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lilshoroscope · 5 years

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Hogwarts AU Part 2!

Hiya my darlings! Tis me, your beloved writer, yet again.

I’m back with the second chapter of my Hogwarts AU!

I am so SHOCKED and GRATEFUL at all the support that the first chapter got! I had no idea that people would like it so much! I am truly honoured! I love writing this so much, it is so fluffy and gorgeous and overall just happy.

Also: The ending is shitty. I couldn’t figure out a way to end it without going into the plan I have for Chapter 3- yes, this is going to be a multi-chapter fanfic. Soooo… Forgive me. Please?

Also- Rose is based off my bestie @avilliansdream

I LOVE YOU BITCH (I’m sorry I made your character shitty)

Also: This is set in a sort of in-between era, where Dumbledore is still around and everyone is alive and happy but we don’t see Harry and crew bc… They are too angsty for this story and I want this to be happy and cheering and god that doesn’t make sense.

Warnings: Swearing. Tired Brian. Sass level 100%. No-fucks-given by Freddie. Basically just fluff!

Word count: 1266 words

Enjoy, my darlings! Please like, reblog, and send me feedback

Let me know if you want to be on my taglist!

Brian sighed, resting his chin on his hand as he stared at the looming blackboard, sporting numerous sums across its black finish. He felt his eyes flutter shut, the hours of sleep he had lost catching up with him. He had stayed up late that night, accompanied by his endless Astronomy textbooks and the silence of the common room, disturbed only by the flickering of the firelight and Melody’s soft snores from where she had dropped off 15 minutes before. He had debated telling her about John’s crush on her during their late night talks, but had decided against it.

‘Brian! Brian! Brian May!’ A voice called, pulling him back to reality.

‘Hmm? Yes?’ he asked, looking up through sleep-riddled eyes, dazed.

‘Sleeping in class, Mr May?’ McGonagall huffed, her eyes scanning his tired face from behind her glasses.

His eyes widened as he realised the gravity of his situation.

‘Um, no, miss!’ He spluttered. He looked next to him, seeing Roger trying to stifle a laugh- and failing. Melody shot him a pitying look, mouthing ‘Sorry!’ from her seat at the back of the room.

‘Is there something you want to add, Mr Taylor?’ the teacher snapped at Roger, who immediately shut up.

‘Detention, Mr May!’ she said, scowling.

‘But, miss!’ he feebly protested.

‘As I was saying, in this spell you must be careful….’ She said, walking back to the front of the classroom. Brian let his forehead slam onto the wooden desk, groaning loudly. How could he get a detention? He never got detentions!

‘Sorry, mate.’ Roger whispered, dipping his quill into the inkwell. ‘Maybe you should try and get some sleep. You’re overwhelming yourself, man.’

‘Shuddup, Rog.’ Brian mumbled from behind his curtain of curls. Roger shrugged, sultrily winking at a girl across the room. He reluctantly sat up, yanking his paper away from Roger.

‘Stop flirting and pay attention, Rog.’

‘I’m not flirting, I’m wooing. Besides, how can I help the fact that girls love me?’

Brian rolled his eyes, blowing a stray lock of hair out of his eyes.

Detention. What fun.

‘Detention, darling? That’s a new one.’ Freddie remarked as he leant against the stone wall in the sunny courtyard, unbuttoning his Slytherin tie and wrapping it around his wrist. Brian rolled his eyes, exchanging pointed glances with John, who was sitting on the stone bench, his robes discarded and his shirt slightly unbuttoned, soaking up the sunshine. John shrugged, letting his head fall back.

‘I’m just saying, darling, you need to loosen up. Maybe detention will do you some good.’

‘No, no it won’t, Fred!’

‘I disagree.’

‘Are you sure that’s the dress code, Fred?’ John interjected, gesturing to Freddie’s outfit- a complete mismatch of his Hogwarts uniform.

He’d ditched the sweater, leaving his chest only covered by his mostly unbuttoned white shirt. He’d wrapped his tie around his pants, deciding that if it was on his wrist it looked ‘too emo’. He’d also rolled up his pants, adorning them with colourful safety pins.

