drain the life out of someone, there was no way he could leave you alone now.

Series updates every Saturday at 8PM PST!

–> 1 | 2 | 3

It was without little enthusiasm, that you found yourself stepping into ‘J’s Collective Herbs’, a small grooved building - with red tinted windows and black trim - that was boxed in by a neighboring market and floral shop.

It was barely reaching noon as you pushed open the door, a small chime greeting you into an over packed and enclosed area, almost no room to roam about or breathe as you shimmied your way through stacks of yellowing papers, boxes, and the occasional spice rack.

The quaint little shop smelled of aged books and crushed herbs. Thyme and rosemary wafted through the air, your nose twitching at the odd combinations. It held an earthy aroma, the kind that reminded you of treks through a vast forest; climbing a hill in the springtime sun.

“Welcome, welcome!” An overly enthusiastic voice greeted from behind a dark stoned counter; littered with small mason jars of different tea leaves.

“What can I help you with today?”

It wasn't until you rounded a stack of boxes, towering above your own height, that you were able to put a face to the chipper voice. A man stood behind the cluttered counter, wearing clear specks and a purple velvet robe; crushing a combination of herbs in a marbled pestle with too much fervor.

He wasn’t looking at you, rather whatever it was he was grinding down into a loose powder. You saw the faint twitch of his lip as he put more strength into his wrist, twisting the stone tool with vigor and you almost felt bad for interrupting his work.

“Are you, um.. the owner? Or do you know where I can find him?”

Your voice sounded so small, you were surprised he even heard you. You know he did though, because instantly his hand stopped grinding, and he was looking up at you in slight surprise.

Your heart was thudding way to heavily in your chest.

Because really, what were you thinking? After finding a somewhat eerie blog post on the internet, you decided to visit the shop associated with the owner of said blog, in hopes of what exactly?

Especially someone claiming to be a vampire, on the internet of all places..

“That’d be me.” He spoke, voice now considerably less chipper. “Whose asking?”

You noticed the man looked on edge, as if your simple question brought a thousand suspicions along with it. You could feel a light sheen of sweat building on the back of your neck, your palms a little clammy as they rubbed against the denim of your jeans.

“Well… I am. I found your blog online and-” You trailed off, voice dying out until it was nonexistent.

You weren’t sure how to explain yourself to this.. J, or whomever he was. You felt considerably awkward as he stepped away from his pestle and removed the specks from his face, laying them down on the counter top uncaringly.

“You found my blog?”

His gaze was impeccably intimidating, eyes seeming to burn a permanent stare into your own. It made you feel uneasy as you nodded your head in response, not trusting your own voice to provide an adequate answer.

At your reply, he no longer looked wary, but amused. His lips turned up into a teasing grin, and you took notice how they faintly resembled the shape of a heart when he smiled.

“Interesting. And how is it that you found my blog little dove, what exactly were you searching for?”

He knows, oh my god he fucking knows.

It was the only thing running through your head, because how else could somebody stumble across a blog like that? You had no excuse, except for that you were an overly paranoid idiot who stuck your nose into a place it didn’t belong.

Cheeks feeling slightly warm at the endearment, you took a small step closer to the front counter, shrugging your shoulders as if to play nonchalant when really, you were freaking out.

“I just.. stumbled across it.”

Your pulse intensified, and you hope he didn’t hear the quiver in your voice.

“Really? Just stumbled across a place like that?” He chuckled then, as if no longer being able to keep up with your games.

You watched as he leaned down to rest his elbows on the counter top, becoming eye level with you, and with the way he was hunched over, you saw the exposed honeyed skin of his chest from where the top three buttons of his white dress shirt were undone.

You swallowed.

“Listen little dove, I don’t have time for your human games. So why don’t you go ahead and ask me what you really came here for?”

There it was again, the word that had been haunting you since you’d been thrown into this puzzling predicament; human.

It was then you realized that it was always said as a way to remind you of where you stood, beneath them, a weak, pathetic, breakable human.

It was also then, that you realized the man in front of you was anything but.

That he’d been able to hear your erratic heartbeat all along.

You wondered how many more run in with vampires you’d have until you met your untimely death. Though the one in front of you didn’t seem all that bad, and despite your constant flight response thrumming in the back of your mind, you didn’t feel like your life was at stake.

At least not yet.

Maybe your curiosity just outweighed the sensible part of your brain that tried to keep you safe.

“You’re really one too, aren’t you?” You sighed out.

“That I am!” He spoke exuberantly, hand lightly slapping down onto counter with enthusiasm.

Standing back up, you watched as he ran a hand through his hair, the brown tufts falling freely back into place, separated and styled almost to perfection.

“What do you mean by ‘one too’ though, little dove? Am I not the first dazzling vampire friend you’ve acquainted yourself with?”

His lightheartedness and playful teasing did somewhat put you at ease. The guy completely contradicted everything that told you a vampire was supposed to be. In all, he was the least non-threatening person or vampire you’d ever come across.

“Actually, you’d be my fourth.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise, not quite expecting that answer you supposed.

“Wow, you’ve been a busy human, haven’t you?”

Your face turned up into one of dislike, a mixture of distaste and regret.

“___” You stated. “Call me ___, not human. I hate being called that.”

The man looked almost perplexed at your shift in mood, but nonetheless nodded agreeing.

“And what makes you dislike it so much ___?”

“It reminds me of someone, someone I’d rather not think about.”

You both left it at that, because you were not about to go into detail about Jungkook and his unstoppable ability to scare you to death, and the man was not about to ask into your personal business. You figured he didn’t care that much, but with the way his lips seemed to frown at your response, you weren’t quite sure that was the case.

“So, what brought you to me little dove?” He eyed you expectantly, and you nervously drummed your fingertips onto your pant leg.

“I’m actually.. not quite sure. I guess I’m curious is all.” It was the truth, and something told you that being honest would help you immensely with this strange vampire.

He’d be able to tell if you were lying anyways.

“Curious about what exactly?” He hummed.

“Everything.” You breathed in response, because the more you learned, the more you felt it wasn’t enough. That this new world you just discovered was always out of reach from you, and that distant feeling kept you searching for more, despite the dangers or not.

The man, vampire, pondered over your reply for a few seconds. As if he didn’t quite know how to respond, as if he’d never had a human in his shop asking questions about the un-dead.

You were probably his first.

“Can I ask you a question ___?”

You nodded, albeit hesitantly.

“Are you curious because you think this is fun, or curious because you have to be?”

Your breathing hitched.

“Let’s just say, I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter.” Your voice held a hint of disdain, and you assumed it was enough of an answer for the vampire, because he looked at you with a dawn of understanding.

“Is one of us bothering you, little dove?” It was a simple question, filled with the faintest of worries.

You weren’t sure how to respond.

“A little, yes.” You agreed solemnly. “I saw something I was never meant to see, and Jungko-”

You immediately caught yourself, lips all but slamming shut before you said too much. Even though this vampire seemed okay in the least, you didn’t know what the information you shared could cost you.

At your abruptness, the vampire narrowed his eyes at you just the slightest, as if you had said something that had caught his interest. Yet at your continued silence, he let his face resolve back into one that was cheerful, smiling gently at you as if you were a delicately scared animal.

He seemed to be monitoring how he acted around you, and although strange, you were nevertheless grateful at the small courtesy.

“I’m going to give you some advice ___.” He spoke, stepping around the counter and walking towards you.

When he was only an arms touch away, you felt your anxiety spiking just the slightest, and if he could sense your worries, he touched your shoulder with his right hand barely so. It was a comforting gesture that almost instantaneously had you at ease.

“It’s not safe for a human to be sticking their nose into vampire business.” His head shook in emphasis; a soft squeeze to your shoulder. “Technically, you’re not even supposed to know anything about us. The elders wouldn’t approve.”

As his hand fell from your shoulder, you looked up at him in confusion. “Elders?”

He nodded disheartened, as if the mere topic was painful to speak of. “Yes, little dove. There is more to this than you realize. You need to be careful who you associate yourself with and how.”

If anything, you were even more puzzled than before. More to this than you realize. What did that even mean? What could be worse than the information you already knew?

“Promise you’ll be careful?” He asked hopefully, as if your safety was one of his utmost concerns.

Which didn’t make sense to you, because why would a vampire concern himself with the safety of a human at best?

“Yeah, I- I promise.”

It was all you could do, could say, at the moment. Your mind was still riddled with curiosity and confusion, but you found that you were somewhat more sated than before. Even though you knew barely anything new since you’d walked into the small shop.

“Perfect!” He beamed, eyes shining. “But don’t let my warnings stop you from coming back, I do have a business to run after all.” He chuckled, quickly stepping back behind the stone counter.

The quick shift in his mood was puzzling, and you found it almost endearing.

“What do you even sell?” You asked off topic, as you eyed your surroundings. The shop was more nick knacks than anything, small trinkets littered about on dusty wooden shelves, candles lit and dripping hot wax onto random surfaces; it was a complex and extravagant space you were currently in.

You supposed its uniqueness fit that of its owner.

“I sell everything, little dove! Herbs, spell books, blood bags… you name it, I have it.”

Your eyes shot open in surprise.

“B-blood bags?!”

As if awaiting your reaction, the vampire laughed light-heartedly, a dazzling grin appearing on his heart shaped lips. The radiance he emitted was almost blinding, for someone so very dead.

“Well of course! I do get thirsty from time to time.”

You held back your fright in the form of a very audible gulp, to which he grinned at as well.

“I should probably get going.” You spoke, biting down onto your lip anxiously.

You knew the vampire wasn’t going to harm you, could almost feel it in the way he acted around you; the presence he gave off. But that didn’t stop your chest from filling with anxiety as your brain once again realized that all of this was horrifyingly real.

“Mmmm, that’s alright.” He was once again distracted with his pestle, continuing to powder the herbs into fine dust. “But visit me again soon, okay little dove? You’re the first human I’ve talked to in a while.”

Well, that was odd.

“Don’t you get human customers?”

The vampire shook his head, sparing you a quick glance. “Believe it or not, the things I sell cater to specific audiences.”

You really didn’t want to know what he meant by that, so you didn’t question any further. Yet you felt considerably fond of the vampire, in a weird way. Maybe because he was the first one who hadn’t threatened you, or gone out of his way to intimidate you until you were cowering in fright.

Whatever it was, you were thankful towards him.

“Well, it was nice meeting you-” It was then you realized you’d never caught his name, and if sensing your unfinished sentence, he temporarily halted his grinding to grin over at you once more, a similar fondness found in his own eyes.

“Hoseok.” He relayed. “You can call me Hoseok.”

/~/

“So, have you talked to him yet?”

Wiping down another empty table of crumbs and straw wrappers, you eyed Jimin over your shoulder, head of orange hair relaxing lazily on one of the bar stools at the counter. You noticed his eyes were playful, like he’d been dying to tease you about the last conversation you both had.

You’d rather clean gum off the bottom of tables then do just that.

Focusing back on the task at hand, you loaded dirtied dishes into a plastic bin, balancing it on your hip as you went from table to table. “Talked to who?” You replied nonchalantly, though you were sure your voice deceived you in displaying just how anxious you were over the topic.

