whinlatter
calico skies
she/her | hp fics & thoughts | fuck jkrcurrently writing beasts on AO3
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English isnāt my first language so I assumed ā I got the old viva on Mondayā to mean you got the flu or Covid. š Congratulations on passing!
omg well unfortunately i did do the viva and then immediately get the fluā¦ā¦. so you were kind of right š„² thank you so much though anon!
#coughing myself inside out gang#i know the chapter is disgustingly late iām so so sorry folks#forgive me and my flighty little immune system#beasts
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So what are the future plans, now that the phd is done and dusted?š„³
finishing this damn fic amirite
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I miss beasts so much!! Hope ur viva went well:)
thank you! i passed! i am now officially dr whinlatter! i feel twenty times lighter! war is over. all was well. more beasts is coming soon!
#thank fuck for that#i am looking forward to being able to sleep again#and also to writing#the beasts chap 13 word doc is being fired up again#at last
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folks iām so sorry itās just not ready to share yet. got the old viva on monday and need to get my head in the game fr. youāll get it soon i swear! when the author is less a puddle of stress. forgive me! ā¤ļø
hi lads!
just wanted to share a little beasts update for you all. chapter 13 will be coming this coming week! but unfortunately won't be with you this weekend. phd hand-in straight into new job has unfortunately not been giving writing retreat (iāve been absolutely shattered tbh, in bed by 9pm every night, very chic from me). but! i've been getting back into the groove of writing this long weekend and am v excited to share the next chapter with you all when it's ready (and honestly hyped to get back to telling this story in general, a source of great great joy). thank you very much for the very very kind messages - i am grateful for every single one. lots and lots of love!
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For the Love Your Fandom Asks 3 and 4 please!
thank you very much for the ask, anon. lovely choices from the love your fandom ask game...
3. who is a character that fandom has helped you appreciate?
sigh. i can hear @whinlatter cackling from here.
ginny weasley.
i've never found ginny a hugely interesting character in her canon form - nor hinny a hugely interesting canon ship - not because i think there's anything particularly wrong with either but because ginny feels so underdone within the narrative and i don't find the fact that all of her major character development happens offscreen particularly compelling.
and i've also always had a wee bit of beef with ginny's treatment in fan spaces - i don't like the way she's treated by lots of fics which want to break her and harry up [which just make her a sort of raving, gold-digging harpy], of course, but i also don't like the fact that so much writing about her turns her into either a #girlboss who hates her mam or into a bang-maid who exists only as a tool for harry's self-actualisation. but, y'know, in a twee way.
but there's - as there is with everyone in the books - some really interesting stuff which i have always been aware lurks in ginny's character arc - especially her slightly vindictive streak and, given my interests, what she actually thinks of tom riddle - but which i'd never taken the time to particularly care about.
enter whinlatter, who is a paid-up defender of ginny, but - crucially - a paid-up defender of ginny as a bit of a flop. her takes on her as a character - especially her inability to open up and her tendency to deflect questions about what she's feeling - and on her various relationships - especially the fact that she's one of the few hinny fans i've seen really dig into the fact that harry's "protection" of ginny isn't romantic but intensely paternalistic [and also her defence of the legend that is molly weasley] - are things i find really valuable to think and to talk about and to integrate into my own writing and worldbuilding.
she's also unfailingly generous intellectually - there's lots she and i continue to disagree on when it comes to her girl, but I've never found her anything other than delighted to bicker about these things - and i will never stop doing an evil little chuckle when i see myself quoted in the author's notes for beasts.
4. say something nice about a ship you don't ship
at their cores, every single ship - no matter how implausible; no matter how beholden to fanon; no matter how out-of-character - comes down to the same thing: that love [platonic or romantic] and desire [platonic or sexual] and human connection is strange and unpredictable, that it may look very different to very different people, and that it is universal.
i dislike numerous ships because i think they're rarely done in ways i find interesting - things like jegulus, wolfstar, dramione, and harmony chief among them - but i respect that they have this fundamental basis in the baffling power of love.
and that they also recognise that fandom is meant to be fun - and that making two hotties kiss in a way they wouldn't do in canon is a time-honoured way of having that fun. shipping really shouldn't be deep, and - despite the reputation the harry potter fandom has for endless beefing over shipping preferences - i am delighted by the sheer number of my fandom friends who think the same way.