‘Course not, Deaky. But they can’t stop me, can they?’

‘They actually can, Fred.’ Deaky deadpanned.

‘Don’t kill the vibe, darling.’

‘Anyway! We were discussing poor Bri’s predicament.’ Roger interrupted from where he was lying in the sunlight, shirt open to expose his torso, drawing many looks and giggles from nearby girls- much to his amusement.

‘Just do the detention, Bri. They’ll just make you write lines or something. No biggie.’ Deaky kindly reassured.

‘Speaking from experience, Deaks?’ Roger asked, laughing.

‘Oh, is our Deaky actually a bad boy?’ Freddie giggled, adjusting his makeshift ‘belt’.

Deaky, in fact, had had multiple detentions, mainly for saying things that ‘should never even cross your mind’ to the people he hated. He was known as ‘Silvertongue’ to many students and teachers. If there was one thing you didn’t want to be, it was on John Deacon’s bad side.

‘Guys! Helllllloooooo!’ someone called, bouncing up to them.

‘Rose! Darling, it’s been too long!’ Freddie cheered, running to embrace the crazy girl who had just strutted in.

‘Freddie, you saw me an hour ago!’ she chided.

He ruffled her midnight-black hair, shorn into a spiky pixie cut. She huffed, puffing her lips and cheeks out dramatically.

‘Freddie! Must say, love the outfit.’

‘HA! See, Deaks, it IS good!’

‘I never said it wasn’t good, Fred. I just said it wouldn’t ring well with the teachers.’ John sighed, resisting the urge to slam his head into a brick wall.

‘Well, fuck them. Don’t you like it, darling?’ He asked Rose, twirling around.

‘I love it! It’s extravagant, daring…..’ Rose paused to think. ‘It just needs a bit of Mercury.’

‘Mercury?’

‘Mercury.’ She confirmed, raising an eyebrow.

‘Mercury?’ Roger asked, baffled.

‘Mercury, Rog.’ She confirmed, pulling a tube of eyeliner out of the pocket of her Gryffindor robe.

She grabbed Freddie’s face in her hands, commanding him to ‘stay still’. She quickly swiped the ink-black wand across his eyelids, conjuring an air of mystery about him. She popped the tube back in her pocket, clapping her hands gleefully.

‘Boom! Mercury!’ she declared, her brown eyes glinting under a coat of thick mascara.

‘Mercury, my dear!’ he laughed, spinning around.

Brian grinned at the sight of his best friend spinning around the courtyard, his robes flying out behind him like a cape, sunshine radiating like a crown above his head.

Rose collapsed on the ground next to Roger, giggling hysterically. Roger started laughing too, and soon Brian and Deaky joined in, the pure, unbridled happiness rippling through the air.

Brian smiled, feeling his cheek muscles hurt from laughing too much. Rose looked up and stuck her tongue out at him, crossing her eyes and puffing her cheeks out. That sent John into hysterics, snorting as his chest heaved with laughter, the oh-so-contagious laughter that sounded like the chime of a thousand different melodies all rolled into one.

Freddie kept on dancing, ignoring the stares from the other students as he glided across the sun-baked bricks, a silhouette against the blinding rays of light.

Brian flicked his hair out of his face, exchanging a gleeful smile with Deaky.

It was times like these when he was reminded of how lucky he was. Sitting here, in the sunlight with his best friends (and one added human) he was full.

This was what paradise felt like.

@onceuponadetectivedemigod @shesadramaqueen @ceruleanrainblues @sophieeelol @avilliansdream @yllwtaxi

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kathrwn · 5 years

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Lana Del Rey is rotting your brain

Read with footnotes here.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: Lana Del Rey does not exist. No, since she is the character performed by the artist Lizzie Grant, whose uncritical approach to American nostalgia does more to invoke the helplessness of American apocalyptica than to make us yearn for simpler times. And just as Lana does not exist, neither does any depth to the project of Miss Del Rey. Between winged eyeliner, prairie dust photo filters, and an affected croon, Lana Del Rey manages to be both campy and pretentious, and does neither particularly well.

