#can someone make a rewrite where everything is the same but harry has a little sassy pet snake? the snake is just him but snake form | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

descendantofthesparrow · 3 years

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Shuffle Playlist - Rewrite - Part of Your World - part 7 - the Isle and Backstabbers

WARNING: Heavy angst inbound! along with the inappropriate touching of minors and kidnapping

Minutes after Evie had finally finished her mini project for Ben’s isle gear, you were all rushing down the darkened halls of Auradon Prep's dorm building. Ben guided the way to the garage filled with the limos and the keys, moving to the side where the remotes and keys were stashed and grabbed one of each.

“Jay!” he turned, holding out his hands as Ben tossed the items to him “keys, remote!” Jay nodded, pressing the unlock button and running towards the limo that had gone off.

“Wait!” you all stopped as Evie suddenly yelled, moving to stand in front of Ben “Somethings wrong” you groaned as Evie tugged Ben’s beanie down and patted the sides of his head “there” Ben gave her a look and shook his head.

You all froze as a new male raspy teenager's voice came from behind you, “SHOTGUN!” you slowly turned and looked down, jaw-dropping as Dude happily stared up at you all. ‘I’ you thought, mind short-circuiting ‘why is Dude’s voice different??!’ he sounded like Beast Boy from Teen Titans??

“No Dude! Stay.” Carlos scolded, shaking his finger in Dude's face “the isles way too dangerous” Ben, Gil, Evie, you, and Jay just stared in shock (you were more in shock at the change of voice) as Dude whined and sat down.

“Did Dude just-“ Jay started, staring at Carlos as he pressed his lips together and nodded.

“talk?! Yeah, I know. I’ll tell you later” Carlos and Jay moved to get into the front seats, while you, Gil, and Evie moved towards the back end.

“let's go” Ben muttered, giving another glance to Dude before following after Evie. You sat down opposite of Evie, Gil sliding in next to you, and quickly buckled in, pressing the remote to remove the driver's seat divider.

“Okay,” Evie sighed, looking towards Jay as he started the limo and drove out of the garage “once we cross the bridge, park under the pier in the old garage. Got it?”

“Got it” Jay hummed, turning to the left as you left the bordars of Auradon prep. Almost an hour later you had finally arrived at the Auradon end of the bridge, Jay pressed the button and a golden bridge appeared under the limo, leading straight across the bridge to the isle. You crossed your arms and bit your lip.

Shivers had been running up your spine for almost two hours now, and the feeling in your stomach was just not going away.

Something was wrong, you could feel it…something had happened to Harry. “Jay please step on it….” You pleaded, feeling your nails dig into your palm as he nodded and pressed on the gas. Gil turned to you, furrowing his brows and wrapping his arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his side.

“it’s gonna be okay (y/n)” he murmured, smiling at you “Harry is going to be just fine”

-two hours earlier-

Harry kept his eyes open as he walked towards what was now Uma’s side of the wharf, not knowing if Uma saw him as a threat or not. He hoped she didn’t, she should know that he would never leave her side, not willingly.

He stopped, hearing the sound of footsteps walking his way…and the chatter of a monkey “Well well~ what do we have here!” Davy emerged from the shadows, a crooked grin on his face “ A lost Auradon brat?”

“Watch yer mouth Daisy” Harry snarled, smirking as Davy’s grin dropped at the nickname Harry had taunted him with since they were kids “even after being in Auradon fer six months I can still kick yer ass no problem”

Davy rolled his eyes and started to walk around harry as if he was a vulture hunting for its next meal “yeah yeah, whatever, but you kick my ass” he stopped, giving Harry a nasty grin “my crew will kick yours, and I don’t think you can handle more than three people at once~”

“crew?” Harry snorted, only knowing that Davy was now Uma’s ‘first mate’ “what crew? Yeh don’t got enough pull to even make someone take yer dinner order~” Harry purred, his brow twitching as Davy laughed “what.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that~ what was their name before they joined up with me n Uma??” Harry grit his teeth at the sound of his friend's name “oh yeah, the Warf Rats” Harry stopped, staring at Davy as the shorter teen cackled to his heart's content. “that’s right~ your crew abandoned you~ and it wasn’t even that long after they denounced you as leader and ran to me~ Uma on the other hand” Davy sighed, watching as Harry's eyes light up slightly at the mention of the sea witch. “held out for so. long. on the hope that you would come back and free her, she always told us you hadn't betrayed the isle, that you would come back for us, for her. But oh”

Davy took immense pride as Harry's bright eyes turned dark, and he looked towards the ground clenching his fists. “how heartbreaking for us to see that after only two months, she had given up….and now she wants revenge~ on you.” Harry twitched, making Davy let out a cold laugh and start to circle him again “and that buffoon Gil. Oh, and your little Auradon brat too, I don’t think she'll survive the first raid Uma rages on Auradon, poor thing, she's a beaut too….maybe I could convince Uma to let me have her as a toy-GUGH” Davy was suddenly shoved back into a wall, Harry's arm pressed against his throat as he looked into Harry's wide eyes, swimming with mania.

“listen here daisy~” Harry purred, his eyes seeming to flash red. “yeh won't even lay yer eyes on the lass because you won't even have the ability ta~ because I’m gonna rip out yer ugly little ones and squish ‘em like grapes, then fed em ta yeh.” Davy shivered at the madness induced cackle that echoed through the alleys around them.

Davy used his free hand to grab onto Harry’s arm and attempted to get out of his grip, stilling as he hardly even budged “how-when the fuck did you get so strong?!” Davy yelped, letting out a choked gurgle as Harry pressed his arm further into his throat.

“being in a place with actual food helps with that” Harry taunted, his eyes flashing again as Davy struggled to get out of his grip. He removed his other hand from Davy’s arm and grabbed his shirt, lifting him from the wall, into the air, and throwing him across the alley.

Davy coughed as he smacked into the wall, grunting loudly as he hit the ground with a loud smack and breathed in the dirt floor. He glanced up, eyes widening and rolling out of the way as Harry's sword came down just where his chest was moments earlier “ARE YOU CRAZY?!” he yelped dodging back quickly as Harry swung at him a couple of times.

Harry let out a loose chuckle, smirking at the wide-eyed Davy “yeh have no idea daisy~~” Davy drew his own sword and clashed it with Harry’s, the ringing sound of metal echoing around them.

Harry spun and swung his blade towards Davy's torso, giggling as Davy struggled to keep up with Harry's pace. Davy sidestepped attempting to flip his sword and stab harry, but he saw through his attempt and spun around, easily dodging Davy's blade and sliding his own through the hilt of Davy's sword and pulling it towards him. He caught it with his free hand and smirked, watching Davy slowly step back with a dark glare on his face.

“you’ll regret this Hook! And don’t think the crew will treat you the same as they did, you’re their enemy now” Davy stuck his tongue out childishly and ran down the alley he was near, disappearing from Harry's sight.

Harry was silent for a few moments, waiting for the sound of Davy's footsteps to disappear. As soon as they stopped Harry threw Davy's sword to the ground and gripped his head. “what happened ta meh” Harry groaned, clenching his eyes shut from the headache pulsing through his brain. He had never done that before, just fully let loose and go wild on his opponent, the only other time he had seen it happen was….he didn’t want to think about that, too many bad memories.

He sheathed his sword and shook his head and shoulders, looking around to see if he could jog his memory of any other ways to get to the chip shop without possibly alerting the, now apparently his enemy, crew. or any other isle goer that would tell his dad of his presence.

His eyes brightened and he set off to the other side of the Warf. The old cave system he and Uma used to travel along to get to school and back on time, that was it! He would be able to get to the chip shop no problem, and the entrance near it was just near the docks the restaurant rested on. He would finally be able to explain everything to Uma.

“what do you want boy” James growled in the darkness of his captain's quarters, numbly sipping on his nearly empty rum.

“Sorry to bother you captain but” Davy stepped into the candlelight, a crooked grin on his face, “I think I have some information that will please you” James turned his dull blue orbs to Davy and waved his hand for Smee, who squeaked and rushed over to the liquor cabinet and grabbed a half-empty bottle of rum and ran over to James, the old washed-up captain chucking his now empty rum on the floor and popping open the “new” bottle. “well? Spill it boy” James rumbled, tipping his head back and taking a large swig of rum.

“Harry’s on the isle” James stopped, slowly looking over at the smugly grinning Davy and setting his rum on his desk.

“boy….if you are lying, it will be your head” James chuckled, standing up from his chair and hobbling to the main deck “LADS!” James’ crew stopped, looking towards their captain. His eyes flashed red as he gave a slanted grin to his old and withered face. “the boy is back” the crew hollered and started to make their way off the ship.

“he’ll be heading to the chip shop to go see Uma, if he gets to her before they do you won't be able to touch him” Davy sighed, crossing his arms and smirking at James “but I know exactly where he’ll be~” James patted Davys back.

“good form my boy, now go get my son for me, he has some….” He turned back to his quarters, his eyes flashing red again “chores to do~”

Davy nodded, cackling as the crew following him back to the chip shop.

Smee watched in horror as the crew hollered and jeered at the mere thought of getting their hands-on Harry….again.

“oh, my” Smee whispered, looking back to see James drinking himself stupid in “celebration” for his son's return “I-have-I must” he snuck off the ship, running towards Harriet's ship that rested even farther up the docks “I must stop this! It's gone on long enough!”

Harry popped open the old cellar-like doors and caught them before they could crash against the stone wall. He carefully climbed out of the cave system and shut the cellar doors behind him. He stepped over the small river like crack in the slick rock and grabbed onto the wooden ladder that led back up to the main docks, where Ursula’s Chip Shop was right next to.

He grunted slightly in effort as he stepped onto the old rotten wooden dock that no matter how hard you scrubbed and cleaned, forever smelled like fish and blood. He took a quick glance around and sigh, most of the residents around this area were either asleep, or inside the chip shop. He snuck around the back and looked up towards Uma’s window, remembering that around this time of night was her only break and she would spend her 5 minutes of privacy up in her room.

“Uma!” he whisper-yelled, looking down and picking up a small pebble, he chucked it at the thin pane of glass and whisper-yelled her name again “Uma! Um-mmfp!” A large hand clamped around his mouth, another set of arms grabbing his own and wrapping a tight rope around his wrists and upper arms.

“mmgf?!” Harry lunged forward halfway breaking free of the unknown person's grip and biting on the hand that covered his mouth, the person yelped and shook his hand away from Harry. “UMA! HEL-mmm!” a dirty cloth was tossed between his open teeth and pulled back, making harry yelp and clamp down on the cloth to alleviate the burning pain that came from the tug. The cloth was quickly tied in a knot behind his head and he was shoved to the ground, multiple hands holding him down.

He struggled to look over his should, but he wished he didn’t as he locked eyes with the hungry ones of his father's crew. ‘no’ he thought, feeling his nose burn as he started to struggle, his breath shortening as he felt ropes bound around his legs and thighs, preventing movement completely ‘please Hades no!’

“hello there again Hook~” Harry looked up, growling at the newest addition to the kidnapping group as Davy stepped into the street lights of the docks. “nice night isn’t it~ now, you are going to do me a favor” he kneeled next to Harrys struggling form, smirking as the men holding him down copped a feel on Harry's thighs and ass. Ooh how he reveled in the tears that gathered in Harrys eyes. “you are going to go with them, not like you have a choice, and stay away from Uma, I won't have you ruining my plans for her” Harrys brows furrowed, plans what plans?? “oh, I can see it, you want to know what is I’m planning? Well too bad, I've learned that monologuing only helps the hero defeat the villain….have fun Harry~ I’m sure many people on the isle missed you~” Davy gave a mocking wave as Harry was hefted up to his feet and dragged away from the chip shop.

Hot tears ran down Harry's cheeks as he listened to the disgusting jeers of his father's crew, all talking about how good it would feel to get buried in his ass gain ‘please, Hades no, someone…help me, Uma, Harriet, uncle Smee!’ he sobbed through the dirty cloth, once more attempting to break free of the two crew members grip, who simply laughed at his attempt and carried on dragging him towards his father's dreadful ship ‘(y/n)…help me!!!’

Davy dropped his smirk as someone stepped out onto the docks in front of the chip shop, he turned, bowing slightly as he locked eyes with Uma, who was looking around on the docks with a raised brow “did you hear anything?” she asked, crossing her arms and cocking her hip.

Davy pursed his lips, shaking his head as he glanced around “nothing other than the usual sounds captain” he sighed, walking towards the chip shop and passing Uma

“I thought I heard my name” Davy stopped “like…I thought I heard Harry” she muttered, turning to Davy with hopeful eyes “did you hear anything like that?” Davy just stared at her, his face blank.

“I didn’t hear anything like that” he hummed, glancing off towards the sea that led to Auradon “perhaps you’re hearing things?”

Uma watched him for a moment, her eyes looking into his very soul, finally, she looked away, hand trailing down her arm to mess with her red and black beaded bracelet. “maybe…” she muttered, staring out onto the ocean with dull eyes before she spun around and stormed back into the chip shop, huffing as her mother screamed at her to get the dishes done. “IM COMING! Sheesh”

Davy smirked at Uma’s receding back, soon, he would be captain. And shrimpy would be at the bottom of the ocean, drowned with the rest of Auradon.

After 5 agonizing minutes of waiting for Jay to finally drive the limo across the isle barrier, he parked it in the old garage and you all quickly climbed out. You, Carlos, and Gil ran for the large sheets to cover the limo to keep it hidden from the isle residents. “Ben!” Carlos called, the king perked up from beside Evie and trotted over to Carlos “help us with the tarp” Ben nodded and grabbed the other end of the white sheet Gil was holding, walking back over to the limo and tossing it over the hood, Jay catching the other side and draped the rest of it over the front of the car.

You and Carlos tossed your sheet to Evie, who gasped in slight shock as it smacked her in the face “sorry Evie” you winced, continuing to cover the limo as Jay took over for Evie and helped you finish covering the car.

“it's really weird being back here” Evie muttered to Jay, her eyes flying over every corner of the dark garage. Jay gave her a soft look and rubbed her shoulder.

“we’ll get in and get out” Evie gave a shallow nod and looked over at Ben, who was peeking through the large pipe leading to the wharf.

“Hey, what's in here?!” Carlos winced, running over to Ben and pulling him away from the pipe. Jay patted Ben's shoulder and shook his head.

“you don’t wanna know” you sighed, crossing your arms and looking through the pipe, just through there was Uma’s ship….and maybe Harry.

Your gut told you different but you held out on the hope that Harry had met up with Uma and was explaining everything to her.

“do you think Harrys talking to Uma right now?” Gil whispered to you, standing next to you and looking down the tunnel. You looked up at him and shrugged, shoulders falling as he sighed and turned back to ben and the vks.

You pulled on the hood trapped beneath Harry's jacket and pulled it over your head, sighing as Carlos stood in front of the group and held his arms out to stop any of you from passing him.

“hey, guys. Keep it chill, all right? last thing we need is our parents figuring out we’re here” Jay, Gil, and Evie gave a numb nod, while Ben glanced around nervously. Carlos turned and walked towards the open alley opposite of the tunnel, the rest of you close behind.

You took a deep breath, squaring your shoulders and setting your hand on the hilt of Harry's cutlass. ‘just walk like you’ve been sent to murder Captain America’ you thought to yourself, smirking as you remembered the whole Tumblr post about ‘murder walking’

(a/n: if you don’t know what I’m talking about here)

You rounded the corner, noticing two young boys quickly dodge out of your way and tuck themselves into a corner, keeping their eyes on you before Evie drew their gaze. You gripped onto your hit as the two boys attempted to rush Evie, one somehow getting her wallet before she easily snatched their arms, drawing them closer to her “Hey-what-Stop!”

The boys, minus Ben, turned at Evie's call, walking back towards you and watching the scene go down. Evie looked at the two boys faces and sighed, releasing their arms and taking a step towards you “Just take it.” they stared at her in shock, the shorter boy glancing from the wallet to Evie “Go on” the boys smiled at each other and ran the opposite way, their laughter echoing back at you.

Evie sighed turning towards you and rolling her eyes, she pushed your shoulder to turn you around and ran after Ben as he walked further into the market “Ben.” She muttered, you scoffed and shook your head and quickly followed after her, the boys close behind as Evie easily found Ben and pulled him back from a snarling isle resident “Ben, stop. Just stop!”

“what-why?” you grabbed onto his other shoulder and waved around the empty half of the market.

“This ain't Auradon beasty boy, it’s the isle” Jay leaned forward, his face towards Ben but his eyes constantly looking around.

“Keep your hands in your pockets unless you’re stealing” Ben opened his mouth, but Carlos interrupted him.

“you either strut or slouch” Ben tried to speak again but Evie silenced him again.

“and never, ever smile” Ben started at the five of you for a moment before he spoke again.

“okay than-“ Gil covered Ben's mouth, shushing him.

“no! No thank you’s and drop the please too, that kinda stuff will get you gutted round here” Gil sighed, releasing Ben's face and taking a step back. Evie sighed, leaning on Ben's shoulder and shaking her head.

“you need to just….Chill~”

(I’m not writing chillin’ like a villain so just imagine urself n Gil in the song bustin some moves because you can and ur not Ben whose failing in the background have fun)

You groaned lightly as Ben half shuffle-strut down the alley, the vks cheering him on as he did a little spin. You face palmed as a pirate suddenly smacked into Ben's side.

And here you thought with Gil on your “side” this part wouldn’t happen! The five of you rushed up to Ben's side, you and Gil taking a good look at the pirate.

He seemed to be part of Uma’s crew; her pirate octopus symbol stenciled onto his jackets front pocket. “hey” the pirate muttered, scratching at his thin blonde beard “I know you”

“uh, nope, don’t know you either man” Ben tried to play it cool, but you could see his hands shaking from a mile away.

“no-no, I know you….King Ben” the pirate grinned, taking off his dark brown tricorn hat and giving Ben a mock bow “what an honor to meet you your majesty~ why I got a friend who would be interested in meeting-holy shi- Gil?!” Gil pressed his lips together and looked away from the pirate, his fists clenching so hard you could hear the leather gloves creak. “and-Evie, Jay, Carlos?” the pirate let out a laugh, a twinkle in his eye that you didn’t trust “oooh you’re all back on the isle-hey get back here!” you shoved at Evie and Ben urging them to finally move their butts and run.

Gabe huffed and ruffled his short hair, then smirked “Uma’s gonna love this!” he turned and bolted back towards the docks, he was gonna get a weeks’ worth of free food with this information!

Gil glanced back at his ex-pirate crew member and shook his head “Gabe’s a lot different than I remember” he sighed, sliding on his boots a bit as the six of them took a hard right to finally reach the alley where the core fours hideout was.

“Gabe?” you asked, trying to catch your breath as the leather jacket was overheating you slightly “who’s….Gabe?”

“Gabe, one of Harrys Warf rats from before….I guess he’s running with another crowd now” Gil sighed, rubbing the back of his head and watching as Jay grabbed a midsized rock and chucked it at the sign, the metal gate swinging up. “wait if you're from your world where-how do you not know his name?”

“not all the crew names were revealed, the most we got was Uma, the captain, Harry; the first mate, you; the second mate slash quartermaster. Then there were the crew members, Jonas, Bonnie, Desiree, Gonzo aaand….yeah that’s it…” Gil pursed his lips, watching Ben climb up the stairs and up towards Mal.

“That’s only a quarter of the crew” he muttered, stuffing his hands in his pockets and leaning against the alleyway wall “…okay I can think of nothing else to talk about, how long do you’ll think they'll be?”

You shrugged, looking up at the ascending stairways, still hearing Ben’s footsteps climb up. “Dunno, ten bucks says Mal breaks it off with him”

“Fifteen says Ben convinces her to come back to Auradon” Gil shot back, grinning slightly as you held out your hand.

“Seal” you shook hands and leaned back against the wall, now waiting in silence for Ben and Mal, or just Ben to come back downstairs.

You hoped Mal knew where Harry was.

