So I’m doing a Fanfiction 101 panel at a local mini convention and I’m trying to get a bunch of advice that all novice fanfic writers could use. Care to share some important tips?
Honestly, my #1 tip: LEARN HOW TO WRITE LIKE A GROWN UP. Learn punctuation, and use it in the right spots. Capitalize, use commas and quotation marks in the right spot, use paragraph breaks. I don’t care how amazing and original and incredible your story is, I won’t read it if it’s full of distracting ugly errors. I just can’t handle it. Typos happen, of course, but it takes two seconds to google ‘how to punctuate a sentence’, like seriously. Or just, you know, pick up a book and look at it and see where the punctuation is…. Getting a beta reader is super helpful for this, also, especially if they’re a better writer than you are. You’ll learn a lot.
Grammar and punctuation are crucial and a great start. I think I might also suggest:
- Write something you want to see. If you’re just writing to be “popular” you’ll quickly burn out. Write something you’re passionate about, and people will find it. I’m not saying notes and reviews aren’t important, because they are, but don’t write something you’re not interested in just to gain them. Be enthusiastic about what you’re doing and engender enthusiasm in others.
- Which goes hand in hand with being as good a reader as you are a writer. Engage with other people’s stories. Learn from them, beta them, and review them. DEFINITELY review them. Fanfiction is a great community, and it is always so encouraging to receive a review (as you’ll see!) and leaving them in return is absolutely essential for being a positive part of that community.
- Keep track of what you write and where you publish it. You can write on as many platforms as possible, but it’s a great idea to keep track of it all, perhaps especially chronologically. That way you can look back on previous works and see how much you’ve progressed.
- Tag smartly. Tag accurately. You want people who would be actually interested in your story to find your story, so use the tags that will guide them there. The more accurate your tags, the more likely the readers you want will discover you.
I would add: learn homophones and apply spell check. It sounds like a tiny nit-picky thing, but I can’t express how helpful it is in both feeling confident in your own writing and reading someone else’s. It’s humiliating to have someone point to that one misspelling in your writing (and there will always be that one asshole), and it’s hard to get through a fic full of spelling errors/syntax errors. For example: there, they’re, their; ore, oar, or; and (for those of you writing smut) wanton and wonton is a vital difference, because I’m assuming you are not writing about East Asian dumplings.
That time when Snape was hiding out of sight in the bushes to spy on Lily and Petunia instead of happening to be nearby
That time when Snape dropped a tree branch on Lily’s sister
That time when Snape defended the use of Dark Magic as a laugh and redirected the conversation to someone else’s actions
That time Snape responded to humiliating and awful but non-violent hexes by giving his opponent a bloody gash to the face
That time when Snape called Lily a Mudblood
That time when Snape threatened to sleep outside Lily’s place of dwelling in the castle in spite of knowing she did not want to speak with him
That time when Lily pointed out that Snape called people Mudblood all the time
That time when Snape was the one who conveyed the prophecy to Voldemort that put Lily in danger in the first place
That time when Snape’s only moral objection to endangering a baby came from his attachment to the mother
That time when Snape didn’t say ‘hide them all’ initially but told Voldemort to kill the father and infant son but spare the mother -and only asked to hide them all after Dumbledore told him he was disgusting
That time when it was Sirius who discovered the Potters and rescued Harry from the ruin of Godric’s Hollow
That time when Snape singled Harry out in a room full of people on the first day of class for not having extensive knowledge not required of them at that point - even deducting points for Harry not monitoring someone else’s potion
Those times when Snape lashed out at Harry for a grudge against his father who had died ten (to sixteen, in HBP) years prior - who Harry couldn’t even remember
All those times when Snape responded to seeing Neville Longbottom struggle in his class by calling him names like ‘idiot boy’, demeaning him, and deducting points when Hermione helped him
That time Snape screamed at a 13-year-old Hermione and called her ‘STUPID GIRL’
That time when Snape was unconscious for Lupin’s transformation and it was Sirius actively forcing the children away from Lupin
That time when Snape lied to the Minister about Sirius confunding the trio - or else lied about being able to recognize it
That time when Snape burst into hysterics after Sirius (rightfully) escaped death
That time when Snape outed Remus as a werewolf (having been attempting to do so for quite some time) and caused him to resign from the only employment that would accept him
That time when Snape made a teenage girl feel even more insecure about her appearance in the face of her being attacked
That time when Snape frequently goaded Sirius for being unable to be useful to the Order in spite of actively contributing to besmirching Sirius’s name so he could not be cleared
That time when Snape didn’t just tell Harry to get out when he was embarrassed, he also told him to never visit his office again in spite of Harry needing Occlumency lessons for his own safety
That time when Snape gave Harry detention every Saturday for the rest of term because he wouldn’t show him his potions book
That time when Snape broke into Harry’s dead godfather’s house to rip apart a picture from Harry’s first and only birthday with his parents
Albus Hagrid’s Flobberworms Potter: Still a better name than the one he had.
That time when 13 year old Neville feared Snape, a fucking teacher, who should have fucking nurtured him like good teachers do, when 13 year old Neville feared Snape more than the fucking woman who literally tortured his parents into insanity.
And he grew up in the magical community, remember, so he’d fucking know what Lestrange looked like, what her name was, before he could wipe his own arse.
Also, remember the time when Snape to time in class to read out a slut-shaming article in a gossip magazine to embarrass two of his students? Yeeaaah…
It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?