It was your shift at Johnny’s once again, working from nine at night, to closing. The only reason Jimin had offered you this shift in the first place, was so he could get home to his boyfriend at a reasonable hour. Yet, there he still sat, watching you busy yourself with any task, rather than answering his questions.

You knew he’d stayed behind, just to interrogate you on the subject of Jungkook, and your supposedly secret crush on him.

You internally gagged.

“Come on ___, I’m dying here. Give me something… did Yoongi give you his number? Have you texted Jungkook yet?”

You groaned audibly, letting him know your obvious frustration. You didn’t want to be too disrespectful, since he was your boss after all, but you truly had no intention of texting the guy who’d been practically stalking you, and you were a terrible liar.

So what the hell were you supposed to say?

Setting the tub of dirty dishes onto a nearby table, you turned around, hands on your hips as you narrowed your eyes at the male who sent you an award winning smirk.

“No, I haven’t messaged him yet Jimin, since you’re dying to know.”

He perked up then, clearly happy that you were at least speaking to him. For the past hour of your shift, you’d done nothing but reply with quiet ‘mhmms’, since you weren’t too keen on the topic.

“Why not? Didn’t you get his number from Yoongi?”

No.

“Uh.. yeah. I’m just-” You paused, trying to come up with an adequate excuse. “Nervous?”

It came out as more of a question, but Jimin didn’t care, because he was instantly hopping down from the bar stool and making his way towards you, a look of almost disbelief on his face.

“Why!” He practically shouted. “Why are you nervous? Jungkookie is so nice, I’ve known him since I’ve been with Yoongi, he’s just a dorky kid. I’m sure he’d love to take you out!”

Dorky kid… who happens to tear into people’s throats when he’s particularly thirsty.

Dorky kid your ass.

Letting out a sigh, you rubbed your forehead in exasperation. You could feel a headache forming, and you knew that Jimin wasn’t going to let you off the hook until you gave him something to work with.

“Okay! I’ll… I’ll message him tomorrow okay? Would that make you happy?”

Jimin didn’t seem convinced, his eyes slightly narrowed onto your own. You had to admit, he looked slightly intimidating, and forcibly held back a shudder at the look he was giving you.

“I don’t believe you.” He stated, matter of fact. “Why don’t I message him for you? Wait! We could double date this weekend, that would be perfect. I’m sure Yoongi would be down for that.”

You grimaced.

Every cell in your body was telling you that Yoongi would not be down for that.

“I don’t think Yoongi is the double dating type of guy.”

Jimin waved you off, clearly still proud of himself for coming up with such a genius idea to set you up. You were going to do everything in your power to keep that from happening.

“Yoongi will go, I’ll make sure of it.”

Clearly you knew who wore the pants in that relationship.

It was a funny thought, the image of Jimin bossing around his vampire boyfriend who had probably worn a permanent scowl on his face for decades.

“Jimin.. I appreciate you trying to help, but I think this is something I need to do on my own okay?”

He frowned, and you almost felt bad. Your boss was a sweetheart, almost too pure for his own good. His heart was two sizes too big, and you hated disappointing people. But there was no way you could go on a double date with a killer. The thought was just revolting.

“I’ll message him in my own time, okay? I promise.”

It was silent for three beats of your heart, until Jimin was letting out a defeated sigh, pursing his lips as his shoulders slightly dropped. “Fine.” He muttered.

Cute.

“Why are you even still here? I thought you wanted to start spending more time with Yoongi.”

At the sound of his boyfriends name, the orange haired male was perking up again, smile gracing his features once more. “Oh yeah! I guess I got distracted hanging out with you.”

Pestering you, was more like it.

“Why don’t you head home? I can handle things from here, we usually don’t get any customers near closing anyways.”

It wasn’t a lie. Johnny’s Pizzeria was busy during class hours, since it was close to campus and offered decent food at a cheap price. Anytime during daytime hours, college students would be scattered about the small diner, grabbing a quick lunch between classes.

You felt your mood slightly shift, because you used to be one of those people; hurrying from class to class, never having time to do much other than grab a quick slice and go. Now, you had all the free time you’d need, and the thought was gloomy.

You were a college drop out, and the title made you feel sick. You had dropped out because of your love for writing, but hadn’t even written a single word since you’d left. Your life had gotten twisted, turned upside down so suddenly, that you’d forgotten to even live.

You hated that.

Were you going to spend the rest of your life living in fear? Did you want to?

No, you didn’t.

You had a feeling that Jungkook wasn’t going to leave you alone anytime soon, and he’d given you his word that he wouldn’t sink his pearly whites into you. Of course, his word meant absolute shit to you, but still, it was something.

You needed to make some sort of change.

“___? You okay?” Jimin asked worriedly.

You snapped out of your thoughts, had almost been consumed by them for a short moment. Giving Jimin a slight nod, and a reassuring smile, you agreed.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, just tired I guess.”

He gave you a once over, like he wasn’t quite convinced, but nodded anyways.

“Alright.. Listen, you can close up a little early tonight okay? I won’t mind. Make sure and get some sleep tonight, and I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

You watched him grab his bag from behind the counter, before making his way towards the exit.

“Thanks Jimin, I will.”

He sent you one last Jimin smile, round cheeks and all teeth. “Of course, take care!”

“You too.”

The sound of the bell ringing above the door let you know he’d taken his leave, and you were once again focused back on the task of busing the tables. Picking up the gray plastic tub filled with dirty dishes and cups, you carried it towards the back of the restaurant, setting it down in the kitchen to be cleaned later.

Eyeing the clock, you realized you had two hours left of your shift, and since Jimin had mentioned you closing early, you knew that you only had an hour or so left. There wasn’t much left to clean, and you were thankful that you’d be able to get back to Taehyung’s apartment a little earlier than normal.

Honestly, it truly sucked staying there. It wasn’t because of Taehyung though, but more you. You loved your best friend, and were so thankful to him for letting you stay as long as you had. Yet, the more you stayed there, the more useless you felt.

Like you weren’t in control of anything anymore, not even your own life.

You were an adult, with a functioning apartment waiting for you to return to. You missed your cozy bed and comfy couch, you were homesick in the worst of ways.

You had left college to become more independent, to become a better version of yourself, one that wasn’t ruled and molded by what your parents wanted. But how could you achieve that, when you were hiding away like a coward?

You couldn’t.

Your run in with Jungkook yesterday had somewhat eased your fears, believe it or not. You supposed his words held some sort of truth to them. If he had truly wanted you dead, you’d be buried ten feet underground by now. He could have easily gotten you at any vulnerable moment, yet he hadn’t. You had no idea why, maybe he did enjoy scaring you, and that was all there was to it.

Either way, things had to change.

You needed to move back home, whether your mind was telling you to or not. You were going to listen to your heart instead, insisted that it always knew best.

“Okay then, it’s decided.” You spoke to yourself, mentally patting your back for having the guts to make that decision at all.

As you were tossing the dirty rag into a hamper near the door, you felt an overwhelming feeling of unease pass through you, enough so to send a spine chilling shiver up your back. The air suddenly felt heavy, and the only other time you had ever felt such emotions, was around Jungkook.

Please don’t be here, please.

And to signal your suspicions coming true, the chime to the restaurant went off not a second later.

You felt your pulse still.

Heavy footsteps rang through the otherwise empty room, and you weren’t brave enough to peak around the corner of the kitchen to see who was standing on the other side of the wall. No one ever ate pizza this late, so just knew this wasn’t a coincidence; could feel it in your bones.

Ever so gently, the sound of fingertips tapping against the front counter could be heard. The person obviously wasn’t leaving, and you decided that you were being an absolute idiot. Maybe a person had a sudden craving for cheese pizza at eleven at night. Maybe.

Since it was your job after all, you sucked in a deep breath before hurrying around the corner, plastering on the nicest smile you could muster up as you made your way behind the counter towards the register.

“Hello, sorry about that. I was cleaning up in the back.” You spoke warmly, “What can I get for you?”

It was then that you were brave enough to look up at the person on the other side of the counter, and were pleasantly shocked to find a head of silver hair, instead of raven black.

Not Jungkook then.

You were undoubtedly pleased.

The man was tall, broad, hair swept back and styled away from his face. Body hidden by a black coat that fell to his knees, and as his eyes met your own, the drumming of his fingers instantly stilled.

It made you uneasy, how he didn’t speak, just simply stared at you. His eyes were a certain black, pupils blown and almost eerie with how vacant they seemed. Confusion flourished through you, at the strange man.

Why was he just staring at you, with no expression?

“Can I get you something?” You repeated again, more cautious this time.

It was only then, that the man let a smile stretch over his lips, dimples appearing on each corner, and it was the most sinister smile you’d ever seen. Like the man knew something you didn’t, and it scared you, to the point that your hands gripped the edge of the counter to help keep your balance.

“I do believe you can.” His voice was rich, deep and husky, words carefully calculated and spoken in such a smooth and enticing way, that left you somewhat bothered.

The man’s features were anything but soft, eyes hardened and jaw tense, as if he was restraining himself from saying, doing, something.

“W-what do you need?” You cleared your throat, as a raspy chuckle left his throat at your stuttering; the sound came deep within his chest, and it left your face feeling too warm.

“I’m looking for a friend, yet I see that he’s not here.” His voice drawled, lazily.

“What a shame.”

What the hell?

“Um, who are you looking for? Maybe I can help?” You insisted politely, even though you were extremely wary around the stranger. His mere presence sent warning singles throughout your brain.

The man took a step back, eyes taking a long sweep down your body, as if taking in every detail of you and your uniform, black pants, yellow shirt with a slice of pizza on the right shoulder, and your name right underneath.

“____.” He spoke to himself, your name sounding like a warning as it passed through his lips.

“Your help won’t be necessary, I can come back another time.” His eyes found yours once more, and the eerie smirk was still permanently etched onto his face.

You hoped he didn’t come back.

“Well, okay. Sorry your friend isn’t here, can I at least get you a drink or something?”

You had no idea who the guy was even looking for, having not having even offered up his friends name. You were pretty sure Jimin would never associate himself with this type of guy, all broad and intimidating.

“No thank you, I’m not particularly thirsty tonight.”

You watched as he slid his hand off the counter, slowly, precision in every move he made. He struck you as odd, and you couldn’t quite define him in exact words even if you tried. The man was strange, in a fearful kind of way. Like he demanded respect from whomever he crossed paths with.

“If you want to give me your name, I can ask around tomorrow to see if anyone here knows you?”

At your offer, the smile slowly slipped off of his face, eyes seeming to drip heavy intent, of what you didn’t know. Weren’t sure you wanted to know.

“My name?” He questioned rhetorically, as if he was too proud to answer at first.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind giving it to someone with such a pretty face.” He spoke, hauntingly.

You could only stare, fingers frozen to the counter and eyes transfixed on his own, almost as if you couldn’t look away.

“My name is Namjoon.”

/~/

Your feet felt heavy as you made your way up a familiar flight of stairs. It had been so long since you’d been home - even within the same block as your apartment - that being back, it felt good.