-end of part 7-

There it is~ part 7! I was gonna include Mal and Ben's heart to heart but decide to leave that for the next chapter! So, the next chapter will open with Mal n Ben and then go back to the reader n the vks!

And I know I know, yall DEFINITELY HATE Davy now AND James…and his crew lol, I hated writing that I’m sorry. Don’t worry tho, Harry will be givin justice!!!! Reader gon go ham on their asses.

Also, dis is Gabe for those who don’t know what he looks like,

he is part of Uma’s crew in d2 and 3, but he has no official name so I took @askauradonprep’s name for him (hopefully that’s okay~)

Also hope yall don’t mind me not writing chillin’ I was writing this at like, 3:30 and didn’t feel like writing it all out.

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chaoticpete · 3 years

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Our lives is a movie?

Peter Parker x reader...I think, Avengers x reader, Tom Holland x Reader (if ya squint)

Warnings: none

What would it be like if the team found out they were just a movie series in our world?

A/n: This is just an idea I had like last year, will probably end up rewriting it, well at least the end, hope you guys still enjoy it though!

“Oh come on! I was so close to an almost perfect winning streak!” You yell at Bucky. Tossing the controller beside you, you cross your arms and start pouting as your Yoshi finally crosses over the finish line.

“Guess I’m just better.” He replies with a smug smirk. “Is that why I beat you the first three games.” It’s your turn to smirk when he glares at you. An alarm starts going off through the tower. A code red. Someone is inside the tower. You wave your hand and your suit appears on.

“FRIDAY! Where’s the intruder?” Tony asks, running into the room, Nat and Wanda following behind. “They’re trying to get into the plans vault, sir.”

“L/N would you mind pulling up a portal?” You make one leading to the vault. “Why of course Papa Stark!” Tony summons a suit and the rest of you jump through your portal seeing a blue man trying to get past the actual vault.

“Hey, Smurf! Who do you think you are?” You ask, throwing a mini explosive his way. He jumps out of way throwing back a disk towards you guys that set off a bright light.

Then he sent another one.

“Void! Look out!” Peter says pushing you out of the way the same time you made another portal causing it to mix with the blue guy’s device.

Before anyone else in the team could do anything the guy was gone, and so were you and Peter.

You land landing on your face. “Ow...I really don’t get paid enough for this.” You grumble as you get back up and brush off your clothes. You notice a golden disk by you. It’s the one the guy threw.

Picking it up and slipping it into your suit, you begin looking around you, you see lots of people walking around some talking other carrying items. “Where the hell am I?” You say starting to walk around.

When you spotted some familiar brown curls. “Peter!” You say running towards the boy and pulling him into a hug. “Ugh, I have absolutely no idea whe- when you change your clothes?” You ask actually getting a good look at him.

‘Peter’ looks at you confused. “When did I change my clothes? Darling, I think the real question is what are you wearing and who are you?” He says in a British accent.

Before either of you can say anything else ANOTHER Peter runs up to you. “Y/n!” “Peter?!” You say back pulling this one in a hug.

“Are you okay?” “Yeah. But when I came out of that portal this woman automatically started coming at me saying that “I needed to get ready for the next scene” and “I needed a touch up” THEN SHE TRIED TO UNDRESS ME! I ran so fast.”

Quickly remembering the other Peter you step back from that Peter and look between the two. Peter looks over at the next person, who he saw...was him. “Holy shit!” He says jumping closer to you.

“Y/n, what is happening?” “I don’t know but I don’t like it. Do you think this is Loki’s doing?” “No, no.” He's on that time mission, remember.” “She.” “Oh yeah.”

The fake Peter looked just as confused as the both of you. “I feel like I should be calling security, but it’s not every day you meet someone who looks, exactly like you.” He says staring at Peter.

“Whoa, you’re British?!” Peter askes shocked at the accident. “Would it help better if I talked like this?” He asked now in an American accent.

He sounded just like Peter.

Both your and Peter’s eyes open wide. “Noooo.” You both say. “You both already look very much alike. Don’t you guys talk alike also?”

A loud bell rings and you and Peter automatically jump into your fighting stances. “Shit! Break is just about done.” Fake Peter says panicking a bit.

“Uh, okay follow me. You guys can stay in my trailer till I’m done for the day then when you get to the hotel we can figure this out.” He says starting to walk towards the trailers.

He goes to one labeled “Peter Parker” and opens the door. “You guys can wait till I’m done. Please, don’t let anyone in. I have a key so I’ll just lock it. Um, there are some snacks in the cupboard, water in the fridge, and feel free to watch anything on the tele. Even got youtube!” He yelled before closing the door.

“...did you catch any of that?” “Nope.”

Turning on the tv, you see the date. “February 16, 2021. What the hell is Covid-19-“

You get cut off by someone trying to open the door. “Fucking div locked the door again. And left the tele on.” You hear a voice mumble on the other side before walking off.

“N/n look at this,” Peter says flipping through pages of paper.

“What is it?” “It’s a script. For a “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” He says looking at the first page. “It has everyone in here. Aunt May, Mj, Ned even that European trip we went on.” “Wait what?” You ask, looking over his shoulder.

“Dude...where the hell are we.”

Hours passed and before you know it you hear the trailer door unlocking. Sitting up in the bed you see the fake Peter (whose name you learned was Tom) walking in looking tired.

“Hey. Okay, so before I actually bring you guys back home. Who exactly are you?”

“Well, my name is Peter. Peter Parker. Spider-Man. Um, I’m pretty sure you know me.”

“Yeah kinda. I am...you? Technically...in this universe. Well, one of you. I’ll explain better at the hotel. Oh, I’m Tom by the way. Don’t think I’ve actually introduced myself.” He says chuckling. “And you?” He asks turning your attention to you.

“I’m the actual Y/n. Or Void as my hero name.”

“Y/n huh? Yeah, we don’t have you here.” “Wait what? Really? But I’m Peter’s partner in crime. We’re always getting blamed for everything with the team.” You say pouting.

“Is there at least an actor that looks like me?” “No, I don’t think so darling. Sorry.”

Before anything else can be said there’s another knock on the door. “Tom, are you in there mate? We’re going to go get some pizza.”

“Uh, no thanks I’ll just meet you back at the room. Be safe.” “Who was that?” “My brother, Harry.” “Aww, he has a brother.” “Three actually.” “Awww!”

“Okay it should be safe to get you two out of here but first. Here,” Tom says opening up a kit bag and giving Peter some clothes and you an oversized hoodie. “They might think you’re trying to steal the suit.”

“Oh, and you’ll need these.” He says grabbing a box and handing you each a mask after Peter was done changing.

“Yeah what’s with these?” “We’re in a pandemic?” “Like the plague?” “Ehh, sort of. Now let’s find a way to get you two back home.”

**************************************************************

“So here, we’re all just...comic book characters? There are no avengers? No flying robots? Nothing?”

“Nope. No alien villains. Just regular people who wanna bring harm.” “Huh.”

The three of you were now in Tom’s suite.

“So how did you guys even get here.” “Well, my theory is when the guy threw his little disk thingy, it merged with Y/n powers and made a new portal.”

“But how do you know that’s what it was meant to do?” “It’s the only explanation with how he got into the compound and the vault unnoticed.”

“You guys never thought about that?” “Blame Tony.” You say as Peter hisses and moves back from getting shocked.

“You okay?” You say grabbing his hand to inspect the slight burn. “Yeah, just a sting. It’ll heal in an hour or two.”

“Can you get us back home?” “Yeah, but I’ll need a few supplies.” “Well,” Tom speaks up. “I’m off tomorrow so we can go pick up what you need. You can stay here tonight if you like.”

“Thanks, dude,” Peter says and you nod with him.

“You guys hungry? I can ask Harry to bring back some pizza for us.” “Ohh yes please.” You say bouncing on your toes a bit. “I’m absolutely starving.”

“So Tom you’re an actor right?” “Mhmm.” “And you said you play me?” “Yep.” “And they have the rest of the team?” “Besides me apparently,” you say under your breath.

“Maybe they’ll bring you in soon. The company is starting a new phase so,” Tom says shrugging.

“Do you guys wanna see them?” “How many are there?” “23 movies and more coming out. There's also shows.”

“23 MOVIES ABOUT US?!”

Tom can’t help but laugh at your guy’s reaction. “Yeah, Marvel movies are some of the biggest ones these days. Going on for almost 13 years.”

“How much have you acted in?” “Like five, two solo films, and this one we’re currently filming will make it six. Three solos and three with the actual avengers.”

There was a knock on the door. “Must be Harry with the pizza,” Tom says going to the door. “Why didn’t you just use your key?”

“Cause my hands are full ya div. Why did you get so much food any-“ Harry stops when he sees you and Peter sitting on the couch.

Tom quickly grabs the food from his hands before he can even think about letting it go.

Looking between his brother and his duplicate you couldn’t help but start laughing at his expression.

All three turned to look at you like you completely lost his mind (which I’m sure is exactly how Harry was feeling). “I’m just gonna...nice meeting you guys I guess.” He says walking to what you think is his room before looking back at Tom and Peter causing him to almost walk up into a wall.

“Uh...sorry about that. That’s my little brother Harry, he came along as my assistant.” You and Peter nod. “Well guess we can dig in and watch the movies.”

“I- it was not that dramatic when Mr. Stark took the suit.” “Yes, it was. You could barely talk properly when you called me.”

“I can’t believe they included Flash but not me.”

“Okay, but why is the guy who plays Mysterio kinda hot though.” “Y/n I swear.” “Okay, but am I wrong?!” “...no.”

“Tony’s ego is gonna be ruined if he ever knows they killed him off.”

“Sucks we didn’t have enough time to watch all 23 films. I’m sure it would make more sense.”

And that’s how your night went. You just watched the Spider-Man stand-alone ones before everyone started to crash from the long eventful day. Harry even came out and joined you guys.

After figuring out what was needed and put together his own device, it was time for you guys to go home.

“You guys got everything?” Harry asks as Peter puts the finishing touches. “Yeah, thank you, guys. Really, I don’t know what I and Peter would’ve done if we didn’t end up here.”

“Oh! These are for you.” Tom says handing you a bag. “It’s the whole MCU collection. I saw how much you guys loved the Spider-Man ones and it was confusing since they all interact. Plus, I’m sure the others would wanna see them.”

“As if some of them need an ego boost. Especially Tony and Loki. I’m pretty sure if Loki ever found out he was actually worshipped here he would find a way to get here.”

You go and pull Tom into a hug. “Nice meeting you Peter’s British half. I’ve never really cared for them but eh, I guess I have a little soft spot for two of them now.” You say shooting Harry a wink before placing a kiss on Tom’s cheek and then going to give Harry a hug as Peter says his byes.

“Ready N/n?” “I guess. I just hope we actually end up in our world and not a different one.” You say grabbing Peter's hand as he gets ready to throw the disc.

You both look back at the two Holland brothers. “See you again one day boys.” You say as Peter throws the disc and a portal opens and the two of you jump through it.

The two of you crash to the floor. “Ugh, Peter get off me! You’re skinny but really heavy.”

“Kids!” You both look up to see the team rushing to you guys. “Where did you two go?!”

Getting up from the ground, both tackled with hugs.

“YOu'll never believe us. But we do have the next movie night!” “What are those?” “Movies about us. Avengers! To the theater room!”

Tags:: @tommyunderoos @spideyspeaches @frenchfrostpudding @holland-styles @gwenvrse @allegra-writes @petersgroupie @cherry-hyejin @kitkatd7 @buckys-other-punk

#marvel #x reader #peter parker #peter parker x reader #spiderman #peter x reader #tom holland spiderman #avengers #mcu peter parker #tom holland x reader #alternate universe #peter Parker and Tom Holland #avenger reader #chaoticpete writes

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peachcitt · 3 years

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okay, so style reference you say? I'm 👀

YES STYLE REFERENCE I SAY

this is going to be. a very long post i think with probably a lot of tangents and probably with a lot more thorough explanation than you could ever want but. here we go

because all of my theory/explanation posts end up So Long, i like to organize myself by keeping myself to a structure, and i also like to think if i put stuff in sub categories with bolded titles, people reading can skip ahead to the stuff they want if they're low on time or don't feel like slogging through everything. so here's the structure of the official Peach Style Reference Narrative

1. Early Days - how i started writing, my early inspirations, origins

2. Current Days - discussions of current style references plus examples and comparisons, discussions of original content versus fan content

3. Future Days - where i expect my writing to grow, trajectories i want, conclusory thoughts

without further ado, let's get into it!

1. Early Days

like i mentioned on the discord server, ive been writing creatively for. a very long time. i just turned 20 (like. literally today. we love to see it) and that seems very young, but i remember writing creatively when i was maybe six or seven, and before that i played with dolls a lot, which meant every day i was creating little narratives for myself. in addition to this - and this is probably why i started writing so young - i was (and am!) a very avid reader. i was that little jerk in elementary school reading chapter books and going into the older kids' section in the school library because i'd already mentally surpassed the books in the section meant for kids my age. so, basically, ive been writing for maybe 13 or 14 years at the least.

when i was young, my favorite books that i remember trying to copy in my own stories were: the magic treehouse books, harry potter, and percy jackson.

the magic treehouse

i honestly could not tell you which magic treehouse book it was, but i remember reading a specific magic treehouse book where the magic lady that left the treehouse for the kids sends the kids (jack and annie??) a note in distress, and she didn't get to finish signing her name because whoever had gotten her had interrupted her. it had been printed in the book with the ink on her name running.

i could not tell you anything else that happened in that book, but i can tell you that at some point in time soon after i read that book i started writing a story with an interrupted letter just like that. i loved the drama, the mystery of it all. i wanted to do something that was a little scary like that, a little exciting.

harry potter

harry potter isn't much of a style reference, but it was a huge impact of my childhood. truth be told i kind of hated the books when i was really young because i grew up watching the movies, and when i tried to read the books when i was in elementary school, the teenage angst that hits about book 5 simply Did Not make sense to me. i also find the language of harry potter to be super cumbersome, and sometimes it feels to me like the books are long just for the sake of being long. they have a huge cultural impact, but i feel the same way about harry potter's style as i do about dickens. cool and interesting, but, like, could you get to the point already? (and also my opinion of j.k. rowling has steadily been growing worse and worse over the years, for obvious reasons. harry potter is nostalgic for me, but i can't look at it now without thinking about it critically, which really lowers my opinion of it)

however, you could probably call my first fanfiction a harry potter fanfiction. i started it when i was maybe six or seven, and it was a rewrite of the chamber of secrets with my childhood best friend as the main character (she didn't know about it, i just had her as the main character because i thought she was cool). i of course never finished it, but harry potter probably did a huge part of planting that seed of magic in me. everything i want to write included some form of magic - although my perspective on what can be considered magic has steadily expanded over the years.

percy jackson

of all my childhood "style references" that still influence me to this day, percy jackson has got to be the biggest. for starters, it's magic. second, it's main themes are about friendship and family - things that i like all my stories now to always include. third - and most important - is the narrative voice.

in terms of narrative voice, percy has a huge personality. he's witty and snarky, but also very thoughtful and poignant. a lot of my early writing was in first person, and it's probably because of percy. also, percy jackson was the first fandom i really got into, and it was the first media that i started officially writing and posting fanfiction for. percy's voice is so clear and hooking, and i wanted to be able to write something funny and real like that.

also - chapter titles. the original pjo series is famous for its weird and hilarious chapter titles, and even though i didn't really start writing fics or stories that were long enough to need chapter titles until a while later, i loved the idea of putting in a chapter title that would make a reader laugh, or maybe even make a reader feel a little apprehensive about the events to come.

but back to percy's narrative voice. i loved that style, almost conversational, so much that i started thinking like it. when i wasn't doing anything, like walking home in middle school, i often found myself narrating my life in my head like percy would, trying to find that humor and spark in my every day surroundings. i still find myself doing that very often, but not necessarily in the classic pjo style. now i narrate everything in my head a little differently, but that practice narration in my early days really helped my shape my voice, i think.

other series i read when i was younger include: a a series of unfortunate events and the name of this book is secret. i don't remember seeing a lot of influence in my early writing from those books, but i definitely think the styles of those books hit me a little later, which i will talk about in the next section.

but, yeah. these were the big three of my childhood. i also read a lot of ya romance, children's mystery books, princess stories, and various types of fantasy, which i think you could probably tell from the genres i like to stick to now. except i don't write a ton of mystery because, as much as i admire the complicated plots, im not sure if i'd have the patience to plan all that out.

in terms of the rest of the genres, a ton of my earlier writing included classic ya romance and fantasy tropes - chosen girl, love triangles, angsty overpowered teens, etc etc. even though those kinds of stories are not necessarily the kinds of stories i want to write or read now, i think my early writing of those kinds of things was really valuable. it's kind of a dirty secret with finished or unfinished works generally considered 'cringe' - often that writer is a new writer, or they're trying something new, or they just haven't found their voice yet. all of those things are perfectly okay and normal, and a lot of people in the writing community preach that kind of thing, but i don't necessarily see people cutting new writers slack in actual practice. writing "overrused" tropes isn't cringe, it's normal, and, besides, what trope isn't overrused? people have been writing and telling stories for thousands of years - nothing is really new. what matter is that someone new is telling the story, and that's what makes it valuable.

so, yeah, a lot of my childhood writing is cringe to me now, but i wouldn't be where i am without it.

with that being said, let's actually look at where i am now

2. Current Days

im going to break this section down into two parts, sort of: original fiction and fanfiction. because i think both of these things have become really important to me, and i don't believe i personally could exist as a writer without one or the other. it's a symbiotic relationship.

we'll start with fanfiction.

my relationship with fanfiction is relatively positive in online spaces: i write what i want to see from media that i like, and i have fun doing it. i also get some comments on my fics by lovely people that detail exactly what they like - some even go so far to talk about narrative style, voice, or tone - and that's really helpful. generally, i see fanfiction not only as a fun hobby and vent space for my strong positive feelings about certain media, but also as a place for me to try new things, experiment, and earn positive feedback.

i don't often share my original fiction online (and if i do, never at the same scope as my fanfiction), so i don't get that same opportunity to see what "works" with readers. fanfiction gives me the space to see that, and i apply new knowledge ive learned to my original fiction. that's what i mean by a symbiotic relationship.

in terms of specific style references for specific fics (which is what i know you probably most want to see), i'll try my best to pick them all out and give specific examples.

those benevolent stars and i am the messenger by markus zusak

in my favorite book list, i saw you mention tbs, so i'll start there. to be honest, i had no idea what my style reference for tbs was when i first saw your tags, and i almost didn't think there was anything specific. style references are a bit sneaky like that - if you've been referencing for someone for a long time, it becomes less of an intentional reference and more of just a you think, so it gets harder to tell.

lucky for this post, i just finished doing my yearly reread of zusak's i am the messenger, and as i was reading, i noticed a few spots where i was like wait hey i remember doing that.

for starters, iatm has been my favorite book for about six or seven years now, so i would say that some aspects of my style certainly comes from zusak because of how much i love iatm but also his other books. zusak has this huge talent for writing short, punchy sentences that convey so much in just a few words, and i think i've ended up trying to do that in my own writing. often, in my writing you'll see fragmentary sentences such as "He stopped. Blinked. Looked at her." that's not from anything specific, but i know ive written something like that maybe a million times over. zusak doesn't do the same thing - often his fragments are jam-packed with imagery in a way that mine aren't - but there's a thoughtfulness in his fragments that are in mine, too. a sort of pause. a hint that there's thinking happening in the narrator or a certain character. for example, i did a quick flip through of my copy and we have:

"We stare across the table.

Just briefly.

At each other." (I am the Messenger, p.144)

so you see how my common sentence fragment of "he stopped / blinked / looked at her" tracks with a fragment like this? i like the way zusak broke up sentences to make you dwell on them a little longer, consider the importance of each section, so i started doing that wayy before i wrote tbs i think.

also, at the time i wrote tbs, i think i was in the process of, or had just finished doing my reread of iatm, and, like i said, zusak loves imagery. tbs is a very imagery-heavy fic. tbs was influenced by a lot of music - a lot of the scenes have very specific pieces of music that i wrote imagining the tone and vibe of. iatm also references a lot of outside media sources, mostly music and films.

there are a couple of scenes in tbs that i think i wrote specifically mimicking or accidentally referencing from iatm. for example, we have this scene in tbs:

"It was almost like he could feel Marinette’s eyes on his back, steady and gentle. 'But you still love her.”