I feel this is something that does often get overlooked in slash shipping, especially in articles that try to ‘explain’ the phenomena. No matter the show, movie or book, people are going to ship. When everyone is a dude and the well written relationships are all dudes, of course we’re gonna go for romance among the dudes because we have no other options.
Totally.
A lot of analyses propose that the overwhelming predominance of male/male ships over female/female and female/male ships in fandom reflects an unhealthy fetishisation of male homosexuality and a deep-seated self-hatred on the part of women in fandom. While it’s true that many fandoms certainly have issues gender-wise, that sort of analysis willfully overlooks a rather more obvious culprit.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we have a hypothetical media franchise with twelve recurring speaking roles, nine of which are male and three of which are female.
(Note that this is actually a bit better than average representaton-wise - female representation in popular media franchises is typicaly well below the 25% contemplated here.)
Assuming that any character can be shipped with any other without regard for age, gender, social position or prior relationship - and for simplicity excluding cloning, time travel and other “selfcest”-enabling scenarios - this yields the following (non-polyamorous) possibilities:
Possible F/F ships: 3 Possible F/M ships: 27 Possible M/M ships: 36
TOTAL POSSIBLE SHIPS: 66
Thus, assuming - again, for the sake of simplicity - that every possible ship is about equally likely to appeal to any given fan, we’d reasonably expect about (36/66) = 55% of all shipping-related media to feature M/M pairings. No particular prejudice in favour of male characters and/or against female characters is necessary for us to get there.
The point is this: before we can conclude that representation in shipping is being skewed by fan prejudice, we have to ask how skewed it would be even in the absence of any particular prejudice on the part of the fans. Or, to put it another way, we have to ask ourselves: are we criticising women in fandom - and let’s be honest here, this type of criticism is almost exclusively directed at women - for creating a representation problem, or are we merely criticising them for failing to correct an existing one?
THANK YOU. Could that person with the statistics degree put those calculations on the internet maybe please and thanks?
SCREAMING BECAUSE I JUST FOUND OUT THAT PETUNIA PLANNED LILY AND JAMES’S FUNERAL. OH MY GOD.
-IMAGINE REMUS FINDING HER ADDRESS AND POPPING OVER ONE DAY BC HE REFUSES TO HAVE HER MESS UP THE ARRANGEMENTS AND DISHONOUR HIS FRIENDS.
-PETUNIA OPENING THE DOOR, FLUSTERED BC SHE HAS TWO SCREAMING BABIES AND HAS NEVER BEEN MORE STESSED EVER AND HAS DUDLEY IN ONE ARM AND HARRY ON HER LEG AND THERES A STRANGE YOUNG MAN WITH GRAYING HAIR AND A LOT OF UGLY SCARS ON HER PORCH
-HARRY RECOGNIZING REMUS AT ONCE AND LETTING GO OF PETUNIA YELLING “UNC-OO MOO'Y! UNC-OO MOO'Y!” AND REMUS AUTOMATICALLY REACHING DOWN TO LET THE TODDLER LATCH ONTO HIS NECK LIKE HE ALWAYS DOES. HARRY QUIETS DOWN QUICKLY AND JUST CURLS UP BC IT’S SOMEONE HE KNOWS AND UNCLE MOONY!
-PETUNIA BEING FLABERGASTED AND FINALLY ASKING, “HOW DID YOU DO THAT? I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO GET HIM TO STOP FUSSING SINCE HE GOT HERE.”
-REMUS EXPLAINING THAT HARRY HAS DONE THAT SINCE DAY ONE AND ASKS POLITELY TO COME IN BC HE HAS SOMETHING TO DISCUSS WITH HER
-PETUNIA ALLOWING REMUS IN AND STATING SHE’S GOING TO PUT DUDLEY DOWN FOR A NAP AND TO PLEASE MAKE HIMSELF COMFORTABLE IN THE SITTING ROOM
-REMUS SITTING AWKWARDLY ON AN ARMCHAIR AND HARRY LOOKS UP AND ASKS “UNC-OO MOO'Y, WHERE MUMA? WHERE DADA? WHERE PA'FU?”
-REMUS NOT KNOWING HOW TO SAY THEYRE DEAD BC SIRIUS SO HE SAYS “HARRY, I NEED YOU TO BE A BIG BOY. MUMA AND DADA… THEY LOVED YOU LOTS AND LOTS BUT THEY HAD TO GO BYEBYE.”
-“WHEN MUMA AND DADA BACK?”