[other answers from this ask game]
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every time i think about ginny in CoS i get unbelievably sad, but also it's so fucking funny when you think about her yapping to Tom...they were #real haters since day 1
the idea that they were sincerely bffs can be pried from my cold, dead hands.
for the serious point that he must select as victims of the basilisk people she's been gabbing about, as a way of terrifying and gaslighting her about whether she's responsible for the attacks - you just know she had a lot to say about what a prick she thought colin was and he was sitting in the ether [or wherever a soul lives] kicking his little feet in the air and saying "so true, bestie. amateur photography is cringe. hopefully nothing terrible happens to him!"
and for the less serious points that:
a. only the sort of theatrical teen edgelord who spent months coming up with an anagram of his own name could have written that valentine's poem.
b. the plan to lure harry to the chamber of secrets is really giving the way you used to ask out your crush when you were in year eight.
either tmr ships hinny [the horcrux is the chest monster! dean, you're in danger, girl!] and said "ok, let's get him down here and i'll gas you up", to which ginny replied "sick, i'll play dead so if he says no i can pretend i didn't realise you asked" or ginny ships tomarry and she said "i'll just chill unobtrusively while you impress him with your giant snake" and he said "class, do you reckon i should imply he's talentless and mid* while i do it?" and she said "yeah, one hundo" [omg snake!].
* āWell,ā said Riddle, smiling pleasantly, āhow is it that you ā a skinny boy with no extraordinaryĀ magicalĀ talentĀ ā managed to defeat the greatest wizard of all time?"
tom... hun...
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Why is beasts the best thing Iāve ever come across?!!! Like OMG
Iāve always adored Ginny and was always sad that we dont have enough content for the deep character she is. So reading this made me really happy.
Like how interesting is her story??? The diary, her 6th year??? So much lore to explore and you are nailing it. All the things I cannot write but only imagine are coming to life through your words haha (this should have paid access in my opinionš)
And your portrayal of Harry toooo!! So so good, very realistic. And their relationship!! ughhshsh How do you write like that???
Just finished all of it and im so excited of what to come with the trial and everything!!
#brb just getting this message engraved on my wall so i can look at it forever#thank you so so much anon#beasts#canāt wait to share more soon!
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Any favourite Irish headcanons for Seamus? š
thank you very much for the ask, anon!
and i'm sorry to say that i'm going to be really dull and - before we get into the more insincere headcanons i have for seamus - say that figuring out his role in the series depends on the answer to a really important question which neither the books nor [to my knowledge] jkr's post-series writing addresses:
is wizarding ireland a colony?
as someone who is fond of seeing the series through the lens of anglo-irish history, this preoccupies me a lot - and i think it's something very interesting to unravel...
the statute of secrecy - the law which brings about the separation of the magical and muggle worlds - was first instituted in 1689 and put fully into effect in 1692.
it's reasonably clear from the tone of the extra canonical material that these dates come from [and also from the fact that - i am told - the statute of secrecy is a fairly significant sub-theme of the fantastic beasts films] that jkr landed on these dates for the statute primarily by thinking about the history of witchcraft in early-modern america [the salem witch trials, for example, take place in 1692-1693].
[witch trials were not an exclusively american phenomenon, of course, but they had begun to fade out in early-modern europe by c.1650, which is roughly when they begin to become more widely-documented in the american colonies. it's also fair to say that the pop-culture image of witch trials, even in europe, is heavily influenced by their american manifestation - we've all seen the crucible!]
but selecting this american context to situate the statute within means that - apparently by accident - it's also a document which appears into the lives of british and irish wizards during an extremely bloody time in anglo-irish history...
a detour which has nothing to do with harry potter...