'Yeah,' Adrien said quietly, 'I still love her.' His eyes moved along a streak of purple that bled into a dark blue. 'I hate her a little bit, too.'

Marinette was silent.

He turned around, giving her a smile." (Those Benevolent Stars, chapter 3)

and this scene from iatm:

"'Do you hate me, Ed?'

Still stupid with bubbles and vodka in my stomach, I answer. Very seriously.

'Yes,' I whisper. 'I do.'

We both smack the sudden silence with laughter." (I am the Messenger, p. 233)

obviously there are differences, and i don't think i did it on purpose, but the interaction is very similar. i love the gentle intimacy of that scene in iatm, that weird complication relationship between the main character and the person he loves, the hurt, the brushing it off with laughter. so i wrote a scene that incorporated those things

zusak is also really good at writing moments of quiet into his books that aren't necessarily important to the plot, but are still important. if you've ever read that ghibli meta post talking about the 'quiet' between scenes in studio ghibli scenes, meant to give both the audience and the characters space to breath, it's like that. nothing in iatm is not imporant - it all serves a purpose, even the quiet moments, and i try to do the same thing. there's moments like that in tbs i think, like:

"Marinette gave him a small smile before turning back to her ice cream. Adrien tried to eat his ice cream a little faster, licking up where it had dripped onto his hand.

They were quiet for a while longer, and Marinette finished her ice cream. She leaned back on her hands and looked up at the dark sky, littered with stars.

He could see them all in her eyes, too." (Those Benevolent Stars, chapter 3)

and in iatm, you get scenes like:

"Our feet dangle.

I watch them, and I watch the jeans on Audrey's legs.

We only sit there now.

Audrey and me." (I am the Messenger, p.120)

so i definitely think tbs is a very i-am-the-messenger/markuz zusak-inspired fic. there's a lot of zusak's quiet, and there's the pieces of zusak's style that i've picked up along the way that really shine in tbs

tomorrow and this body's not big enough for the both of us by edgar cantero

ive talked about cantero a few times recently, but, as you've probably noticed, in relation to my fic called 'tomorrow.' i wrote tomorrow pretty soon after reading this body's not big enough for the both of us, and i used tomorrow specifically to experiment with cantero's visual writing style. in all the books by cantero ive read, there's this kind of hyper-awareness of a film gaze - how a certain scene would be shot on a camera, dialogue as script writing, and other things like that mixed with prose. i thought it was fascinating, and after finishing this body, i really wanted to play around with that idea. so i wrote tomorrow keeping in mind a "film gaze." for example:

"Two figures sitting on a rooftop, silhouettes. The moon hovers over them carefully, a crescent afraid to break the silence. One of the figures takes a breath, looks up into the sky at the hesitant moon, and he sighs. He closes his mouth again." (tomorrow)

versus in cantero's work, where we get descriptions like:

"And then, like a high-heeled coup de grace, she arrived.

She paused briefly outside the door, her hourglass silhouette cast upon the glass panel with the fresh shiny vinyl letters" (This Body's Not Big Enough for the Both of Us, prologue)

the tone of the two excerpts are very different, but there's a very visual sense to both of them, like they are being described from a shot in a movie rather than a regular work in prose. in tomorrow i also work a lot with specific camera imagery - saying where the camera goes in the scene, what it focuses on - and this body doesn't do this too much, but cantero's meddling kids does at least once that i remember.

regardless, after finishing this body, i wanted to try my hand at the visual structure that cantero uses in his works, so i really leaned in to the idea.

chat noir's white french man hit list for feminist purposes and grasshopper jungle by andrew smith

this is, as of right now, the most recent fic on my ao3, and i started it the literal day i finished grasshopper jungle. i think you might be getting a theme here - i read a really good book, and then immediately after i start writing something. the easiest way to get inspired as a writer is to read.

chat noir's hit list is a fic that is very much aware of the fact that it is a story being told - you don't know by who or for what real reason until the end, but it's a self aware sort of story. it's also very snarky and sarcastic, and it expands past just the confines of its own story; it's about chat noir and his hit list, but it also talks in depth about emilie agreste, chat noir's relationship with ladybug, and his relationship with himself. this is very much the kind of thing that you would find in an andrew smith book - grasshopper jungle is a story being told to you, and it's also about more than just the original pieces of the plot. the narrator tells the story that expands past regular confines of the story he means to tell - he's telling the 'history' of his life and his town, but he also talks about his great-great grandfather, the origins of the ketchup his girlfriend's dad eats, and what's happening in other parts of the country as he and his best friend are hanging out. the line in chat's hit list of "stars exploded, the sun did not, life continued on" was very much a grasshopper jungle and andrew smith-inspired line.

at the end of adrien's narration in chat's hit list, he says:

"It should be mentioned at this point in time that this story is not over, although I’ll stop telling it here.

So that’s the story of Chat Noir, who is also Adrien Agreste, who was very much a normal boy, except for the fact that he wasn’t. It’s a sad story, but it is also a happy story, and it is highly confidential. I’m sure you understand." (Chat Noir's White French Man Hit List for Feminist Purposes)

and at the end of grasshopper jungle, as the main character is closing out his narration, we get:

What I have written here is not the history of Eden. It is the history of the end of the world. All real histories will be about everything, and they will stretch to the end of the world.

The end of the world started when Andrej Szczerba slid into the cold sea as his boy, Krys, watched and wept and drifted closer and closer to the United States of America.

Nobody knew anything about it." (Grasshopper Jungle, p.382-3)

It's not overtly similar, but the structure is the same: recognition of the end, short summary of where we started and left the story, tag phrase that was used prior in the work. when i was writing the end of adrien's narration, i didn't mean to mirror grasshopper jungle so closely, but sometimes things just happen that way - honestly, so many of the things i do in my writing aren't intentional, they're subconscious. when i make a conscious choice, it's related to plot or to a new strategy im applying to style or voice that i'm not used to, but a lot of the things i do fly under the radar in my brain unless im purposefully trying to piece them apart like i am here.

i will say the meta-story of chat's hit list was pretty directly inspired by grasshopper jungle because i love meta stories, and i like using opportunities to put them in. i just love the idea of reading a story of someone telling someone else a story, which is what the two books by andrew smith i've read have been, and i think that's just fascinating, which is why i used it here.

ive gotten a couple of comments on chat's hit list that liken the narrative style to pseudonymous bosch's the name of this book is secret and lemony snicket's a series of unfortunate events, which i thought was really interesting, because i was purposefully trying to make the voice an impression of andrew smith's voice adapted to the tone of ml, but i could definitely see their reasoning.

andrew smith, like i mentioned before, likes specifics - what exactly people were doing at certain times, where a specific bottle of ketchup came from, etc. from what i remember of the name of this book is secret and a series of unfortunate events, i remember the descriptions included in those books chock full of highly specific, snarky details that aren't truly necessary, but do a whole lot in terms of adding a certain flavor to the narration. i won't try and look up examples from unfortunate events and the name of this book, but here are a couple examples:

"See, the thing about Emilie Agreste, formerly Emilie Graham De Vanily, is that she was what could be generously called a ‘radical.’ Born in 1969, like most amazing and world-altering things, Emilie Graham De Vanily grew up in London alongside her twin sister, who is a nice enough woman and who is not really that important to this story, and she was raised with the firm and gentle hands of people who had witnessed war and cruelty and had found that they did not like at all. Emilie Graham De Vanily grew up learning about the true history of England, which is not a very nice history, truly, and she grew up knowing that people with white skin like her were historically not all that great. That, historically, was a very radical thought." (Chat Noir's White French Man Hit List for Feminist Purposes)

from chat's hit list, and this:

"In 1905, being seventeen years old made you a man. In 1969 when hungry Jack fought in Vietnam, seventeen years old was a man. My brother, Eric, who was somewhere in Afghanistan, was twenty-two.

Krzys Szczerba came across the Atlantic with his father. They planned on working and earning enough money so Krzys's mother, brother, and two sisters could come to the United States, too. People who did that were called Bread Polacks. They came here to make money." (Grasshopper Jungle, p. 68)

from grasshopper jungle. once again, obviously very different, but you can tell im playing around with that same feeling of giving a surplus of facts in my narration in the same way that andrew smith does. you can't really tell in the grasshopper jungle excerpt, but oftentimes the surplus of 'facts' serves almost a comedic effect, which is definitely something that you can feel in chat noir's hit list.

[REDACTED] and six of crows by leigh bardugo

as a reward for sticking around through this, i'll give out something fun here. the current long fic that ive been working on recently has proved to be very bardugo-inspired, particularly six of crows-inspired.

in six of crows, bardugo gives us action right off the bat and then integrates flashbacks into lulls of action so that there's never truly a dull moment. i found [REDACTED] to be a fic where i wanted to use flashbacks in a similar way, so that i would get something like:

"She doesn’t stay for the whole parade, but she stays for enough of it. Nothing unusual happens, just like always, but she still makes cursory patrols around the city, ending up at the Eiffel Tower, just like always. She sits on the railing way up at the top, and she crosses her ankles, swinging her legs back and forth and humming softly to herself as she watches the sun set.

'Little kitty on the roof, all alone without his lady,' he used to sing when he’d gotten back to their meeting point from patrolling his half of the city before her. It was just a silly little song, one that he’d clearly made up for himself."

It didn’t hurt until he’d been akumatized, and she’d seen that one version of the future - the one where he’d destroyed the whole world because of Gabriel Agreste. She’d seen him then, a lonely figure in white, humming his little song to himself. Who knows how long he’d been like that before she’d been transported to him, how long he’d been really and truly alone. (REDACTED, chapter 1)

and in comparison, we get a lot of scenes in six of crows like:

"Kaz leaned against the ship's railing. He wished he hadn't said anything about his brother. Even those few words raised the memories, clamoring for attention. What had he said to Geels at the Exchange? I'm the kind of bastard they only manufacture in the Barrel. One more lie, one more piece of the myth he'd built for himself.

After their father died, crushed beneath a plow with his insides strewn across a field like a trail of damp red blossoms, Jordie had sold the farm. Not for much." (Six of Crows, p.205-6)

bardugo uses most of the flashbacks during a time in which the main characters are on a long sea voyage, which means they have a lot of time to reflect on their pasts and what brought them to these situations - it's a smart way to fill the empty space of the sea voyage and to really dwell on how important the voyage is. in a similar way, i chose to use the flashbacks in dull or lulling moments in the events of the story, ones in which marinette lets her mind wander or sees something that makes her remember something specific.

however, here's a situation where you can see me adapt the style into something that makes more sense for me, personally: in my excerpt, the tense changes between the current events and the flashback events, while in bardugo's excerpt, the tense stays the same at a comfortable past tense. when i was writing my fic with the flashbacks, i thought the constant, sometimes abrupt, switching would get confusing, so i made sure to always have a clear line using the past and present tense that readers could consciously or unconsciously take notice of.

so there are a couple of instances within some fairly recent fics i have that have specific callbacks to specific books. there are a whole bunch more, i think, but these are the ones that ive played around with intentionally the most recently or the most often.

3. Future Days

based on my recent rapid experimentation in fics (the most recent four fics on my ao3 have been very experimental in comparison to most of my works), i really anticipate a lot of growth in my overall style. ive been having a lot of fun experimenting and throwing in things that a few years ago i would've never even thought of, so im really excited to see where that might lead me, style wise.

i think as a writer there's always room for growth and learning, and that kind of growth and learning comes from not only practicing writing, but also reading. i cannot stress enough how valuable and impactful reading is on writing. considering ive been trying to read a lot more than i have been in recent years, it makes a lot of sense that ive been making a lot of weird decisions and learning more about what i want to see in my own writing.

honestly, if you ever want to know about any of my other fics, or you want to see how this kind of thing translates to my original works, just shoot me an ask! this post is already long enough, so i think i'll go ahead and end it here, but just know you can always ask questions<3

thank you so much for asking me this question and letting me indulge, and thank you for reading!!!<3<3<3<3

#ask #miabrown007 #writing #writing meta #writing style #writing style reference #my writing meta #this took. actually i will not say how long this took because i do not want to hurt myself that way #just know that this took a while. did it need to? fucking no absolutely not you didn't ask for something this long i did this to myself #this is why i didn't answer this for a couple days btw i wanted to take time to actually sit down and write down a thorough post like this #for you and i didn't have the time when you first sent it #technically i should not have had the time today but that sort of thing doesn't count in the middle of the night #happy birthday to me im giving myself a super long meta post where i info dump about some of my favorite things #also you did not. you did not ask for writing or life advice and yet i also gave that. im sorry it just happens i don't know how to stop #im so tired. i have class tomorrow (today) my cat's being a little piece of shit. we love to see it #thanks so much for asking this and i seriously mean it when i say you can ask any time #i obviously didn't go over the majority of my fics and most of this was done off of memory alone #(in terms of my own fics. the books i had to flip through to find the quotes i wanted)#so if you have any more questions about a specific fic don't hesitate to ask!! that goes for everyone btw #anyway now i have to pay attention to my cat and then go to sleep goodnight love y'all

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dramione-tea · 3 years

Text

recommendations & little snippets of myself

by Cassiopeia Candles ( Instagram: @casseopya.candles )

note: click the title in order to be directed to the desired fan fiction.

- for the dramione shippers, I wish you luck!

Unrequited Love [ casspiane ]

“Darling, I wished you knew,”

Draco Malfoy x Original Characters (OC)

1. Love Never Dies. [ rosebuds_ ]

Rachel Farrell, pure blood witch, family of Gryffindors. First year is not the best for Rachel. She struggles trying to fit in and be accepted by those around her. Falling for Draco Malfoy, Rachel has to overcome a wave of obstacles. She finds it difficult to be accepted by her family and turns to the Malfoys... Which was undoubtedly one of the biggest mistakes she made. Find out what happens to Rachel and what truly changes her life.

- Literally binge read the whole book during my 6th grade examination. ( I know it was bad for me ) But hey I didn’t fail.

P.S. Don’t be like me.

2. midnight of the masquerade [ seraphilims ]

a story in which two people realize masks only hide the appearance - not the heart.

- Love the story plot. I’ve read this thrice in different years.

3. Imperio [ pansyparks ]

The younger sister of Cedric Diggory, Arden, is a Slytherin who doesn't fit in. Draco Malfoy, a wealthy Slytherin bully. The two come together, and Arden realises that being a Slytherin isn't so bad after all; but with a few bumps in the road for Draco, can they stay together?

4. Dear Draco [ malfoyuh ]

❛stay a little longer❜

- 15 year old me were in tears, so was my heart. Rate it as 5/5.

5. Let’s Kill Tonight [ Bambey ]

Rebecca Rosewood's life is dramatically changed when she becomes a Death Eater. With blood on her hands, she is summoned by Voldemort to go to Hogwarts and extract information from the famous Harry Potter, finding herself hopelessly attracted to Draco Malfoy at the same time. But it all gets a little too much when her past finally catches up with her...

- One of the first fan-fictions I’ve read about Draco.

6. if looks could kill [ WhenInDoubtSleep ]

In times like this, the truth can rewrite the past and alter the future. In an attempt to find herself amidst the deceptive lies and horrible truths, she finds Draco Malfoy instead. She honestly just wants to make it out of the year alive...and maybe with a few less kisses from the blond git. Love story set during the sixth year at Hogwarts.

7. Always Had A Thing For Bad Boys [ oxNeverShoutNeverxo ]

8. Who Are You? [ TheBlondeAdventurer ]

Draco Malfoy. One of the most arrogant teenage boys in Slytherin's house. He struts through the school and doesn't miss an opportunity to cut someone down, just as he has been by his father his entire life. Now enter Elena Crowe. A quiet girl who tries her hardest to stay out of trouble, and one of Ravenclaw's best students. She always has the best answers and never fails to help someone in need, even if they may not deserve it. In their sixth year at Hogwarts, Draco finally runs into Elena, whom he has never seemed to notice before. Elena does her absolute best to stay away from him, because all he can be is trouble, but Draco finds amusement by forcing himself into her life. For what reason, he doesn't know; but what he does know is that he enjoys bantering with this quiet girl, because even she can get riled up and fight back. But Draco will see that Elena is a lot more than what she may seem. Soon he will be battling morales, his past, his family, and both of them may end up facing off in the final battle not with Lord Voldemort, but each other.

- To be completely honest, read this one more than 3 times.

9. Unwanted Legacy [ writtenbyciara ]

" admit it, you care about me. "

- Recently read this months ago and found it quite interesting. The author’s writing style is different from the rest as her words make you visualize more on what is happening.

- Book 1 & 2 is complete, while book 3 is still on its way.

Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger (Dramione)

1. We Learned The Sea [ floorcoaster ]

Draco Malfoy turns himself in after a very successful career as a Death Eater, then enlists Harry and Hermione to help him in a scheme to bring down the Dark Lord.

- This gave me the feels. Draco’s personality in this is far most different from the books and other fan fictions.

2. The Bachelor [ Fluff ]

Hermione's mother is pressuring her into finding a boyfriend. On a whim, she applies and is accepted into the wizard version of The Bachelor. But what happens when The Bachelor is none other than Draco Malfoy himself?

3. Defending The Dark [ Cece Louise ]

Almost three years after Voldemort's defeat, Hermione Granger is a Ministry-appointed Defense Inquisitor. Her next assignment: defend Draco Malfoy. She's sure there must be some mistake. Confronted with mysterious memories, candid conversations, and confusing feelings, she is plagued with uncertainty. Just who is Draco Malfoy? And does he deserve a second chance?

4. Graveyard Valentine [ Bex-chan ]

Hermione thought she was the only person in the world who would spend Valentine's Day in a Graveyard, but she was wrong. He's there. Every single year, with his gloves, roses, and answers. Dramione Valentine's Day one-shot. Post-Hogwarts.

- All time favorite.

5. Eighteen Months [ Istalindar ]

When Hermione is diagnosed with a magic allergy and kidney failure during the summer, everything changes for her, friends, enemies..life.

6. Love Me Twice [ Bex-chan ]

'"They tore her apart and then wiped me out of her mind to send me a message. To mess up my life. To break..." he trailed off. Blaise nodded his head with understanding. "To break your heart," he finished for him.' Dramione. One-shot.

7. The Wrong Strain [ Colubrina ]

Everyone knew what veela were. Veela were magical creatures, breathtakingly beautiful, who captivated men with a single look. It would have been nice to have been that strain. Instead, Hermione Granger was infected by another. Instead of captivating all men, she was captivated by one. She'd die without him. She was already in almost constant pain.

8. Entwined In Time [ TheSummerNightingale ]

When Hermione and Draco get put into detention together, a potion mishaps throws them back in time: into the Marauders' era. As they begin to adjust to life twenty years into the past, the two become drawn together, sharing the bond of the future as they are forced to work together to return to their own time.

9. Destiny [ Annie Lockwood ]

Hermione's wedding night is everything but perfect for the young witch. Her new husband and long-time friend, Ronald, is passed out drunk and she thinks upon her life leading up to that night. Hermione falls asleep, despondent and alone. When she wakes up the following morning, she is still in bed with her husband. But it isn't Ronald Weasley.

10. Silencio [ AkashatheKitty ]

One late night, hate turns to lust.

11. Clean [ Olivie Blake ]

Malfoy's handsome face was contoured into a condescending smirk. "No faith in that giant brain of yours, Granger?" She looked up at him defiantly. "Maybe I don't have faith in you!" she said, raising her voice. Malfoy only looked at her. "You'll find I'm very surprising."

12. Marked [ Olivie Blake ]

Two dead. Three missing. The Order is down a leader and another innocent takes the Mark. Where is the Chosen One, and who killed Draco Malfoy?