-“HARRY, I’M SORRY BUT THEY HAD TO GO TO HEAVEN.” AND REMUS IS CRYING BECAUSE IT’S SUDDENLY REAL AND HIS FRIENDS ARE ACTUALLY FUCKING DEAD AND IT HURTS AND IT HURTS SO MUCH HE WISH HE COULD RIP HIS HEART OUT AND NEVER FEEL AGAIN
-AND HARRY IS CONFUSED SO HE GRABS REMUS’S NOSE IN ATTEMPT TO COMFORT REMUS AND STARTS BABBLING ABOUT MUMA PLAYING PEEKABO AND DADA HIDING UNDER A BIG FLAPPY CLOAK AND A GREEN LIGHT AND UNCLE MOONY ITS JUST GAMES
-PETUNIA COMING BACK DOWNSTAIRS TO SEE REMUS SOBBING AND PETTING HARRY’S HEAD AND TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT MUMA AND DADA CAN’T COME BACK BUT REMUS IS CRYING SO MUCH HE CAN BARELY SPEAK SO SHE OFFERS A HANKERCHEIF AND ASKS WHAT HE CAME FOR
-AFTER HE CALMS DOWN ENOUGH HE FLAT OUT TELLS PETUNIA THAT HE IS GOING TO HELP WITH THE FUNERAL
-SHE’S ACTUALLY RELIEVED AND SAYS SHE HADN’T THE FAINTEST TO INVITE SEEING AS SHE WASN’T CLOSE WITH LILY (AT THIS REMUS SNORTS) AND COULDN’T JUST ATTEND HERSELF
-SKIP TO THE FUNERAL. IT’S AN OPEN CASKET AND DUE TO MAGIC BOTH LILY AND JAMES ARE IN THE SAME CASKET AND THEIR HANDS ARE INTERRWINED AND IT LOOKS AS THEYRE SLEEPING IN THEIR FINEST CLOTHES (LILY IN HER WEDDING DRESS, AS IT WAS HER FAVORITE ARTICLE OF CLOTHING AND NOT LONG OR OVERLY FANCY AND JAMES IN A SUIT BUT INSTEAD OF A SUIT TOP HES WEARING THAT RIDICULOUS SHIRT HIM AND SIRIUS MADE THAT HAD “I HAVE THE WORLD’S HOTTEST WIFE” PRINTED ON IT)
-REMUS IS SITTING TO THE RIGHT OF PETUNIA WITH HARRY IN HIS LAP AND ALICE AND FRANK ARE TO THE RIGHT OF HIM
-THE SERVICE IS GORGEOUS WITH DUMBLEDORE CONDUCTING IT IN THE RIDICULOUS PURPLE ROBES WITH YELLOW STARS THAT JAMES ABSOLUTELY LOVED
-WHEN IT’S TIME TO GO UP AND VIEW THE BODIES, PETUNIA LINGERS A SECOND LONGEUR THAN HER HUSBAND BUT QUICKLY MOVES
-REMUS GOES UP WITH HARRY
-HARRY MANAGED TO ESCAPE REMUS’S ARMS AND LANDS IN THE COFFIN YELLING, “MUMA! DADA! WAKEY!” OVER AND OVER AND HE’S SO CONFUSED AS TO WHY THEY AREN’T ANSWERING. FINALLY HE TURNS TO REMUS, CONFUSED, AND ASKS, “UNC-OO MOO'Y, PEEA'BOO?”
-EVERYONE IS FROZEN, WATCHING THE TINY BABY POKE AND PROD HIS PARENTS. MCGONAGALL IS CRYING AND REMUS IS SOBBING AGAIN AND HE’S TRYING TO EXPLAIN TO HARRY THAT THEY CAN’T
-DUMBLEDORE SWEEPS IN ALL MAGESTICALLY AND HARRY SHRIEKS “DUBLDOR!” AND DUMBLEDORE IS ABLE TO EXPLAIN THAT MUMA AND DADA ARE GONE IN THE NICEST WAY POSSIBLE BUT SO HARRY UNDERSTANDS AND HARRY STARTS CRYING AND SAYING HE WANTS MUMA AND DADA
-REMUS GRABS HARRY AND BEGINS TO SHUSH HIM AND LETS OTHER PEOPLE SAY GOODBYE TO LILY AND JAMES AND SUDDENLY PETUNIA AND VERNON ARE OVER AND HARRY IS BEING RIPPED OUT OF REMUS’S ARMS AND BEING TOLD THAT REMUS IS NEVER ALLOWED TO COME OVER AGAIN AND IF HE DOES THE POLICE WILL BE CALLED AND REMUS IS NOT ALLOWED TO EVER CONTACT HARRY OR THE DURSLEY’S AGAIN
-REMUS JUST STARES NUMBLY AS THE DURSLEYS STOMP FROM THE HALL WITH HARRY CRYING AND SHREIKING, “UNC-OO MOO'Y! UNC-OO MOO'Y! I WAN’ UNC-OO MOO'Y!” AND SUDDENLY REMUS IS CRYING FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE THE MILLIONTH TIME AND IT FEELS LIKE LILY AND JAMES DIED ALL OVER AGAIN AS HARRY’S CRIES FADE AND HE FALLS TO HIS KNEES AND HE’S SCREAMING IN PAIN BECAUSE IT’S TOO MUCH AND HE DIDN’T ASK FOR THIS AND HE’S DEMANDING TO KNOW WHY THIS HAD TO HAPPEN
-REMUS LUPIN IS 21 AND HIS ENTIRE FAMILY HAS BEEN TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM WITHOUT MERCY
“You know what I have? I have a 24-year-old genius with a smartphone and a problem with authority. You really never stood a chance.”—Nate Ford (Leverage 3x16, The San Lorenzo Job)
okay my teacher wanted a story that’s gonna shock him
so i wrote him a cute little story about a couple fletcher and mia falling in love
and the last sentences of story are
“so… what is your full name? i mean what is mia short for?”
“michael”
because my teacher is kinda homophobic, i am gonna force him into enjoying a fluffy love story with no gender pronouns and well what a shame you liked a story about a gay couple sorry man
If you were ever told or were made to learn cursive writing when you were in grade school.
I wanna see how many of you suffered like I did.
“Oh , you need to know this. Everything in high school needs to be turned in In cursive.”