Felt right.

The bag flung over your right shoulder was heavy with your belongings, but not as heavy as your heart as you realized that you’d be on your own once again. Though it was your choice to move back in, you couldn’t help but remember the moment you told Taehyung you’d be returning home, and his protests at the topic.

“What! You’re going back already? But you just got here…”

You saw the pout of his plush lips, shoulders sagging as he held the small angry puppy in his arms. You both were cuddled on the couch, watching some random Netflix movie that wasn’t very good, but it was cozy and you felt safe.

“Tae..” You said weakly, not liking the disappointed eyes he was giving you. It hurt your heart.

“I’ve been here for over a week! I don’t want to be a burden on you anymore..”

At that, his face looked struck with disbelief, his body sitting upright as he sat down the little puppy between the two of you, who instantly starting chewing on the blanket that covered your legs.

“You’re not a burden ___! I love having you here! Who is going to do face masks with me every night now? Who can make delicious macaroni like you can?”

You stifled a laugh, reaching out to grab his hand and offering a reassuring squeeze. You loved your best friend, weirdness and all. And you were going to miss him, because honestly, it was nice having someone else around to talk to. Where it wasn’t just you and your thoughts.

But you knew you needed to do this, for yourself.

“I’m only fifteen minutes away, it’ll be just like it was before! Plus, I’m not leaving until this weekend, so we still have a few days left.”

Though it wasn’t enough to convince him completely, Taehyung still sent you a small smile, before picking up the puppy again, once it started chewing on the cushion of his couch.

“Tannie’s going to miss you so much.” He sighed dramatically, and you smiled at the sight of the small dog in the arms of a much larger puppy, and laughed, heart feeling a little too warm.

You supposed you were going to miss them too.

It had taken a good twenty minutes for Taehyung to even let you leave through the front door, whether by conveniently misplacing your apartment keys, to accidentally relocating your bag.

You found it cute, in an annoying sort of way. You had hugged both him and the little pupper goodbye, before grabbing an Uber back to your apartment. It was Friday, which meant you had a good three days to get yourself acquainted with your apartment, before having to work again.

Jimin had given you the day off, after you told him you were moving back in. He had sounded too chipper over the phone, raising your suspicions, and when you’d asked him what was up, he replied with a suspicious ‘I’m just happy for you!’.

A little too happy, was what you thought at the time.

You’d let it go, thankful that he’d given you the time off. It was still light out, the sun just starting to fade into the sky, and you were feeling okay, happy to be back at your apartment and happy to get your life back on track once again.

That was, until you rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and saw a familiar head of black hair in front of your door.

What the hell was he doing there.

Suddenly, all the courage and long for independence you’d once held inside, came flowing out like lava. Why the moment you decided to change yourself for the better, was he reappearing to make your life hell again?

You were angry, and for once the anger layered the fear.

“What the hell are you doing here?” You spat, as you made your way towards him.

He had been leaning against the front of your door, one leg bent at the knee and foot propped up on the door, while the other was stretched out in front of him. His head was hung, as if asleep, but you knew better, and hands were tucked into the pockets of a familiar black coat.

At your voice, his head snapped up and attention fully on you. His once emotionless face now held a prideful smirk, as he watched your heated figure stomp towards him.

“Little human, was wondering when you’d show up.”

His voice made the hairs on your neck stand up, and as you came to a stop before him, you let your bag drop from your shoulder uncaring.

“What- why are you here? How did you even know I was coming back?”

You were almost too shocked to sound angry, because how the hell had he known you were planning on moving out of Taehyung’s house? Unless he really was stalking you, and if that was the case, you had a much bigger problem on your hands..

The only two people you had told were Tae, and Jimin.

Jimin.

Oh my god.

“Oh no..” You spoke aloud, closing your eyes as you remembered how suspiciously evil your boss had sounded on the phone.

The sound of laughing broke you from your thoughts, and you were met with Jungkook’s eyes staring at you, lips turned up into a grin and eyes still consumed by a black void.

“Yeah, Jimin hyung said you’d be here. told me to help you get settled in.”

You wanted to scream.

“Well Jimin is an idiot, I don’t want you here, so leave.”

You ignored how the grin slipped from his lips, and the same expressionless stare was once again rooted to his face. You thought he looked better that way, helped really emphasize on the killer aspect of his personality.

“That’s not what he said.”

You ignored him, fishing for your keys in the pocket of your jacket.

It was odd, how you weren’t as afraid as you’d thought you’d be. Maybe it had to do with the overflowing amount of irritation and dislike you held for the vampire in front of you, or maybe it had to do with the new mindset you’d taken on about living your life despite the circumstances.

Or maybe, it was something else, you weren’t sure.

You just wanted him gone.

“Yeah? What did he tell you?” You asked, giving him a quick glance. “And move, you’re blocking my door.”

Surprisingly, he stepped to the side, just enough to let you access your lock, but not enough to where you weren’t forced to have your arm brush against his chest. You almost hesitated, because you were vulnerable in the position, and all he’d have to do is lean down and take a chunk out of your neck.

“He told me you had a little crush.”

You dropped your keys.

“What!” You whirled around, coming face to chest with him, and when you looked up he seemed entirely thrilled at your outburst.

“That’s insane! I- I don’t”

“He even said you went to Yoongi of all people, just to get my number.”

You couldn’t help but hate how arrogant he looked, and you wanted nothing more than to smack it right off his face. If only it wouldn’t cost you your life in return.

“I did go to Yoongi, but it had nothing to do with getting your number!” You fought back.

How quickly his face changed from smug to annoyed was an understatement, and it had you taking a quick step back, as you bent down to swipe your keys from the floor.

You watched his jaw tense, muscles flexing under the skin, and eyes flashing a hint of red.

“You went and saw Yoongi? Why, when?”

Why did he care?

“It’s none of your business, so stop fucking stalking me and get lost.” Your voice quivered slightly, and you were quick when entering the key into your front door and twisting.

It opened with ease, and as you pushed the door open and quickly kicked your bag inside, you felt a strong grip on your elbow, turning your body to face him and bringing you snug against his own.

“I asked you a question, little human.” He spoke low, precise. It sent shivers through you. “And I expect an answer.”

You gulped. Your hands came to push against his chest, and when he didn’t bulge, you felt your anger slowly being replaced by fear once again.

“Like I said, n-none of your business.” You spat, and his grip on you tightened.

It was nearing painful, and for a split second you were reminded of what he was, what he could do, and your eyes held a sense of pleading as they stared up at him.

“Maybe I was wrong about you.” He whispered, face inching down near you, as his nose brushed along your own softly.

“Maybe you aren’t as weak as I’d hoped.”

You inhaled deeply, body shaking in his grasp, noticing how he smelled of fresh cotton and sandalwood, the mixture of scents all too pleasing, it left your head spinning.

“Just let me go.” You whispered, in a last attempt.

And he did.

He let you go with ease, a newfound recollection in his eyes that you didn’t quite understand, and it seemed neither did he. You took the quick second of distraction to fling yourself into your apartment, the action seeming to shock him back into the moment, as he took a step forward.

“Don’t think this is the last time you’ll be seeing me, little human.” A hand on each side of your door frame. “We have things to discuss.”

You didn’t want to discuss anything with him, ever.

“Fat chance at that happening.” You spat, looking at him with disgust. Your body was till thrumming from being so close to him, a weird sensation in your chest that was unrecognizable.

He sneered, obviously not pleased with your attitude, and went to take a step forward before he was abruptly stopped, his body being forced back as if he just ran straight into a wall.

You looked at him confused, as sudden realization crossed his face.

Looking down, you noticed how the tips of his boots were just outside your door frame, still touching the cement of outside and unable to move any closer.

He can’t come in. You realized in shock, eyes widening to stare up at him.

Yoongi’s words suddenly reappearing from your last meeting with him. ‘About as hard as it’d be for Jungkook to step foot in yours, I suppose.’

You hadn’t invited him into your house. Taehyung had invited him in to his place, that’s how Jungkook had been able to enter.

You were safe after all.

“Wow.” You breathed, a smile breaking out over your face. “Guess we won’t be discussing things after all.”

You watched his lip turn up in annoyance, and you were nothing but thrilled.

“Enjoy this moment while it lasts, human.” He growled. “You can’t hide in here forever.”

Sure you could.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” You replied, all too amused and clearly showing it on your face.

“Oh and Jungkook?” His name seared your tongue as you spoke, and you watched his eyes burn a bright crimson once more, pupils blowing out into a sea of blood red.

“Why don’t you fuck off.”

And with that, you slammed the door in his face.

You were safe.

#bts scenario #bts au #jungkook scenario #jungkook au #bangtan scenarios #bts vampire au #jungkook vampire au #bts #bangtan #jeon jungkook #slow burn #jungkook

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Chapters 1-12

by Dan H

Wednesday, 01 August 2007

Dan reviews the final Harry Potter book chapter by painful chapter.~

I really liked the first three Harry Potter books. They were brilliant, engaging, cleverly written, masterfully paced and - as AS Byatt put it - just scary enough. They were genuinely good children's fiction, of the kind that a grown up wouldn't feel too bad about reading in public. Then JKR got famous, and her editors stopped doing their job. And she got sucked into a nightmare whirlwind of publicity. And it went downhill from there. I hate Potter now. Genuinely, vehemently hate it. I hate it precisely because I used to love it, and it angers me no end that the books I enjoyed, about a boy wizard and his boarding-school adventures, have been swallowed by this "phenomenon."

The Harry Potter books aren't "books" any more. They're events. That's why people queue outside a bookshop at midnight to buy a copy, as if somehow starting to read a book an hour later than somebody else makes the reading experience different. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have a burning desire to exorcise the spirit of Potter from my soul, and I intend to do it by writing a chapter-by-chapter review of the final instalment. There may be some delays while I fling the book across the room. So, without further ado... Chapter One: The Dark Lord Ascending In which Voldemort borrows Lucius Malfoy's wand. I should first take a quick moment to say that his book managed to piss me off before chapter one even started by having a quote from Aeschylus at the start. I mean for fuck's sake, what is this, a 1993 Vampire sourcebook? Anyway, chapter one is called The Dark Lord Ascending although it should more properly be called "The Dark Lord Sitting In A Dining Room And Being A Bit Mean To The Malfoys But Basically Doing Nothing." Fans of the series will of course be intimately familiar with scenes of Voldemort Doing Nothing. He's been at it for three books now. This chapter is particularly full of fine examples of the Dark Lord's sinister aptitude for inactivity. The action - or rather inaction - takes place in the pleasingly alliterative grounds of Malfoy Manor. Voldemort and his wacky minions discuss the progress of their sinister plan to take over the Wizarding World. They bicker about when Harry is going to be moved from his present location, and then they do a lot of exposition about how they are going to take over the Ministry of Magic. This is particularly heavy handed.