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the main period of british colonial expansion in ireland - the early seventeenth century is, for example, the period of the plantation [that is, the settler colonisation] of ulster [what is now roughly northern ireland].
like many periods of anglo-irish relations, there was a major sectarian aspect to the british treatment of the irish. the plantation was driven by protestant settlers from scotland [which is not and has never been a colony!] and england into northern ireland. the protestant population expanded rapidly in the seventeenth century, political authority in the subordinate irish parliament was largely in the hands of protestant elites [especially clerics connected to the church of ireland] who enacted the policies of the british parliament and the crown, the catholic population was subject to land confiscations, restriction of worship, and an expectation of anglicisation.
and in march of 1689 - the year the statute of secrecy was first signed - this all... rather kicked off.
in november 1688 - in an event known as the glorious revolution - the king of britain [and ireland!], james ii, was forced from the throne. among the reasons for this [many of which were to do with james' absolutist views of monarchy] was the fact that james was a roman catholic, and that the birth of his son james [iii, the old pretender] in june 1688 displaced james ii's protestant daughters mary and anne in the line of succession and would result in a catholic dynasty on the throne. which was unpopular.
so james was chased off and the throne was offered to william of orange - soon to be william iii - the husband of mary [ii].
in an attempt to regain his throne, james primarily recruited support from among the catholic population of ireland [as well as scotland and france], having promised to reverse many of the more unpopular sixteenth- and seventeenth-century policies imposed upon ireland by the crown. this was intolerable both to british and irish protestants, and william iii had no choice but to land in ireland with an army.
the start of the conflict was bloody but nebulous. the tide turned in william iii - and his protestant supporters' - favour in july 1690, with the battle of the boyne, a williamite victory. the jacobite cause was in shambles, james fled the country, and his supporters were eventually made to formally surrender with the signing of the treaty of limerick in october 1691.
from 1691 to 1800, ireland was a british colonial client state [nominally an autonomous kingdom with its own parliament, in reality controlled by the crown and responsible to the king's cabinet in london] politically dominated by anglo-irish protestant families. in 1800, this "independent" legislature was abolished and ireland was absorbed into the united kingdom of britain and ireland and governed from westminster via a colonial administration in dublin, which remained dominated by anglo-irish protestants. this remained the case until the establishment of the republic of ireland in 1922. northern ireland remains a constituent nation of the united kingdom.
and now back to the wizards...
according to the harry potter lexicon [my beloved], jkr has connected the establishment of the statute of secrecy in britain to a delegation of wizards who sought protections for the magical from [a post-battle-of-the-boyne?] william iii and mary ii in 1690. when they failed to get these, the british delegation - along with the representatives from other nations who made up the international confederation of wizards - agreed to the full imposition of the statute, with the main local result of this being the creation of the ministry of magic to govern the magical citizens of britain...
and of ireland?
because something which has always stood out to me - in a way i imagine it has for literally nobody else - is that you can suggest on the basis of canon that magical ireland was never partioned...
ā[England] Went down to Transylvania, three hundred and ninety to ten,ā said Charlie gloomily. āShocking performance. AndĀ WalesĀ lost to Uganda, and Scotland was slaughtered by Luxembourg.āĀ
charlie is talking about the performance of the uk's constituent nations in the quidditch world cup here. we know - obviously - that ireland are the finalists and eventual champions of the competition.
northern ireland, however, is nowhere to be seen...
it could be that the northern irish quidditch team is as abysmal at international sport as its muggle equivalents and that charlie regarded it as futile to mention it. it could be that wizarding ireland is a united ireland [slay!]. but it could also be that the minister for magic is ultimately responsible - as the monarch would have been at the time the statute was signed - for the governance of the entirety of ireland, with his rule maintained within ireland itself by a client government which he appoints.