13. The Fallout [ everythursday ]

Hermione learns about growing up through the redemption of Draco Malfoy.

14. Every Day, a Little Death [ LovesBitca8 ]

It has become common knowledge that Hermione Granger cannot have an orgasm. Many have tried, none have succeeded. Can Draco Malfoy offer his assistance?

15. familiar faces, worn out places [ LovesBitca8 ]

“You are at St. Mungo’s. You were in a coma.” He looks me over again, taking a pause. “I am a Healer here now,” he says, like it explains something. My fingers stretch, drifting across his sleeve. He looks down, like I’ve thrown mud at him.

Forcing my vocal chords together for the first time, I whisper, “What’s your name?”

16. Kiss Me, Haunt Me, Kill Me [ LovesBitca8 ]

"So," she said, and her voice was just as he'd remembered it, "you've chosen to haunt the castle as well?" She lifted her brows. "I'm dead. What's your excuse?" ~*~ Draco Malfoy returns to Hogwarts as Potions Master to find the ghost of Hermione Granger floating through the halls.

17. Ribbons Down Her Back [ LovesBitca8 ]

The unintentional annual seduction of Draco Malfoy through a series of ribbons and bows - or - Christmas Fluff with a dash of Secret Santa.

18. Manacled [ SenLinYu ]

Harry Potter is dead. In the aftermath of the war, in order to strengthen the might of the magical world, Voldemort enacts a repopulation effort. Hermione Granger has an Order secret, lost but hidden in her mind, so she is sent as an enslaved surrogate to the High Reeve until her mind can be cracked.

19. The Library of Alexandria [ SenLinYu ]

The Library of Alexandria is not for just any witch or wizard. Many bookworms may try but few are permitted to pass through its doors. The books residing there are ancient and powerful and, if one happens to make a mistake, the consequences can be rather—novel.

20. A Slow Cruel Descent + A Fragile Ascent [ SenLinYu ]

A Slow Cruel Descent

The war grinds on and Hermione Granger, the lead intelligence for the Order of the Pheonix, is captured. Unable to crack her through interrogation without risking her mind, Voldemort conceives a cruel method of breaking her that involves a reluctant Draco Malfoy.“He stared at her in disgust.She looked—broken.The fire she’d still had when she was dragged in was now extinguished. Her eyes were locked on his face like she were memorizing him.“Stop staring at me.” He snarled. “You stupid bint. You’re supposed to be so clever. They can’t break you with torture but a fucking potion reduces you to a sniveling traitor.”

A Fragile Ascent

The War is over. Voldemort is dead. And Hermione Granger is broken.

21. Sweetly Broken [ LadyKenz347 ]

As the dust settles following the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco’s confidence, belief system, and world are shattered.In an attempt to mend his broken pieces, he turns to vials that take the pain away. But once the high’s are no longer so high and the lows get so much lower, Draco has to start a journey of healing and redemption that often hurts more than it helps.

22. Truth, Lies, and Storytelling [ BreathOfThePhoenix ]

“Hermione,” Harry took a deep breath and flipped the book over to see the back cover, “why is my name on this?”“Like I said, someone is writing about us. The film we just saw was based on that book,” Hermione tapped the cover of the book on the top of the stack, “and it was incredibly accurate.”Harry passed the stack of books over to Ginny, holding on to the first one. He turned the title of the book over in his head, mumbling the words quietly to himself.“Harry Potter… me… Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Philosopher’s stone. Hermione, this feels weird. Am I the narrator?”When Hermione and Draco uncover a familiar new film called “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” they learn that the wizarding world may not be as well hidden as they thought.

23. DIVINATION FOR SKEPTICS [ OLIVIEBLAKE ]

The latest in magical advancements is an enchantment that reveals the bearer’s romantic compatibility with another person. Effectively eliminating uncertainty from dating, the charm can tell you whether or not you’ve found The One with a precise, Hermione Granger-approved calculation of traits and preferences. It’s a foolproof method of predicting relationship happiness. It’s also, for Hermione, positively dreadful news.

24. Isolation [ Bex-chan ]

He can't leave the room. Her room. And it's all the Order's fault. Confined to a small space with only the Mudblood for company, something's going to give. Maybe his sanity. Maybe not. "There," she spat. "Now your Blood's filthy too!"

25. Hunted [ Bex-chan ]

Forced to work together when their old schoolmates start dying, Hermione & Draco must overcome their differences to solve the mysterious deaths. The tension in the office is getting rather...heated.

If you reached to this part.

HEY THERE!

Feel free to message me on instagram if you ever feel the need to fan girl, I do too most of the time.

#dramione #draco x oc #draco malfoy #draco x hermione #harry potter #hogwarts #fanfic

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hp-fanfic-archive · 3 years

Text

an introductory rec list (that no one asked for) to some of my favorite ships: wolfstar [1/10]

First fic I read for the pairing: Where Rain And Smoke Mingle by smallestbird [1k,T] It doesn't matter if they've disowned you, they're still your family. It doesn't matter how often you walk away, it still hurts. [it’s a bit dreary, but the writing style is so nice and i’m a big sucker for hurt/comfort]

Fic that really sold me on the pairing: Of Brothers and Boyfriends by Amuly [38k,E] There’s no summary on the fic, but, essentially, Remus and Sirius’s secret relationship gets found out and things get… complicated. (warning for homophobia) [My note on my ao3 bookmark pretty much sums up how I feel about this fic: Honestly one of my favorites (and one of the stories that really got me hooked on Wolfstar tbh) and I've read it at least eight times. However, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the homophobic James Potter (even though he does come around).]

Absolute favorite fic(s) for the pairing: Text Talk by merlywhirls [141k,Not Rated] Sirius is in boarding school, Remus is in hospital, and they don't know each other until Sirius texts the wrong number. (warnings for homophobia, mentions of abuse, and homophobic language) [One of the earlier fics I read and it’s always just been one of my favorites, even though it’s been 3 years since I read it for the first time.] Harry Potter and the Live Laugh Love Sign in the Basement by loudestfandomsoftheworld [24k,T] Harry spends his summer with his fugitive godfather and his former professor who is a jobless werewolf. It's probably the best summer he's ever had. [The humor, the characterizations, their relationships, it’s all so fucking perfect!!] Go East [+Podfic] by xinasvoice [84k,E] Remus has been running for a long time. Eventually, he runs into a strange castle built by a wizard and his young apprentice. The longer he stays, the more secrets he uncovers...and the less he wants to leave. This is a novel-length adventure story that loosely follows the plot of Howl's Moving Castle. It does not require knowledge of the HMC book or movie to enjoy it. [it made me laugh, it made me cry, and it’s plot is based on one of my all time favorite movies? 11/10] Of Queries and Quarantines by MoonCat457 [51k,E] LUPIN.RJ: James, WHY? POTTER.JF: Because you’re the one currently doing the job, so it makes sense that you’d be the one to train the person hired to take your place. LUPIN.RJ: No, I mean why is Monty hiring a new editor in the middle of a fucking pandemic? POTTER.JF: An old friend of mine is in a tough spot and needs a job, so of course, dad is helping him out. - - - - OR A story set in the middle of the pandemic in which Sirius is hired at the Potter’s publishing company and Remus is responsible for training him. Lots of texting, lots of video calls, lots of mutual pining, and a lot of really bad literature quotes. [i’ve largely avoided quarantine au fics, but sometimes they’re so well-written and hilarious and also a texting fic and i accidentally fall in love with them, so here we are.]

Most recent fic I’ve read for the pairing: There Is No Man, However Wise by enigmaticblue [87k,T] It’s 1988, Sirius has Harry, and possession is nine-tenths of the law. [i adore a good raising harry au and i also adore the premise of the series this is in and i also adore the writing story and characterizations. 10/10]

Favorite AU(s) I’ve read for the pairing: High School AU: Likewise Variable by ssstrychnine [28k,T] James has plans, Peter is the nurse, Sirius keeps fake blood up his sleeves, and Remus just tries to stay alive. [i first read this fic in 2017 and it still lives rent free in my mind. it’s hilarious, a perfect characterization of the marauders (even tho it’s a muggle modern high school au) and adding shakespeare? just icing on the fucking cake. it’s excellent.] University AU: Wannabe Your Lover by Maraudererasmut & shadow_prince [15k,M] Somewhere in America, Fall of 1997 - Returning to University, James refused to room with Sirius in the wake of The Great Cheez-it Battle of '96. They must adjust to living with someone new, Mr. Potter worried they'd both get scurvy, James unsuccessfully continued trying to court one Lily Evans, Snape got what was coming to him, and Sirius was the most confused of them all. [this is the university experience we all wish we had, lowkey. aside from the hilarity that comes from having the marauders in a fic, it’s just cute and well-written and i love it (and southern remus??? it’s everything i never knew i needed.] Alternate Sorting AU (Slytherin Remus): Half Agony, Half Hope by Barry_Manilows_Wardrobe [21k,E] A tale wherein Sirius Black loses 750 House Points for Gryffindor. But it’s totally worth it. [listen, if, before i read this fic, you asked me if remus could’ve been a slytherin, my answer would have been “perhaps but probably not.” now, however, yeah. 100%. it’s hilarious, it’s novel (which i love to see), but it’s still the same remus and sirius and it’s excellent.] Haunted House AU: Another Day in the Sun by REwrites [19k,T] Is it haunted? I suppose that depends on who is telling the story. [really really excellent and a little haunting (pun entirely intended). it’s romantic and sweet and a little bittersweet but i adore it.]

WIP(s) I really love for the pairing: We Were Infinite by WolfstarPups90 [336k,E] “The Marauders aren’t something that will just go away once we graduate.” James continued, taking a more serious tone and addressing not only Remus, but the fear that they all had found recently in the back of their minds about what may become of them outside the walls of Hogwarts. “We’re a family. We’ve proven that again and again, haven’t we? We’re forever. Unstoppable. We’re infinite.” The full story of The Marauders from September 1st 1971 - October 31st 1981. (Heavily centered around Wolfstar and Jily in later chapter) [the first WIP i ever read (usually i stick to completed works, but this was being pretty regularly updated when i started reading it and also it’s fucking iconic so what can i say?)] Of Leaves and Stars by irrationalmoony & LadyAmina [273k,T] Almost a year out of Hogwarts, Lily finally manages to convince Sirius and James to get more acquainted with muggle technology and buy phones. Sirius, of course, texts the wrong number. [everyone is queer! (as they well should be). also: is it complete? no. has that stopped me from reading it twice? also no.]

Favorite Series for the pairing: TransVerse by picascribit [30k,E,2 works] Canon-divergent AU in which Remus is a transgender boy instead of being a werewolf. (warnings for underage, transphobia, internalized transphobia, bullying, self-harm) [i am a trans remus stan and this series is iconic, but also heed the tags kids.]

Longest fic I’ve read for the pairing: Once in a Blue Moon by FullMoonDreams [408k,M] In a world where Remus never received his Hogwarts invitation and Sirius wasn't accepted by the Gryffindors the two lonely boys become friends. A story beginning in their first year, and continuing right through Hogwarts and beyond. RLSB. [this fic emotionally ruined me,,, but like,,, in a good way, you know? i will probably never reread it because i cried for hours the first time, but the plot does live rent free in my mind (and i do have a playlist of songs that remind me of it).]

Fic(s) with some of my favorite tropes: Matchmaking: Pining, Parchment, Plotting, and Pranks by KayBee1762 [12k,T] “Idea parchment,” James said. He unfolded it and smoothed it out. “You want to get them together, right? That’s why you came to me?” “Yeah,” Lily huffed, which was ridiculous because he was right, that’s why she came to him. But it was supposed to be her idea, because she wanted to help her dear friend Remus, not James or Sirius. But it was so nice to be able to talk about this with someone, and James looked so pleased and excited. “Good,” James said. “Good, because they need to get together, they would be so happy and so good together, and Sirius will stop sighing like a lovesick puppy and just snog him instead.” In which Lily considers changing Houses, James blushes a lot, Sirius is his usual dramatic self, Remus mopes, and Peter knew everything all along. [the marauders (especially james and lily) trying to play matchmaker is one of my favorite instances of the classic matchmaking trope.] Road Trips + Bed Sharing: Of Comets and Counter-Examples by Woldy [5k,T] If the past is a foreign country, can travel help to resolve a troubled history? Dumbledore assigns Remus and Sirius a mission to explore three European cities, or perhaps to find each other. [a lovely tale of travel, reunions, comfort, friendship, and self-rediscovery. plus, travel, bed sharing, and friends to lovers??? yeah] Matchmaking (again): In The Middle by Blossomwitch [3k,Not Rated] James is the natural confidant of both Remus and Sirius. When they both swear him to secrecy on the same topic, James is stuck watching his friends pine for each other without being able to say a word to bring them together. A lesser man might shrink from the challenge of finding a way to break his promise without breaking his promise, but not James Potter! [i already did a matchmaking trope fic i know but what can i say other than the trope fucking slaps and so does this fic.]

#wolfstar #remus/sirius #sirius/remus #wolfstar fic rec #wolfstar fic rec list #intro to my fav ships rec list #hp fic rec #hp fic rec list #queue is for quibbler

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lunapwrites · 3 years

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7, 16 and 26 please!

love you! 💞

my beloved!!! <3 <3 <3

7. has your writing process changed and improved, and how?

Good lord has it ever lol. I can absolutely attribute this to finally joining the community and not just tippy-tapping away in secret like the little hermit I am was. The thing that I think is wildest to me, personally, is that a lot of what I published earlier in 2020 was not that indistinguishable from what I published in 2008. Basically the narrative voice had matured (because I had matured), and I was handling subject matter a bit more gracefully, but otherwise? It had the same sort of patterns, because I just write how I think. I also didn't used to have any kind of editing process aside from "do a once-over for typos." And now I actually am running things through Grammarly, and I am using alpha and beta readers, and I am being more thoughtful in my editing process and keeping in mind things like continuity and clarity in addition to flow. I also kind of actually outline things now? When I first dove into this series I'm writing, I dove in with nothing but where I was starting and where I wanted to end up, and everything between was a giant question mark. But now I actually have like. Beats I want to hit in my story haha. It's pretty neat. And you can actually see, in Louder Than Love in particular, the point where I started really talking to other writers and incorporating feedback. I mean, maybe a little less so now that I'm quietly editing the first couple of chapters so they stop being sins against god (IMO) but otherwise, you can literally see a shift around... chapter 5? I think chapter 5 was after I got on Discord. Anyway, yeah. Mostly just having access to creative feedback and getting the opportunity to both teach and learn has been HUGE for me.

16: what's a comment/piece of feedback you received that really made your day?

OK, so I don't usually post up whole-ass comments like this, but it didn't just make my day, it like... validated my entire existence. Like, I think about this comment every time I start doubting myself, and it's literally giving me strength to continue so BIG updoots to this commenter.

I've been reading through this series for the past few days and I guess this is just the point where I need to comment.

This may be my absolute favorite characterization of Remus of all time. Like, your characterization of everyone is so perfect and gives them all so much depth and actual humanity, but your Remus is incandescent. I love his anger and his rough edges. It feels like what he would be if he wasn't only a character in a children's book or a person being perceived from a child's (book Harry's) perspective. I adore how you describe relationships and create connection between Remus and Sirius and Dora. It's just so real and layered and brilliant.

One of the things that really hooks me into a fic is when people can capture the entire flavor of what a long term relationship is. It's not just angst or just love or just flirtation. Sometimes its being absolutely fucking livid with your person but still wanting to make them a cup of coffee because you can love someone and be angry with them at the same time. It is many and varied. You do a great job of portraying love very realistically, especially in the chapter here where Remus runs away and how we see everyone's reactions when he comes back.

I'm rambling, I've got a lot more I could say, but I'll leave it here. Thank you for this universe.

Like I am just. Floored by this. I'm pretty sure I actually cried over this one lol. It's also on No Code, which I'm actually planning on rewriting because my dumb ass posted Louder Than Love and its sequel concurrently, without having either of them completed, and so things have shifted slightly to the left. And just. Ugh. I appreciate every comment that I get, even if it's just a heart emoji, because someone took the time out to tell me they liked what I read and that is life-giving to me. But comments like this one in particular keep me up at night for the best reasons.

#26 I answered over on another post, and it's another long boi, so I'm just going to link to it here!

Thank you for the ask!! <3 <3 Love you! :D

#ask game #answers #fanfiction #hp #in which i publicly weep over a comment i got months ago #that i am still thinking about #lp talks

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bl597 · 4 years

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Can I request a Ron Weasley x Slytherin!reader, where they never got on, but after the war, she comforts him, with a little bit of angst and fluff?

of course you can, honey! really hope you enjoy it!

warnings: agnst, agnst and more agnst, a little fluff at the ending, mention of death, english is not my first language, so I'm sorry for any mistakes? also, I'm really sorry if it's not as good as you expected to, honey, i can rewrite it if you want to.

my masterlist ♡

You became friends with Ginny Weasley on your 2nd year, when professor Sprout paired you together in the classes. Of course, at first she wasn't really nice to you because of the green on your robes. You didn't really mind it, since people always tend to think on the stereotypical bad and mean pureblood Slytherin whenever they saw a Slytherin. But, fortunately, she realised you were nothing like your housemates.

You were actually nice and treated her better than some of your housemates did, and after that day, you both became inseparable. After a few weeks, she introduced you to her friends and you easily befriended with them, expect for one: her brother, Ronald Weasley. You didn't know why he didn't like you and you always tried to get him to not dislike you, but it never worked. You just brushed it off, not wanting to annoy him and make him dislike you even more.

Over the years, he kept treating you the same way, despiste your friends - especially Hermione and Ginny - telling him to stop being such an idiot to you, but these words fell deaf on his ears. Despite the way Ron treated you, you always had fun with your friends, and sometimes they even treated you as if you were a Gryffindor. You would always go to their common room to just hang out, and even the Fat Lady wasn't annoyed when you went there.

The next 4 years were fine, you had great grades and great friends – a very few from Slytherin, since most of them saw you as a 'traitor' for hanging around with Gryffindors –, you were enjoying the good and old Hogwarts. Well, at least you were until your sixth year, when Snape became the headmaster and the Carrows started transforming the school in a living hell.

In this same year, the Golden Trio - as people liked to call Harry, Hermione and Ron - didn't even show up to the school, well, it was understandable; Harry has been hunted by the Minister and by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Hermione was a muggleborn and they weren't really wanted in the wizarding world right now, and Ronald, well, he apparently was sick. It was really serious, Ginny told you.

When they came back after months, you were obviously happy to see that they were back and fine, and as soon as you saw Neville entering the room with the three of them, you almost had a heart attack. With the biggest smile you had ever given, you ran up to them, pulling Hermione and then Harry in a bone crushing hug - one Mrs Weasley gives you everytime she sees you -, but you stopped when you got close to Ron, just nodding awkwardly at him and saying “Good to see you, Ronald” before coming back to where you were. He pretended he didn't hear you.

That was when Ginny entered the room and said that the Carrows knew Harry was here. Everyone panicked, and nobody knew what to do.

Well, you didn't know how or when, but all the underage students were forced to leave, but you insisted on staying, and nothing would make you abandon your home or friends, you would stay and fight. The Deatheaters started attacking, green lights flying everywhere, destroying everything. Everyone was fighting for their lives, and the Deatheaters didn't mind to kill one or two more people, it was nothing to them, anyway.

You were fighting with a Deatheater when you saw someone trying to kill a redhead: it was Ron. You stupefyed the one you were fighting and went to where Ron was and sent a Protego spell, sending the Deatheater away. You smiled at him and tried to help him to get up, but he just pushed you.

“I don't need your help, snake.” he said harshly, getting his wand that fell on the floor. “Why don't you go help you Deatheaters friends?”

You scoffed, not believing what he had just said. You just saved his bloody life, why did he have to be such an arse? “Well, Ronald,” you said, your voice spitting venom “I'm too busy trying to help my friend right now.”

