Ultimate security as Harry is the only one capable of opening it.
Myrtle proudly spending her time acting as a guard/lookout.
Later, Harry diligently teaching Ron, Hermione, and a few choice others, like Neville, how to mimic parseltongue so that they can open it too.
Muggleborns experiencing vicious satisfaction that they’re using this chamber as a place of education and defense, reclaiming the very space Slytherin built to rid the school of their presence.
Hermione methodically dismantling the basilisk’s corpse, covertly selling the priceless ingredients to potion masters, using the funds to continue their work - buying books and battle robes and new wands for those who can’t afford it.
(Hermione saving a portion of those ingredients for her own research, straightening in triumph when she learns what basilisk venom does to horcruxes, knowing she has vials of it hidden up in her room).
Harry reverently adding the Chamber of Secrets to the Marauder’s Map, proudly continuing his family’s work and reveling in the difference they’re making.
These students - these kids - choosing to train in a dark, horrifying place that was never meant for them. Learning spells amongst shadows, growing stronger in inches of murky water, the smell of a decomposing corpse in their noses, memories of all that had happened here haunting them. They know this is what war is really like and it helps to push them forward.
Updating this because people have brought up some REALLY GREAT plot-holes and I like trying to flesh out my AUs soooooooo…
Ginny is the one who suggests using the Chamber. Of course she is. Harry isn’t the type to think of that, but for Ginny… for Ginny the Chamber still haunts her dreams, too often, and she’s furious that a part of the castle is restricted to her - a part of her home that she wants to avoid. She suggests the Chamber, partly for the DA’s benefit, mostly for her own.
Visibility is a concern - what if someone sees them going into the girl’s restroom? They think it’s a serious issue until Ron starts laughing. No one comes near that bathroom anymore, he says. Not ever. It was barely an issue while brewing a month long polyjuice potion, Ron and Harry popping in and out to add ingredients or to stir. Now though? Now that Myrtle has stepped up her game (shrieking, flooding the room if someone unwanted comes near), now that Hogwarts is infused with rumors that Harry fought a basilisk rightin there, now that the nearby corridor still has a bloody, horrifying message that even the professors haven’t been able to erase*… well, students avoid the area like the plague.
Even if they didn’t, the House Elves help them out. Dobby did, after all, suggest the Room of Requirement before Ginny brought up the Chamber. Who better than the workers who see but are not seen to help the DA keep watch?
The castle helps too. By now it knows Harry and desperately wants to protect its students. More than once Umbridge follows a DA member, only to find the staircase moving unexpectedly, taking her in another direction entirely. Sometimes there’s even a door directly beside the lavatory - appearing out of nowhere - that students can slip inside if they feel the need…
Getting out is the other concern. At first they think to bring brooms or levitate one another out… but that’s just not practical. Then, one of the Hufflepuffs asks the obvious and yet oddly illusive question: how did Salazar get out? They start a search and by the end of the day they’ve found at least four hidden exits.
One exit leads out into the Forbidden Forest, a space that’s not nearly as terrifying as it once was. Harry speaks quietly to Firenze and secures the help of the centaurs for when they need safe passage late at night. One day they encounter a group of acromantulas… and Harry learns of Hagrid’s strict new rule - friends of Hagrid are never food, no matter how easy the prey. The students don’t realize it, but they’re slowly gaining allies. Those in the forest begin to take notice of the children who walk both bravely and respectfully through their trees.
(And one day when they’re too tired to walk back, a familiar blue car pulls up and throws open its doors. Ron cheers like a maniac. Ginny laughs and threatens to tell their dad).
Though the exists are great, it’s Hermione who realizes the Chamber’s true benefit - it lies outside of Hogwart’s apparition zone. How can it not? Godric, Helga, and Rowena didn’t know of its existence when they first made the wards. So now the DA can go with ease, they just can’t pop in from anywhere else in the castle. Which is, admittedly, perfect. Apparition lessons begin in earnest.
(And during the Battle of Hogwarts, DA members take Slytherin students by the hand - those who wouldn’t, couldn’t, fight their own families. They take them down to the Chamber and tell them to apparate out. Leave while you still can. Keep safe).