"It's a start," said Voldemort. "But Thicknesse is only one man. Scrimgeour must be surrounded by our people before I act. One failed attempt on the Minister's life will set me back a long way." "Yes, my Lord - that is true - but you know, as the head of the department of magical law enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the Minister himself, but also with the heads of all the other Ministry departments. It will, I think, be easy now that we have such a high-ranking official under our control, to subjugate the others, and then we can all work together to bring Scrimgeour down."

Just in case you didn't catch that, they've got control of a man named Thicknesse, got that, Thicknesse, who is head of the department of magical law enforcement, and they are going to use him to get control over all the other ministers, and use that to take down Scrimgeour, and then take control of the ministry of magic. Remember in the first book, where the Philosopher's Stone was barely seen, seldom discussed, and it wasn't until the very end of the book that you actually found out why Lord Voldemort wanted it so badly? Remember how cool and exciting that was. Damn I miss that. While the Death Eaters bicker about whether their dastardly plan which they could have enacted at any time over the past three years is actually going to work or not, we are painfully aware that there is a figure, horribly suspended above the table in the centre of the room. Helpless and silent, we are forced to watch the black-hearted villains discuss their tedious-but-horrific plans, while this figure suffers above us. Imagine, then, how our horror is compounded when we discover that this innocent creature who the Dark Lord torments so casually is none other than ... ... Charity Burbage! You know. Charity Burbage. She taught Muggle Studies at Hogwarts. Remember Muggle Studies? I think Hermione takes it in her third year. Or something. So anyway, she dies. And this makes a Meaningful Statement About The Nature Of Death. Students of literary history will of course recall that up until 2000's Goblet of Fire, there had never been a death in any children's book ever written. The Death Eaters talk some more. They make Nazi salutes (seriously: "in silence, both raised their left arms in a kind of salute") and are racist about Muggles and Mudbloods. Chapter Two: In Memoriam In which Harry gets angry at a Daily Prophet article and shouts "Lies!" For chapter two, we are back following Harry Potter. I confidently predict that we shall never leave his side again. In chapter two, Harry cuts his finger on the mirror that Sirius gave him. Then he reads two articles about Albus Dumbledore. These give us more information than we could possibly want about the plot-dumping old coot. Tragically, it seems fated to be but the tip of a very large Dumbledore-shaped iceberg. And these articles are long. Like really, really long. It's basically like JK Rowling took her fifteen-year old notes about the character of Dumbledore, copy-pasted them into the text, and attributed them to a guy with a silly name. The purpose of this chapter, it seems, is to make us believe that there was more to Dumbledore than we ever expected. He had thought he knew Dumbledore quite well, but ever since reading this obituary he had been forced to recognise that he had barely known him at all. Never once had he imagined Dumbledore's childhood or youth; it was as though he had sprung into being as Harry had known him, venerable and silver-haired and old. Now I'm sorry, but that's just cheating. Dumbledore spends six books being a moderately entertaining but utterly generic White Haired Old Mentor Figure. Harry's belief that Dumbledore had "sprung into being ... venerable and silver-haired and old" is of course literally true. JK Rowling invented him to be a mentor to her protagonist, and at no point does he act like anything else. Dumbledore spends six books as a plot device. Asking us to suddenly see him as a real person is pathetic. She might as well have gone the whole hog and written "Suddenly, Harry realised that JK Rowling was a really brilliant writer, and all her characters were really complex and interesting." Harry packs his bags, and prepares to leave on his Epic Quest To Defeat Voldemort Using The Spells He Learned In His Second Year Duelling Class. Chapter Three: The Dursleys Departing In which the Dursleys Depart, and it's actually quite touching. This chapter, unlike the previous two chapters, is not a waste of good wood pulp. We see Harry being taken away from the Dursleys for the last time, and the Dursleys themselves being taken into hiding so that Voldemort cannot target them. This chapter actually contains something approaching a significant event, and even more rarely, some actual semblance of character development on behalf of the otherwise zero-dimensional Dursley family.

"I don't think you're a waste of space."

It's a touch of the old style. The Dursleys remain, to the end, a rather pathetic caricature of a middle class family (and really, is there any easier target in the world than the middle class suburbanite?) but Dudley's admission that he doesn't entirely hate Harry, and that Harry did in fact save his life, carries a genuine emotional weight. So the Dursleys depart in the company of two utterly forgettable Order of the Phoenix members, and we never hear from them again. From here on in we live forever in the magical world of Hogwarts, where fourteen year olds fight dragons, and Dark Lords are desperate to get teaching gigs. Chapter Four: The Seven Potters In which Harry's mail client goes down. After the Dursleys leave, the Order of the Phoenix show up, and explain that Potter can't escape by magic, because he's still underage, and the "Trace" which detects magic being performed around underage wizards would allow the Ministry to locate him instantly. So instead they decide to go by broomstick / Thestral / flying motorbike, with six "decoy" Potters, created using Polyjuice potion. It all goes a bit tits up. They run into a pack of thirty Death Eaters, who start flinging killing curses at them. Harry responds with the spells he learned in his second year duelling class, and manages to take out about half a dozen of the pursuing Death Eaters with Stupefy and Impedimentia charms, which they are clearly incapable of blocking. Note that since Harry is "still under the Trace," his use of underaged magic should have immediately notified the Ministry to his presence, allowing them to track him trivially. After all, that's why they couldn't just Apparate out of there in the first place. Right? So Harry and the rest of the Order fight the Death Eaters. During this battle, however, the Order of the Phoenix suffers a Terrible Loss.

"Hedwig - Hedwig -" But the owl lay motionless and pathetic as a toy on the floor of her cage. He could not take it in, and his terror for the others was paramount.

Leaving aside the fact that I've seen better writing on fanfiction.net (I mean really "He could not take it in and his terror for the others was paramount," what the fuck?), I think it's telling that so far the casualties of this most dark and terrible war are a teacher who we never actually saw in a previous book, and Harry's pet owl. But the whole thing is presented in this massively portentous way that says This Is A Significant Event. I'm sorry, but it's an owl. Not only is it an owl, but it's an owl whose sole function is to deliver Harry's post. So they fight the Death Eaters, and one of them gets his cowl knocked off to reveal that he is none other than ... ... ready for this? There's a lot of these big revelations coming up... ... he is none other than Stanley Shunpike! Stanley Shunpike ... the guy off Knight Bus? Yeah, I don't care either. Harry tries to disarm Stan with his trademark Expelliarmus curse, at which point Stan can identify him immediately. This is apparently significant, although since the Ministry is supposed to be able to tell the moment he performs underage magic of any sort anyway, I'm not sure why he's so shocked. Some thing go wrong, and Hagrid flying tackles a Death Eater and gets all badly hurt and stuff. The next chapter is called "Fallen Warrior." But don't worry, Hagrid doesn't die. Because people only die if it won't get in the way of the plot. I wish I'd had JK Rowling to explain death to me when I was a child. Chapter Five: Fallen Warrior In which JK Rowling talks to us about the nature of death. Hagrid doesn't die. He and Harry are taken in by Mr and Mrs Tonks, Harry's tooth (which got knocked out in the previous chapter) is regrown by magic. Harry and Hagrid travel by Portkey to the Burrow. Everybody else shows up one at a time, taking much longer than they needed to. Lupin gives Harry a stern talking to about not trying to disarm his enemies. You see, the Death Eaters don't understand the idea of disarming your opponent. They're far too evil to consider the advantages of being armed when your opponent isn't. Or something.

"Of course not," said Lupin, "but the Death Eaters - frankly most people! - would have expected you to attack back! Expelliarmus is a useful spell, Harry, but the Death Eaters seem to think it is your signature move, and I urge you not to let it become so!"

Essentially this little speech, like the bit about Dumbledore in chapter two, reads a lot like JK Rowling trying to pretend that her weaknesses as a writer are really deliberate character traits. The fact that Harry always uses Expelliarmus in a fight is a limitation of miss Rowling's imagination, her idea of non-evil things to do in a fight is strictly limited. Trying to claim that this is somehow saying something profound about Harry's naivete or his merciful nature is hogwash. Most everybody makes it back in one piece. George (of Fred and George) loses an ear, which apparently can't be cured because it's "Dark Magic". And Mad-Eye-Moody dies. Now, I kinda liked Mad-Eye, but the character I actually liked was Mad-Eye as played by Barty Crouch under the influence of Polyjuice potion. Now admittedly, that character is pretty much identical to the "real" Mad-Eye, but that's rather strong testimony to how poorly developed he actually was. This would all be fair enough, but JK then insists on making it very clear to us that there is Death happening and that Death is a very important part of the book, because it's important that children be told about Death. So we get glorious lines like:

Harry could not quite believe it. Mad-Eye dead; it could not be ... Mad-Eye, so tough, so brave, the consummate survivor ...

And...

Nobody seemed to know what to do. Tonks was crying silently into a hand-kerchief: she had been close to Mad-Eye, Harry knew, his favourite and his protegee at the Ministry of Magic.

And of course the execrable:

The suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence.

The first two are just the old show-don't tell problem, which JK never really got over. She's never really worked out how to convey something to her audience without just telling it to them directly. The last line, though, is just completely fucking amateurish. It's up there with "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil." Leaving aside the fact that, yet again, she's attempting to convey the information that the people in the room have been struck by the suddenness and completeness of death by saying "the suddenness and completeness of death was with them" she also seems to think that "was with them like a presence" is anything other than nonsense. I mean, how can something be with you without being like a presence? It's a completely empty simile. It's functionally equivalent to saying "the suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a thing" or "the suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a thing that was with them." I really hate this book. Chapter Six: The Ghoul In Pyjamas In which we get a plot dump about Horcruxes. In chapter six we have a refreshing change of pace. And by "refreshing" I mean "frustrating" and by "change of pace" I mean "slow to a painful crawl as we watch Harry and co sit around doing nothing for several days." So Bill and Fleur are getting married. We spend an inordinate amount of time talking about this. Mrs Weasley is entirely preoccupied with it. Presumably because she's a woman and therefore doesn't understand important things like war, death, and her son losing an ear. In chapter six, Harry Ron and Hermione explain to each other in great detail the plans they have made for their upcoming battle against Voldemort. So we learn how Hermione mind-raped her parents in order to keep them safe (she cries about this for four seconds, Harry and Ron do not comment). We learn how Ron has dressed up the Weasleys' pet Ghoul in an unconvincing red wig, so that nobody will suspect that he's really out to kill Voldemort. The thing that bugs me about this chapter is that it tries to provide answers to questions which I wouldn't have thought were important until JK drew attention to them. If the book had just been about Messers Potter, Weasley and Granger hunting some Dark Lord ass, I'd be totally onside. Putting this chapter in to "explain" why Voldemort doesn't just capture the Weasleys and torture the hell out of them just highlights how ludicrous it is that he doesn't. Hell, once he's taken over the Ministry of Magic, he could very easily haul in everybody Potter has ever cared about, and start hacking bits off of them until Harry gives himself up. But he doesn't. Because Ron has cunningly disguised a Ghoul as "Ron With a horrible disease and a completely different face". So they'll leave the Weasleys alone. They're considerate, those Death Eaters. The other thing we find out is that Hermione has a copy of Secrets of the Darkest Art, otherwise known as the Big Book of Horcruxes. She proceeds to explain in excruciating detail exactly how Horcruxes work. Because lord knows we wouldn't want anybody reading the book to draw their own conclusions about that sort of thing. That would imply that reading a work of fiction was something other than the process of learning facts about the author's world. We can't have that now can we. Similarly, we get things like:

"I wonder when Dumbledore removed it from the library ... if he didn't do it until he was headmaster, I bet Voldemort got all the instruction he needed from here." "Why did he have to ask Slughorn how to make a Horcrux then, if he'd already read that?" asked Ron. "He only approached Slughorn to find out what would happen if you split your soul into seven," said Harry.