because while i don't buy the idea of a hereditary wizengamot or think that the sacred twenty-eight has any actual power other than the opportunity to influence the minister... it's striking that the name of an anglo-irish noble family appears on it [burke - although carrow is sufficiently close to the anglo-irish "carew" for us to consider it a variant, and one also finds the odd lestrange knocking about irish history...], and that jkr has written about another of the most prominent pureblood families as having been resident in ireland during the seventeenth century... the gaunts [it's why lord voldemort like relics so much...]. we also know that the london edition of the daily prophet - which functions as something close to state propaganda - circulates in ireland, because seamus' mother takes it, and that the ministry is unhappy with the tricolour flag being flown ostentatiously by ireland supporters during the world cup...
it is, then, entirely possible - should an author wish - to imagine that the imposition of the statute at such a key point in anglo-irish history means that the magical ireland of the 1990s remains subject to the british minister, and that it therefore has a very different political and cultural relationship to britain than its muggle cousin.
and i also think that this but one way of thinking more broadly about the wider imperialist vibe which is found in the books: the defence of "civilisation" and the status quo; the fact that so much "wizarding" culture is just posh british stuff; the fact that so many of the historical analogies jkr uses to mirror wizarding history relate to the troubles; the ways in which the size and insularity of the wizarding population means that the conditions which enable revolution might not be present in magical communities, etc.
and for us to think about the ways this might make wizarding history diverge from muggle in the early-modern and modern era: is there a revolution in wizarding russia, or are there still estates staffed by squib serfs? do wizards think they're travelling to istanbul or constantinople? do wizards participate in the "new imperialism" of the late nineteenth century, imposing the same colonial borders upon magical africa and asia as muggles do? what would it be like, if you were muggleborn, entering a world which is not only so culturally and politically different, but geographically different?
which brings us to...
seamus finnegan headcanons
on the basis of name alone - which, of course, doesn't mean everything - seamus appears to be one of the only students of irish extraction [that is, not just the only student who's an irish national, but the only student who's of irish heritage] at hogwarts [orla quirke - sorted in goblet of fire - is the only other one i can think of].
[although it is worth noting that many names which appear to be scottish are also common in ireland - especially in the north. professor mcgonagall has - on the information of the seven-book canon - just as much chance of being an ulster protestant as she does a scot...]
[i have decided on the basis of this that i now think cormac mclaggen is northern irish.]
irish people from all walks of life live, study, and work in britain - and vice versa. but the fact that seamus attends a boarding school with the specific cultural vibe hogwarts has - that is, an institution which is a pastiche of elite, fee-paying british schools; which directly maintains the class-based status quo which props up the wizarding state; whose graduates dominate high-level political and institutional positions; and whose student body is striking well-heeled - suggests that there are less famous wizarding schools in ireland, and that him being sent to hogwarts is the result of a certain anglophilia [and the desire for him to benefit in any future ministry career, in britain or ireland, from an elite british education] on behalf of his parents...
this is not to say that i think seamus is a protestant - although i genuinely think that the muggle dad witch mam thing is meant to be a joke suggesting he comes from a mixed marriage [still reasonably scandalous here even in 2024!] - but that he comes from a reasonably posh, anglophile, unionist catholic background, as did many real anglo-irish civil servants educated at the sort of institutions - especially oxford and cambridge - hogwarts shares a cultural vibe with.
but who gives a shit about class and religion! the more important things to know about seamus:
his go-to chip shop order is - as it should be - a spice bag.
he has - in his life - drunk the odd bottle of football special.
his over-the-top loathing of "pretty-boy diggory" in goblet of fire is an absolutely iconic deflection tactic from the fact he's gay - and deamus is canon.
indeed, he loves dean so much that he has willingly cheered for the england national football team [although he threatened to obliviate anybody dean told about this]. dean, for his part, has got really into hurling.
the closest they come to divorce is when dean won't stop singing galway girl by ed sheeran at him.
one @whinlatter has convinced me of: this is their son.
his confirmation name is florian - the patron saint of protection against fire.
