Dang It. I Can Never Resist These. Hairs Not Perfect Since I Dont Actually Have Bangs, But Still Cute!

Dang it. I can never resist these. Hair’s not perfect since I don’t actually have bangs, but still cute!

Tagging @triggerlil​, @blue-rose-smalls​, @eletriptan​, and any of the rest of you if you wanna do one, too!

As someone once said, see a picrew you like? Do it.

That someone was @fraddit so now she gotta do it. And I'm also tagging @lazywonderlvnd , @fae-vorite @polly-weasley and @m4g0rtz

Also @julcheninred show us yours, I know you did this one 👀

Growing up fat, you get made fun of for everything you do, even basic shit like eating and laughing and breathing are funny when you do it because youre fat! And its so hard to not carry that with you as you get older, like I’m still embarassed to eat or dance in front of people or smile in pictures and its ridiculous and I hate it and I wish I was treated with more humanity

my singing voice is good for showers and mornings in the kitchen and drunken nights and lullabies for babies who need sleep and im okay with this

On female characters being held to a higher standard

I want to discuss something I've seen in fandom that applies much more broadly, and it involves internalized misogyny toward fictional characters.

Fictional characters often do some shitty things. In fandom, we often explore the shitty things they've done in canon or introduce new shitty things! I can't even begin to list the number of shitty things I've read characters do. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I love moral ambiguity in fiction! I think we humans have lots to learn from thinking about the inherent messiness of life and of relationships.

I write mostly mlm fic. Which means I write mostly male characters and have mostly female readers. (Another whole thing but not focusing on that right now.) And what I've found is this: in fics where I have prominent female characters who are exactly as messy and complicated as the male characters I write, the comments I get are much different. I can think of maybe one or two comments EVER in which I've been criticized for a male character doing something wrong. But Hermione and Ginny? Lots.

I wrote a fic in which Hermione is literally under attack by men's rights activists because she got love potions outlawed. The fic spends a lot of time exploring the complexity of the issue, and in the fic Hermione is challenged by allies with more and less robust challenges and by men's rights activists who are trying to sexually assault her in retaliation. I have received DOZENS of comments (many extremely impassioned) telling me how wrong Hermione is, how can she think outlawing them is the right answer?!, etc.

I wrote a fic in which Harry and Ginny get pregnant almost immediately after the war and Ginny has an abortion without telling Harry. Harry is triggered and gets super upset, etc etc. I recently got two very serious comments telling me that Ginny should've talked to Harry about the abortion, that her behavior wasn't healthy, and that girls shouldn't do that.

I don't care about the comments. But I do feel like we need to have a conversation about this double standard we apparently have wrt fictional characters—because I'm not writing these women any differently than I write men, and the comments are wildly different.

Why are we expecting so much more of female characters? Why are we expecting what amounts to perfection? Do we not see that this contributes to really poor female representation in books and fandom?

Why are we expecting that fanfiction is offering life advice? And if we are expecting that, why are we expecting it more when it's female characters on the page? Fiction isn't life advice, even if sometimes we get amazing life lessons from it.

Both of the fics I mention above are Harry/Draco fics. My most fundamental question, then, is why it's so easy for readers to redeem Draco when they can't do the same for female characters WHO HAVE NEVER DONE ANYTHING NEARLY AS BAD AS HE HAS?

Draco was a bb nazi. Draco joined a hate group that sought to genocide ppl including Harry's bff and mother and his father was the lead torture. Draco idolized that father's actions until the whole thing got too close and bummed him out.

Listen. I am all for redemption stories. I think Draco is a fantastic character (as should be obvious from my fics). But why is it that we as readers can forgive that type of behavior, but not Hermione having a radical political position on love potions? Why is it that we can handwave bigotry and torture but not a 17yo girl who is traumatized and grieving for getting an abortion without consulting a man?

So first, fictional characters do not always behave in ideal human ways. An author writing that isn't condoning any of the behavior.

Second, if you find yourself outraged by a female character's behavior, maybe take a moment to ask yourself whether your internalized misogyny is showing. Are you excusing much worse behavior in male characters?

16, 15, and 9 for the snape ask

9. One of your saddest (headcanons)?

I think Severus hates himself, and he’s never properly dealt with any of his trauma. It’s the root of most of his problems, and he might actually be able to properly connect with others if he got some damn therapy.

15. If he’d lived, how do you think he would have gone on with his life?

I don’t know what you’re talking about because Severus is alive and well, living his best life with his husband Harry Potter in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. He does potions research, loves gardening, and is expected to twice monthly afternoon tea with Minerva, Filius, Poppy, and a few other ex-colleagues which he pretends is a chore but actually looks forward to. He is also dragged to weekly Sunday dinners at The Burrow and stuffed into his very own Weasley sweater each Christmas whether he likes it or not (which he secretly does; he cried the first time he unwrapped one and threatened Harry with a slow and painful death if he ever told anyone).

16.  What do you headcanon about his relationship with his parents?

I think he hated and feared his father because he was an abusive drunk. He both loved and resented his mother for not protecting him or herself. I typically headcanon that he lost both his parents by the time he started teaching, but I don’t have one solid idea on the hows for either of them.

I finally remembered to look through this, and most of the words from my year were kinda 😬

It took me a while to pick three, but I finally went with geeked, over-the-top, and go-to.

I’ll tag @crazyconglasses, @zzledri, @manixzen, @oliverwilde105, and anyone else that wants to play!

i just found out merriam webster has a time traveler feature that tells you some of the words that were “born” the same year as you. it’s pretty neat yall should do this