I mean…I exclusively took notes in cursive for all of freshman and sophomore year of high school and college because it stopped people from asking to photocopy my notes.
-seriously from california to new mexico is terrifying like it’s eight straight hours of pale red desert and the sky is so large that everything, even your car, even your hands, looks like a tenuously small and fragile diorama placed on an endless pale red table and left there to dissolve.
-a gas station that for some reason has large dinosaurs made out of scrap metal. they are 1000% awesome. sometimes they move. take a million pictures.
-a fruit stand that sells the best fruit you have ever eaten. later you won’t quite remember which fruit. strawberries, maybe? peaches?
-small black birds, subtly different in every state. some have gold eyes and some are a little iridescent and some are black from beak to toes. the sparrows they compete with for crumbs look exactly the same wherever you go.
-a completely empty rest stop. no one eats at the concrete tables. no one plays in the tiny strip of grass or gravel. you will find a small and beautiful stone.
-a hawaii license plate, somewhere around ohio. i still don’t know how they get the cars across the ocean. i don’t know why anyone would leave hawaii for ohio. i don’t know why anyone lives in ohio.
-an incredibly weird duck. you had no idea ducks could look so incredibly weird, and you wish you were still ignorant of how incredibly weird ducks can, apparently, look.
-a small folksy roadside waystation that sells fudge and incredibly tacky statues of eagles and wolves and cowboys. if you like fudge, eat the fudge from here.
-a lizard doing pushups. if you are particularly fortunate: many lizards doing pushups.
-approximately one gajillion starbucks shops. don’t bother counting them. it will make you angry.
-a storm somewhere around oklahoma, if you’re lucky. the clouds tower up in fantastic fluffy castles miles and miles into the air and are painted pink and gold and purple and the sky turns a dozen impossible shades of blue and when the rain comes down over your car it sounds like the world is ending.
-weird burrs will stick to your legs. you’ll flick them out of the car eighty or eight hundred miles from where their parent plant was grown, and not be sure whether you should wish the little hitchikers well or not.
-a dog wearing sunglasses with his head hanging out of a car window. this will be the high point of the trip.
-the world’s most depressing restaurant. you will know it when you wind up there and have to eat the terrible food, and listen to the terrible music, and look at all the listless waiters and want to tell them get in my car, for god’s sake get in, i’ll take you out of whatever crapsack little town this is that you can’t get out of on your own. but you won’t say that because it’s rude. maybe they have family here. maybe they even like it here.
-a painting of a sailboat in a motel located at least a hundred miles from any significant body of water.
-several genuinely hilarious postcards. buy them.
-a cat that will not let you pet it. this will be the low point of the trip.
-corn. so much corn you will get scared. who the fuck is going to eat all this corn?
-a small stream in some small woods and the light will come down perfectly and the water will be beautiful and the grass will be beautiful and there will be flowers maybe or the leaves of the trees are starting to turn gold and there are birds chirping and it will be so perfect you will want to stand there and stay forever and live in this little magical painting off the side of the highway and be some kind of highway druid. but instead, you’ll get bored after a while, and get back in the car.
if anyone ever wonders why i love america so much despite its many political and cultural flaws, this is why. this post explains it perfectly.
Yes but this barely even covers the east cost bc you will experience great things such as -a highway that is so desolate, all you can see are trees. You will have to pee, but the next exit won’t be for another 20 miles so have fun -bridge after bridge after bridge. Who even builds a road over all these rivers and streams and stuff? -so many deer. They just want to cross the road, but instead they will just stare at you and will be content to do for another half an hour -restaurant after restaurant painted with little lobsters wearing chefs hats, apparently cooking other lobsters -more trees. Trees everywhere. -what state are we in? It doesn’t matter, you’re in New England, you will be in a new one soon -you will learn to hate the beach because for some reason, people really like the ocean and have to get there, so you will be stuck in traffic for hours and hours just because it’s a nice beach day. It doesn’t matter how far you are from the coast. If you are in a state that touches the ocean, you will experience the beach traffic -A road that probably hasn’t been paved since it was made, so you make a humming noise just to hear your voice shake with the bumps - so many trees. All you can see are trees. Trees everywhere.
Also if you’re road tripping through New England get in touch with your inner Stephen King because you will encounter:
- an abandoned playground with one swing creaking along dismally - a creepily cheerful town that is certainly hiding something because of the sheer insistence that it is hiding nothing (there is a town near where I live that gives me the screaming meemies, I can admit that) - an abandoned tricycle with one wheel creaking along dismally (I shit you not) - fogs that wisp in from nowhere and settle down like it’s their sole desire in life to blind you - an abandoned house with at least two extensions stuck one in front of another, possibly with someone living in the latest extension while the roof of the original creaks dismally (there’s one down the street from me) - at least one Christine-style car a day - pseudo-abandoned boats creaking dismally in the harbor if you’re on the coast - a road paved with such obsessive regularity you may wonder if there’s a body or some other secret that potholes might uncover underneath; alternatively, roads that have potholes so big they could feasibly swallow small children and pets - And last but not least - bring a map, because there are a lot of roads that look completely different depending on which direction you’re driving (and let’s face it, that advice the old man at the diner gave you of “it’s right past the big barn that burned down five years ago” probably isn’t that helpful, now is it)
Seduce me with hilariously awkward stories from your life
Oh have I got one for you.