him getting beaten to a pulp by the carrows - and then explaining in great detail how the room of requirement works to harry - is iconic, and is a really under-appreciated aspect of character growth from his doubt over harry in order of the phoenix.
the derry girl he identifies most strongly with is james - although he tells everyone it's michelle.
he met edele lynch from b*witched once and lost his mind.
he owns a flat cap.
him publicly beefing with his mam in the immediate run-up to dumbledore's funeral is one of the most specifically irish things he ever does and i can't explain why.
him giving harry an "appreciative smirk" after he drops the iconic "there's no need to call me sir, professor" line is the second most irish thing he does. i, once again, cannot explain why. [him winking at harry after he answers snape back in their very first potions lesson also sends me.]
he is the voice behind this iconic video... and, let's be real, his slight capacity for self-aggrandisement and sulking does make him a plausible cork man.
he visits his granny every sunday for endless cups of tea and re-runs of ballykissangel.
he has never read a single piece of writing by sally rooney - but he lies and says he has.
he did this to harry on his first day in the ministry:
his wand is made of dogwood - which suits the flamboyant and loud.
he's shown in canon to quite like a bit of gossip - him being gassed up by quirrell's claim that he fought a zombie and then gutted when quirrell refuses to actually tell the story always sends me - and i like the idea of him being amazing value in a pub.
he's an only child - but he has at least thirty cousins. and his cousin fergus genuinely never did have another peaceful moment after seamus learned to apparate.
he and lavender went to the yule ball together because both dean and parvati are stupid and didn't see what was right in front of their faces. they split a bottle of archers behind a rose bush and complained about men and it was the best night of their lives.
he goes as red as a lobster the second the sun's out.
he runs the shit london guinness twitter account.
his boggart is a banshee because his dad - who is literally only mentioned once in philosopher's stone - dies over the summer before his second year [banshees - in irish folklore - herald the deaths of family members with their weeping]. however - unlike harry - you don't hear him fucking banging on about this all the time...
and he can't speak a word of irish, but none of the posh english lads he knows are going to risk calling him out on that...
#this is a riot#genuinely important wizarding politics post#this has done me in#come for the wizarding ireland is a colony theory stay for theories on why fawkes is orange#immaculate posting#seamus finnigan#meta
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lux aurumque
sirius black & james potter
teen | 3.6k words
he is not james, with the golden-snitch glitter of gryffindor righteousness in his marrow. he had to beg the sorting hat not to send him to slytherin, not to deck him in silver and green like his father and his father's father before him, and every day he has to wake up and keep trying to be worthy of the chance at a transformed life it gave him.
seven dawns which change sirius black.
author's notes under the cut
this piece was written, like so many good things are, because i thought somebody was wrong on the internet.
specifically, it was written in response to a piece of writing in which sirius - spared azkaban after pettigrew was arrested for somewhat spurious reasons - was remarkably unconcerned by jamesā death, and happy to leave harry to his own devices at the dursleys if it meant he could reconnect with the pureblood world of his birth.
i understand the motivation behind this characterisation. the artist-currently-known-as-fanon-sirius [who is found almost exclusively in marauders-era stories, and almost exclusively in a relationship with remus lupin] has probably become in recent years the most dominant version of the character in fanfiction. fanon sirius, who is a short, goofy, dim-witted, emotionally fragile baby bean, is best friends with his aspiring terrorist brother, often happy to be treated like shit by his boyfriend, and so achingly cool that muggle bands ought to be paying him to listen to their music.
i get why this portrayal of sirius pisses people off. but it seems to have inspired in return what we might call dark aristocrat sirius, who is a wizengamot-seat-touting posho who misses the patrician world of his birth; who is proud of being pureblood, thinks it matters, thinks it makes him different, and thinks that it does make him more important than people like lily; who thinks that his parentsā insistence that to be a black makes you "practically royal" isnāt eye-rolling pretension with no basis in reality, but true; whose love for his cousins is never subsumed by his loathing at who they are and what theyāve become; and who thinks of his relationship with james as no more significant to him than his relationship with any of the pureblood friends of his childhood.