You looked at him, hurt in your eyes and left him there and went to fight other Deatheaters. That asshole, you thought. He just rolled his eyes and went the other way, a tiny part of him scolded the other one and felt guilty for what he has just said and did, but he decided to ignore it. He couldn't think about these things right now, unless he wants to die.

It was really late when Voldemort had given a temporary truce and everyone calmed down a little, relieved to finally have some peace, even if it was for an hour. Bodies laid on the floor, lifeless. Friends, families, loves. A lot of people were crying because they lost they loved ones, and you really really hoped you wouldn't be one of those people. You knew it was kind of selfish of your part for wishing it, but you just needed to know your friends were alright and alive.

That was when you caught sight of a family of redheads, all around something, or more appropriated: around someone. You approached them carefully to see who was the unlucky one and you almost fainted when you saw George crying next to a now lifeless body. It was Fred. When you saw that scene, it was as if your world had just ended. Fred and George were like older brothers for you, the brothers you never had, and seeing George crying over his dead brother destroyed you.

You approached the men on the floor, kneeling beside Fred and touching his cold cheek with your trembling hands, the tears making it hard for you to see anything. It can't be real, it can't be. You then looked at George and his face broke your heart even more, crushing the million pieces of it. You just hugged him thight, whispering “I'm sorry” repeatedly in his ear.

After you both calmed down a little bit, Mrs Weasley lifted you two carefully from the floor, and you hugged her too, you hugged her so tightly you feared she could stop breathing. When you separated from the hug, you decided to sit down with her, in case you actually fainted this time. That was when someone you never expected to sat down beside you – Ron. Seeing that you maybe wanna have some time alone, Mrs Weasley got up to hug her other children.

“I'm sorry about Fred.” was all you could manage to say, you didn't want to talk to him right now - not because of the silly little fight you had earlier, but because you wanted to give him some space. For Merlin's sake, he lost his brother!

“I'm sorry, too.” he started “I know you saw Fred as a brother.” he paused a little before he started crying again, his head between his hands. You didn't know what to do, you never saw him look so vulnerable, so you just did the first thing that crossed your mind at the moment.

Carefully, you wrapped your arms around him in an attempt to hug him, and surprisingly he hugged you back, holding you as if his life depended on it. “It's okay, Ron, it's okay. It will all be over soon.” you spoke softly, soothing him. You stayed like that for a few minutes, whispering sweet nothings to him until he calmed down. Of course, you were extremely sad and broken too, but nothing compared his relationship with Fred; he has lost a brother, a part of his family, a part of him.

“Thank you.” he spoke, voice hoarse from crying. “I'm sorry, too. For earlier. You saved me and I was a bloody idiot. And sorry for all those years, too.”

“You know, Ronald” you said “I would be bloody furious if we weren't in the middle of a war right now. And there's no need to apologize. I just... Why?”

He didn't look at you, too embarrassed to do it. “I don't know.” he shrugged “I guess I was jealous. You became friends with Ginny and she always spent time with you, barely even talked to me at school. And then you met my friends and they loved you, and I guess I got insecure. It was as if you stole everything and everyone I care about, you know?”

You nodded, not fully understanding but not wanting to upset him. “So, you treated me like shit for four years because you were jealous?” you asked with a scoff, laughing lightly at his stupidity.

“Yes, and now I realised how stupid it was. I'm really really sorry, (Y/n).” he said and he looked genuinely guilty, so you just accepted his apologies. “You know, we can still be friends. If you want to, of course. And if we survive too.” he offered with a smile.

You pondered for a minute, not sure if you should or shouldn't accept the offer, but if you didn't, you knew you would regret. He was a nice person, just didn't know how to express himself. You couldn't really blame him for being insecure, it's not like he wanted to be like that. “I would like that.” you said with a sincere smile.

it's really long and kinda boring too, sorry

#harry potter imagines #harry potter x reader #harry potter x you #harry potter #hp imagine #hp x reader #ron weasley #ronald weasley #ron weasley x reader #ron weasley x you #ron weasley imagine #ron weasley x slytherin!reader #Slytherin!reader #my first actual request yay im so excited

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stark-tony · 4 years

Note

I'd love hp recs if you're willing!

* = incomplete

boy with a scar series* by dirgewithoutmusic

summary: A series of "what if" rewrites of Harry Potter, books 1-7. Cross-posted from tumblr (ink-splotch).

pairings: romione, hinny, wolfstar, bleur, jily

tags: hurt/comfort, angst, fluff

warnings:

we must unite inside her walls or we'll crumble from within series by dirgewithoutmusic

summary: stories for the ladies of hogwarts, who cry, waver, giggle, trespass, and who deserve our respect all the same

pairings:

tags: angst, hurt/comfort

warnings: none

the dogfather au by hollimichele

summary: “I’m not a reverse werewolf either,” says the man. “I’m your godfather.”

pairings: wolfstar

tags: fluff, hurt/comfort

warnings: none

The Changeling + Armistice Series* by Annerb

summary: Ginny is sorted into Slytherin. It takes her seven years to figure out why.

pairings: hinny

tags: angst, drama

warnings: rape

tell me whether he is dead by LullabyKnell

summary: Post-DH AU: Harry suffers a few side-effects of dying but not dying.

“Hey, can someone help me with this? The mirror in the bedroom’s stopped working for me."

“What do you mean ‘the mirror’s stopped working’?”

pairings: hermione/harry/ron

tags: fluff, angst, humor

warnings: none

Regulus Black and the Way Things Changed: A Not!Fic by imaginary_golux

summary: What if Regulus Black, and not Severus Snape, ended up being the turncoat Potions Master of Hogwarts?

A not!fic written in bullet points, ignoring the Deathly Hallows entirely because they annoy me.

Beta by my immensely patient Best Beloved, Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw, and by the delightful starbirdrampant.

pairings: wolfstar

tags: crack

warnings: none

who discovered your secret by LullabyKnell

summary: Pre-Canon AU: On the street named Privet Drive, in Little Whinging, Surrey, a man lived alone at Number Eight, supposedly.

It was apparently difficult to tell.

pairings: none

tags: fluff, angst

warnings: none

Little Lion Boy by ShanaStoryteller

summary: Draco is sorted into Gryffindor.

It's all part of the plan, really.

parings: none

tags:

warnings: none

a witch in the family by LullabyKnell

summary: - "For the 5+ Headcanon game, what do you think of an AU in which Petunia is a witch?"

Pre-Canon AU: Petunia Evans learns important life lessons from the magical world that every proper witch ought to know.

pairings: none

tags: angst

warnings: none

when in doubt, go to the library by LullabyKnell

summary: The Hogwarts Library saves the Wizarding World through the power of reading.

pairings: none

tags: humor, crack

warnings: none

these long cold days by dirgewithoutmusic

summary: In the war, Dean holed up in hollows and friendly attics and Muggle pubs. He drew Umbridge the Toad, noseless Voldy confused by the last dozen plus years of wizardly pop culture, the Ministry of Magic with its fingers stuffed in its stuffy ears.

He drew Snape as Headmaster, his sneer easy after seven years of notebook margin practice. Dean drew the Dark Mark over London’s skyline and he left his work nailed up around Diagon Alley, Hogsmeade, Godric’s Hollow. He signed his name. He had things he wanted to say.

There were long days when he didn’t talk to anyone– walking old fields and long roads, sleeping in haystacks. There were long weeks when he only talked to strangers– passersby, shop owners, sympathizers, snatchers who he traded curses with.

He drew the Gryffindor Common Room, hearths all ablaze. He listened to Lee Jordan’s radio show on the crackling airwaves. He drew his little sisters, who had gone to France with his mother and father. He drew faces from the darkened boys’ dormitory– Harry’s long bangs hiding his scar, Neville practicing his dance moves for the Yule Ball, Ron asleep with his head on his thick Weasley sweater, Seamus grinning at him over a three a.m. game of cards.

pairings: deamus

tags: angst

warnings: kidnapping

Rise by Kyra_Neko_Rei

summary: When Voldemort came to kill Harry, Lily met him with a SIG Sauer pistol she bought at a pawn shop. Seems Dark Lords die as easily as anyone else when you empty two clips into them.

Hailed as the savior of the Wizarding world, Lily has a live baby, a dead husband, the personal enmity of most of the Dark Lord's followers, and not the slightest idea how to put her life back together.

Phoenixes have it easy. Burn, die, rise from the ashes.

For humans it's a bit different. Sort of.

pairings: none

tags: angst

warnings: character death

look to your kingdoms by Vail

summary: When she visits Diagon Alley, Hermione hates that the first thing the shop clerk in the apothecary tries to sell her is a potion to “tame her hair.” She likes her hair the way it is, curls and frizz, heavy around her shoulders. She thought the wizarding world would be different. (Black Hermione character study.)

pairings: none

tags: drama

warnings: racism

The Chamber Strike by BlainelovesKurt, evansentranced

summary: Harry is sick of Umbridge and everyone pushing him around. Halfway through fifth year, he decides to Do Something about it. Warning: Contains nuts. And cults, falling sugar bowls, terrible handwriting, and beleaguered caretakers. Crack!fic. Written with transfiguredbunny over Thanksgiving of 2006 after we ate ALL the turkey.

pairings: none

tags: crack

warnings: none

Dudley Dursley's Most Unexpectedly Fortunate Flower by aTasteofCaramell

summary: Dudley Dursley is leading a perfectly normal life, his contact with his odd cousin limited to Christmas cards and peculiar memories.

Until his daughter sneezes and sets the curtains on fire.

pairings: dudley/ original female character, hinny

tags: fluff, humor

warnings: none

repeated a thousand times in golden ink by LullabyKnell

summary: Half-Blood Prince AU: In which Luna makes a friend through desk art and Ginny helps.

Shameless, essentially plotless friendship fluff.

pairings: none

tags: fluff

warnings: none

The Splendid Gallery by LullabyKnell

summary: Pre-POA AU: In the summer of 1993, the Grangers vacation in France and meet the Delacours. When the Granger-Delacour parents elect to explore Wizarding France as a group, Hermione Granger is thrown together with a girl named Fleur Delacour due to some bizarre idea that they will somehow magically become friends. Even though they have nothing whatsoever in common and Hermione doesn't like Fleur at all!

In which two of the brightest witches of their age become very good friends.

pairings: fleur/ hermione

tags: fluff

warnings: none

riding up the wrong path by ashen_key

summary: When Lily is eighteen, she cuts her hair and joins the army. The British Army.The British Muggle Army.

Despite what the gossip papers say, she leaves her wand at home. She's not a complete idiot.

– –

Oh, right.

Maybe take a few steps back.

pairings: none

tags:

warnings: none

there will come a time, you'll see by aloneintherain

summary: They have Shepard’s pie for dinner. Ron and Hermione watch Harry fill up his plate and only start serving themselves when he picks up his fork and starts eating. Neville laughs into his wine glass.

“How are you dealing with their mothering, Harry?” he asks.

Ron opens and closes his mouth for a minute, groping for an excuse. Eventually, Ron says, “He’s just so small, Nev.”

“Hey,” Harry says. “I’m seventeen. I’m an adult.”

Ron shakes his head at Neville. “My best friend is an infant.”

A curse regresses Harry to his seventeen year old self, physically and mentally. He doesn’t recognise this strange peaceful wizarding world, but there are two people he does recognise: Ron and Hermione.

Based off this tumblr post.

pairings: romione

tags: fluff, hurt/comfort

warnings: none

call it a badge of honor by dirgewithoutmusic

summary: In those halls, they faced down Death Eaters under the guise of teaching robes. They faced them with raised wands, raised fists, or just raised chins, these children who kept telling stories in the dark about Harry Potter, who was going to save them.

pairings: none

tags: angst

warnings: none

Hogwarts, to welcome you home by gedsparrowhawk (FaceChanger)

summary: “You understand, Professor,” Harry began, after a moment, “that I don’t have my N.E.W.T.s. I never even finished seventh year. Between everything, I never had a chance the first time around, and then afterwards there didn’t seem to be much point. Hermione argued for it, of course, but I was so tired of Britain. So technically, I am completely unqualified for the position.”

“Quite a way to begin an interview, Mr. Potter,” McGonagall said, dryly.

Or, three years after the war, Harry Potter becomes Hogwarts' newest Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

pairings: hinny

tags: fluff, humor, angst

warnings:

THERMOS!, or, How a Muggle-Born Brought a New Age of Spell-Making to Hogwarts (Entirely by Accident) by susieboo

summary: Muggle-born witch Phoebe McDevitt just wanted her tea to stay warm during class. She didn't expect to accidentally start a spell-making craze among her classmates.

[Oneshot. Next generation. Based off a Tumblr post, which I will link to in the notes.]

pairings: none

tags: humor

warnings: none

and ready to suffer and ready to hope by irnan (locked to ao3 users)

summary: or, the one where petunia evans is a witch.

pairings: jily, hinny

tags: angst

warnings: character death

a very nice thing to say by LullabyKnell

summary: Chamber of Secrets AU: Harry and Ron miss the train to Hogwarts. Luckily for them, they're not the only ones. Harry's not sure what's going on, what they're going to do, or who these people are exactly, but Ron seems to know these Lovegood people and it's not like there's anyone else to help them get to Hogwarts.

tags: fluff, humor,

pairings: none

warnings: none

yesterday we were just children playing soliders by girlmadeofstars

summary: What if, when Harry heard the Slytherin portion of the Hat's song, he payed attention when the Hat sung perhaps in Slytherin, you'll make your real friends? Imagine this: a little boy- beaten, and ignored, for his entire life. A little boy- friendless, and lonely. A little boy- desperate for the kind of friendship he had read about in books, seen on the television screen.

When the Hat offered him Slytherin, imagine that Harry said yes.

pairings: hinny, romione, astoria/ draco

tags:

warnings:

The Transfiguration Incident, Or Pettigrew's Problems by Kyra_Neko_Rei

summary: The lesson is transfiguring rats into teacups . . . only Ron Weasley's rat is actually an Animagus, which has dire consequences for the spell, for Peter Pettigrew, and for the Dark Lord's prospects for resurrection (and rather better consequences for Minerva McGonagall's reputation). Cross-posted (finally!) from Tumblr.

pairings: none

tags: humor

warnings: none

In the Name of the Brave* by LullabyKnell

summary: “Who’s that teacher talking to Professor Quirrell?”

“Oh, that’s Professor Black.”

- A slow-paced, self-indulgent, canon rewrite Philosopher's Stone AU.

pairings: none

tags: fluff, angst

warnings: none

Take Two* by Bundibird

summary: Never let it be said that a Slytherin doesn’t know to take hold of an opportunity when it’s presented to him on a silver platter.

[A Fourth Year AU in which Draco makes the most of Potter and Weasley’s fight and takes a second shot at befriending Harry. For the Greater Evil, obviously.]

Cross-posted at ff.n

pairings: none

tags: fluff, humor

warnings:

Percy Weasley and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by LullabyKnell

summary: Pre-Philosopher's Stone AU: In which fourteen-year-old Percy Weasley is very stressed, does not get enough sleep, and accidentally and unknowingly saves the Wizarding World because of bad aim.

pairings: none

tags: humor

warnings: none

beautiful enough for the both of us by dirgewithoutmusic

summary: “You know Professor Lupin was a werewolf?” Hermione said, ten minutes into a very awkward lunch she had asked for in an equally awkward letter.

Lavender pushed a sauteed carrot through a little puddle of pasta sauce. “I think everyone heard about that one. Someone told the papers, or something, right?”

“Er, yes,” said Hermione. “Snape did. Which is what I– I mean, it’s related. Oh, I wish you’d gotten to talk to Remus about this. He was a lovely man.”

“Not as lovely as Lockhart,” Lavender said and she and Hermione spent a moment in wistful remembrance. “God, I feel old,” Lavender said.

“Anyway, Snape,” said Hermione. “Snape and Lupin. When Lupin was at school, Snape would make him a potion that would… tame him, on full moons. He could just curl up in his office and sleep by the fire. If you’re interested, I’m trying to learn how to brew it myself.”

Lavender shook her head. “We’re not friends,” she said. “Never have been. So why are you doing all this?”

Hermione looked like she was trying to say “we’re friends,” but she couldn’t get it out.

Werewolf!Lavender, post-canon

pairings: lavender/ parvati

tags: hurt/comfort

warnings: none

#hp recs #my fic recs #hp #rape tw #kidnapping tw #character death tw #racism tw #becca answers #anon

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keep-it-i-resign · 3 years

Text

Fic Writer Asks

tagged by the lovely @vampcoffeegyrl23 I am soooo sorry this has taken over a week! I promise I was just busy away from my computer and using mobile is not the way to go about answering these! 😅

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

6 on AO3 and 6 on ffn.net. I haven't used the ffn.net account in years, i.e 2013 (and therefore my user name isn't even the same) so those 6 stories are different from my AO3 ones. I don't post most of what I write and now that I'm in my mid-20s with a few published papers behind me - I'm much more confident in my ability to write a cohesive and interesting story so expect more posted!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

17,425 words which isn't bad for only 6 fics with two of those stories having additional chapters coming soon.

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

On AO3? Just 1, which is The Flash and by extension Stargate SG-1 for the crossover I did for Snowells Week this year. Counting ffn.net that's 3 more with Castle, Doctor Who, and Firefly. Over my lifetime of writing fic for myself? I think only 7 more. Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Sanctuary, Harry Potter, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: TNG, and Left 4 Dead. Left 4 Dead isn't much of a fanfic but I did use the zombie types as place holders in an original story until I developed my own.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I'll Be Waiting (The Flash - Caitlin/Harry)

Well... This is Awkward (The Flash - Caitlin/Harry, Frost/Nash, Caitlin/Nash, and Frost/Harry)

Rewind Time (The Flash - Caitlin/Harry)

Through the Gate (The Flash/Stargate SG-1 - Caitlin/Eowells)

Harvest Season (The Flash - Caitlin/Harry)

5. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I don't write angst much and I haven't posted many stories yet but of the ones posted I guess "I'll Be Waiting" is the angstiest.

6. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

"Well...This is Awkward" has a pretty happy ending with everyone alive and together. Or maybe "Twilight of the Gods" because ReverseSnow/ReverseFrost happens and there is hope of bringing everything lost back and balance the universe again. I guess it depends on your definition of what constitutes as a happy ending. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you've written?

I've only written one - The Flash/Stargate SG-1 crossover. I don't normally think about crossovers just because the shows I watch are so vastly different they can't really work or they are already in the same universe with the canon crossovers. I'm also not always a fan of reading them because they can get chaotic quick and characterization takes a dive in order to fit characters into other universes/situations. I admire anyone who can write it well though!

As a side note: I did have a thought about a Snowells into the Arkham universe fic just because I have been replaying the Batman Arkham video games which I might give a shot at.

8. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

👀I wrote one smutty story years ago and it's terrible because I was young and naïve. I haven't tried recently but I'm not opposed to giving it a shot now. I have a few ideas on a prompt list I have for Snowells already so it's really a matter of when will I get to it!

9. Do you respond to comments. why or why not?

I do when I can! I like to get feedback from my readers and having an open dialogue of what they liked or disliked is important for me! I want to know what my audience enjoyed and what to improve on! Responding to them also shows them I saw that they said and appreciate what they had to say! 🥰

10. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Surprisingly - no, even on my old and terribly written stuff. I'm perfectly open to criticism but hate? If you don't like it, you don't like it but others might. Why spend the time spreading negativity when the world has enough of it?

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

As far as I know - no.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No but given enough time I could probably translate mine. It would be grammatically atrocious because I rarely translate from English into any of the languages I know. It's normally the other way around! I'd definitely need a Beta who is fluent to correct my mistakes.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No but it's definitely something I'd try! I co-wrote an original story with a few friends of mine years ago in high school and enjoyed it. I like the idea of getting to talk and bounce ideas off of someone who enjoys the same fandoms and character as me! I haven't really done that since I grew apart from one of my friends from high school who I did that with.

