Has anyone ever seen that picture of the horse in the pool with the sunglasses wearing dog in its back and the ’D’ from the Hollywood sign thrown in the bushes?
Ok this is the picture… Can someone explain it to me?
I want to write an alternative version of Romeo and Juliet where instead of being a little ponce and trying to work things out for himself, Romeo asks his smarter friends what to do about the whole thing and Benvolio and Mercutio come up with the world’s greatest plan:
Marriage of convenience between Juliet and Mercutio.
Think about it.
Juliet’s parents want her to marry into the Prince’s family. Mercutio is a good compromise between no marriage and Paris.
Mercutio probably won’t get his inheritance if he keeps being HELLA FUCKING GAY ALL OVER THE PLACE so a beard is only a benefit to him.
They would probably get along great rolling their eyes at how adorably stupid Romeo is.
Romeo and Benvolio could get a “bachelor pad” right next to Juliet and Mercutio’s house. Every night, Romeo and Mercutio high five as they hop the fence to go bang their one true love.
The second half of the play is just all of them trying to keep up the charade and being “THIS CLOSE” to getting caught all the time. But everything ends nicely because true love conquers all.
Everybody wins. Nobody dies.
THE SHAKESPERE AU I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED
DUDE DID YOU JUST FIX ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC PLAYS EVER CREATED?!
ONCE AGAIN EVERYTHING IS SOLVED BY THE QUEER LENS.
Ally tip: learn to recognize the difference between a censored queer romance (i.e. Marceline and Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time) and queerbaiting (i.e. BBC Sherlock and Supernatural)
harmony vs romione vs dramione – it was getting UGLY out there (hell, it’s STILL ugly out there)
constant idealization of draco and constant demonization of ron – which led to the creation of the “draco in leather pants” and “ron the death eater” tropes. (you still see this, of course, but i think we’re getting better)
my immortal dramatic readings EVERYWHERE
my immortal still being on fanfiction.net
actual fanart of my immortal
soooo many youtube music videos for the creator’s otp
“harry potter chatroom” videos on youtube where the premise was that each character had a laptop and was in an online chatroom for some reason. usually each character got their own music that played in the background while they “typed,” and they all looked like this:
i wish i was kidding
i may have been obsessed with these when i was nine
so many fanvids of draco with “untitled” by simple plan (aka “how could this happen to meeeeeeeeeeeee i made my mistaaaaaaaakes”)
fanfics where voldemort had a daughter (and it was ALWAYS a daughter. pre-cursed child, mind you.)
people actually liking snape
pretty blatantly ignoring the fact that electricity doesn’t work at hogwarts in fanfictions
THE RISE OF DRARRY
drapple (draco + green apples. not joking.)
that fanfic that was a lemon of the giant squid and the hogwarts castle… i can’t be the only one that read it out of sheer morbid curiosity
jily fanfics that gave lily two OC friends that would be paired off with sirius and remus
no muggleborn slytherins, ever
fanmade potter puppet pal videos – some of them were quite good, but most weren’t
bashing viktor krum, cho chang, lavender brown, fleur delacour, and the entire weasley family for no reason
fics where people “switched houses”
people actually shipping snily
you could always tell the author’s opinion of draco malfoy based on whether they called him “malfoy” or “draco” in their narration
fanvids of “you belong with me” for every ship imaginable
the trio ALWAYS being white in fanart
fics where hermione randomly got hot over the summer
sorting yourself into slytherin to be “edgy”
or because you had a crush on tom felton
or both
pairing hermione with literally every male character. ron, harry, draco, cedric, fred and george (sometimes both at once), lucius, snape, voldemort, neville, dean, seamus… if they interacted in canon (or even if they didn’t), they were shipped
“transfer student” OCs to explain why they haven’t been there for the past five years
not many same-gender pairings apart from wolfstar and drarry
harmony fanfics making ginny an “evil bitchy slut” and ron a drunken rapist so harry and hermione can find comfort in each other’s arms
people placing literal bets with actual money on who would die in the last book
which led to a bit of an issue for people who had bet on harry, as no one was sure whether or not it actually counted since he didn’t stay dead
my immortal predicting that harry would turn out to be a horcrux
people flipping the fuck out when their otps got sunk in the epilogue and swearing off the series forever
everyone having a crush on oliver wood (to be fair this one is completely understandable)
school play fanfics, usually with the purpose of getting their otp to kiss on stage (i am 1000% convinced jk rowling had “tales of beedle the bard” mention that theatrical productions are banned at hogwarts specifically to get people to knock it off)
“american exchange student” OCs
a girl ends up in harry’s (or draco’s) dorm for some reason – either bc she’s pulling a mulan or because of a mistake no one bothered to fix
lots of fanfics of the otp banging bc “i don’t want to die a virgin”
“101 ways to annoy lord voldemort” lists
calling voldemort “moldyshorts”
fanfics of the characters somehow reading the harry potter books and reacting to them (these were all taken down bc of copyright)
leaving peter out of marauders fanart and fanfic (i understand the urge but come on he was a marauder it’s what made his betrayal so tragic)
fred/george fanfic (my eyes, they bleed)
fred and george (but mostly fred) being the school heartthrobs
think of any two characters. any two. there is a fanfiction somewhere that ships them. (this is still true, of course – in a fandom this massive, it’s inevitable)
if you spoiled THAT DEATH from the sixth book, and someone murdered you for it, it was your fault
same with THAT DEATH from the fifth book. and a certain few THOSE DEATHS from the seventh.