but this is a portrayal of sirius which is just as removed from his canon character as the tiny giggling pixie of the marauders fandom. in particular, it completely overlooks one of siriusā most significant roles in the harry potter series: what his life and his decisions illustrate about the value of choice.
because siriusā entire narrative purpose is that he shows to harry that - in an astonishingly lineage-based society, where your name and background dictate almost everything about your life - you can still choose to defy your family if standing against them is the right thing to do. sirius explicitly rejects his parentsā and his cousinsā blood-supremacy, he rejects the idea that his family line is owed inherent loyalty, he rejects the idea that blood purity is ontologically meaningful. he almost certainly misses aspects of his childhood and regrets what he has been made to do to take a stand against blood-supremacist terror - including, as he notes in lux aurumque, the fact that he is aware that many of the death eaters heās fighting to kill are his own flesh-and-blood - but he has rejected the overarching social structures which defined his early life utterly. he may struggle with his decision sometimes, but it is a decision he chooses - every single day - to make and re-make.
[hence my longstanding headcanon, explored in this piece and quoted above, that - like his godson - he asks the sorting hat not to put him in slytherin.]
siriusā initial defiant choice is canonically triggered - as per snapeās memories in deathly hallows - by his introduction to the defining relationship of his life: james.
james is fascinating within the seriesā theme of choice, because heās clearly someone to whom being "good" comes easily - all his family have been in gryffindor, he is instinctively opposed to blood-supremacy and everyone he knows is the same, he faces none of the social or familial pressures [to find a pureblood wife, to socialise exclusively with pureblood friends] that sirius does. and yet he is still someone whose presence upends siriusā world to a significant enough extent that he changes the course of his entire life to stay close to him.
i have my theory as to why. all the evidence of the text - not least the fact that siriusā narrative mirror is severus snape, himself in love with the other half of james and lily - is that sirius love for james is not purely platonic. it is this, i think, which better explains the fact that he doesnāt seem to be enormously close to lily [at least until she has to send him the letter ex machina in deathly hallows] than because he feels uncomfortable around her muggleborn pretensions - heās clearly jealous, but he would rather die than upset james by articulating this. as we see in the opening scene of lux aurumque, he is heartbroken at losing james into the world of marriage and babies, but he knows he cannot cling to him.
and he knows he may have to die for him instead.
the profundity of siriusā choice - and jamesā and all the orderās - stands out the more starkly when we note that all the evidence of canon is that voldemort is winning the first war. lux aurumque deals with the struggle of opting to keep fighting in the face of an overwhelming feeling of futility, opting to keep hoping and trying and loving each other as the bodies pile up and the streets run with blood.
it also deals with realising that others may be making different choices.
reading between the lines of prisoner of azkaban, it is clear that albus dumbledore suspected that sirius was the spy in the order well before october 1981. it is also clear that remus lupin suspected the same thing.
both lupin and dumbledore are people whose stated belief in the power of choice is in tension with the fact that they struggle not to consider certain faults innate. lupin is bogged down by the belief that his lycanthropy is an irredeemable flaw he cannot escape. dumbledore thinks that some people are just born bad [look at how he treats the eleven-year-old tom riddle]. to both of them, sirius - with his brother and cousins paid up members of the death eaters - would be all too easily tempted. that sirius thinks the same about lupin - who he imagines would want to seek protection under voldemortās wings because his insubstantiality canāt stand up to the force of the war - should not surprise us.
but some things are innate. and one of these is that sirius can be extremely impulsive. much like harry, he tends to leap before he looks. brilliant, in a quidditch match. less ideal when it comes to protecting the love of your life.
in canon, sirius suggests that the secret keeper swap was a spur of the moment decision. in lux aurumque we get a look at how exactly this might have been triggered - i like the idea that the death eaters manipulate him into it, to some extent; not least because this allows pettigrew, who gets treated like a bit of a joke in canon, to be an evil little bastard who is clearly regarded as quite useful by voldemort. i can imagine him chuckling as he sits down to teach the dark lord all about how to exploit his friendsā emotional weaknesses - above all, the fact that sirius may think that james is naive and too trusting, but he would never, ever believe such a thing about himself.