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

What kind of question is this? Do people actually have an ultimate ship? Is that even possible? I have ships from several fandoms and sometimes multiple ships within a fandom. Most of the time I have a main ship from a fandom but that doesn't mean I discount any of the other ones that I or others enjoy as well. I'll throw out a few that I still got out and read for in order of what I read most often (either new stuff or re-reads) to what I read occasionally, at least according to my AO3 favorite tags.

Snowells (all variations) - The Flash

Jack O'Neill/Sam Carter - Stargate SG-1

Helen Magnus/Nikola Tesla - Sanctuary

Harry/Hermione - Harry Potter

William Murdoch/Julia Ogden - Murdoch Mysteries

Phil/ Melinda - Agents of SHIELD

Kathryn Janeway/Tom Paris - Star Trek: Voyager

Kate Fleming/Steve Arnott - Line of Duty

I will occasionally go check what kind of fics the fandom writes when I start a show just out of curiosity. Sometimes you can tell if there is fandom hate between ships by doing so and I know to steer clear, especially if I ship a lesser ship/non-canon ship. Also - the number of canon-divergence or rewrites will tell you if the shows writers start being ridiculous *cough* The Flash *cough* and whether it's worth getting attached at all.

15. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

Hoo boy. I have a drive full of them. Most of which aren't even close to being posted. My biggest one right now is a complete re-write of The Flash dealing with a what if scenario of Earth-1 Tess Morgan being pregnant the night that Thawne kills them both and he chooses to birth the kid rather than let it die with her. It's set a few years earlier (so 18/19 years stuck in the past rather than the original 15 that the show has it) so the kid isn't Jesse but it changes how season 1 plays out and definitely how season 2 plays out when Harry finds out about the kid while dealing with the Jesse/Zoom issue. Plus it's Snowells too and I want to deal with Barry's mistakes and the consequences of them better than the show did since the show just kind of brushes them off? For some reason? I wanted things to have a little more consequence because some of the mistakes made are egregious and then they acted like it never happened which bothers me. It's a beast of a project and I'm - unfortunately- a perfectionist and a completionist. I'm thinking an episode per chapter rewrite but right now it's in bits and pieces and a lot of notes on how episodes would play out differently with an added character and dynamic.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and scene positioning. I can write out the dialogue for a story quickly with the bare bones of the scene and movements playing out. After that, it takes me ages to expand the scene and fill in the bits between speaking lines because I can see the piece play out in my head and putting that to paper accurately and engagingly without being overwhelming is a multi-layered process.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Some of this is normal, you know, like grammar and spelling. My brain moves faster than I type so words or bit of phrases end up missing and I later have to fix it. I'm also a Southerner who grew up watching a ton of British shows so a lot of the way I phrase things isn't commonly used anywhere. I have to spend a lot of time double checking things like that. I think my biggest one is not knowing how to end stories satisfactorily. I haven't posted many fics because it's hard to post them when you don't know how to wrap everything up.

18. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

It depends on whether it's an established part of a character or story and whether or not I'm comfortable with the language. Like with Sherloque - it's established he'll say something in French and then repeat it in English. I took 3 years of French so I'm comfortable writing it and it fits the character and situation. But take Cisco, we know he speaks Spanish, but it's never really shown in the show. So fics that I've read where he breaks into Spanish can be distracting as we've never seen him do it - even in dire circumstances. I also never took Spanish in school and I only know rudimentary pieces (I took Mandarin and Latin instead), so I'm unlikely to use it in any fic I write unless the circumstances warrant it (say - Cisco is talking to a grandparent or a meta struggling with English).

But again, it depends on the situation, what we know of the character, and how comfortable I am with the language enough to get it correct and in character. Any fic writer who can get the situation and character down while using a secondary language, and not make it distracting deserves applause!

19. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Hit me with a hard one why don't you? 🤣 I think it was Stargate SG-1 or maybe it was Stargate Atlantis. You're asking me to think back over a decade and a half ago to when I started reading and writing fic at the tender age of 7 or 8. I'm fairly certain it was one of those two fandoms and it might've been a crossover. I do remember writing part of it on an old Gateway computer running Windows '98 with a glass monitor that was mine and my sisters. The other half was written on an electric type-writer that I owned because this was before laptops were widely available and affordable.

20. What's your favorite fic you've written?

It's a tie between "Twilight of the Gods" and "I'll Be Waiting". "Twilight of the Gods" because I got to show off a few of my degrees (History and Classics, I couldn't shoehorn in my others but they are science related and that doesn't quite fit that story). "I'll Be Waiting" is a favorite because it's a big middle finger to whoever / collective group wrote The Flash season 7. I'm still pissed off at how the Wells plotline was dealt with and let's not get started on the whole Chillblaine/Kramer/Forces as kids of WA plots (ewwwwwww 🤢). I'd need a whole new post to talk about how tired I am of the WA kids showing up (because screw how that'll effect the timeline, right?) and the reliance on the future to drive what decisions are made (because, again, screw how bad that would be for the timeline - it's not like we have seen how much that effects things before right?) 😒

Phew.....That was longer than I expected, honestly, but a lot of fun!

Tagging whoever wants to talk about their works because you are all wonderful people who should get a chance to share!

#20 questions #writer asks #fandom things #fanfic #Snowells

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shouldertallabyss · 4 years

Text

ObsidianPen’s Fanfiction and Why It Lives Up to the Hype

As you have eyes, this is a rant. Apologies, I could not be brief. These thoughts literally roll around when I’m running, driving, standing in the pickle aisle at the grocery store, etc. I very much wondering if I’m not just off my nut. Fearing the worst, I have come to the Internet to commiserate.

How good is the Haunted and Hunted series? Allow me to try to put it into examples:

- It’s like, if you were leaning over the edge of the CN Tower--fun, right? Enjoying the Views? Then someone comes up behind you and pushes you off. That’s the adrenaline.

- It’s like, you had a first crush--teetering on obsessive, right? Really infatuated. Then, before you get the chance to tell them how you feel, because you’re so nervous to get rejected, you find out they’re with someone else, interested in someone else. That’s the emotional impact, but only topically.

- Say you’re a little religious--you see symbolism in the little things of life, yeah? You can look up at the stars and it makes you feel small, like your choices don’t matter, but then you look at the friends you’ve had in your life--even one nice person that you liked--and you remember that you had an impact on them as much as they had an impact on you. This includes the perspective that one or both of you don’t even realize the impact, because life sometimes just happens, consequences happen--all because of choice. That’s the humanity aspect.

- Say you’re athletic, or were ever forced to run the mile in a gym class--you know what it’s like for you to lose your breath, but keep going, yes? When the mile was over, how did you feel? Exhausted? Exhilarated? A mix of the two? That’s the end of most chapters.

- Have you ever looked at something for a long time, and then realized that you’ve just been staring off into space, not even thinking about what’s in front of you? That’s been me for two years (two years?), hi.

- Two years ago, I read the Haunted and Hunted series in one sitting (one weekend, I read slowly, don’t @ me) and then later moved on to No Glory, which was a MISTAKE, because I just wait for updates and it’s a semi-inconvenient distraction from my real life. Always worth the wait, as good entertainment is--the anticipation is part of the experience.

- I swear on it, I do not see the world the same way after thinking through all the aspects of OG Hauntingly. There have been plenty of other fictions that are good, but Hauntingly already has the pull of the love you have for the Harry Potter fandom, and it adds another real story, despite it being the same story, to the mix.

- In my heart, there is the Harry Potter series as J.K. Rowling wrote it, intended it, and finished it...and then there is the fork in the road that happened before Harry’s 6th year, and changed my love for the Harry Potter universe. It definitely made it deeper, because it parallels the canon timeline perfectly, and introduces all of the points from the view of Harry being removed. Not a common theme in canon, but still maintaining Harry at the focal point. Astonishing. Outstanding.

- J.K. Rowling created and ObsidianPen took that groundwork, that beautiful masterpiece, and shaped something new...using almost all of the themes from the OG HP plot. Wow.

- These are not just stories, they are philosophies. I believe that, because they have been written from a place of passion--for the fandom, for friends, for the sake of telling the same story with a few elements removed, and how a few elements make all the difference. Despite every new take OP makes, it is always in a way that is not too far off of being familiar. That’s just what I think.

- The dialogue is incredibly in character. Dialogue feeds interactions, and makes those scenes come to life in a more authentic and real way. You could have a whole story without dialogue, but here, it is the beloved characters continued.

- These are my own opinions, but like, seriously, I’ve been down the rabbit hole, and I have so much respect for the writing style of ObsidianPen--who is an artist in stunning form, in captivating ways--and I’m wondering if I will ever be in a mindset where I will live my life not analyzing the end of the series every other month. It’s like, burned in my memory.

- Let me try to explain that more: it wasn’t even the story that had me so captivated. It was everything that was so emotional, every new word that floated up and described a mental state, or an emotional renaissance, or just trying to be human. The “just trying to be human” piece is what throws me, because it will always be philosophical, full of change, and you could read how Harry falls apart from the surface, or you could go deeper, take the dive, blend with what is being told to you...and listen to the undercurrents. ObsidianPen has a grasp on writing fiction in a consistent and impassioned manner. There is world-building, on the bones of the landscapes that Rowling describes, as well as just the world at large. It is the familiar with the new, mentioned above. It is perfectly temporary, just like life. This fanfiction is not a story I took lightly, and I just want to KNOW that all of these listed things weren’t just coming out of some fever dream that attached me to it. It really got me. It didn’t necessarily teach me something new, but it opened my melancholy heart to the love, or compassion, that exists when someone tries to say something that they think is important, and has the means to do it well. Like with the intermixing of philosophies, fandom feels, and unique character expression that you can find inside yourself.

- ObsidianPen, without dispute, has the means to do art well. In this narrow-scoped case, through fanfiction writing. I know OP is an artist in other fantastic ways, we are just not getting into that. Life’s a journey, and it is as complex as the descriptions in the Haunted and Hunted series, round 1 & 2.

- No spoilers for the sake of the rewrite, but gd if I don’t sometimes stand in the shower and just think about church.

- Or maybe I’m off my flipping rocker......irrelevant. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. Read these works, if you haven’t. They are...godlike.

#obsidianpen #ao3 #ao3 author #fanfiction rant #harry potter fanfiction #harrymort #tomarry #hauntingly #haunted and hunted #shower thoughts #shower thots #i just really like obsidianpen's fanfiction #i appreciate the work and time that went into it #this is an obsidianpen appreciation post #gd i'm sorry if you read all of this and were like #yeah duh it's good #that's why we're here

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liam-93-productions · 4 years

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I remember meeting Liam Payne once before. I was writing the cover story on One Direction for this very magazine four years ago and, finally, after endless tail chasing and schedule clashes, I managed to pin all five members down backstage at the O2 shortly before they played to what seemed like a bazillion screaming teenagers. The air was heavy with the fug of Haribo Starmix and raging hormones; even at that point the band were already more popular than The Beatles in some circles. Or, as John Lennon would have put it, Jesus.

The band members were courteous and convivial. One certainly got the impression that their time wasn’t their own, although any cracks that would end up splintering the band some years later were kept well hidden. I remember Payne for being perhaps the most grounded out of all five of them. He seemed to have an ease with his status and fortune that kept his ego in check. He seemed genuinely bamboozled at the hysteria going on around them. He was a young, ambitious pop star caught in fame’s full beams.

Last week, in some respects, a very different man sat down for an exclusive chat with GQ Hype. He’s certainly more hench, as this exclusive shoot with fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott prove. Whoa. We talked about his sizzling new underwear campaign with Hugo Boss, his first nude shoot (which may well be his last if his dear mother has anything to do with it) and we reminisced about his One Direction days, a period which he came out of shaken, sure, but not completely upside down or inside out.

He’s been through a great deal since the end of being one fifth of the biggest boy bands in history – drink problems, therapy, (...), anxiety – but at his core he’s still that same multi-talented, hard-working boy from Wolverhampton, honest about his faults and still excited to see where all this is taking him. Undoubtedly, he’s a man who wears his heart on his sleeve. Well, when he’s wearing any sleeves at all...

GQ: So how’s the build-up to the debut album, LP1?

Liam Payne: Good, can’t complain. Just rewriting a lot of things in my world at the moment. That’s why I was in with my top, top manager for a while just reconfiguring things towards the end of the year.

What are you reconfiguring?

Well, we just kind of ticked off album one. The writing process was interesting to say the least. I mean, it was almost like blind dating in LA with different writers, and when that happens it’s hard to get traction, or get to know anyone properly, or let your guard down in a way. You feel like you’re going into different rooms all the time, with different styles. There are so many things that can affect the writing unless you find that one person who can carry you all the way through a record. Post Malone has a producer called Louis Bell, whom he works with, and there's a common stitch throughout the whole thing that kind of puts it all together properly, whereas we never really found that.

How come that never materialised?

I was going through a bunch of stuff when we started writing the album – growing up and all sorts of different shit coming out of the band. So for me it wasn't the best entry into the writing side of it and making personal music rather than writing for a band. So it was difficult, but I mean the album is done and coming out and I absolutely love it and it's just interesting to see that my favourite is from when I was younger. The first albums I listened to actually helped create my first album, so super cool.

It sounds like it’s been a long process getting the debut album finished?

It’s been, since “Strip That Down” really, the best part of two maybe three years to get everything finished. And it was difficult. I mean, it's opening up at first and trying to figure out who you are and what people want to know from you. And what the sound is. Trying to find that medium point for all those things. It's just the most difficult thing, especially at a young age when you're constantly changing and you don't really know yourself yet. We spent the best part of five years in a band closed off from the world and I had to go through this really weird transition inside that band as the world, and then myself, came out of it. I mean, even in my therapy sessions, my therapist asked me, “What do you actually like to do?” And I'm like, “I don’t know what I like doing!”

Most people presumed you came out of One Direction fully formed. That wasn’t the case?

Everything changed. New teams, new managers, new labels. Building those working relationships can be tricky. You also become the boss of your own shit, and I was 21, 22 when I first started doing my own thing, so it’s all a bit scary and can be a bit lonely. That’s not a complaint; it's also a lot of fun as well. We have a great time. Now the band members have all worked our way through this first couple of years, you can kind of see everyone's finding their own feet. Take Harry [Styles] at the moment. You know, he's just found what I think is his sound and exactly where he wants to be, which took him a little minute to get into since he had his last album out. So, yeah, it just takes time.

Towards the end of One Direction, were you aware of everyone’s own tastes developing?

I think so. I mean, for me, someone like Louis [Tomlinson] always had a very specific taste – things like Green Day, that was the era he was from... also Oasis and old Robbie Williams. Harry always played an eclectic mix of stuff too. I can always remember the one time Harry put Rick Springfield’s “Jessie's Girl’ on and I had never really heard it before but it was an interesting choice. I liked it nevertheless. And then for me, I mean, when I wrote “Better Than Words” for the last 1D album, it had a different rhythm for us, something we hadn’t done before. So you could definitely see those unique tastes early on. I think funnily enough it was through fashion and style that our own perspectives could be seen most of all, all hints of what was to come for us. We would always wear black on stage, black skinny jeans and a black T-shirt, but maybe we’d add something else as individuals. I remember Harry having these cool rings, for example, and then he’d go crazy with his shirts as time went on. Saying that, I think Louis still dresses pretty much the same as he used to.

Was it competitive with the other band members?

I mean, for me personally, I don't think I ever really looked at it that way. I think the biggest question for all of us at the start was figuring out who the hell we were without each other around, which is a really weird thing because you’d found your dynamic and role within the band. But then when you started a solo thing it was almost like leaving like school or university and trying to find your place within the real world. So I think it was more the pressure of that than anything else, rather than us competing with each other on, like, dress sense or vibe or even the music.

You mentioned therapy. Was that while you were still in the band?

I went into therapy a couple years after leaving. I kind of went off the rails a little bit and just couldn't really figure out what was making me sad. So, you know, my team got somebody around to help me through a couple of different, difficult things that I was going through. I was just trying to figure myself out. It was just such a strange course through life, and then when the switch turns off you're left to your own devices...

Did it throw you off when the band’s scheduled just stopped? Going from having a two-year plan to not even having a two-day plan?

I mean, yeah, we went through a really weird retirement phase. It’s quite funny, when my dad retired, I was telling him what to expect: first off, you're not going to get out of bed for ages, and then all of a sudden you get an urge to get out of bed all the time and start trying to do stuff just to seem like you are doing things. But I think everyone in the band went through this really weird retirement phase and trying to switch off. For me, I remember standing in my garden at my house and just looking around thinking, “It's been a lot of fun, but what do I do now that’s done? What actually happens at this point? Who do I call? Who is the ‘point of’ person?” I just didn't really know what was going to happen; a very strange thing to be involved in. All of it is weird, but that was a real strange moment. But things pick up and slowly you start getting back into the groove again.

Were you worried about not being famous any more? Or making music? About it all just stopping?

Actually, no. I kind of always knew that something would happen. I just didn't know what the hell it was going to be. And that was the scariest part of it. You just didn't really want to make a fool of yourself at that point. I think after such a long legacy of your band being absolutely amazing, the most important thing was make sure you don’t step off that pedestal; don't embarrass yourself. The biggest worry was don't ruin the legacy.

Let's talk about the underwear campaign with Hugo Boss. These are some incredible photographs taken by Mert and Marcus…

It got very raunchy very quickly. I hadn’t been properly warned about the amount of nudity Mert and Marcus do in their work, let's say. Mert’s actually become a really good friend now. We were in his house to three in the morning the other day singing karaoke, which is so funny. Yeah, I mean, really great to work with. I think everyone was quite surprised early on that they wanted to work with me and it kind of gave us a little nod and an entry into working in fashion proper.

Had you always wanted to land an underwear campaign?

Before we landed the deal with Hugo Boss I’d gone into my gym and said, “I'm going to get an underwear commercial.” I just wanted to do it; I knew I could do it. And then it actually happened! And I worked my ass off and I'm still hitting the gym: I didn't realise once you get on that thing you can't really turn it off. You've got to keep it going. Like I said, it’s been a lot of training and being an athlete and working out – it became 90 per cent of my job for the best part of a year leading up to that shoot, which was crazy. Come 2019 everyone's a lot more open about body image and I wanted to get in shape. Not to show off my body to anyone else, I just knew that’s what would give the confidence on set. I didn’t want to arrive not ready and not looking like I’d worked hard to get there. But what a thing to do and then to go on to designing clothes for Hugo Boss too – an amazing experience. We actually had the first design meeting [for the clothing line] here and I remember in the car on the way to the meeting thinking, “What have you got yourself into?” That always seems to happen to me. I was lucky enough to spend some time with a friend of mine, Kim Jones [artistic director at Dior menswear], and he gave me some great advice: “It’s the same as music: once you’ve had a hit you know what people want from you.” And I took that with me into the design meeting and used that to help the whole process. Find the hit and make it work.

Have you done a nude shoot before?

No! Well, not a planned one, at least. There was a lot of tequila involved for this shoot. I mean, the first day we did most of the shots for the capsule collection and then the last shots were the box shots for the front of the underwear packaging – which was just like, “Wow, I get to be the guy on the box,” which was a real moment. I’d never take that for granted. And then like the next day, we set up again and the model, Stella Maxwell, she's in the shoot with me. And it just ended up being a lot more naked than I thought it was – and for her as well. She was also naked. And I was just, you know, “Don’t look!” She was naked behind me and I was thinking, “Liam, don’t look whatever you do.”

Talk to me about the curtain shot...

Wow. Yes, I mean it was just a room full of five or six people and a hell of a lot of tequila to get me to this level. I was standing there and all of a sudden it was, “Right, OK, take them off.” I'm like, “Really? Take them off? Off, off? Like on-the-floor off? Oh, my God.” And there was a real hollow moment afterwards where I was sitting outside smoking a cigarette thinking, “I have basically just shot soft-core porn.” For one, my mum is going to kill me. For another thing, I don’t know how far this is going to go... That was just the first shot! It was a lot of fun to shoot but my mum wasn’t best pleased. There’s this really raunchy shot of me and Stella, and I showed my mum. She took one look at it and gave me a clip round the ear. All I was thinking was, “I better not tell her about the London buses!”