Harry realizing that parseltongue is easily imitated and coming up with an actual password that has to be spoken, one linked to a spell too. It helps that the snakes around the entrance are semi-sentient and are loyal to their new master. They know who’s meant to go down there and who’s not.
Neville joking one day that they should be learning how to use swords, considering that’s how the original battle down here was won. Harry takes it seriously. Not the swords bit, but using physical/muggle fighting techniques on wizards who are too reliant on their magic. They begin reading up on hand-to-hand combat and knives.
Harry needing to test their progress and getting a really stupid idea… but honestly, those often work out in his favor. So one sunny, Saturday morning - when everyone else is lounging outside - Harry sneaks the DA into the third floor corridor. Fluffy is gone, as is the mirror, but the rest remains, no doubt left in case Dumbledore ever had to guard something else precious. Hermione, Ron, and Harry spend the day supervising, teaching their peers how to react under pressure, think through situations, and rely on one another’s skills.
And then one day things get weird (because they always do with Harry) when he realizes that the miniature chamber the basilisk was kept in is the only part of their hideout they’d yet to explore. See, given their rarity, it’s unsurprising that wizardkind knows so little about basilisks - not that they reproduce asexually or that only a parseltongue can hatch the egg. So when Harry crawls into the chamber, and finds a strange egg-like object nestled there, that begins pulsing a soft green color in his presence, and when he basically says, “What the hell…?” out loud, and when it comes out in parseltongue because he is surrounded by snake things…well, let’s just say a few minutes later Harry crawls back out, very sheepish, a baby basilisk cooing around his neck. He laughs pretty shakily and mutters something about finding their mascot.
(And they name the beast - because of course they do - and Hermione invents a soft device to cover its eyes and feeding it is an absolute horror… but they do grow to love their ‘mascot.’ And during the Battle - when Harry is off in the forest and Hogwarts is losing badly - no one is more surprised than the Death Eaters when Ron and Hermione come tearing out of the school riding a goddamn fully grown basilisk. Hermione rips off the cover on its eyes and sets to work).
People who perform manual labor should be not only given high and liveable wages, but unlimited access to healthcare and physical therapy to help manage the myriad conditions that come from doing back-breaking work.
Like this is not an absurd concept. It bothers me that people think that it is.
Donald Trump is exactly the kind of person that Jesus would have thrown out of the temple and beaten with a stick, and the fact that so many self-identified Christians want to put him in office tells you pretty everything wrong with white American Christianity.
Because Jesus had authority at temples and beat people.
I 100% can’t tell if you’re joking here but he actually did chase people out of a temple at least once for using religion for their own selfish gains, complete with literal table flipping and improvised whips
So really it’s not that he would have trump thrown out as much as he would storm in and accuse him of turning his father’s house into a den of thieves before upending a table on his head
Dude, Jesus not only chased them out, he broke stuff they were selling, let loose all of their animals, and fucking flipped all the money-changing tables.
Jesus 100% would have been chasing Trump out with a table leg.
do u ever just think about the fact that molly weasley saw HARRY POTTER, the boy who defeated voldemort, and went “i’m gonna knit this kid a christmas sweater”
what i love thinking about is
in the book ron says he told his mum that harry wasn’t expecting any christmas presents and that’s why she sent him them
and knowing ron can be a bit scatty/oblivious he probably didn’t mention it til like two days before christmas
so i just like to think of molly sitting up all night knitting harry his sweater and baking him homemade fudge or whatever because she’d be damned if she’d let harry go present-less at christmas
Or maybe Harry is just as dismissive. Like, Ron is dreaming aloud of him mom’s homemade fudge and asks Harry what he wants and Harry shrugs “the Dursley never give me anything, last year I got a half-used eraser” and Ron is like 0_0 because what, no one is going to give a gift to his new best friend? So he takes poor Errol telling Percy it’s an emergency and Percy’s like no! and Ron’s like HARRY NEVER GETS CHRISTMAS GIFTS YOU GIT and Percy’s like Oh. Ok. Write mom. And Ron’s letter is mainly MOM HARRY NEVER GETS CHRISTMAS GIFTS FROM HIS MUGGLES WHAT DO I DO and then it’s December 23 at night and Arthur is ready to go to bed and sees his wife get the yarn and the knitting needles out again and Honey I thought you were done? Did we get another child while I was at work? YES, she answers, furious. Ron’s new friend, little Harry. If I get this done by tomorrow morning I can make a batch of fudge and send Errol back with it. And that’s when Arthur Weasley realized they did get another kid when he wasn’t looking but, honestly, once you went past the five kids mark you stopped counting.