cedric dying was old news within like a month though.
the divide between people who had gotten into the series late (or, sometimes, because of the movies) and people who had been there since (almost) the beginning
people refusing to go online until they’d finished reading the seventh book for fear of spoilers (i am SO glad i didn’t have tumblr back then)
people actually saying they wanted to join the death eaters
every character was either good or evil. no in between as far as the fandom was concerned.
everyone’s icon looking like this for some reason
dramione fanfics where he calls her mudblood AFTER THEY START DATING??? AND SHE PUTS UP WITH IT????
dramione fics where hermione heals him with her love
making ginny out to be the school bicycle and basically burning her at the stake for going on dates
fics where the head boy and girl get their own separate room??? for some reason???
VAMPIRE AUS (usually harry and/or draco)
dumbledore either being 100% heroic or satan
hermione’s parents always being named “dan and emma”
fics where hermione turns out to be adopted and a pureblood all along!
harry switching to the dark side for some reason??
basically
the harry potter fandom has ALWAYS been wild
it’s the same shit as always, the details are just different
Winning the villain over to your side is a power fantasy.
Like, a really big one, too.
Social emphasis has it that men should value strength,
aggression, and violence, and women should value kindness, empathy, and
community. But really, anyone who has
learned to prefer social success to might/aggression is going to favour a
strategy where you can make your enemies into allies of some kind, over one
where you just kill them. As a display of dominance, killing is overly
simplistic. And it’s also hard to ignore the reality that luck usually has more
to do with most fights than actual strength.
So, many people vastly prefer stories where the villains don’t
die, but instead, get won over by the hero. It’s also a much more prevalent
power fantasy among women than it is among men, because women are often taught
that violence on our parts is inherently distasteful and ignoble. If you can’t defeat your enemies by putting a
bullet in their heads, then what could
be more satisfying than convincing that enemy to come and fight other people on
your behalf instead?
This is a major component to why villains end up as popular
shipping material. I honestly don’t think it’s the ‘bad boy’ impulse, or some
branch of misogyny, or at least, not in a majority of cases. It’s a total and
sincere power fantasy. Someone going ‘all I care about is myself and all I want
to do is DESTROY THE WORLD MWAHAHAHA’ meeting you and then being like ‘oh no
wait I also want to please you and spend time with you and I want that so much
that I will now give up those other things’ implies an intoxicating level of
charisma.
Of course, like most power fantasies, it pays to tread
carefully with it. Because real life rarely accommodates such things, and as
with some muscle-bound hero easily lifting a house over his head, being able to
take a wholly selfish being and convert them into a devoted companion is… unlikely to happen outside of fiction.
For a lot of reasons.
However, I bring it up because I am C O N S T A N T L Y
seeing the compulsion to ship characters with villains misattributed to A)
agreeing with the villains, B) some form of self-hatred, C) a noble impulse
towards compassion and understanding, or D) sheer stupidity, and really… it’s
just another power fantasy. Wonder Woman punches a tank. Tony Stark buys an
entire island. Storm calls down a lightning strike. Batman outwits all his clever foes. And some seemingly random,
ordinary human woman convinces Lex Luthor to chill out and stop trying to kill
Superman. It’s all power, displayed
in fantastical proportions.
(Which isn’t to say that you have to like it or think that
every such relationship is good and healthy, gods no, but once you realize that
everyone’s just pretending to be the Superman of relationships, it’s easier to just go ‘oh that’s what you’re after’ and… y’know… fret less.)
tbh people mock harry for going back to rescue fleurs sister in the second triwizard task but harry knows dumbledore better than anyone else. he probably looked at the situation and thought “would dumbledore let an eight year old drown just because fleur couldnt do this bit? yes. yes he would.”
it’s also possible he was acting off of the lessons he learned in the abusive dursley household. that’s why he does a lot of his so-called “hero complex” shit. he takes a lot of personal responsibility for other people bc he learned growing up that “no one’s here for you, no one will help you, you will not catch any breaks”. he helps bc if he didn’t, who would? certainly not the dursleys, and that’s what he grew up with.
he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts, bc he’s learned that authority figures are no help and will only make things worse. he takes situations at face value bc he’s never seen other options in his life, he’s never HAD other options in his life. speaking very personally, that was a serious marker of abuse that i saw in myself – i never thought abt escape, or what i could do to improve my situation, bc i didn’t even see that as an option. the options were survive or don’t, deal w it or don’t, acclimate or implode.
maybe he wasn’t thinking abt what DUMBLEDORE would do, what anyone at hogwarts would do. maybe he was acting off what he knew the dursleys (his main authority figures) would do. the dursleys would let the girl drown. and harry was there, and harry could do something, and so harry did. he took personal responsibility for fleur’s sister’s safety bc all his life he’s learned that authority figures cannot be trusted to do so.
people characterize these aspects of harry as a “hero complex” or a “stupid nobility” or a “lack of common sense”, but i don’t agree with that. i can’t put my finger on exactly what it is. it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.
it’s called “complex ptsd” and if you get out of the abusive situation before you’re old enough to understand how fucked up it was, like Harry did, you don’t end up with the classic flashbacks so much, just atypical behavior patterns and a high risk of other shit. That’s why Harry is so fucked up by everything that Umbridge does, it’s because he’s being retraumatized in his safe space.