Which, let's face it, reads like the Q&A section from JKR's official website. This isn't Harry talking to Ron, this is Rowling talking to her readers. At least, to the sorts of readers who ask that sort of question. The chapter ends with no progress having been made towards finding any of the Horcruxes. Chapter Seven: The Will of Albus Dumbledore In which Ginny kisses Harry Like She Has Never Kissed Him Before Chapter seven is a mystery dump. Harry wakes up shouting "Grigorovitch!" and we are left to wonder what this mysterious name means. It's Harry's birthday. Ron gets him a book about pulling chicks. Ginny kisses him as she has never kissed him before. The Minister for Magic shows up and tells Harry, Ron and Hermione that they have all been left stuff in Dumbledore's will. Then he makes an inept attempt to grill them for information. In Dumbledore's Will, Ron is left the Deluminator (the thing Dumbledore uses at the start of the first book to put out the lights in Privet Drive), Hermione is left a book of fairy tales, and Harry is left the Snitch from his first ever game of Quidditch. And the Sword of Godric Gryffindor, but he's not given that. We are then told that all of these gifts are Very Very Mysterious but that Dumbledore Must Have Had A Plan and therefore it is Important To Work Out What Each Of The Gifts Means. Once again, nothing happens. Ron tells Harry to keep his filthy vacillating hands out of his sister's long, sweet-smelling hair. Team Potter wonders why Dumbledore left them the bunch of crap he left them. And of course they wonder why the irritating old coot didn't tell them what was going on while he was still alive, or give Harry the Sword of Godric Gryffindor when he still had the chance.

"And why couldn't he have just told me?" Harry said quietly. "It was there, it was right there on the wall of his office during all our talks last year! If he wanted me to have it, why didn't he give it to me then?"

Going by previous form, the answer to this all important question about Dumbledore's already spurious motivation probably has something to do with love. Everybody gets ready for the wedding. Because a wedding is exactly what you should be thinking about when a Nazi wizard with no nose is taking over the world. Chapter Eight: The Wedding In which Voldemort takes over the world while Harry is at a wedding. One of the Weasleys marries one of the characters with a stupid accent. Harry is Polyjuiced into a red-headed stepchild so that he can hide amongst the guests. Harry then has to babysit an offensive aunt of the Weasley clan, who says horrible things about everybody. Harry, being a man who has his priorities sorted out, decides that the best use of his time, seeing as how he's destined to destroy the Dark Lord and everything, is to get really obsessive about Dumbledore's family history. To be fair to the kid, it's not like he was going to be able to get anything done at the wedding anyway. So we learn more tedious crap about how Dumbledore's mother was like evil or something, and he had a sister who was a squib. We also learn ... ... get ready for another big revelation ... ... this one's really big ... ... no seriously ... we also learn that the Dumbledores used to live in Godric's Hollow! Doesn't that shed a whole new light on the other books? Can't you just see it all now, how Dumbledore's every glance, every gesture was just screaming "Harry! My family once lived in the same general location as your family!" Truly, we are in the presence of a master storyteller. We also find out that Grigorovitch was a wandmaker, that Voldemort is still evil, and that Voldemort has killed the Minister of Magic and taken control of the Wizarding government.

The Ministry has fallen. Scrimgeour is dead. They are coming.

Okay, I get it. It's punchy. But for the love of all that is holy, we're a hundred and thirty-three pages in, the Death Eaters have finally done something interesting, and we miss it because we're stuck following Harry, who is stuck at a wedding and angsting about his old headmaster. Chapter Nine: A Place To Hide In which Team Potter sits around doing nothing. Potter and his pals flee the wedding and hide out in a greasy spoon cafe, where they are set upon by Dolohov and Thorfin Rowle. Presumably these names mean something to somebody - perhaps to people who have religiously followed JK Rowling's "Wizard of the Month" updates on her website. These two Death Eaters fail to capture the Potterites, which should come as no surprise to anybody. They decide to modify the memories of these two men, in order to cover their escape. Because lord knows a couple of mindless zombies won't attract attention.

"But I've never done a memory charm." "Nor have I," said Hermione, "but I know the theory."

By "but I know the theory" she of course means "I mind-raped my parents into thinking they were completely different people who wanted to move to Australia, and by the way I told you fuckers that - like - two chapters ago and you didn't offer me any support or sympathy." They decide they need somewhere safe, and they decide to go to Grimmauld Place, which is apparently safe because the late, lamented Mad-Eye had set up "protections" there, so that Snape couldn't get in and kill them all (remember that, although JK Rowling told us categorically that Snape was a good guy, we're supposed to ignore this information and keep acting like we think he's a villain). These "protections" turn out to be a tongue-tying curse that lasts for eight seconds (and can't Snape cast spells silently anyway?) and a Spooky Dumbledore Ghost, which goes away once you tell it you aren't Snape. This chapter is mercifully short. Chapter Ten: Kreacher's Tale In which we are told firmly that Sirius black was NOT GAY. Harry pokes around Grimmauld place, finding Sirius' old collection of bikini model posters, photograph of himself at the age of one, and a letter from Lily Potter which basically reads: "Dear Sirius, I'm really glad we aren't going get horribly killed in the next six months. Baby Harry is wonderful and I love him very much. So much that I'll make him immune to dark magic by the sheer loving power of my loving loving love. Love Lily." And of course, the letter ends on this note:

Bathilda drops in most days, she's a fascinating old thing with the most amazing stories about Dumbledore, I'm not sure he'd be pleased if he knew! I don't know how much to believe, actually, because it seems incredible that Dumbledore...

The rest of the letter is missing. You fucking hack, JK Rowling. Look, I get it. You've got a bunch of Dumbledore backplot you want to give us. You've told us that. Just give us the plot dump, or don't give us the plot dump. I don't care at this stage. Nothing's going to be as cool as "he was Ron from the future" anyway. Next to Sirius' room is the bedroom of ... ... wait for it ... ... Sirius's brother: Regulus Arcturus Black. It's a good thing that he put his middle name on his door really. And a good thing that no two people in the entire Wizarding world have the same initials. So they've found RAB, but no magic locket of Horcruxness. They ransack the house, then realise that Mundungus probably nicked off with it. Bastard. So they go to Kreacher, and he gives them a bit of backstory which, unusually is genuinely touching. It turns out that crotchety old Kreacher was given to Lord Voldemort by Regulus, and Voldemort used him to "test" the defences around his locket Horcrux, making Kreacher drink the poison so that he could hide the artefact underneath it. Curiously, this led the Dark Lord to believe that his defences were completely secure, instead of the more sensible opinion that his defences could be breached by anybody with access to a tractable house-elf. Anyway, Kreacher was all wrecked by this, and when Regulus found out he turned against Voldemort (possibly the genocide was giving him the willies as well). He got Kreacher to take him back to the cave, drank the poison himself, and gave Kreacher the Horcrux with instructions that he should destroy it. Which is actually kind of sweet, and I'm damned certain Harry and co would never dream of sacrificing themselves for a house-elf. So they decide to be nice to Kreacher, and this gets him onside. They then send Kreacher looking for Mundugus, so they can get the Horcrux back off him. Chapter Eleven: The Bribe In which Harry Potter bravely lets a house-elf do his job for him. Harry Potter, realising that in order to defeat Voldemort he must use the Dark Lord's own methods, however despicable they might be, spends this chapter sitting on his arse doing nothing. Not that Voldemort has anything to fear: he's had decades to practice his sitting-on-his-arse-doing-nothing, and Harry's arse-sitting seems amateurish by comparison. So anyway. Harry sends Kreacher to get Mundungus back, so he can ask for the Horcrux. While he is sitting around waiting, Remus Lupin shows up and acts like an asshole. He informs Harry that Tonks is now pregnant, and therefore he has decided to join Harry on his quest, because werewolves shouldn't be allowed near small children or something. We also find out that Voldemort and his minions have continued their cunning plan to imitate the Nazis and have started making Muggle-Borns "register", and presumably wear little yellow stars as well, because in case you hadn't noticed the Death Eaters are a little bit like the Nazis and Voldemort's desire to wipe out the Muggle-Borns is a little bit like the Holocaust. Clever that, isn't it. Kudos to you JK Rowling. It's about time somebody took a stand against genocide. Anyway, I digress. Remus shows up and acts like an asshole. Harry acts like an asshole back, and they get into this huge "who can be the biggest asshole" competition. This shows us that Harry has "grown up" over the course of the books. We know this because he is now acting like a forty year old novelist thinks a teenager would act, rather than actually displaying any form of personality or motivation. Remus leaves to go back to his "wife and child", but not before giving us another one of the by now familiar "this is why this book totally makes sense and doesn't suck" speeches. When asked (very sensibly) why Voldemort doesn't just come into the open now that he's - y'know - taken over the goddamned world already, Lupin insists that:

"Voldemort is playing a very clever game. Declaring himself might have provoked open rebellion: remaining masked has crafted confusion, uncertainty and fear."

Once again, JK drops the "show, don't tell" ball, by having somebody inform us that Voldemort is being clever, when in fact all he's doing is letting Harry slip through his fingers by pulling his punches when he should be rounding people up by the truckload. I mean what, precisely, does Voldemort have to fear from open rebellion? And if he wants to create confusion uncertainty and fear, then I'm sure a couple of senseless massacres could do the same job with fewer administrative overheads. Eventually Kreacher, who is the only person around here still doing his job right, brings Mundungus back, and he reveals that he gave the amulet to Dolores "Wasn't I Killed by Centaurs Already?" Umbridge as a bribe. So Harry is off to the Ministry of magic. Chapter Twelve: Magic is Might In which we get yet another Polyjuice sequence. One thing I'll say for JK Rowling: you've got to respect her plot devices. While nothing will ever top the Room of Requirement for sheer brass-bollocked "yeah, this thing does whatever the hell I need it to" style, Polyjuice potion pulls its weight and then some. So Harry, Ron and Hermione polyjuice themselves into Ministry employees and walk right in through the front door. This reminds us, as if we didn't know already, that the Ministry is run by morons who, despite Polyjuice potion being common enough that an above-average twelve year old can whip up a batch, haven't thought to take any precautions against their members being waylaid and replaced by rebellious seventeen year olds. Perhaps Voldemort couldn't increase security too much on account of his not wanting to "provoke open rebellion." He's just too damned clever for his own good, that Lord Voldemort. This chapter is almost Tolkeinesque in its irrelevance. It essentially chronicles, in painstaking detail, the way in which Team Potter knock out some Ministry officials, polyjuice into them, and walk into the ministry. On their way in they hear terrible things about Mudbloods and Blood-Traitors being put on trial. For a Dark Lord, Voldemort is clearly very concerned about due process. The chapter takes its name from an irrelevant but kinda cool piece of window-dressing. The phrase "Magic is Might" is engraved onto the base of the new (black) statue which has replaced the old frolicking magical creatures motif.