“
Did we get another child while I was at work?” “YES”
the solar system is probably most purely, simply fun exploratory experience humans will ever get to have, because there’s nobody there! there’s no colonialism and we don’t have to worry about aliens yet, so its just. fun!
we just land a robot on an empty planet and make it do wheelies and every few days we find like a cool rock and scientists yell about it on twitter
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched Fury Road by now, but there’s always a few random things I notice or focus on more than the last time around. This time it was:
1. The way the exposed pipes on the front of the Gigahorse look like the tubing on Immortan Joe’s mask.
2. Slit saying “He was scanning the horizon” always always sounds like a Monty Python line to me. There’s just such a specificity to it that it makes me laugh every time.
3. The first glance between Furiosa and Max when he’s strapped to Nux’s car. Furiosa’s expression is not super easy to read here, but I think there’s a tiny flash of pity. Not like she’s about to help him–she’s got her own problems–but at least a genuine, “sucks to be you.”
4. The way the movie unites Max and Furiosa in action before they’ve ever interacted. They both almost get decapitated by the Buzzard buzzsaw and both have a moment when they breathe a sigh of relief, one right after the other, after it’s taken out of commission.
5. The transitions between diegetic and non-diegetic sound in this movie are siiiiick. The one I’m thinking of is the way the hollow bangs of Furiosa knocking sand off the Rig become part of the soundtrack as Max approaches the Rig.
6. When Max first rolls up to the Rig, Furiosa isn’t automatically hostile. Her first expression is wary and maybe a little curious? Even when he’s pointing the gun at her.
She only shifts into kill mode after he threatens Angharad with the gun.
7. Speaking of which…I can’t believe I never put this together before, but Max is basically using Angharad as a human shield when he’s drinking the water, making her stand between him and Furiosa with the gun pointed at her. Another instance of the taken by force/willingly given pattern.
8. “I saw it all. My own bloodbag, driving the Rig that killed her.” I find all the different interpretations of Angharad’s fall off the Rig fascinating. It’s such an important moment in the story, but there’s so much ambiguity in it. Of course Nux wouldn’t think to blame Joe for any of this, but he doesn’t even seem to particularly blame Max–he doesn’t show any hostility toward him at any point later. It’s more like he blames the machine, specifically, for failing her.
9. It’s impossible to pick a favorite action sequence in Fury Road but the nighttime stuff in the bog has a particular sense of terror to it. We know exactly how pissed Joe is now that Angharad’s baby is dead; the Bullet Farmer is coming for them and they keep. getting. stuck. It’s the most horror-like of all the sequences and it’s totally appropriate that it takes place at night.
It’s also the only time we see anyone firing any kind of rockets or mortars or really using any kind of long-range weapon (other than Furiosa’s sniper shots, which unsurprisingly also factor into this scene). Pretty much all the other weapons in the movie are things that you have to be close enough to your target to see them before you can fire. The mortar rounds are very effective as a scary escalation at a point when our protagonists already seem completely fucked.
10. Meeting the Vuvalini. The scream in the desert is the climax of the scene, but the thing that always gets me in the feels is moment after, “I can’t wait for them to see it.” “See what?” “Home.” There’s just this long beat of silence and you think oh no.