Looking at Lana Del Rey music videos, there are similarities which together comprise a Lana “image,” or a sort of aesthetic uniform which unites the Lana Del Rey Cinematic Universe. Often there are post-production filters which evoke old-school photographs of your mom’s cousin in the 60s, references to film and music stars of the 50s, and a misplaced fetish for the “good ol’ days” of America which turns grit into surface-level beauty.

Thematic focus is good, especially when the singer is a construction, like Lana is. Critics are quick to notice her sharp devotion to her bit, calling her music a “Southern Californian dream world constructed out of sad girls and bad boys, manufactured melancholy and genuine glamour,” or “a blown-out Hollywood production.” Lana has described herself as a “Lolita got lost in the hood” or even a “Gangsta Nancy Sinatra” which critics have called straight “manufactured.”

While plenty of songstresses presently play with the heights of glamour that women are expected to summit in the spotlight--Lady Gaga, Cher, and Dolly Parton come to mind instantly--many of them inject irony or camp into their performances, their outfits, their presentation. Parton in particular loves to joke about herself, famously quipping “I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.”

It undeniable to say these three women also play characters in their music--Lady Gaga is not nobility, Cher’s Twitter is filled with political commentary, Dolly Parton is, of course, not even blond. Lana also plays a character, but why is the Lana character a failure compared to the others? It’s not for want of production--many women pop stars are over-, perhaps even hyper-produced to drive the point home about the disinfectant power pop music holds over artists. Lana is also over-produced, somehow giving her music an auditory sepia tone, as though it were a film from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

But perhaps that’s it--Lana, as a character, is reactionary. She invokes a time well-past, and one well-past for good reason. The 50s and 60s were not heavenly for all, certainly not for black people, not for gay people, nor political dissidents. Lana’s music draws on themes that attempt to highlight the teeming hate and anger of midcentury America, but ultimately fail when she refers to herself as “[y]our Venice bitch” and prides herself on wearing “his favorite sundress” but with a strange sincerity. Often times, Lana infantilizes herself, referring to her lover as “Daddy,” or worrying that he is so superficial he might not love her, perhaps most famously, when she is “no longer young and beautiful.”

That is not to say that Lana is vapid, but she has adopted the veneer of being so. She has unwittingly become a crooner for the past when her worth was tied to a sexual currency. Her uncritical love for glam and grand cinematisme is part of her pastiche act. But because she is nostalgic, and rarely, if ever, scathing when she sings about outdated courtship and relationship dynamics, she shows just how empty her actual songs are. In dying to know if she will be loved when her skin is no longer elastic, Lana never manages to find validation and closure in herself, instead tying her worth even tighter to a man she calls her “sun,” who plays with her “like a child.” Cool and normal. Newer songs follow this same trend, with cuts like “You’re beautiful and I’m insane, We’re American made” doing little to flatter herself, then listing off American inventions like “Hallmark” and “Norman Rockwell.” (The Norman Rockwell thing is especially weird when she follows it immediately with references to sex and then calling herself--again!--“your little Venice bitch.”)

There’s nothing many Americans love more than Americana and sincerely yearning for a time they never experienced. Lana, perhaps, is the most “I was born in the wrong decade” singer to grace our airways. Her songs make love, even uneven and abusive love, the ultimate goal. Letting summer--a time that is eternal in the LDRCU and, supposedly, California--wash over her and her lovers until the cocaine and ocean consume them.

Then, it’s no surprise this cheeky political compass places Lana in the libertarian right segment--she is made to sell, to hit some pleasure center in impressionable brains, to be a sweet spot in pop music that guarantees profits will be made from her work. Her songs are chock full of concrete imagery, which allows them to become realized in her audience's mind, rather than relying on letting the listener make their own emotional connections. There is nothing wrong with that, but it shows why the Del Rey song formula is as successful as it is soulless.