and, when itās all gone wrong, sirius makes another choice. his decision to remain in azkaban confuses a lot of fans - particularly those who are angry with dumbledore for doing nothing to get him out of prison [which, to be frank, dumbledore can hardly be blamed for - sirius doesnāt open his mouth to speak in his own defence at any point, and all the evidence without him doing that is that he was the secret keeper who betrayed the potters] - but it makes perfect sense for who he is as a character. he considers himself to have "as good as killed" james, and he stays in azkaban because itās the only way he knows to try and atone for the greatest mistake of his life.
until a visit from the minister and a photo of a rat shows him another.
[two minor points: this piece also addresses the opposite of choice, which is chance. i am aware, before anyone points it out, that the line about voldemort "only having to be lucky once" is a quote from the ira, but itās a statement thatās both goes incredibly hard and is incredibly true. and its title is taken from the choral piece of the same name, by the composer eric whitacre. its lyrics - lux, calida gravisque pura velut aurum (light, warm and heavy as pure gold) - seemed very fitting for the transformative dawns of this piece, and for the choice sirius has made to be on the side of the light.]
#nice one lip's wobbling#absolutely cracking fic from an absolutely cracking lass#i have never correctly spelled 'lux aurumque' but my god will i go to my grave proudly bearing the title of its biggest fan#pro ginny sleeper agent that's me#fic rec
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hi lads!
just wanted to share a little beasts update for you all. chapter 13 will be coming this coming week! but unfortunately won't be with you this weekend. phd hand-in straight into new job has unfortunately not been giving writing retreat (iāve been absolutely shattered tbh, in bed by 9pm every night, very chic from me). but! i've been getting back into the groove of writing this long weekend and am v excited to share the next chapter with you all when it's ready (and honestly hyped to get back to telling this story in general, a source of great great joy). thank you very much for the very very kind messages - i am grateful for every single one. lots and lots of love!
#beasts#i have been godās sleepiest soldier since hand in#but i am feeling much restored and ready to return to the woods#thank you for your patience#it means the world!
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Random question: whenever itās Christmas in the books the kids wake up to presents at the end of their bed, is that like a British thing or do you think itās a wizard thing? (do they not do the whole Christmas tree tradition?)
very happy to be corrected on this by the other brits, but i think itās actually (sort of) a class thing ā or at least a quite old fashioned tradition thing, though definitely is still a thing a lot of british families do. extremely generally speaking, more middle and upper class families (so, in british class terms, the more affluent educated classes from the professions all the way up to the aristocracy) traditionally hang stockings at the end of childrenās beds with the smaller presents in for them to wake up to. while the parents might then get the children to bring their stockings to their parentsā room to open them altogether, the idea is that father christmas has visited each child individually in the night (rather than just doing the tree lark). so then the children wake up to gifts in their beds. and then they do an exchange of āproperā more substantial gifts around the christmas tree later on christmas morning. (i know this because my family did not do this growing up because we were common as muck (slay), so also never got why they did it in HP and assumed it was a wizard thing until friends from loftier class backgrounds than mine clarified that was in fact the deal in their families too, lol).
to be honest itās one of those things where jkrās own class background colours some of the traditions that appear in the text. (one of the many quirks of HP - sometimes theyāre made-up wizard things, sometimes theyāre twee british things, and sometimes theyāre twee class-based british things that also leave a lot of non-middle class british people scratching their heads.)
i hope this helps anon !!!
#getting to experience this tradition for the first time myself this past christmas was extremely fun#but yes not wizardy just british and class-based#slay!