11. The tiny little crack in Max’s voice on “…you’ll go insane.” Just kill me now.
All of this very much (god, the crack in his voice just fucKING KILLS ME), but particularly the one about Nux’s perspective on Angharad’s death–that he almost seems to blame the War Rig rather than Max (who was driving) or even Furiosa (who’s really at the center of this whole thing). I’ve kind of abstractly toyed with the thought before that the War Boys seem to consider cars/vehicles a nigh-living force in their world, and I’ve had a lot of trouble putting it into words but I’m going to give it a shot.
In their world, the War Boys seem to view themselves as one half of Joe’s army: the half with thumbs, the half that drives. The other half, the sacred half, is the V8 engine, the car itself that they drive. Nux is VERY protective of his position as driver of his particular car, both because of the status it affords him (obviously) and maybe because he considers the car…almost an ally? A comrade in arms? It would make sense, given the society that Joe sets up. So maybe he does blame the War Rig. Maybe there’s a part of Nux–a part that he knows is objectively foolish because he’s a blackthumb, he knows that cars don’t have thoughts or wills of their own, but a part that persists nonetheless–that thinks quietly that Furiosa betrayed them all and somehow convinced the War Rig to side with her. The great and beautiful creation of Immortan Joe, THE War Rig, betraying him (and isn’t Furiosa a great and beautiful creation of Joe too, from that angle, all the parts ripped to pieces and put back together as something dangerous and unstoppable that he does not control nearly as much as he might have imagined?)
I was going to be like “an AU where all Leia writes all her official dispatched he exact same way that Carrie Fisher tweets,” except I think we all know in our heart of hearts that this is in fact canon, and the first thing you learn in the Resistance is a basic fluency in emoji
One time the First Order manages to intercept a few official communiques and they’re all like “wtf is this code” while Kylo Ren is standing to the side just dying inside because MOM GOD THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING
darth vader would never write like this
THIS IS THE MOST VITALLY IMPORTANT THING I HAVE BEHELD OH MY GOD
if u donuts wanna start shipping new star wars characters then be my fucking guest but mama din’t raise no fool. im waitin til i know who related to who so i don’t have to spend the next ten years in the shower praying for forgiveness. fool me once, george lucas.
It always pisses me off whenever fic writers forget that Steve Rogers also had a shit-ton of Bad Things to happen to him or at least marginalize it because Bucky had it worse.
Look, I’m not arguing that it isn’t true. Bucky’s
definitely had the worst end of the whole deal so this isn’t and this shouldn’t be a contest in which, “Your pain and experience is worse, so you should get help and we’ll just ignore the other guy.”
Consider the shit Steve’s gone through:
a. Has PTSD. Possible suicidal tendencies. Depression.
b. Has no other family or relatives to go home to - by the time Steve wakes up, any possible support system he might have had is long gone. The Commandos are either dead or too old. Peggy Carter is the same. Bucky, of course, is out of the picture. Steve has never come home from his war. Never.
c. Was apparently isolated by SHIELD in the first few days of his awakening and then pretty much manipulated into joining the group. Also, the first thing SHIELD does to him is lie. Nick Fury also lied to him about Phase 2 and while I don’t doubt Fury’s got better intentions than someone like Alexander Pierce…. that is not a good way to treat a man who’s led covert ops and been around spies in freakin’ World War II.
d. SHIELD is actually HYDRA and has been torturing and brainwashing and fucking over Steve’s Best Friend and Only Family. So basically, Steve died for nothing.
e. The entirety of the whole Winter Soldier mess.
f. Everything special about you came from a bottle. I honestly think those words still haunt Steve, especially in the wake of the whole Winter Soldier shitstorm.
g. Is still expected to be Captain America, beacon of hope and justice and right and he still pushes on, even as he deals with a world that’s vastly different from what he knows, with people who constantly remind him that he’s out of touch and out of sync, even if it’s in a good-natured, teasing way, even as he comes to grips with the fact that Bucky, his best friend, will never be the man he’s known and the fact that he should have jumped after his friend on the train, even as Bucky, with his memory all FUBAR’d, jumped after him on the helicarrier. TL;DR - Steve deals with a poison stew of grief and guilt and anger on a daily basis.