Take, for instance, her famous “Summertime Sadness.” From the red dress she wears, to the pale moonlight, to the “telephone wires above... Sizzling like a snare” we can recreate the scene in our heads. These lines are so evocative, so palpable in what they describe, it wouldn’t be hard at all to envision yourself standing in her same pair of high heels.

However, there is a marked absence of irony or self-awareness in her discography. Her sincerity is her downfall. When she sings “Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain, You like your girls insane,” does she mean it. And she really means it. She prides herself on her lyrical tendency to degrade women.

This is not a new criticism of Lana. She herself has said “the issue of feminism is just not an interesting concept. I’m more interested in, you know, SpaceX and Tesla, what’s going to happen with our intergalactic possibilities. Whenever people bring up feminism, I’m like, ‘God, I’m just not really that interested,'” which is proof that Lana is so massively lacking in any self-awareness that her music becomes pointless, useless, and dumb. How is being interested in SpaceX and Tesla at all incompatible with the basic philosophy of women’s liberation and complete personhood? What about the women who were unable to be astrophysicists in the past, but are now writing the algorithms that take us to those “intergalactic possibilities”? How about the droves of young women who unironically listen to this schlock, call themselves insane, and then have no clue how to be a part of a functioning, normal relationship, because they think they have to be a crazy minx? Actually, even better, what about the bat shit insane way Elon Musk treats women, like when he famously pulled his bride aside and told her he was “the alpha.” It’s just bonkers how popular Lana Del Rey’s line of thinking is. That somehow feminism is incompatible with the fetishism of science?

Perhaps that’s where Lana Del Rey stands out. As soft rock and easy listening DJs give us “Fight Song” and “Firework” ad nauseum, we have grown weary of the female empowerment song. Any song that wasn’t “You’re So Vain,” is extraneous to the genre of girl power pop. Maybe this makes Lana appealing, if only because she shakes up our expectations. Her yearning is to be submissive, not to be dominant, a far cry from the way many chanteuses have embodied the lyrics of Patti Page’s “Conquest.”

If that were all, maybe it could be forgiven. It would be a sweet rebellion against the popular themes of the day, one that has its problems but isn’t overly regressive. Only, the more you dig, the worse it becomes. Not just the content of her lyrics, and her constant playing of the damsel, but the visuals she chooses to use in her videos and albums are beyond simply self-stylized misogyny. Lana has a nasty habit of racializing her character, trying to make simple the complex legacy of mid-century American counter culture.

For instance, in her epic three-song music video Tropico, Lana appears to us in several visions. Once as Eve, once as a sex worker, once as a woman escaped from the city to be with her lover. The first one is the color of the dream of a flower-crown-era-Tumblr aesthetic blogger, the last is similarly as harmless. But that one in the middle is an iffy exploration of the actual economic conditions of sex workers, but absurdly tone deaf in the light of her comments about feminism. And all of the above is extremely tone deaf within the LDRCU. Is she supposed to be the girlfriend of a gang member, styled in heavy eyeliner and bandanas reminiscent of cholo culture? Or is she, as is inline with much of the rest of her videography, an upper-crust, Jackie-O-esque trophy wife with a listless stare? Neither are particularly good characters to play, relying on stereotypes and hazy filters to get the point across.

But Lana has always had an issue with understanding the fundamental issues of her middle-distance gaze into American history. Yes, it’s cool Lana has A$AP Rocky play Kennedy, that’s pretty neat; but it’s also extremely uncool to do so while adopting a Cuban-sounding name while turning up the nostalgia factor on figures who, like Kennedy, did great harm to Cuban and Cuban-Americans. The conflict she creates within her own character is glossed over by her, and much of her audience. While critical pieces of Lana do exist, many fans--including myself at times!--get lost in her Venice Beach Baddie persona, and forget her self-awareness trends in the wrong direction.

With the release of “Norman Fucking Rockwell” on the horizon (at the time of writing), though, we’re going to have to ask ourselves--is that a normal name for an album, or are we all having a collective fever dream?