Harry looked more closely and realised that what he had thought were decoratively carved thrones were actually mounds of carved humans: hundreds and hundreds of naked bodies, men, women and children, all with rather stupid, ugly faces, twisted and pressed together to support the weight of the handsomely robed wizards.

Now that's some serious Dark Lord style. But you'd think with his overall agenda of world conquest and crushing the Muggles and the Muggle-born beneath his pallid iron-shod heel, he'd be less concerned about hiding in the shadows. Oh, also in this chapter we find out some more shit about Dumbledore or something. And Snape has been made headmaster of Hogwarts. And Voldemort is still looking for this wand-maker guy. Next: The return of Dolores Umbridge, and more pointless backplot.

Themes: J.K. Rowling, Books, Young Adult / Children

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Comments (go to latest)

http://pozorvlak.livejournal.com/ at 20:39 on 2009-02-08

That, my friend, was awesome. You had at least twice as many quotable lines in that piece as JKR managed throughout the entire book.

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Rami at 06:53 on 2009-02-09

Welcome to Dan's Fans -- meetings are every Saturday at 11... ;-)

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Arthur B at 09:16 on 2009-02-09

You realise, of course, that there's only one way this can end: sooner or later someone, somewhere, is going to write Harry Potter fanfic where Dan is a character. (He could teach all the kids physics and he could be in a big snark feud with Snape and Snape will challenge him to a duel and Harry will be all GO DAN SHOW THAT MEANY WHO'S BOSS and Hermione will be all OH WOW PHYSICS IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN MAGIC I AM TOTALLY A SCIENCE NERD NOW and Ron is all MAN IF I WERE GROWN UP I WOULD TOTALLY SMOOCH DAN RIGHT NOW and Dumbledore is all MAN IF EVERYONE I KISSED DIDN'T TURN INTO HITLER I WOULD TOTALLY SMOOCH DAN RIGHT NOW and Dan beats Snape in duel with science and Snape is all I WAS WRONG TO SAY SCIENCE IS LAME YOU SHOULD STAY HERE AT HOGWARTS AND TEACH US ALL THE WAY OF THE MUGGLES and Dan is all like NO WAY THE KIDS OF ALL NATIONS NEED ME and he turns around and punches Voldemort in the jaw so hard his head comes off and then he takes off and flies away to the Moooooooooooooon....)

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Wardog at 10:54 on 2009-02-09

But Dan doesn't have long dark hair, skin like freshly poured cream and violet eyes....

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Arthur B at 11:03 on 2009-02-09

Aaaand there's my cue to post a link to the Sparklypoo comic.

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https://me.yahoo.com/a/tjLTVHEducFb4rKDHU5DukBHtQcCbTVMEEq55v0CxV4-#5e156 at 19:43 on 2009-07-29

Brilliant, absolutely hilarious, I want to show the rest of the Harry Potter fanbase your review. I wonder if my inertia could ever be on a par with Voldemort's. "My inertia is with me like something that is with me."

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http://lunabell14.myopenid.com/ at 22:50 on 2010-07-27

I wonder if cutting out all of that unnecessary Dumbledore backstory would've helped the pacing, or at least cut down some of the reading. Seriously, even when it was first introduced, I couldn't help but think "Why are you telling us about this? How will this help with Harry's quest, at all?" And every time it was brought up, it just continued to irritate me. I honestly don't understand why her editors didn't insist she cut it out.

#Ferretbrain #Harry Potter #J.K. Rowling #Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows #Dan H

6 notes · View notes

borathae · 2 years

Note

SIBIII CH34🥺🥺

I MEAN WE KNEW YG WAS COMING BACK... BUT DAMN SOMEBODY ELSE HAS RETURNED! N IM LOVING THIS ONE AS WELL!!😭😚

I THINK IT MAY BE RISKY N EVEN DUMB TO SOME BUT TO ME THE WAY OC STRAIGHT UP TELLS JK THAT FK IT IM NOT SCARED OF U JUST RELAX IS SUCH A GREAT THING... IT MAKES ME SO PROUD.🥺🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

MAYBE IM READING INTO THINGS BUT SIB, LISTEN-

YG licking her wound off also symbolises his return... he is here to protect her, but he is also gentle about her, uk in animal kingdom licking is a gesture of care but simaltaneously showing whats theirs... its like marking territory?😂 But anyways THIS MOMENT WAS TOO INTIMATE TO ME... THE WAY THEY HUGGED AND

I missed you😭😭😭😭😭😭

IF ONE THING HAS REMAINED CONSTANT THRU YEARS OF YGS LIFE IS HIS RESILIENCE... if he decides one thing.. he does it... he decided he ll be more communicative(is this a word?🤔) and he did that! YG IS ALWAYS IN A MENTAL WORKOUT N TBH I DONT THINK ANYBODY ELSE CUD DO IT THAT GUD🤗

Yup he IS still grumpy!😭😂

Yoongi Boongie😂😂😭😭😭😭 OC🤗🤗

When YG growled at first i was like TOO MUCH ... NONONO BACK OFF ITS OK EVERYTHING IS OKKK

BUT THEN😳

YES YG WE LOVE U🤗😚

THE KISS😳✨😭😭

HIM SAYING SHE IS BEAUTIFUL😳✨😭

Tell me what you think SOMETIMES IT HITS ME HOW U R GRADUALLY CHANGING MY TYPE OF MEN I LIKE... NOW I LIKE GRUMPY BUT SOFTIE VAMPIRE BOYS... N GUESS WHAT SIBI!!!!?!?!?!?!?! THEY DONT EXIST🙂

UGH ITS OK OC IS LEARNING TOO.... ITS HARD FOR HER TOO... I dont want to bring myself in btw but sib uk im so tired of the entire dating-crush culture, i deliberately pushed away the only one person i felt anything for after 2-3 yrs... someone who pulled me out of my anxiety and self harm phase... just cuz its hard for me to see them giving their 100% to me while i always fail to keep up as im too busy trying to deal wid my fucked up head, i cant keep hurting them while they keep trying to stop making me hurt so much all the time... so i meant WE CANT EVEN IMAGINE WHAT IT TAKES TO HAVE 3 PPL WHO MEAN SO MUCH TO YOU... AND KEEP GIVING UR BEST TO ALL... AND ON TOP OF IT THEM BEING VAMPS N ALL THE BACKSTORY... ITS NOT EASY.

HE IS FINALLY SPEAKING HIS HEART OUT... N I LOVE IT. I LOVE IT.✨✨💓

THE ENDING OF THIS CH😭😭😭😭😭

SIB I HV MAJOR ISSUES WID LETTING GO THINGS I LIKE... I CANT GIVE OUT A TSHIRT I GOT WHEN I WAS 13 THAT DOESNT EVEN FIT ME CUZ I FEEL IT HAS MEMORIES... I CANT LET GO OF A RANDOM PENCIL CUZ IT HAS MEMORIES😂... YA IM A BIT OF A FREAK AND IHV NEVER BEEN SO ATTACHED TO A STORY BEFORE... N SA IS ENDING. ITS A LIL TOO MUCH FOR ME RN SO IM JUST IGNORING IT... ILL LET ALL OF IT HIT ME AT ONCE WHEN THE LAST CH COMES OUT... TILL THEN ... IM LOVING EVERYTHING U R BRINGING TO US... IHV SAID THIS BEFORE ILL SAY IT AGAIN... I ADORE YOU.💜💜💜

-The Yelling Anon

TO ME THE WAY OC STRAIGHT UP TELLS JK THAT FK IT IM NOT SCARED OF U JUST RELAX IS SUCH A GREAT THING... IT MAKES ME SO PROUD.🥺🙌🏻

Okay but it is!! 😔😔

No but like I totally get you about the licking part. I wouldn't say that this was Yoongi marking her as his' and more an honest symbol of "I am back and you're finally safe again. I promise as long as I am here you are safe. You won't find no harm through me" and honestly this is ripping me apart :(

Tell me what you think SOMETIMES IT HITS ME HOW U R GRADUALLY CHANGING MY TYPE OF MEN I LIKE... NOW I LIKE GRUMPY BUT SOFTIE VAMPIRE BOYS... N GUESS WHAT SIBI!!!!?!?!?!?!?! THEY DONT EXIST🙂

HAHAHAH THIS IS ME @ MYSELF IN THE MIRROR like bitch please chill we all know that irl men aren't like that HAHAHAHAH although yoongi does give off major "written by a woman" vibes sO 😩

just cuz its hard for me to see them giving their 100% to me while i always fail to keep up as im too busy trying to deal wid my fucked up head, i cant keep hurting them while they keep trying to stop making me hurt so much all the time

Sometimes you have to remember that a burden is something that was forced upon your shoulders. And if you do, then remember that this person chose to shoulder your struggles, which means you can't be a burden to them.

And also pulling away from a person hurts them a lot too. Especially when they are left with "holy fuck I actually loved them a 100% and even that wasn't enough to keep someone in my life. what's seriously wrong with me and my personality?" that shit fucks someone up.

Which is also really interesting because you also said that you can't let things go. Dropping people comes easy but letting go of an inanimate object is difficult, very interesting 🤔👀

This wasn't me throwing shade btw just us doing our little phsych analysis HAHAHAH I FEEL YOU THOUGH I SERIOUSLY DON'T WANT SANGUIS ALPHA TO END :( IT HURTS ME :( 😭💜

#asks: sanguis alpha #asks #yelling anon #reviews

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preserving-ferretbrain · 5 years

Text

The Death of the Reader

by Wardog

Tuesday, 14 August 2007

Wardog joins the Harry Potter free-for-all~

I shall begin, like every other Harry Potter article on Ferretbrain, by saying that Harry Potter 1-3 are above average children's books. They're well edited, tightly plotted, action-packed children's books with just enough depth and darkness to appeal to adults as well but their primary audience is definitely children. The world presented is a child's world in which school is the most important place in the universe and the Headmaster of a school is unquestioned in his role as one of its most politically powerful figures. Defeating evil is, essentially, equivalent or, in fact slightly less important, than winning the house cup. For the first three books, Draco Malfoy - socially powerful bully that he is - has a far greater impact on Harry's world than Voldemort.

From an adult's perspective, of course, this is all complete madness. Why does Voldemort, Dark Lord of the Sith...err..., why does he never go to war during the school holidays? And why does his plan for taking over the galaxy involve becoming Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Yes yes, I know, so he can recruit a juvenile army of dark wizards but seriously, aren't there grown up people he'd be better off corrupting? And if somebody told you that your son's Head of English had decided not to be Prime Minister and instead came to work at Scumville Comp, you'd laugh in their face. But the point is, these are children's books and they were marketed as children's books. They're even delightfully short. Books 4 onwards, however, are a very matter indeed.