Seriously, the Dursleys would have not only let her drown, they would have let her drown so they could blame Harry for it afterwards. (Although the loudest “Potter, too busy winning to care about anyone else” voice in his head would probably be Snape’s.)
Incidentally this is even more clear in the first and second books, to me. Because Harry DID go to adults and say someone’s trying to steal the stone, and what did the adults do? Did they say, yes, we know, we’re taking precautions, real, good protective measures? Noooo. Did they say, thank you, we’ll look into it, even? Noooo. They said, don’t be silly, it’s not your concern, nothing to see here, little boy, run along and do your schoolwork.
And they said this to a boy whose entire life experience has never involved an adult that can be depended on. And they lied, lied about their own knowledge, said “that’s silly” when they know “that’s true.” And they were too convincing: since he as well knew the truth, what they ended up convincing him was that they didn’t know. And it fit right in with his expectations. Adults, whether actively malicious (the Dursleys, Snape) or well-meaning but oblivious (Mrs. Figg, Harry’s primary-school teachers, the other Hogwarts teachers), can’t be depended on. If anything’s got to be done, Harry and his friends have got to do it himself.
Second book, same thing—they’re headed for the teacher’s lounge to tell the teachers it’s a basilisk, and overhear the teachers saying that Ginny Weasley’s been taken by the monster, and they need to close Hogwarts, and their only plan to rescue Ginny is to send Gilderoy Lockhart—knowing full well he’s a fraud, a coward, and no match for a Cornish pixie, let alone a basilisk. Once again, the adults are flat-out useless and if anyone is going to save Ginny, it’s gotta be Harry and Ron.
Notably, this is after another ball-drop on the part of the adults: when Harry’s been framed for underage magic and locked up in his room and starved by people who have every intention of keeping him out of Hogwarts forever, it’s other kids, Ron, Fred, and George, who go rescue him, and when the adults find out, one of them punishes and scolds and the other is only interested in how his car worked.
In book three, we meet a couple of adults that are competent, helpful, and willing to listen—Sirius and Remus—and the other adults come in and the end result is, one’s fired and the other has to go on the run lest he have his soul sucked out by dementors. Dumbledore does listen and give them the necessary hints, but it’s Harry, and Hermione this time, who have to do the work.
And then in Order of the Phoenix, in comes the smothering bullshit about how he’s too young to be in the Order and needs to leave everything to the grownups, after the grownups have dropped the ball four years running and are batting zero on the trust-and-listening factor—no wonder he threw a tantrum, I would’ve thrown a tantrum, he was fucking entitled to one.
“Well, that was a bit stupid of you,” said Ginny angrily, “seeing as you don’t know anyone but me who’s been possessed by You-Know-Who, and I can tell you how it feels.” Harry remained quite still as the impact of these words hit him. Then he turned on the spot to face her. “I forgot,” he said.
– OotP
“he does things by himself and the two people he actually trusts… it’s not completely unhealthy; it’s even very useful and responsible on occasion.” – @gaelissfelin
…this. Harry sees people as: a. him and people he trusts, b. people to be evaded, and c. people in need of help. When he gets backed into a corner (Voldemort inside his head, heading down the trapdoor alone, off to the DoM alone, into the Forest alone), the circle of people he trusts shrinks down from the DA/OotP, to the Trio, to just himself. Harry never wants to be a hero or gets off on it, he’s just a person who’s suffered from the bystander effect and doesn’t want to be a bystander himself.
…that’s what it is, why it’s useful, I think. It’s not a hero complex, it’s an anti-bystander complex. Sometimes it only takes one person standing up.
When I was younger I never understood why people thought Harry wasn’t thinking things through. But now that I am older and have my diagnosis of PTSD I realize that I was just one abused child identifying with another. It was logical to me that Harry not trust the adults in his life because I couldn’t trust any in mine. No one ever believed me when I told them I was being bullied, my parents were too wrapped up in screaming at each other to give a fuck about me. You go that long feeling like a shadow without a voice and you just start doing things on your own because who the fuck cares about you. You wind up with a protective streak a mile wide because in the back of your mind you know that things can’t change for you but maybe you can change them for someone else even if it means taking their pain as your own. No wonder Harry winds up an Auror, he’s been saving people and getting himself hurt since birth, he needs a psychiatrist to help him but he doesn’t trust anyone so he just throws himself into the only thing he knows how to do rather than healing. It’s by sheer force of will that he’s not catatonic or having PTSD flashbacks every time he goes to work.
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