Still, your parents must be very proud?

The One Direction thing was enough. Just to get to that level. I would have happily walked away at that point. But now with all the other things I have managed to achieve, not least this underwear campaign with Hugo Boss, it’s meant a lot to me personally. I think it’s got me closer to those men whom I respect so much, people like David Beckham and Brad Pitt, such icons in their own lifestyles. It’s a real pinch-me moment. I can’t believe it hasn’t all burnt down to the ground yet, to be honest.

You mentioned a bad patch, a depression of sorts?

There was a lot of stuff. I was drinking too much and getting into really bad, bad situations for quite some time actually. And I hit a peak moment where I knew the drinking was going to get me; I needed to do something about it. I spent a lot of time drinking to escape the crazy world that I had created for myself. I didn't know what I was doing. That first therapy session and being like, “I don't even know what I like or anything about myself” – it was pretty scary stuff. I was afraid of how far my career was going and that it might go even further. You can say, “Who is afraid of success?” But that’s what it entails sometimes. Success has got the better of me on more than one occasion. When I am losing I tend to concentrate more.

Did you stop drinking for a bit?

Yes, I got sober for about a year, cutting down so the only vice was cigarettes. I hadn't planned to go sober forever, it was more important for me to say I didn't actually didn't need to drink. I wanted to prove it. I did the whole year, no booze completely, and at that point I didn’t actually know being sober was making my life any better. Things went up, but things like my social life plummeted. I was the biggest recluse on the planet. I would get up at 5am and go running in the park, but at night I would be in bed by 7pm. Is that a way to live your life? And in a strange way I am trying to still figure all that out and get the balance right between being a party animal and being an animal in the gym – the latter not being fun at all. We are all at fault; we all need balance.

So, 12 December: Boris or Jeremy?

I think I will vote but I am always out of the country. We need a mobile app where we can vote with our thumbprint or something. I mean, in regards to Boris or Jeremy, I don't think we give people enough time. Same with West Brom football club. They always change their manager every week it seems and we never get time to gel with anybody. So it's like, if I was changing my manager every week, I'd probably be really shit too. We need to give someone a chance to at least have a proper go of it or it will never be fixed. Also, I don't think it's always the one person that's to blame. Take Winston Churchill, people hated him at first, thought he was a drunk, that he had no clue, [wondered] what’s he doing going to war. Maybe we should all just be more like Winston Churchill.

Zayn has been through his own difficulties with fame and anxiety...

I think for anybody entering into these talent shows we do them for specific reasons. And I've often asked myself this question a bunch of times because we all went through it. You know, for me, as I was younger, from my own experience, I entered the show because I wanted to make my dad proud. Fast forward ten years and here we are in his office, talking about an album and an underwear campaign – incredible. But here’s the thing: you just don't know until you get there whether you're built for this or not. For Zayn, he loves music and he's an amazing talent. He genuinely was the best singer in One Direction, hand on heart, out of all of us. But for him to get to a point where, you know, he can't step on a stage? It's a lot. I mean, he's doing great. His streaming numbers are ridiculous but I do think he misses out on the performance side a bit, you know. He can't seem to get past that part. We all have it. I mean, I have this, like, brain fart syndrome: I was on medication for a while, and it was something to do with epilepsy, but I was using it for something else. And it was to do with anxiety for me too, fully prescribed, but I didn't realise that [on the medication] certain lights made me forget, well, everything. I totally forgot who I was. And lyrics. It still happens. I have a fear of it now. It happens all the time. So we all have our little beasties in that sort of scenario. But this era of talent shows, it is dangerous and some people just don’t know what they are getting into.

Did you want to reach out to him?

I did, yeah. I didn’t want him to feel like he was going through this all alone in some ways, or that we were all out to get him. We're the only people who know what you're going through. The only five people who know what you are going through were all in a room together once, and you left – fair enough – but you don’t want anyone going through such evils for no reason. But it got to a point with me where I wouldn’t know where to begin with Zayn. I hope he has good people around him, but I don’t at this stage think it’s anything the rest of us can solve.

Are there still grudges between the five of you?

Definitely in some part, yeah. We had our differences throughout the whole experience with some things. I still think about some stuff that was said and done that now I would do differently, but then that's all part of growing up. Being in One Direction was such a schoolyard mentality somehow – the One Direction University, I call it. Everyone has stuff they’ve said at parties they wished they hadn’t but, for us, the difference was that it was all happening in front of the world. Now we are older, for me certainly there are things that I am just not as bothered about. I think with Zayn’s particular exit and the way he chose to go, we haven’t really heard from him since he left. He didn’t even say goodbye, if I am being honest. It was a really sordid scenario, from our side certainly. A bit strange. It’s difficult.

The Hugo x Liam Payne bodywear collection is available now. Payne’s debut album, LP1, is out 6 December and available to pre-order now.

#liam payne #british gq #hugo boss #hugo bodywear #lp1 #liam's interviews #04.11.2019

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monimmortal · 3 years

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My Immortal is the quintessential piece of bad fanfiction, a story so notorious that the very concept of badfic immediately brings up mention of it in virtually any circle. Much like a discussion about bad movies inevitably breaks down into someone screaming quotes from The Room into the middle distance in a terrible impression of an even worse accent, My Immortal is a guarantee whenever bad fanfiction comes up. It’s risen above the entry-level masterworks like My Inner Life and “the Goku/Anne Frank” fic, and with its sheer fame completely obscured the deep cuts of a 4 AM fanfiction.net binge where you learn things about yourself that you were much better off not knowing. Regardless of a person’s fandom or even how into fanfic they are, they understand the story to be the utter distillation of everything terrible about fanfic. There is something for everyone, whether the dark specter of a writer’s own teenage shames or something to cackle quotes from and spiral off into dramatic readings of. No fanfic has ever united people across barriers of fandom so easily.

And it’s all a lie.

Several months ago, I wrote a rather long-winded explanation of how My Immortal is not the creation of a teenage girl embodying the very worst in fanfic writers, but in fact the most masterfully-constructed piece of troll fiction ever conceived, which has, for going on nine years, managed to fool the internet at large into believing it completely genuine. But I was left unsatisfied with the initial result, which didn’t delve as deep as I would have liked into the points it raised, and missed quite a few important parts. So I’m making a second pass on the, hopefully concisely enough that I don’t need to make a third, because after writing a second essay about My Immortal, heaven knows I’m miserable now.

Special thanks to oisiflaneur for proofreading this 14,000+ word monster.

Preamble: People Who Are Young And Alive

For the purposes of best understanding everything I’m about to talk about, I suggest going and reading My Immortal first. ‘Context’ might not be the best way to explain what you’ll get by knowing what I’m referring to, but familiarity with the source material will make this a much easier read. Due to it having been long-since purged from fanfiction.net, you can find it reposted across the internet, in particular here. It is quite a read and I greatly reccomend it, although I do so as somebody who has read through countless times and liked it enough to write thousands upon thousands of words about it.

However, it’s certainly not an easy read for some people due to its clusterfuck of misspellings and incomprehensibility, so in addition to the quotes and excerpts I will provide to illustrate my points, I will briefly give a quick rundown of the major players in our tale.

Our heroine, Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way’s own words sum up her existence better than I ever could:

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

This paragraph is the first of the story, and it is also the longest of the story, saying so much and yet so little about our protagonist. We know almost nothing of the personality that she is alleged to possess, but we do know that she wishes to be familially related to Gerard Way because she finds him attractive, and presumably has an incest kink that will never be touched upon again in the story. The rest of this thesis will touch on all of the other woeful elements of this monstrous violation of ‘show, don’t tell’, but now you have the definitive look at who and what Ebony is.

Ebony is in love with Draco Malfoy, who save for a few minor elements remains largely unchanged in My Immortal. The same cannot be said for Harry “Vampire” Potter;

In the Great Hall, I ate some Count Chocula cereal with blood instead of milk, and a glass of red blood. Suddenly someone bumped into me. All the blood spilled over my top.

“Bastard!” I shouted angrily. I regretted saying it when I looked up cause I was looking into the pale white face of a gothic boy with spiky black hair with red streaks in it. He was wearing so much eyeliner that I was going down his face and he was wearing black lipstick. He didn’t have glasses anymore and now he was wearing red contact lenses just like Draco’s and there was no scar on his forhead anymore. He had a manly stubble on his chin. He had a sexy English accent. He looked exactly like Joel Madden. He was so sexy that my body went all hot when I saw him kind of like an erection only I’m a girl so I didn’t get one you sicko.

If nothing else, it’s certainly a nice change from the usual traits about his mother’s eyes and taped-up glasses. In this story, Harry goes by ‘Vampire’; he used to date Draco Malfoy and they got tattoos with each others’ names, he is gothic and now part of Slytherin for reasons never elaborated upon – these two traits go hand-in-hand for every character in the story– and resembles the lead singer of Good Charlotte for some reason. Thankfully, our author also notes that the character who was born, raised, and lives his entire life in Great Britain happens to have a “sexy English accent”.

“Satan” is the name that Tom Riddle went by when he was a Hogwarts student. In the 1980s. And gothic. We’ll touch on him a little later. There’s a lot of trainwreck going on here, in case you haven’t noticed.

The two meta players to what is one of the greatest internet performance art pieces ever created are our author Tara Gilesbie, and her best friend/beta reader Raven, noted in the story by her own self-insert Willow. I have a lot to say about these two, who are characters in their own ways and who the understanding of is vital to seeing My Immortal as something greater than it appears to be. Tara is a budding teenage writer, Harry Potter, and goth, who doesn’t like that people keep ‘flassing’ her story and threatens self-mutilation as retribution for it, because if there is one thing the mid-2000s internet was, it was caring and serious about such issues. She plays it rather loose with things like literary devices or the English language, as we shall see.

Part 1: Bigmouth Strikes Again – Matters of “Da Story and Spelling”

Upon reading My Immortal for the first time, one of the most egregious and clear issues with the story lies within the spelling and grammar: they’re fucking abysmal. You can see it in the author’s notes right away, and it slowly trickles into the story itself. It starts with ridiculous run-on sentences that seem more like lists than the placement of words into a coherent and complete thought, delivered in a halting and completely jarring cadence. Allegedly, Tara’s friend Raven is editing the story until chapter 15 – more on her later – but even under her tenure as beta, little slips become more frequent. The job of trying to edit something so terrible would certainly be taxing and likely require intensive rewrites of whole chapters at a time, and it’s understandable that perhaps someone would simply be past the point of being able to handle this, and would get sloppier in their job. Chapter eleven, where the author’s note explicitly stated Raven helped, contains of the most infamous and brilliant mistakes in the entire work; ‘Loopin’ 'masticating’.

Once Raven leaves as Tara’s editor, the story nosedives even further into a death spiral of spelling and grammar. Typos become common and any lip service paid to writing words out fully is discarded. Without a beta, we see the depths of Tara’s unfettered lack of shits given for her story to come off as anything resembling presentable. And it needs to be this way, because one of the hallmarks of bad fanfiction is being incomprehensible. Not quite as much as it once was in the days before My Immortal shook the scene up, but it’s a clear indicator of the writer being unprincipled and very young, which are all vital to the character of Tara. The story needs to be poorly written, because if it isn’t, a site like fanfiction.net which, let’s be honest, doesn’t have very high standards–or really any at all–won’t react with all the venom and vitriol the story is meant to induce. It would merely fly under the radar as another mediocre story in the ever-swelling Harry Potter section, which even years after the fandom has cooled off, still moves faster than any person can possibly read through completely. That’s why the author’s notes are so terribly formatted; the very first thing a reader will see upon opening the story is, “Special fangz (get it, coz Im goffik)”.

And it is that word 'goffik’, my darlings, that marks the first place in My Immortal where Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

Everyone who types regularly can see certain little flubs and bad habits develop in their words; muscle memory kicking them in the ass and accidentally writing an incredibly similar word, or having some consistent errors that come through very clearly. And she does have a few, such as “jacket” as “jackson” (chapters 26, 37, 41, 42) and “converse” as “congress shoes” (chapters 24, 39, 41, 42), but they are few and far between in a dizzying array of random misspellings as chaotic as the story itself. They’re just layered beneath what is already a no-shits-given typing style that was back then incredibly commonplace within the subculture presented in the story, but they can be made out clearly if looked for beyond using Z in place of S or 'da’ for 'the’.

The easiest case to make in this regard is with names. Nobody has their names consistently spelled correctly, but they aren’t even consistent in their incorrectness. Our main character, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, is referred to as Enoby, Enony, Egogy, TaEbory, Ebony, and Evony, among others. Hagrid’s name is spelled correctly a grand total of zero times, but can be noticed as Hargrid, Hairgird, HAHRID, Hargirid, etc. Is her boyfriend Draco, or is he Drako, Darko, or Drago? Voldemort has almost as many misspellings as he does appearances; Volfemort, Vlodemort, Volxemort, Voldemint, Volremot, and Darth Valer, to name a few. Sirius Black becomes Serifs, Series, Sodomize, Socrates, and my personal favorite, Spartacus. Professor Slutgorn, Cornelia Fuck, Dumblewhore, Preacher McGongal are also highlights.

But there’s perhaps too much convenience in how words become other words so easily. From Loopin’s mastication and the pointing of his womb, to being sent not to Azkaban but to Azerbaijan, to recording a sex tape on a caramel, to Dracon being hung like a Stallone, the story is littered with mistakes that seem almost too good to be true. Not all of this can be explained away as just a stray finger. Some of them defy keyboard logic in how they came to be, and somebody who could be that sloppy with a keyboard would be incapable of making sentences that could even be pieced together by someone intent on understanding what was meant by them, which as it stands is already how much of My Immortal is written. Sort of like Finnegan’s Wake, except the analysis of it is performed by significantly sadder people.

Matters like Azerbaijan and caramel might be explained away by spellcheck, if there was even the slightest evidence that Tara spellchecked any of this. It’s very, very apparent that she didn’t, because these passages are surrounded by misspellings that have gone unedited and unfixed, which means that she had to type out these words to the full extent manually.

Could it be some kind of celestial alignment that leads to there being so many absolutely perfect typos? It could be. But I believe that the typos not in fact the meanderings of someone who doesn’t care, but in fact a labour of love from someone who cares far, far too much. Poor typing habits and a lack of care for what’s being put down are hallmarks of bad writing, and My Immortal strives to push it to heights that become almost impossible for an actual human being to accidentally make. Words are put into the story that aren’t even in the same neighborhood as the ones they’re supposed to be, and names steadily spin out of control in ever-escalating insanity like a Fibonacci sequence from hell.

In the chapter 4 author’s note, Tara notes “her name is ENOBY nut mary su ok!” In chapter 12, hot off the heels of Loopin masticating is the line, “Who MASTABATED (c is dat speld rong) to it he added silently.” What are the odds that she misspells the words on the two occasions where it matters most? In particular the latter one, where you’d think she would bother looking the word back over first to make sure it wasn’t, in fact, misspelled. Raven doesn’t pick up on it either, even though as we’ll see later she is most certainly capable of spelling words properly. It highlights the character of Tara’s hubris and incompetence, that she points out that she spelled a word correctly when she in fact had not. Someone who cares enough to show up the haters mid-story, but not enough to make sure they’re actually doing so.

Accompanying the more clearly intentional mistakes is the steady clumsiness that grows with the word count. Misspellings become more prevalent and less attention is put into trying to look like words, and while the tipping point is certainly Raven rescinding her service as an editor, it’s also a measured and slow degradation. We’ll go over this in more detail in part eight, but it is rather damning that the story doesn’t just plummet right through the floor once Raven isn’t working on making it presentable, as it reasonably should. Instead, it s a careful and measured breakdown. For comparison’s sake, let’s take the opening of chapter 15, which is the final Raven-edited chapter before the breakup:

“Ebony Ebony!” shouted Draco sadly. “No, please, come back!”

But I was too mad.

“Whatever! Now u can go anh have sex with Vampire!” I shouted. I stormed into my room and closed my black door with my blood-red key. It had a picture of Marylin Manson on it. He looked so sexy in a way that reminded me of Draco and Vampire. I started to cry and weep. I took a razor and started to slit my wrists. I drank the blood all depressed. Then I looked at my black GC watch and noticed it was time to go to Biology class.

And chapter 16, where their relationship reaches its peak and Raven has left as editor:

We ran happily to Hogsmede. There we saw the stage where GC had played. We ran in happly. MCR were there playing ‘Helena’. I was so fucking happy! Gerard looked even sexier than he did in da pictures. Even Draco thought so, I could totally see him getting an erection but it didn’t matter cuz I knew know that we were da only true ones for eachother. I was wearing a black leather minidress and black leather platinum boots with red ripped fishnets. Draco was wearing a black baggy MCR t-shirt and black baggy pants. Anyway, we stated moshing to Helena. We frenched. We ran up 2 the front of the band to stage-dive. Suddenly, Gerard pulled off his mask. So did the others. We gasped. It wasn’t them at all. It was.,……………………….. Volsemort and da Death Dealers

There are certainly a few more typos in this sample, and we see 'da’ and 'cuz’ slip through without Raven’s guidance, but overall they don’t seem too far apart. 'Volsemort’ is the only thing that is clearly down to a typo rather than laziness. But let’s jump into Morty McFli’s “tim machine” and see how chapter 26 opens:

A few mutates later Vampire came 2 da tree. He was wearing a blak leather jackson, black leather pants and a Good Chralotte t-shirt.

“Hi Vampire.” I said flirtily as I started to sob. Draco hugged me sexily tryont to comfrot me. I started to cry tears of blood and then told them what happened.

“Oh fuck it!” Vampire shouted angrily. He4 started to cry sadly. “What fucking dick did that!”

“I don’t know.” I said. “Now come on we have 2 tell Dumbledor.”

We ran out of the tree and in2 da castle. Dumblydor was sitting in his office.

“Sire are dads have been shot!” Draco said while we wipped sum tears from his white face. “Enoby had a vision in a dreem.”

Dubleodre started to cockle. “Hahahaha! And How due u aspect me to know Ebony’s not divisional?

It’s night and fucking day. Raven’s presence was clearly not the only thing keeping Tara’s spelling in check, because she started off just fine without her, but somewhere along the next ten chapters clearly lost her way. But hey, just for comparison’s sake, let’s see if ten more chapters supports my claim. Chapter 36:

I loked around in a depresed way. Suddenly I saw Profesor Sinister. B’lody Mary, Socrates and Draco, Vampire and Willow were their to.

“OMFG Sorius I saw u nd Samaro and Snip nd everyone!11111 I kant beleev Snap uzd 2 b goffik!111111”

“Yah I no.” Serious said sadly.

“Oh hey there bitch.” Profesor Trevolry said in an emo voice dirnking some Volxemortserom.

Hi fuker.” I said. “Lizzen, Satan asked me out to a gottik cornet and a movie so I need a sexah new outfit for da date. Also I’m playng in a gothic band so I need an ootfit for that too.”

“Oh my satan!1” (geddit lolz koz shes gofik) gasped B’lody Mary. “Want 2 go to Hot Topik to shop 4 ur outfit?”

“OMFS, letz have a groop kutting session!11” said Profesor Trevolry.

“I can’t fucking wait 4 dat but we need 2 get sum stuff first.” said Willow.

“Yah we need sum portions for Profesor Trevolry so she wont be adikted 2 Volxemortserum anymore nd also………….sum luv potion 4 Enoby.” Darko said resultantly.

It’s almost difficult to believe they’re from the same story we saw twenty chapters ago, and it’s sure as hell not because Tara has improved her craft. Within the confines of the story itself, it seems so gradual that you might not even realize it, but laid out in chunks like that, can you really say it’s not someone trying their best to destroy as many words as they possibly can?

Part 2: It’s Gruesome That Someone So Handsome Should Care – Matters of Identity and “Goffikness”

At the very core of My Immortal is what Tara believes being a goth to be. From the very first sentence of the first author’s note we learn this fact, and the first paragraph in the story, which is also the longest, is devoted to showing that Ebony is as well. Whether or not one is a goth becomes the most important character trait for the entire cast and defines their relationships with one another. Throughout the story, we are regaled with all the evidence of band fandom and other ultimately superficial traits that assure us that these characters are indeed true goths. The only things that receive anything approaching description are the clothes Ebony wears, all black and leather and band t-shirts. Nothing matters more than being a goth.