It can be argued that this has been the point all along and that the power of the later books derives from the brutal overturning of the all sources of adult authority Harry previously thought he could trust - in essence, that the process of growing up must mirror a parallel process that amounts to the loss of innocence. Thus all the people Harry idolised are revealed to be flawed (Sirius, Dumbledore, James, Remus), the people in power turn out to be corrupt (Fudge, Umbridge etc.), places of sanctuary rapidly become places of restriction (Hogwarts, in Book V) and so on. Intelligent readers (aka my friend David) have occasionally tried to argue me out of my frustrations with the later books by claiming that much of my resentment springs from their failure to deliver what I was looking for i.e. a jolly romp with comically named characters and cool magical items.

But, ultimately, attempts to argue for darkness, depth and disillusionment in the Harry Potter universe always ring hollow to me because they never quite fit within the established terms of the books. If a text suddenly demands that you start questioning the assumptions of the world and the characters in it, then the text has to be strong enough to withstand such questioning. As Dan is fond of pointing out, this is one the weaknesses of Season Six Buffy; the show seems to forget, suddenly, that Buffy is a metaphor for growing up and instead asks the viewer to treat her like she's a real person with real concerns such as how she's going to pay the rent on her house. This is not only much less interesting than watching her kick vampire ass it just draws attention to trivia you might otherwise not have questioned, for example if the Watcher's Council has a fund for over the hill watchers, why doesn't it also have a fund so that the Chosen One can get on with saving the world instead of having to get a job in fast food.

In Harry Potter, by asking its readership to start questioning the world established in the first three books, JK again only draws attention to how actually stupid it is when you stop and think about it for a moment. If we're expected to cringe and shudder at Umbridge's methods, are we also meant to question what the hell Dumbledore was doing employing a complete incompetent to teach Divination and didn't the Board of Governors have anything to say about it? I know she made one prophecy once but the fact of the matter is that I can't imagine any of the Hogwarts teachers getting onto a PGCE course without difficulty. And if, in fact, we are meant to view Dumbledore's repeated failures as a headmaster as foreshadowing the fact that he was once a little bit tempted by the pleasures of world domination then it is only fair that we also question why the hell he got the job and wasn't there somebody on the interview panel who thought being a powerful wizard and being a decent headmaster were perhaps not similar skills. Again, Umbridge's "I will not tell lies detention" is genuinely terrifying but the fact she can get away with it leads one to wonder why previous detentions involved jolly romps in the hilarious named forbidden forest full of monsters with an irresponsible half-giant and was that, in fact, any more appropriate.

Perhaps it has as much to with the changing nature of the media, increasing communication between authors and fans, the immense power of the internet to foster fandoms and bring obsessive compulsives together, and Jk's forthcoming, teasing style of interacting with her (vast) public but I think she must be of the most talked to and talked about authors I have ever encountered. And, by encountered you understand, I mean read about on the internet. But it's not like people were chasing James Joyce down the street asking to know about the lanky galoot in the brown mackintosh at Paddy Dingam's funeral and was he, perhaps, Ron from the future. The endless alternate worlds of fandom aside, JK's communicativeness and her public's willingness to listen to her and ask her for her arbitration on matters of no consequence seems to have granted her an unheard of amount of authority in her position, not so much as author, but as creator and even as God.

JK has always encouraged fan speculation but speculation and interpretation are very different indeed. Speculation, like guessing the murderer in an Agatha Christi novel, is an intellectual exercise with a "right" and unquestionable answer. You can't turn round and say "no, Poiret got that wrong, it was actually this guy who did it." Similarly, you can't turn round and say RAB is Rupert Addlepate Bungstock, once the text has established RAB is Regalus A-whatever Black. Speculation can always be controlled and, like a particularly inflexible GM, JK has always carefully directed her audience towards the questions they should be asking of the text. Who is RAB? Why does Petunia flush? What's the deal with the Half-Blood Prince (and was a disappointing deal that was). But, ultimately, the succession of tantalising small mysteries are there to distract the reader's attention from other things they might be thinking about, specifically their own interpretations of the text.

To take an example at random, some time last August, JK and some other less rich, less famous people attended a charity event at Radio City Music Hall in New York. During the course of the evening, an audience member brought up a matter of trivial detail ("Aunt Petunia is said to be oddly flushed when Dumbledore announces that Harry will be returning only once more to Privet Drive") which JK praised as an excellent question. Later Salman Rushdie introduced himself and his family, explaining on behalf on his young son that they did not believe Dumbledore was truly dead, citing quite specific textual "evidence" from the 6th book: "Our theory is that Snape is in fact still a good guy from which it follows that Dumbledore can't really be dead, and that the death is a ruse..." Now, looking specifically at the events of the 6th book this seems at least plausible to me, especially if you decide that Snape's moral hokey-cokey will ultimately put him on the side of the good guys and we know, from book 4, that killing curses require a certain amount of conviction.

I don't actually subscribe to the theory but then I'm not a young child and I don't care if the irritating, sherbet-lemon sucking coot is dead. However, most of the "evidence" that Dumbledore is probably very definitely dead comes from knowledge and assumptions drawn from outside the text. I know, for example, that JK likes to think she's dark and, therefore, she's likely to make a point of death being final. I also know that, even though in these sorts of genres death isn't quite the handicap it used to be in the olden days, having an actual corpse is generally considered proof of lasting deaditude. And, finally, I know that JK is all about her seven book arc and that it is an important part of the hero's journey to lose the mentor figure. It's, like, the rules.

But, as it turns out, the clash of titans represented by Kyra Versus Random Kid, was irrelevant because JK's response was this: "But I see that I need to be a little more explicit... and say that Dumbledore is definitely dead." It's a slightly awkward example because whether Dumbledore is dead or not is very much something that can be true or false within JK's imagined world (it is, essentially, a fact) but until the its veracity has been thoroughly established by the text itself then it is certainly not JK's place to explain, justify and interpret her own books for her readership. I would even go so far as to say that, perhaps for a young child fond of Dumbledore, part of the experience of reading book seven is hoping for a miracle that will bring him back or hat his death was nothing but a clever ploy all along. That very personal experience of hope, resignation and, finally, a sense of loss akin to grief can teach someone far more about death than JK's constant over-written references to the cold, unfeeling stars looking down on the arbitrarily massacred secondary characters lying below them. In fact, one of my (many) frustrations with the final book is that being "definitely dead" didn't in any way prevent Dumbledore turning up an giving one of his interminable plot explanations. Talk about the worst of all possible worlds.

In the flurry of interviews (

this

is a good example) JK has given following the release of the seventh book she has repeatedly been called upon to explain, not only the events of the book but the actions of the characters within it. Does Neville end up with Luna, clamour the fans. Was Snape redeemed? No and yes, replies JK Rowling, saving everybody the trouble of actually having to think about it for a second. I'm not a rabid deconstructionist, I don't believe there is nothing outside the text but I certainly do believe that JK Rowling shouldn't be standing there on the text's doorstep, telling her readers precisely how to interpret and respond to it. In bald terms: it is the writer's job to write. It is the reader's task, and the reader's pleasure, to interpret what is written. If you can dig up enough textual evidence to support a Neville/Luna tendre then it has the potential to be there. Although why you'd want it to be eludes me.

Similarly, in the epilogue of the seventh book, Harry offers us Rowling's final evaluation of the characters of Snape and Dumbledore. Snape is the "bravest man" Harry ever knew and, despite having essentially raised him to be a sacrificial lamb, Dumbledore has been re-instated as a beloved mentor figure. This is not explicitly stated in the text but if Harry had really come to a mature understanding as Dumbledore as a flawed control freak capable of sending a seventeen year old boy to his death he wouldn't be naming his child after him. Readers usually think what protagonists think, it's the way it works, especially in books where there is relatively little deviation from the protagonist's point of view so Harry's attitude to both Snape and Dumbledore in the epilogue becomes a statement of authorial authority.

The rather-late-in-the-day revelation of Dumbledore's moral ambiguity is irritating in a book that should have been concentrating on the final climatic battle between good and evil and love and death. On the other hand if you take it to its logical conclusion, not, in fact, that Dumbledore raised a hero but that Dumbledore deliberately and callously created a martyr then it becomes rather interesting. Or it would be if the epilogue, and the book in general, allowed the reader any such space in which to manoeuvre. Dumbledore is not, actually, open to interpretation because Harry's love and admiration for him remain unchanged, as demonstrated by the fact he named his child Albus. And I don't think at that stage we're meant to be questioning Harry's psychological health.

Snape, also, suffers a fatal loss of complexity. Although the fact that Harry stiles him brave probably suggests he has not entirely forgotten how entirely horrid Snape was to him for seven books but, in JK's world view, being mean and petty and traitorous and selfish is less important than having been in love when you were sixteen. Changing sides because the bad guy suddenly threatens a girl you want to boink is significantly less morally sophisticated than changing sides because you suddenly realise you've joined the Nazis With Superpowers but, regardless, I could tolerate the Snape Loved Lily revelation because, as far as I was concerned, it didn't make Snape one jot more sympathetic. This isn't to say I don't like Snape (he and Gilderoy Lockhart are my two favourite characters) but I have always liked him because he is unattractive and unsympathetic and petty. The disaster at the end The Order of the Phoenix occurs not because Kreacher betrayed Sirius for treating him like shit but because Snape couldn't get over himself for five minutes to teach Harry occulemcy and because Snape always seemed so untrustworthy a spy that Harry dares not trust him to alert the Order when he blurts out his fears about Sirius. However, the idea that love can be selfish is not a possibility in JK Rowling's world and Snape's infatuation with Lily Potter redeems him so completely that even the boy he ruthlessly bullied for seven years is willing to immortalise him in the naming of his children.

JK herself admits that Snape is, basically, kind of horrible (not her words) but she insists that he is brave and, in her rather simplistic worldview, bravery - that irritating Gryffindor virtue - is an attribute so overwhelmingly laudable that it eclipses all others. It is depressing beyond belief that it essentially transforms Snape - the only remotely admirable Slytherin - into a Gryffindor-at-heart. Furthermore, although acting as a double agent for a half-mad, unpredictable mass murdering psychopath is quite brave, it strikes me as being rather less brave to do it because you've been manoeuvred into it for the price of saving someone you happen to fancy. On the other hand, acting as a double agent for a half-mad, unpredictable, mass murdering psychopath because you decide that your conscience can't countenance working for him any more is bloody brave. It's a very personal decision with only nebulous and general benefits, whereas doing it for an individualis directly related to your own desires.

The Harry Potter books are not written to be read in any sense that I would understand it. They're there to be passively received and carefully cross-checked against the author's (externally established) intent. It's like a hundred and fifty years of literary theory never happened. I'm unsurprised that JKR's next work is to be an encyclopaedia because it's obviously what she wanted to be writing all along. I'm not, by any means, saying she's deliberately being sinister and trying to oppress her readership but as the books have progressed there's been an increasing preoccupation in establishing a set of approved readings. An encyclopaedia, even of one relating to an imaginary world, is still a way of introducing sources of absolute truth into something that should be as fluid and incalculable as the differences between my imagination and yours. What astonishes and horrifies me is not that JK is trying to do it but that everyone keen for her to do so.