So, I grew up in a financially strapped household with lots of kids. So we were always buying in bulk. Cheap bulk. It lead to us getting things like this, a 6 lb can of cheap peanut butter:
Now, we’d always had this in the house since a main staple was PB toast, PB sandwich (no J sometimes cause we didn’t have it) and just spoonfuls of PB to help with acid reflux, sore throats, quick snack or just a way to keep 4 hyperactive kids quiet for a few minutes in the same manner of watching a dog lick the roof of it’s mouth for a while after giving it a glob of the PB.
Ever since I was about 6 or 8, I’ve always had a certain urge every time I saw a brand new can of this opened (Which was roughly once every two months) and that was to just shove my whole arm into the can. At that age, it would have easily gone up to my elbow. I don’t know why I felt this urge, but I did. Luckily, I suppressed it….Until I was 14.
I’m 14, home alone after school and making some PB toast for a snack when lo and behold…I get to peel open a brand spanking new can and mar up that perfectly smooth surface. This was a rare occurrence and I wanted to savor it. What would I write in it with the knife for the next person to find? Do I try to carve something into it? Then I remembered my childhood urge of wanting to just shove my arm into it.
I do it. I don’t point my fingers to make it easy, no, it’s open palm hand print with fingers splayed as I shove my hand into a cardboard can full of 6 lbs of PB and it is glorious. I didn’t care that physics dictates that stuff and mass means that PB was being pushed up and out. It was fairly viscous and stuck mostly to my exposed arm. I got almost all of my forearm in this and wiggled my fingers. I pulled my arm out and looked at the massive blob of PB and giggled thinking of the old classic movie “The Blob”. I didn’t use a knife and just rubbed the toast on my PB gauntlet and that’s when I heard it…
A key unlocking the front door.
OH SHIT. I was scrambling to get my hand back in the can to scrape off the mass of peanut butter and clean up this mess. I don’t register the multiple voices until I hear my mom call my name and I look up. She was standing there with her friends that she had invited over looking at her eldest and first born, 14 year old, 3.5 GPA rocking daughter trying to scrape 6 lbs of PB off her arm and into a can.
There was no talking my way out of this or explaining any of it. We stared at each other for what must have been a solid minute before she just guided her friends out of the kitchen and left me to finish cleaning up my mess.
We stopped buying the 6lb cans of peanut butter after that.
Remus Lupin fought alongside Frank and Alice Longbottom in the Order of the Phoenix. He probably knew their fate, how they were tortured into madness and forced to leave their son in the care of his grandmother.
Lupin probably guessed that Neville’s biggest fear would be similar to what he guessed Harry’s would be- Lord Voldemort, or in Neville’s case the death eater who tortured his parents - and was planning on stepping in before Neville faced the boggart so a bunch of 13 year olds wouldn’t see Bellatrix Lestrange cackling and spitting curses in their classroom.
But then Severus Snape insults Neville in front of his class, tries to shame a 13 year old boy in front of a new teacher, and Lupin is so angry. Because he had hoped that after 13 years, now they were adults, maybe Snape had gotten over himself a little and realized that he was a teacher and responsible for these kids, but apparently not. Apparently Snape was still the same petty, angry ,bitter child that he’d been in school, except now he’s bullying children half his age instead of yelling slurs at classmates.
And so Lupin sees the terror in Neville’s face and realizes that, oh my god he fears his potions teacher more than the people responsible for his parents. And Lupin is so indignant and outraged that he KNOWS he has to give this kid some leverage, some way to stand up to his tormentor, and gives that to him. Lupin stands up and tells Neville EXACTLY how to conquer his fear and, moreover, how to do it in front of all his classmates who laughed at him for being scared.
Remus Lupin starting off the school year by letting his students confront their biggest fears, so nothing else they face that year will be as scary. If you can beat your biggest fear, how bad can a test be? Or a big quidditch match? Or being rejected by the girl you ask out?
Remus Lupin truly, deeply, cared about his students. And Snape got him fired.
FCUK THIS IM SCREAMIGN
FUCKING SHIT WHATS THIS MADNESS IM SO HURT
The best thing about the Boggart scene was that Remus finally succeeded in doing in adulthood what he had failed to do in his adolescence - he stood up for a bullied kid and gave him the power he needed at the expense of the bully, even though he had a reason to let the bully’s actions slide.
people’s opinions on book five harry are what make and break a relationship tbh
How people handle different opinions on book five Harry are what make or break a relationship tbh
no. i shouldn’t have to ‘handle’ or tolerate people dismissing the effects of child abuse or post-traumatic stress by labelling them as dramatic or rude. he watched a friend die the previous year, he was close to being murdered by the man who killed his parents, he was being ridiculed by the community for telling the truth. people called him an attention seeker, people he thought were friends didn’t believe his story and he had to go to school with the children of death eaters who stood by as voldemort tried to kill him. he was almost expelled and dismissed from the wizarding world for protecting himself and dudley from a dementor, which the ministry refused to believe. he was essentially tortured by umbridge, being forced to lie about all the horrific things he had experienced. and while all this was happening, he was also being mollycoddled by the order, kept in the dark about plans and blatantly ignored by dumbledore when all he needed was for his pain to be realised. i am not going to tolerate anyone insulting harry during ootp because they cannot understand the effects of abuse, neglect or PTSD.