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peace. (post-war)
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CONGRATULATIONS! Iām sure youāve done an incredible job!! Free from the shackles of phd-ingā¦I can only dream
mate thank you so much. honestly what a colossal ordeal. horrendous. feel so much lighter i cannot tell you. and now i can just write for joy??? life changing. transformational. may all be free from these self-imposed chains soon enough š
#good luck anon#v v kind#also#āwriting for joyā as in iām handwriting bits of next chapter because opening my laptop is currently giving trauma response#slay
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Did you submittt?????
yes maāam !!!
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Any thoughts on Teddy/Victoire?
thank you very much for the ask, anon!
i don't massively care about next-gen fics of any kind, because - while i really enjoy "everyone's learning how to live again after the war" things set following the conclusion of deathly hallows, i don't really find things set in the time where all is well attention-grabbing in the same way. laundry and taxes is all well and good as a trope, but there's also only so much that can be said about a couple who has a normal life falling in love in a normal fashion.
what i will say, though, is that tedoire do have a good chance of being more interesting than that in the right hands. teddy has the same "orphan seeking to understand how much of themselves is inherited vibe" as harry does, which stands nicely in contrast to victoire's enormous extended family and secure sense of her place in that history and which also has a lovely bit of conflict lurking below the surface in that the parent he will primarily be looking to understand is his father. we know that, canonically, andromeda is not best pleased about remadora's marriage, and i am extremely taken with the idea that she spends her life looking for tonks in teddy's face and ignoring any of the lupin she finds there. i am even more taken with the idea that harry - to his great anguish - also struggles to provide teddy with any meaningful insight into lupin's character - as we see in canon, the two aren't actually particularly close, and lupin obscures so much of his true self when around harry as a way of suppressing his own grief for james. anyone else who could tell teddy about his dad is dead.
except - as it turns out - for molly weasley, whose relationship with lupin is set out quite beautifully here by @whinlatter. i think you could do something genuinely lovely with teddy lurking round the burrow hoping to catch a glimpse of victoire just because she's a hottie, and instead finding the secrets to his life simmering gently in the kitchen, waiting for him to pop the question and officially join the family he always belonged to anyway.
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Hi! I wanted to say that I'm really enjoying Beasts. The way you describe Ginny's reticence and trauma, and Harry's openness and trauma, and I love how if it had been a year or two previous the two's responses would likely have been the opposite. Your Hermione (her reaction to DADA soul classes!) and Golden Trio are incredible, and I especially liked the 'listen to the radio' debate because I could understand both sides and those are the best (and worst) kind of disagreements to read about. The description of post war justice and how it's not easy is great too. Can't wait to see how the forever debate of should the Slytherins who fought in the war be forgiven is resolved.
Is it rude to ask what field your PhD is in?? Kinda curious.
thank you very very much for reading and enjoying my fic, this is extremely lovely of you to say. i care so much about getting these characters right, and spend far too much time trying to map out their motivations and their nuances and how their respective flaws would shape their interactions with the other flawed people around them, so this really does mean a lot. not rude at all to ask - my phd is in modern european history, so have had to read quite a bit about postwar justice in my time (beasts is a busman's holiday of a fic, alas!)
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so here we are, five psych/education researchers (and me, ed policy), doing qualitative thematic coding of a bunch of interviews we did for a clientā¦I have on my headphones, and I guess I was blazing through my summaries to such a degree that the lead researcher tapped me and said, āhey, whatās your playlist, share your mojo.ā I said, āthe vibes might work for anyone else, butāsure.ā I turn off my headphones, we listen through my computer, and after ten minutes another guy said, āwell shit this is a mood. Who died?ā I had to bite my tongue before saying, āFred, Colin, Tonks, Remusā¦ā The Beasts playlist: fueling angsty research since 2024, yāall š¤š¤ Hope the PhD is going well!!
this makes me SO happy ššš spreading the sad forest vibes far and wide. you're killin me!
#'who died' has sent me to the moon#who DIDN'T die#you're an angel for this#brightened my day fr#do bagpipes help productivity???#should i do another phd to find out???#jk i shouldn't have done the first one#but we move#two more days til phd freedom we're gettin there !!!
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