#original #blog #pop culture criticism #media criticism #it's a blog don't take it seriously

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tealime9 · 7 years

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for the system ask: 13, 17, 20!

13- describe what everyone look in the headspace.

Im gonna put words but also image (bcs im friking artist so yahoo mee tho it was Red who did it)

Alexandre- He is 16 and stuff, he has short black hair and uses a red cap, a purple shirt with two yellow stripes, a black coat pants and boots. He have a ligh shade of brown eyes

Gem- He is a brown/black person with a long green hair, using a pink flower crown, jeans, a white shirt with peace symbol in it, and brown boots. He has a darker shade of red/brownish eye. (he likes walking naked around tho)

Jazz- She has brown braided hair, uses a black shirt and jeans, with lil golden shoes, her eyes are brown/yellow and she has a tail and ears, she is a werewolf im p sure.

Red (previously Tsuki) She looks like me actually? she uses a gardener suit and gray shirt, using red headphones in her red hair, but have blue eyes. She is kinda of Jazz sibiling on her original? oh she also use lil golden shoes.

Annie- Have whitehair and dresses as a anime girl idk, white shirt with a red necktie and black skirt.She has a thing that hold her socks up? and lil black shoes. She has red eyes.

Shuu- Tall guy, with blond hair, green eyes, he use kinda of a brown suit? has a lil green bow tie and a caffee uniform thing? black pants and social black shoes.

Akira-Black haired guy with black shirt but with reddish long sleeve shirt under, black cap and pants, red eyes and dark circles under his eyes. He and Shuu are brothers (dont like each other much)

Sad face (fragment) She/they have a HUGE messy blond hair, white long sleeved shirt and black pants, dont use any shoes and most if not all the time is using a maskwith a happy face. They are always crying i assure you. She is the tallest of all of us.

Kaito missing Nasaki- Brown long hair, in a ponytail usually, uses a blue long sleeve shirt and band, white pants and black shoes, he has yellow eyes.

And there is Cinza/Radio. She is.. black and white and look a lot like Sad face, but she is always smiling, her sclera is black and she kinda is always bleeding from her face (eyes, mouth,nose etc) she… uses something kinda like sad face but it seems to have a black heart in it

17-What characters best describes each alter?

I think you mean of anything in the universe? bcs if only shows well shit my bad memory im not gonna remember at 6am that

But I guess Gem remembers me a lot of Steven from first/second season, OH OH Nico from percy jackson before his sister dies.

Peridot to Alex bcs he is a huge nerd. and all of peridot bcs he acts ‘cold’ but he really is justa nerd trying to understand stuff. Nico from percy Jackson after sister dies and he accepts it but become kind of a loner.

Jazz is a dog basically? But jyushimatsu from osomatsu san!

Akira remembers me a lot of underfell sans? fkng edgy binch, also the cheetah from the lion guard, tsundere cactuses

Shuu certainly reminds me of swap papyrus

Annie is like that video where there is an anime girl just laughing like ‘OHOHOHOHOHOHOHO’, probably the friendly bitch in any show tbh.

IDK abt Kaito, he p much is chill but energetic bs. quite of a Jyushimatsu himself but competitive af and less vanilla i guess

Kuudere its what Red is gonna be remembered by my mind. Tho she reminds a lot from that doll girl from Another, Misaki Mei I think

Honorable mention of how Tsuki (Red previous person she was) was pretty much akazawa izumi from Another.

aint gonna o for sadface or Cinza

20. Does anyone have any hobbies?

Me, Alex, Red, Gem and Akira has a hobby of drawing

Gem seems to want to learn violin too.

Alex seem to like robotic/Alien stuff, he has some doodles of it.

Annie like doing Make up things and getting clothes and stuff.

Jazz is basically playing , anythinG

she seem to like play tag ur it and stuff.

I have no idea what shuu have a hobby

Kaito from what I remember he had a hobby or martial arts like me too.

p sure that is all I know by the moment, if I remember anything i will probably put in more.

and for plus yall, the image.

Thanks for asking!

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