Especially since child abuse/neglect and depression and losing friends and being publically humiliated for protecting yourself (don’t believe me? two words: victim shaming), et cetera, et cetera, all actually happen in reality. Harry might be a fictional character, but there are plenty of people I know who read that book and went “Hey, I remember screaming at friends because they were just the last fucking straw and I felt bad about it later but at the time I just didn’t know what else to do.” I was one of them, round about the tenth time I read the books. Rereading the books now, after a couple go-rounds on the ‘I was assaulted in public and when I punched the guy in the face/kicked him in the balls the room full of witnesses laughed at me’ ride, I’m still one of them. People’s opinion about book five Harry tells me what their opinion about me three, four, five years ago will be. And believe you me, that can make or break a relationship damn quick, so how about you silencio your ass.
Relatedly, anyone who tells me that I need to stop reading these books as I get older is going to take an Avada Kedavra straight to the fucking face. These books mean something to me.
Or that she was a vibrant, interesting, caring, funny person.
And also an Auror, which is basically a Dark Wizard-catcher which is like the most badass career you can have in the Wizarding World except for, I don’t know, dragon-wrangling probably. She was the last Auror trained by Alastor Moody before he retired and she was actually quite good at her job, btw.
Also her hair was not a fucking mood ring. She was a metamorphmagus, which means that she possessed a rare and special brand of magic that allowed her to change her appearance at will.
Except when she temporarily lost that power while she was suffering through a period of bleak depression in the middle of a war that she had chosen to fight despite the fact that the government, whom she worked for as the youngest and newest Auror at the Ministry, didn’t want to acknowledge and so she risked losing her job (at the least) for her efforts on behalf of the Order but fought for them anyway. This happened after the death of her cousin, Sirius, whom she didn’t really know well because he’d been in Azkaban most of her life but they were both members of the ancient and noble House of Black that had kicked them both out for breaking their pure-blood rules (although in her case it was her mother who had been disowned; she had never been accepted into the family in the first place) and so they probably bonded over that a bit and of course she had been the one dueling her Aunt Bellatrix before, so she was probably a little guilty for not taking her down, too–never mind that Bellatrix Lestrange was on the top-ten list of “most dangerous Dark Wizards” and the mere fact that she survived a fight with her deranged auntie was fucking impressive and it wasn’t her fault that Sirius didn’t. He had also been best friends with the dude she fell in love with, this Remus Lupin guy, a shabby professor with a massive inferiority complex and a case of lycanthropy who rejected her because he was didn’t think he was good enough for her, and to be fair she was risking social ostracization by dating a werewolf but she didn’t care and said as much without hesitation, and the two of them got married just as full-war broke out and then he panicked and ran out on her again when he found out she was pregnant but he came back and she forgave him and they were a happy family for like two seconds before they both died in the last battle against Voldemort and they left their son to be raised by his grandmother, the aforementioned witch who was kicked-out of the Black Family for marrying a muggle-born, a.k.a. Tonks’s dad who had died just a little bit earlier and who they named their son after.
Oh and she was clumsy, like seriously clumsy, like that one glimpse you get of Tonks tripping on her way into the meeting with the Order of the Phoenix at the start of the fifth movie? Yeah that was it, that was Tonks. That was pretty much the only proper moment with her we got. (Even the “don’t call my Nymphadora” bit was botched, ugh.) And the really baffling part is that they cast an actress who pretty much is Tonks and then managed to…not have her be herself? Somehow? Because David Yates is an amazing director. As in, I am constantly amazed by him.
Also she usually had bubblegum pink hair when she was happy–because she liked the color not because she was a fucking mood ring. Just for the record.
harry potter is one of those fandoms i always think i’ve gradually moved on from… but then i’ll hear someone say “you know, i think snape was a great guy” or “all slytherins are evil” and i’ll literally vault over three tables and a small elephant to debate them face-to-face
hi. I’m nor, I’m an agender disabled trans sex worker & for the past few months I’ve been having a really rough time financially. Due to health issues, having to drive long distances to get reasonable trans and otherwise health care, having multiple serious injuries, household & out of household abuse, and pursuing getting a diagnosis for my arthritis & inflammatory physical issues, I havent barely been able to make enough money for survive & I am about $1000 in the red over medical bills, parking tickets, back rent & utilities, among other things. & the fact that I’m selling what I own of any value on eBay is not making any dent in that at all.
i would find a way to live in my car or travel constantly, but it’s extremely important that I stay in my current home and pay rent to both financially and emotionally keep my trans queer family afloat.
it would be tremendously helpful if you could donate (via the PayPal donate button on my blog) even just one dollar. If you can’t do that, it would be really helpful if you could reblog this post. Thanks
Hey so rn I’m at about $370 && it would also be helpful if I could get $150 to help Nicky make her rent this month (we’re sharing a paypal acct)? So that’s
370/1150. Thanks a ton so far for donations & for all yr signal boosting!!
However, I would really like to meet that goal so if anyone could donate like even $1 (& if not like please signal boost if you can), like anything or like if you have money in Amazon gift cards you could send it to me on amazon(inbox me ab that) its rlly easy to turn that into food among a lot of other things (gas, etc).
No one has donated in like 4 or 5 days at least & no one is really reblogging it. I don’t want to be unappreciative, but I rlly rlly need your continued help at the moment.
tampons/pads marketed to young kids who just started getting their periods
should be a thing
wrappers with dinosaurs and planets and glitter and cats and sea creatures
make kids feel comfortable about something natural that happens to their bodies.
and for goodness sake
don’t sexualize it
No. Actually. Why do you need this? You don’t. Getting your period means you are starting to mature, which means you need to drive them AWAY from needless things like that. Also, you all bitch enough as it is about paying for these things, imagine how much more money companies will charge for those things? Or, maybe EDUCATE them, so they will already feel comfortable about it. Jesus fucking christ.