I think this is the major reason the epilogue of the seventh book offends me as much as it does. I mean, there are others, of course, most related to the fact it stinks. But by establishing her characters, precisely as she wants them, nineteen years on from the events of the book, JK pins them down in perpetuity. I would like to think that the characters went on to pursue lives not entirely and absolutely determined by what they did (and who they did) at school. Oh foolish me. Also it strikes me as particularly low thing to do for a writer who owes so much to her fandom. It's the equivalent of those girly posters on Sirius's wall (he was never even the slightest bit gay ever!); a rather petty attempt to establish enduring canon relationships exactly the way she wants them: Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione. And Scorpius and Albus-Severus. Obviously.Themes:

J.K. Rowling

Books

Young Adult / Children

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~Comments (

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Wendy B

at 22:02 on 2007-08-15Excellent points. Bravo.

In my opinion, Jo wasted a tremendous opportunity. She should have written the 7th tale from both Harry and Snape's perspective. After six years of a Harry-filtered world, it would have been so illuminating if she had allowed Snape a real voice so we could understand what drove him, besides the fact that his boss offed his fantasy girlfriend. I believe Jo dislikes the character of Snape as she certainly begrudges fandom's interest in him. Instead she gives us a confusing answer to the question of whether Snape was good or evil. Answer: he was good, evil, AND in it for himself. If she hopped off her precious Harry filter and just let go of the narrative misdirection writing techinque (which had limited value in the final book) it could of been a great tale. Instead...blech.

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Arthur B

at 22:23 on 2007-08-15Rowling is never going to give up narrative misdirection. It's her one and only trick, and ever since she was able to steamroller her editors into publishing whatever she writes she's even got sloppy at that. The next two books she's got planned after the Potter encyclopedia - the new children's book and her project for grown-ups - are going to be terrible.

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Wardog

at 10:32 on 2007-08-16Many thanks, Wendy - I think there's my original review knocking around in the archives somewhere, but Dan's is much better because I was still in a weird state of denial that the book was as bad as I suspected it was.

I didn't realise JKR begrudged fandom their interest in Snape; I thought she certainly hated the popularity of Lupin because books 5 onwards are basically a character-assassination piece on the poor guy, which is a shame because I always rather liked Lupin and I thought his flaws (his desperation to be liked, his inability to stand up to his more confident friends, his general sense of divided-identity) were rather cool. I sometimes wonder if interest perhaps peaked when it became impossible in everyone's minds for him to look like anybody other than Alan Rickman :)

But the books have *always* been about Harry so I suspect offering a new perspective and point of view in the final book would be massively jarring, not that I wouldn't have welcomed anything that stage! I think one of the reasons that Snape worked so well was because he was elusive and, therefore, seemed infinitely more complex than JKR actually thought he was. I quite liked the fact he was in love with Lily Potter but I wish he'd been allowed at least one other character trait.

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Wardog

at 10:34 on 2007-08-16Hmmm...Arthur...your reference to narrative misdirection now has me imagining some kind of bastard-monster consisting of bits of JK and bits of Joss Whedon. The pain!

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Arthur B

at 12:32 on 2007-08-16As far as Lupin goes, it's pretty clear to me that he was meant to show up in

Prisoner of Azkaban

, be a red herring ("It's always the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher!"), and go away again. Then the collective howling of fandom when he didn't have a bigger role in book 4 prompted Rowling to drag him out in book 5, only to commence running him down and emphasising his essential irrelevance.

It's strange how the Harry Potter books seem to have been shaped in some places by JK's response to her fans - even when she doesn't give the fans what they want, she ends up doing things precisely

because

it's not what the fans want (witness Sirius's girly posters). It'd be interesting to see how the series would have turned out if Rowling had been completely isolated from the fandom.

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Wardog

at 14:19 on 2007-08-16Dan pointed out a while back that since JKR wrote the prologue eighty years ago (or whatever) and Teddy Lupin is in it, Lupin's arc was probably always pretty much the same. Although I think in interviews she talks about how important it was to her to kill parents so ... who knows the hell is going on? Also, is it me, but do you think he dies at the battle of Hogwarts just so he can show up with the Suicide Club?

But then I suppose books have always been shaped to *some* extent by fans and fan demands - look at Sherlock Holmes.

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Arthur B

at 14:33 on 2007-08-16I'm not convinced that the epilogue we got is, in fact, the epilogue she wrote way back when and put in a safe in case she died before writing book 7 or something, simply because there's a nigh-total lack of exposition: I suspect she scrapped or heavily rewrote the old one since it was no longer necessary.

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lessofthat

at 01:14 on 2007-08-28"What astonishes and horrifies me is not that JK is trying to do it but that everyone keen for her to do so."

You're right to be horrified, but not to be astonished. Look at the screechy, barely sane arguments in the various fandoms about what is and is not canon. Or the existence of Star Trek and Star Wars technical manuals. Fans (I mean the word in the geeky, semi-stalkery sense, not the generic one) don't want literature, they want an alternative universe they can buy maps of.

"bravery[..]is an attribute so overwhelmingly laudable that it eclipses all others"

Susan Sontag said, correctly, that courage was a morally neutral virtue. She was talking about the 9/11 hijackers at the time.

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Wardog

at 15:03 on 2007-08-28I know I shouldn't be astonished but it's necessary for me not degenerating in a pile of embittered, contemptuous goo that I am.

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Whenmarshmallowssnap

at 20:47 on 2007-08-28I didn't appreciate all the 'fluff' Rowling put in that should have been good narrative. I thought most of the Dumbledore backplot was kind useless and didn't really add to the story. Also, it was so unlike for Team Potter (as Dan likes to call them) to sit in a tent twiddling their thumbs, that I wondered vaguely if JK Rowling didn't have anything remotely interesting to write and settled for the trio wasting their time pointlessly. Plus, I fell through so many plot holes, I broke both my ankles.

"...a rather petty attempt to establish enduring canon relationships exactly the way she wants them..." Thank you for that. I did not like the fact that she controlled every single aspect of the characters' lives so that nothing is left to the readers' imagination. I wish Harry ended up with Cho Chang, and became an ex-convict. It would have added spontaneity to an otherwise boring and disappointing finish of the epic (read:really long and ingratiating) Harry Potter series.

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Arthur B

at 14:29 on 2007-10-20Have you seen

this

? Not content to pull the rug out of the "Sirius is gay" crowd, Rowling has now declared that Dumbledore was gay all along, and was dating Grindlewald until that whole "Wizard-Hitler" thing caused them to split up.

Now, let's see what's objectionable about this...

- Author assigning attributes to a character which they never even hinted at during the actual books? Check.

- The one canonical gay relationship in the entire series being a terrible mistake on Dumbledore's part? Check.

- A homosexual, who was previously evil (or at best a collaborator) and in a relationship, is now unquestionably good and rigorously asexual. Implications that gays are better off living a celibate life? Check.

- Rowling jerking the fans around like puppets, and them applauding her for it anyhow like Winston Smith at the end of

1984

knuckling under and loving Big Brother like all the rest of the beaten-down herds?

Check.

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M Harris

at 06:09 on 2007-10-21Also this:

The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think ti's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

[Loud applause.]

This entire interview is quite... freaky/weird.

The website it is on is this (I don't know how to make it into a link like Arthur B did):

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/10/20/j-k-rowling-at-carnegie-hall-reveals-dumbledore-is-gay-neville-marries-hannah-abbott-and-scores-more

[Linkified by webmaster]

You might want to read the answer to the question about Nazi parallels.

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M Harris

at 10:30 on 2007-10-21Oh no, I'm reading comments about this on Mugglenet and I want to kill people.

"anyway i think you choose to be gay or straight. i don't think ur born gay. and since ppl. are judged by their actions/choices, i don't think gay ppl. are all that great. don't jump on me now, just sayin wat i think."

"It has to be a joke. The Harry Potter fandom would have been much smaller otherwise. Personally, I would not have read and loved the series if one of the main characters had been gay. What kind of "children's book" would that be? That type of "lifestyle" may be acceptable in Britain, but its not viewed so favorably everywhere (like the entire Southern United States). While there are exceptions here, they are the extreme minority."

And then these idiots:

"JKR is genius! A gay Harry Potter character....wow. That takes true guts. This proves JKR is God. :D"

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Arthur B

at 13:35 on 2007-10-21So, Rowling says

...I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

which I agree with, and I think it's a shame that that message doesn't actually come through in Harry Potter. The most frequently-appearing authority figure in the books is Dumbledore, who is basically 100% right all the time. True, he isn't actually massively important in the grand scheme of things, but he's the supreme authority in Harry's world, and it turns out that all of his plans are for the best even when they involve convincing Harry to go get himself killed. The bad guys in the establishment and the press, meanwhile, are always quite obviously bad guys, and Harry usually finds what they have to say objectionable from the get-go.

The lesson seems to be "Trust your instincts: if the person in authority seems nice and trustworthy and is saying things you want to hear, they're probably good. If they seem harsh and unfair and are saying things you don't want to hear, they're bad." That's not exactly a helpful anti-authoritarian message.

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Wardog

at 09:47 on 2007-10-22God, I genuinely tried to rise above this and not think about it. But, no, I'm pissed off. I'm fucking pissed off.

"If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"

If it was in any way relevant or important you should have included in the goddamn books!

I was re-reading my Roland Barthes for school the other day and I found myself asking myself whether he was really still relevant or his conception of the Author-God actually exsisted - and JKR has proven the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. I genuinely can't quite believe this. It's not the way books work. It's not like Dickens turned up at his famous lecturers and started giving extra information about the life of Tiny Tim after the end of A Christmas Carol.

Also Dumbledore's sexuality is completely irrelevant, just like his brief flirtation with nazi-ism is completely irrelevant. He's presented as a 2D mentor figure and all the backplot in th world can't change that.

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Dan H

at 18:54 on 2007-10-23

"JKR is genius! A gay Harry Potter character....wow. That takes true guts. This proves JKR is God. :D"

If the internet hadn't destroyed my faith in humanity many years ago, I'd actually assume that one was a joke.

I find it utterly hilarious the way that JKR's "prolonged argument for tolerance" is so hidebound by her middle-class value-system that she genuinely can't see how - well - completely intolerant it is for, for example, the one canonical homosexual relationship in the entire series to have been a colossal mistake that wound up causing the wizarding equivalent of the second world war.

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Melissa G.

at 18:51 on 2009-12-08This is a really late comment, but I've been HP-obsessed the past few weeks. And I just want to say that what bothered me most about the "plea for tolerance" aspect was actually that she had a slave race that actually enjoyed being slaves and if we took that away from them, they'd turn into sobbing drunks. The idea that slaves like being slaves and they'd have nothing without slavery is so archaic and horrific an idea that it pains me to see it played for laughs with Winky.

#Ferretbrain #J.K. Rowling #Harry Potter #Wardog #Death of the Author

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