Seriously, the only one I’ve seen who pretty much just comes close to understanding the crap he’s gone through is Sam Wilson. Who gets that it’s not a contest of who got the worst experience - just recognizes that Steve is also in pain and hurting and shouldn’t be shuffled aside and told to “walk it off” because Bucky is the tortured POW, not him. TL;DR: Steve Rogers also needs a hug. A LOT of hugs. A LOT of kindness and understanding. Especially from the people who are supposed to be his friends.
where a grad student becomes a supervillain for extra credit since their doctoral committee is lowkey three of the city’s supervillains. and they meet the hero who is cute and charming and idealistic. and damn, extra credit is so not worth this. but damn, grad school is expensive and the job market is competitive
“there’s good in you”
“i really think all that’s in me at this point is ramen, red bull and spite”
Just letting y’all know I’ve scrolled past that “reblog or your mom will die in x amount of seconds” post several times and nothings happened. She’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I promise nothing will happen to your mother if you don’t reblog it. Fuck the person who made that post in the first place because it’s just cruel and does nothing but play around with people’s anxiety.
at what point in history do you think americans stopped having british accents
Actually, Americans still have the original British accent. We kept it over time and Britain didn’t. What we currently coin as a British accent developed in England during the 19th century among the upper class as a symbol of status. Historians often claim that Shakespeare sounds better in an American accent.
whAT THE FUCK
I’m too tired for this
Always add in the video that according to linguists, Native southern drawl is a slowed down British.
ahh yes earth day where we pretend that the reason human beings are fucking the earth over is because your mom doesn’t recycle and not because global corporations are ducking national regulations and then calling their products “green” because they donate to an organization to save cute animals in your name
It’s been a while since a big election and this is the first time some Tumblrites are voting so here’s a quick warning:
Please Don’t Snapchat, Instagram, take a selfie with, etc, your vote in the voting booth! There are laws in almost every state forbidding sharing your vote, especially if polls haven’t closer yet. If any officials get wind of it they can invalidate your vote, basically throw it away. This was actually a thing during Obama’s election.
So make sure you get out and vote, and make sure it counts! Keep your phone in your pocket for this one.
One of my biggest fears about this election is that all the millennials are gonna come out and vote for Bernie Sanders and forget to vote for anybody else. Every seat in the House of Representatives is up for reelection and a bunch of Senate seats are up as well. Most states do their governor and state legislature during mid-terms (which means we’re all gonna need to go out again in 2018), but a few are open in this cycle and people living in those states need to know about that too.
There are two things about American politics that nobody seems to know and everyone should: republicans only win when people don’t vote and local politics affect you at least as much as national level shit. Vote for your favorite Presidential candidate, but also vote for like, city council and state representative and stuff. It’s all important and if we as a generation want to make real change we need to flex our voting power at every level of government and show our country that we are a political force to be reckoned with. I want to see us out, in force, in every election until we’re all goddamned dead. Because that’s how shit gets done in a democracy.
this generation gets dragged so much and insulted so much and called conceited and careless and lazy and stupid and yet we’re just taking selfies when we think we look nice and complimenting each other and educating ourselves and un-learning internalized prejudices and we care so much about the world and the future and we’re so tolerant and passionate and perseverant and i love it. i love it so much. everyone hated us and we just didn’t care. everyone hated us so we learned to love ourselves
this generation gets dragged so much and insulted so much and called conceited and careless and lazy and stupid and yet we’re just taking selfies when we think we look nice and complimenting each other and educating ourselves and un-learning internalized prejudices and we care so much about the world and the future and we’re so tolerant and passionate and perseverant and i love it. i love it so much. everyone hated us and we just didn’t care. everyone hated us so we learned to love ourselves
the worst thing about writing is that you aren’t just a writer. you have to be a thousand things. a poet, a flirt, a weapons expert, a bleeding heart, a scholar, a legendary cook, a theorist, an engineer, a reckless teenage girl, a dying god. you have to be able to write monologues and speeches and heartfelt confessions, and you have to make them believable. writing is putting yourself into someone else’s shoes.