Tell that to ten-year-old me, who still hadn’t had the period talk yet in school. I was crying and freaking out because I thought I was dying. Then my mother comes up to me and says with a smile “You’re becoming a woman!” I didn’t want to grow up yet. I was ten. Fucking ten and was told to start to grow up. My mom wanted me to get away from silly little kids things because I’m fucking bleeding out my goddamn vagina.
Also some people are children at heart and like to be silly and having a dinosaur-patterned maxi-pad would be pretty fuckin’ hilarious and I’m sure there’d be a huge market for that.
Not all people with vaginas are stoic and serious and want the same frilly, swirly boring-ass pads and tampons.
Plus if you’ve been having a miserable day and say you bought the character variety pack of pads. Sitting in the bathroom stall wanting to stab everyone and you open up some baby dinosaur pads. You’ve got dinosaurs in your underwear. No ones gonna ruin your day now.
U by Kotex has these, Tween pads. Sparkly box, cute designs on the pad and wrapper. There are even “period facts and myths” in each box, and the inner wrapper has instructions for how to use a pad properly. What’s more is they are smaller than standard pads. (I use these pads because I’m a petite person). Best part? Everywhere I buy them, one box of pads is less than $5.
^^^^^^^ THESE ARE THE BEST BTW. VERY SOFT AND FUN AND COLORFUL. DID YOU KNOW THAT EVEN SEEING PRETTY COLORS CAN LIFT YOUR MOOD? I DIDN’T. NOW I DO.
BUT REALLY THESE ARE THE BEST OK
BECAUSE WHEN MY TEN-YEAR-OLD SISTER GOT HER PERIOD SHE WAS SUPER SCARED BUT I GAVE HER MY PACK AND SHE’S LIKE THIS LOOKS KINDA COOL AND NOW SHE THINKS SHE’S SO AWESOME AND COOL BECAUSE SHE WEARS COLORFUL PADS WITH SHOOTING STARS AND HEARTS ON THEM AND SHE’S SO CONFIDENT IT’S SO AWESOME
SO YOU TRY TELLING ME THAT SEEING A TEN YEAR OLD GIRL DEPRESSED AND ASHAMED OF A NATURAL BODY FUNCTION IS PREFERABLE TO SEEING HER SHOWING OFF HER UFO AND SHOOTING STAR-PATTERNED PADS TO HER BFFS
YOU WOULDN’T GIVE A FOUR-YEAR-OLD BOY A BORING BEIGE BAND-AID NO YOU’D GO OUT AND BUY THE HECK OUTTA THOSE SPONGEBOB AND TOY STORY SHITS BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM HAPPY DON’T MAKE YOUR GIRLS GROW OUT OF THINGS THAT MAKE THEM HAPPY BEFORE THEY’VE EVEN LEFT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Ok but U by Kotex has got all of our backs. This brand dose great and empowering things for all women and even girls :)
Why are people with vaginas expected to be grown ass adults at 10 but people with dicks aren’t expected to act like adults until their 20’s??
Actually I’m p sure men aren’t expected to act like adults ever and that’s really fuckin sad tbh
Cause as soon as a man/older boy doesn’t something stupid it’s ‘oh boys will be boys’
One of my friend’s mom still says that about her 30 something year old when he gets to drunk
OKAY I WORK IN A FABRIC STORE AND ONE TIME THIS LITTLE OLD LADY CAME UP TO ME AND SLAMMED THE INDEPENDENCE DAY ONE DOWN ON THE COUNTER AND SAID, “THIS. THIS IS WHAT OUR COUNTRY NEEDS.”
I had an older man come into the fabric store that I used to work in and dropped 3 bolts of the firefighter one on my counter and said, “I need this. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it, but I need it.” a man behind him then yelled, “Pyjamas!” and the first man said, “My husband recommends pyjamas.”
My favourite thing about the orgy scene is that while Will is understandably slightly confused by the whole situation, Wolfgang is just sitting there like, Yes, spontaneous mental orgies happen to me all the time. Must be Thursday.
its a crying shame Supernatural only got 5 seasons but i guess its good they stopped before it became one of those shows that only stayed on the air for the fans
It’s coming up on a year now since I got my current job as a pizza delivery girl, and I thought this would be a good time to delve into the little ever-expanding “WTFPIZZA” note I keep on my cell that helps me remember some of my more, uh - interesting deliveries.
So without further ado and in no particular order, here’s some pizza customers who left a lasting impression on me thus far:
- A bearded man who answered the door and periodically spat blood into a crusted Harley-Davidson coffee mug while counting out his cash.
- A woman who slipped me a business card (in lieu of tip) for a laser tattoo removal clinic, explaining “In case you want to bring your mutilated skin back to how God intended it to be.”
- At least three Batmans so far, but only one who did the voice.
- An elderly Spanish woman who meekly presented me with a (rather classy) pearl-handled .32 snub nosed revolver and asked if I knew how to load it (I do) and also, if I could load it for her (I didn’t).
- A group of EMT’s hanging out in the back of an ambulance at a recently extinguished (but still smouldering) house fire.
- A man with a thick Alabama accent who admonished me for standing in front of his mailbox while I waited for him to answer the door. He then explained how this was a federal offense because I was “obstructing the mail system” and demanded my social security number so he could “report me to the proper authorities”.
- A group of young teenage girls (like 14-16) who begged me to buy a case of Bud Light (ew why) and bring it back to them.
- A hotel room full of badass middle-aged women all dressed as Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter films, who were also completely wasted on Jello shots. They kept encouraging me to stay and party with them.
- A 20-something dude who answered the door with an unsheathed katana dangling through a belt loop on his jeans.
- Multiple instances of people asking if I would sell them pot. (bitch get your own dealer sheesh)
- A guy who slipped a twenty directly into my shirt because I apparently was the “spitting image” of his deceased daughter.
- A woman who admonished me for driving a Mazda, and wrote “get a real car” in the tip portion of my credit receipt.
- A very drunk dude who gave me his iPhone and had me take a bunch of Myspace-esque pictures of the both of us. He did the duck lips thing in every shot.
- Multiple prank deliveries (joke’s on you motherfucker, I get paid for the gas AND I eat the pizzas you ordered)
- An elderly man who wrote “FUCK OFF” as his signature on a credit receipt.
- A thirty-something guy who begged to get his order for free because he “works so hard”. He visibly teared up and sniffled when I told him I couldn’t do anything.
- A dudebro wearing a bath robe and socks + sandals (indoors) who straight up wordlessly yanked the pizzas out of my hands without paying and shut the door. Multiple knockings were of no avail.
- A woman who angrily demanded to see my ID because she refused to believe my claims that I’m female. She proceeded to snatch my driver’s license out of my hand, run back into her house and show it to her children while pointing back at me.
- A kid no older than 14 who desperately tried to convince me to play WoW on the free custom server he was playing on. (But it has double XP!)
- A guy who spent the entire time I was there digging a (impressively large) booger out of his nose. He proceeded to smear it on, thankfully, HIS copy of the receipt.
- An on-duty cop who flagged me down by intercepting me on the road before I got to the police station and pulling me over to get his pizza.
- A drill instructor looking-guy who filled out his entire credit card receipt, specifically wrote “0.00” in the tip portion, then proceeded to write out a check for seventy-eight cents and handed it to me. It said “pizza tip” in the “For” section.
- A furious lady who yelled at me for a solid five minutes (I kept track) all about how long it took for her delivery to get to her. She then tipped me an extra ten bucks on a six dollar order. I dunno.
- An incredibly stoned teenager trying and failing to look sober. When I complimented his Adventure Time wallet (which was super cute) and asked where he got it, he immediately looked terrified, sat down on the floor and muttered “I… I don’t know….”
- Obligatory naked man with unimpressive penis
- A chick at a house party who answered the door and immediately turned to vomit into her mailbox.
- A surly Korean mom with an amazing shoulder tattoo of a baby giving birth to a full-grown woman.
- A man who lived in one of those mini-mansions inside a gated community, who sported a seemingly massive collection of what appeared to be solid glass spheres of varying size and color. I only got a quick glance in his house but there had to be hundreds of them in display racks, tables, shelves - everywhere.
- A group of 20-something guys who challenged me to sing the original Pokemon theme song, which I did. And perfectly, I may add.
- A completely iced-out musclebound gangster kid who was blaring Regina Spektor so loud and with so much bass I actually couldn’t hear anything he was saying.
- An elderly guy who deadpan asked me if I knew anyone who could score him hollowpoint bullets.
- An adorable older lesbian couple who were mortified that they didn’t have any extra money for a tip, so they gave me a big sack of pistachios instead. It took me three weeks to finish the bag.
this was so worth reading
L
This made my day. This woman should get an award for keeping a record of this shit.
You drive a massive SUV and steal my parking spot all the time and I was just heading out to leave a strongly worded note under your windshield wiper but oh no you’re hot AU
I’m a barista and you’re the obnoxious customer who comes through and orders a venti macchiato while talking on the phone the whole time so I misspell your name in increasingly creative ways every day AU
I’m a busy businessperson and my barista keeps misspelling my name in increasingly disrespectful ways, honestly, who does this person think they are AU
We were both playing wingman for our friends who have now decided to go home together, and after five minutes of conversation we fucking hate each other, let’s bang it out AU
I saw you trying to hit the “door close” button in the elevator but I made it in and then I pushed every single button to make you later for work, but now we’re stuck in this fucking elevator as it stops at every single floor and I don’t know what to say other than “you started it” AU
I asked for your help getting a book off the top shelf and and you laughed at my taste and called me a nerd so I shoved you into a table of nonfiction best-sellers and that’s how we both got banned from the quirky community bookstore AU
I take my grades very seriously and you’re the lazy asshole who asks a ton of off-topic questions to distract the professor and I might be a foot shorter than you but I swear to god I’ll fight you AU
You tried to barge into a private conversation so I said something devastatingly witty and dismissive but you came back with something even meaner and more clever AU
Shouting match over the last Thanksgiving turkey at the grocery store AU
Gentle reminder: To identify as Two-Spirited is to identify as NativeAmerican and outside the gender binary. Please do not disrespect that it is a part of being First Nations and queer and that identity is important to us.
A less gentle reminder: Spirit Animals are fucking sacred, don’t use them for just anything. I don’t care how much you identify with the thing, unless you are using the term properly you are being disrespectful.
PSA by a First Nations person, thank you for your time.