In this strange world, Ebony’s lifestyle is supported in ways that are beyond belief. Merchandising is so invasively ever-present that you can buy just about anything branded with her interests. In chapter 38, Satan smokes a Nightmare Before Christmas cigar (over a decade before The Nightmare Before Christmas came out), capes can bear Avril Lavigne’s face on them without anyone raising an eyebrow, and cars have pentagram decals all over them. Although band t-shirts are perfectly normal – and if I’m anything to go by, having pretty much nothing but band shirts isn’t unheard of – Ebony also has a wide range of band-branded everything, like skirts that have 'Simple Plan’ written across her ass.

Ebony looks like Amy Lee, and any boy she thinks is attractive will invariably be compared to the lead members of bands she likes, because those positive associations are marks of her dedication.

In the world of My Immortal, being a goth or a prep is not down to musical choices and circles of friends, but instead a sweeping statement about where you fall in matters of good and evil. Everyone she approves of fits her lifestyle whether it makes sense for the character to or not, radically changing their personalities to fall into the box she wants them to. The Golden Trio, alongside Ginny and Neville all goth up and convert to Slytherin, because as the 'dark’ house it is the only logical place for goths to go be. She does not have any friends who aren’t goths, because to not be a goth is to a prep, and preps are evil. Preps have middle fingers put up at them when they do nothing wrong, because on mere principle they must be hated and despised.

Which forms one of the many problems with the plot, but one that is not specific to the madness of Tara Gilesbie. At almost no point do characters coded as preps actually do anything wrong. Britney is consistently insulted and called a 'fucking prep’ in every appearance she has as though 'prep’ is an earth-shattering slur. Her presence consists entirely of being in a room, sometimes with middle fingers put up at her, and in one case, singled out by Professor Trevolry to do extra homework, because Trevolry is a goff teacher, which means she punishes preps for being preps. The only time Britney does anything wrong is in the final chapter, when it’s revealed that she released Snap and Loopin from Azerbaijan.

Britney is also the only actually preppy character in the story. We know this because she wears pink and little else, due to the lack of dialogue or character shown. But other people are referred to as preps constantly, including Snoop, Lumpkin, and Valmont. As are everyone who criticizes the story. We receive no indication for these, and often they are completely baffling for how decidedly un-preppy these characters truly are, but it’s vital to the narrative and the division of the cast that everyone Ebony does not approve of is a prep.

It’s not an uncommon attitude among teenagers, especially those with interest or belonging to subcultures out of the approved mainstream, to draw lines and assume everyone who falls into divisions other than them are inherently opposed to them. The idea that anyone who isn’t different must assume that difference is bad is so pervasive that it often comes to define works of fiction taking place in high school, even when written by grown-ass adults, because it provides cheap and easy conflict. Most teenagers grow fairly quickly out of this, but because of its convenience as a device, it persists. Tara is far from the only person to ever believe this, but the degree to which she takes it is a little further than most do, lumping the world into only two categories, but defining 'them’ as a one-dimensional army of preps even when they’re the opposite of preppy.

Which makes it an incredibly mockable and therefore desirable angle to write her plot through, doesn’t it?

Once again setting herself up for incredible failure is the fact that she’s completely off the fucking mark about what a goth is. With favorite bands ranging from My Chemical Romance, Evanessence, and Linkin Park, to a bizarre interest in pop punk through Simple Plan and Good Charlotte, her taste in goth music is a lot like her taste in klezmer; it doesn’t fucking exist. This is not the musical taste of a broody, dark goth, it’s the stock standard taste of a teenaged rock fan in 2006, which is exactly what it’s supposed to be. To believe this is all to be pure, gothic music is to be so disconnected from the entire concept of the goth subculture that Tara would have to have not even given it a cursory Googling to discover what sort of music goths listened to.

This 2006; 'emo’ was already a word so pervasive that it was insufferable, but had TaEbory identified as emo, she would have lost one vital piece of the puzzle. Merely being wrong or incredibly forward about one’s identity isn’t enough; she had to be both simultaneously. Her fervid defense of what it is to be a goth, paired with being so off the mark, turns her into a hypocrite and a fool, a strawman whose every word is only making worse her whole case. It makes her stand out as a special and egregious case, an author so wrong about everything and whose self-insert only looks worse off for it. And this is how My Immortal rose to the top of an ocean of mediocre, bad, and downright terrible fanfiction.

Dubious musical categorizations aside, another element of the gothicness that pervades the story is authenticity. Among the more snobbish and elitist of any subculture since the beginning of time, the desire to be seen as authentic and real is an incredibly pervasive element that My Immortal predictably lingers on quite heavily. “Poser” is a word loaded with as much venom as prep is, because in the false dichotomy Tara instills upon the world, to have airs of goffikness while not truly being a goff is just as evil as wearing pink is. Perhaps even more so, because these fakers are infiltrating her circles. When Tara and Raven cease being friends, Raven’s stand-in Willow is referred to as a poser. When Draco feels betrayed upon discovering that Voldemort has tasked Ebony with killing Vampire, he refers to her as a “poser muggle bitch”.

While we can’t hold My Immortal to a rigid understanding of proper Harry Potter canon, it does explain a lot about Tara’s worldview. Draco Malfoy has spent his whole life of privilege being taught about the importance of blood purity by his parents, who — we’re all adults here, right? We can accept this? — are fucking wizard nazis. A lot of his early character is specifically centered around his beliefs on blood purity and his use of slurs like 'mudblood’ toward Hermione and dismissals of families like the Weasleys as blood traitors. Such traits are so surface level and blatant that even someone like Tara could pick up on them, which makes the inclusion of 'poser’ in his insult, a triple threat along with fantastical racism and straight-up sexism, into something very telling about just how important it is in her version of the Harry Potter universe to be seen as genuine.

You can’t simply become a goth, you have to already be one. You have to shop at the 'real goth stores’, which are known only to goths. Any attempt to learn of them is met with derision, because goffikness is not something you can attain, except for all the characters who are noted in their new backstories to have become goffs in their transfers over to Slytherin.

Simmering underneath this obsession with being seen as authentic, with a narrative that constantly asserts with very insecure undertones just how much Tara wants to be seen as a real goth, is how shallow her interests really are. She prattles off lists of the clothing she and her friends wear like she’s Patrick Bateman, a laundry list whose obsessive detail forms the only proper description anything in the story receives. And much like in American Psycho, the narrator’s obsession with clothes comes off as remarkably phony, a desire to fit in with a group they desire to be a part of through a series of checklist points, although while Patrick Bateman is deranged within the narrative, you must go one level of abstraction away from the character’s portrayal in the universe, to look on a metafictional level into the delusions of Tara to see where she gets it all so wrong.

We’re told in the narrative that Ebony is depressed and suicidal time and again, but despite slitting her wrists in lieu of an afternoon snack, we never truly see actual depression. She uses 'depressed’ in ways that don’t really make sense, such as to describe the movie Corpse Bride, coloured contact lenses, and makeout sessions. Chapter three even contains the passage, “'Hi Draco!’ I said in a depressed voice.” Given how wonderfully the entire world caters to Ebony and the fact Tara seems to not really understand what it means, it comes off not like Ebony is a character that actually has depression, but instead that since depression is gothic, she must therefore possess it. She isn’t somebody who wears black on the outside because black is how she feels on the inside, she just says she’s depressed because it’s all a part of the goth package.

As is Satanism, which Ebony is apparently an adherent of. Much like being depressed, a vampire, listening to Simple Plan, and being a Slytherin, it is vital to the gothic identity that you are a Satanist, even if you don’t know what Satanism is. That you sometimes refuse to acknowledge the words 'cross’ and 'god’. It’s so casually mentioned and without even the slightest bit of conviction that it feels thrown in by someone who doesn’t really care, but, once again, wants to fit in.

The end result is an all-encompassing, story ruining obsession with ensuring the reader know and believe that Ebony–and by extension the author she is an avatar of–is the most true and devout goth in the world. Setting herself up to be so very, very wrong on this account is an easy way to discredit Tara and add another layer of pure mockability to the story. She is truly the greatest poser of all, and her entire worldview comes crumbling down around her under the slightest scrutiny, all by design.

Part 3: Just a Miserable Lie – The Impossible Mistakes

This news may shock and surprise you, so make sure you are very securely strapped your seat.

My Immortal is not entirely consistent.

Certain little things creep out of the woodwork in both the narrative and off to the side, hidden amid all of the craziness around them, that I believe are little winks at the camera on the part of the author. Hints meant to clue you in as to the fact that this whole thing is, in fact, one big joke. A lot of them have gone rather unnoticed, it seems, but let’s start with the most noticeable of all.

In chapter 31, we meet Tom Bombadil. I’m not fucking with you, here, it really does happen.

Suddenly I was in fornt of teh School. In front of me wuz one of da sexiest goth guyz I had ever seen. He was wering long blak hair, kinda like Mikey Way only black. He had gren eyes like Billie Joe Amstrung and pale whit skin. He wuz wearing a blak ripped up suit wif Vans. It was…………………….Tom Bombodil!1

Now, some of you may be asking who the balls Tom Bombadil is, and that is my point entirely. Deep in the first half of Fellowship of the Ring is god of the forest and walking filler arc Tom Bombadil, whose three-chapter appearance leaves most readers wishing for a violent end to existence for how long it all drags. For the express reason that his appearance is so incredibly pointless, he appears in no major adaptations of the series, which means for Tara to know about him, she’d have to read Fellowship of the Ring, a book that is done no favours by Tolkein’s incredibly dry and long writing style, not to mention an entire chapter chronicling the genealogy of Hobbiton.

To be a teenager at a reading level high enough to tackle Tolkein precludes you from being capable of doing something like My Immortal genuinely. Tara would know how words are spelled and that, hey, stories are considerably better when you give a quarter of a crap about typing them properly. The levels of literacy involved in Tom Bombadil and writing My Immortal are so far removed that these two traits are mutually exclusive, impossible for Tara to possess if she’s genuine. After all,

I dntn red all da boox! dis is frum da movie ok so itz nut my folt if dumbeldor swers!

But wait.

Among the many baffling changes Tara makes to the canon, one of the weirdest and most damning to me is Professor Sinister/Trevolry/Sinatra/Siniater/Relory. This bizarre composite of professors Sinistra and Trelawny is a half-vampire, half-Japanese goff, and the only teacher in the school Ebony likes, because she dresses like her and assigns the preps extra homework, complete with a pun about doing an 'exorcise’ in the book. Her presence is bizarre, for being the only positive authority figure in the story, and for the utter perplexity involved in picking the two professors as a composite goth character at the expense of more conventional fanfic fodder like Snape and Lupin, who are both obviously villainous preps in this story.

Professor Trelawny is a strange choice whose incongruity I feel is another one of those expectation-defying twists meant to seem strange as an indicator to the audience where a more mainstream and believable choice would have been to romanticize Snape as so much of the fandom has, but the real headscratcher is Professor Sinistra. Her presence in the canon is entirely off-screen, mentioned by Hermione as a teacher for a course that Ron and Harry don’t take; she has no lines or purpose anywhere, and even in the movies is only a background character identified by virtue of there being an actress credited as her. Her absolute lack of lines makes her presence here troubling, because if Ebony’s reference base for this is the movies, where this dialogueless character coming from?

Of course, there’s also the aspect of how fluidly she switches between names bastardized off of the two professors which, unlike the matter of Hagrid being Cedric but not really, is so consistent and ever-present that it again seems like a level of sloppiness entirely beyond human capability. Two completely disparate names that are way too far removed to be keyboard fuckery, with bastardizations of both used in each scene she appears as though there is a quota on how many of each get used in a chapter for full effect. Because there absolutely is; here’s the introduction of the professor in chapter 24:

Well we had Deviation next so I got to ask Proffessor Trevolry about the visions.

“Konnichiwa everybody come in.” said Proffesor Sinister in Japanese. She smelled at me with her gothic black lipstick. She’s da coolest fucking teacher ever. She had long dead black hair with blood red tips and red eyes. (hr mom woz a vampire. She’s also haf Japanese so she speaks it and everyfing. she n b’loody mry get along grate) She’s really young for a teacher. 2day she was wearing a black leather top with red lace and a long goffik black ripped dress. We went inside the black classroom with pastors of Emily the Strong. I raced my hand. I was wearing some black naie Polish with red pentagrams on it.

In the tweet-sized morcel from “well” to “Japanese”, Tara has already methodically sank this character’s introduction, making someone paying even the slightest attention to what’s in front of them look back up to that previous line to see if they lost something somewhere. Trevolry is used to refer to her next, and then Sinister again, which are the only four mentions of this character in the chapter. Tara’s handle on the chaos of her own story is perfect, and the entire existence of the professor in this chapter serves as a massive wink to the camera.

Also a strange decision is to note that Professor Sinister and B'loody Mary “get along grate”. They don’t interact, as is expected from a narrative that marginalizes everybody except for Ebony and her love interests, relegating all of the friends to satellite roles where they interact only with her, but it’s perplexing for the way it’s made note of out of nowhere. I feel it goes beyond a strange decision to include more female friendships in the background of her story, and serves as a one-two punch of running afoul of “show, don’t tell” and of the canon itself, as in the original series the teacher that Hermione clashes with the most, to the point of dropping the class altogether, is Professor Trelawny. And yet here they are, besties in gothhood. Another subtle note that indicates how carefully woven this entire mess is.

For someone with the reading comprehension of a microwave-made baked potato though, she has an oddly prescient view on the series endgame in chapter 42’s author’s note.

AN: omg da new book iz kumming out rlly soon I kant wait!!!1111. I fink dat snap will be really the same person as Volximort koz dey are both haff-blood so dat will explain y he kild dumblydore and he hated hairy!!!!!1111 nd den hairy wil have 2 kommit suicide so voldimort will die koz he will rilly be a horcrox!!!!!111

On one hand, the idea that Snap and Volximort are the same person is so unfounded and bizarre that you kind of dismiss what comes next, but despite retaining nothing beyond the most surface-level details about the canon, she somehow managed to make the connection of Harry’s abilities and scar as evidence of him being a horcrux. It’s not a massive leap, and many in the fandom saw it coming, but for someone whose grasp on the canon simply doesn’t exist, it’s suspect.

I’ve unfortunately already blown the “big deal of a revelation that is fairly obvious” joke, so I won’t bother setting it up again, but this revelation is genuinely a noteworthy one. Contained within My Immortal is one reference that is unambiguously and inarguably gothic. Not one of the borderline cases like Marilyn Manson where it depends on who you ask, but a genuine reference to a piece of gothic music. From chapter 28,

We went in2 a blak room. The wallz were blak with portraits of gothic bands lik MCR, GC and Marlin Mason all over them. A big black coffin was in the middle. Red vevlet lined da blak box. There were three chairs made of bones with real skullz in dem. I wuz wearing a blak corset bar wif purple stuff on it, fishnet suckings and a blak leather thong underneath.

It’s so subtle and unexpected a reference that even if you know what it’s from, you may not pick it up. “Red velvet lines the black box” is a lyric from Bauhau’s 1979 song Bela Lugosi’s Dead, which is generally considered to be the very first gothic rock song ever written, thus making it the only genuinely gothic sentence in this entire tale. However, devoid of teenage angst or guyliner, it makes no sense that such a reference would be in the repertoire of somebody who believes that Marilyn Manson was a band from the '80s. In fact, it is impossible to believe that a Tara taken at face value would have ever so much as encountered the song, because the collision of matter and anti-matter annihilates both. However, it would be the fodder of somebody who, baffled at how easily people have accepted their work as a genuine offering, got bored and decided to throw a wink to the camera that couldn’t have possibly slipped under the radar.

Littered among the litany of showy, “look at how goffik” I am references to things, as though My Immortal were a PSA about the goth cred of Tara Gilesbie, are a few rather suspect notes. Tara is somebody who can’t mention certain names without indicating her undying hatred toward them, and yet,

“I love you!” I said and then we started to kiss just like Hilary Duff (i fukin h8 dat bitch) and CMM in a Cinderella Story.

We are apparently to believe that Tara, somebody who is so slavishly devoted to her identity and to a dichotomy that has coloured the entirety of a fictional universe, not only watched A Cinderella Story in spite of her hatred of Hilary Duff, but then drew a comparison to it in how she and Draco kissed? Drawing comparisons to things the author is interested in is a rather frequent amateur move for young fanfic writers who merely draw the blunt comparison to something rather than learning to describe the individual features themselves. Tara is not a good enough writer to describe the facial features of her favorite band leads, so she just mentions that people look like Gerard to indicate that the absolute pinnacle of human attractiveness is this.

The only comparisons she ever draws are to her favorite things, because it’s a way to prove that her life is so goffik that everything around her draws its existence from her interests. And yet she cites a Hilary Duff movie that she quite frankly should not have even seen, if she is so diametrically opposed to being perceived as a prep, which veering so far off of the beaten goff path and into would most certainly indicate. Something doesn’t add up about this.

On what I believe to be the intentional cliffhanger that chapter 42 ends on, we hear another mention of goffik cinema right before the very end of the story.

“Save us Ebony!” Dumbledark cried.

I cried sexily I just wanted 2 go 2 the commen room and slit my wrists with mi friends while we watched Shark Attak 3 and Saw 2 and do it with Draco but I knew I had 2 do somefing more impotent.

“ABRA KEDABRA!!!!!!!!!!!11111” I shooted.

For those not in the know, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon is a phenomenally bad direct-to-video monster movie whose sole claim to fame is in being so laughably bad that it’s found an audience in bad movie circles. And while one could make the fairly weak argument that on the basis of some super edgy “I love watching people dying” attitude, a movie like Shark Attack might appeal to Tara the same way slashers and gorn like Saw and “Hoes of Wax” appeal to her, it’s so bizarre in its sudden presence at the very end that I believe it yet another wink, but this time a more final one. The second-to-last sentence in the story makes mention to a notorious bad movie to draw the connection to the story, a final and overt declaration of a joke that you’re supposed to be in on. The last punchline before the music hits and Porky Pig bursts from out of the big drum to say, “That’s all folks.”

Part 4. What Difference Does it Make? - The Desecration of Canon

Calling out My Immortal for distorting and twisting the Harry Potter universe into something unrecognizable and monstrous is like calling out a bear for shitting in the woods, but it’s impossible to explain how carefully crafted a piece of perfect trollfic it is without examining just how many 'liberties’ Tara took with the canon.

All of the characters that Tara seeks to lionize convert to Slytherin, because apparently people can just do that if they decide they really like black lipstick. But that’s not enough to make them more 'like her’. Backstories are revised to include a quite frankly startling volume of sexual abuse backstories and characters secretly adopted by abusive parents. Vampirism is not a trait anybody received through the narrative, but instead a species inherited by birth that somehow, people don’t know they have, showing no signs or hunger, until they learn about their parentage. Characters all receive new, gothic nicknames like B'loody Mary, Vampire, and Diabolo.

What Tara has done is remove everything about the characters one may think noticeable about them in the slightest. Everyone now resembles Tara’s favorite artists. Harry’s iconic lightning bolt scar, a symbol of the series, has been changed by makeup and magic to instead be a pentagram, because that is a design change of her choice, visually reclaiming the character from Rowling. The only character whose visual traits at all line up with the canon is Voldemort.

Then all of a suddenly, an horrible man with red eyes and no nose and everything started flying towards me on a broomstick! He didn’t have a nose (basically like Voldemort in the movie) and he was wearing all black but it was obvious he wasn’t gothic.

But then it gets stranger. Hagrid becomes a member of Ebony’s band Bloody Gothic Rose 666 and a “little Hogwarts student” (chapter 11). Although she appears to retcon that in chapter 12 with,

AN: stop f,aing ok hargrid is a pedo 2 a lot of ppl in amerikan skoolz r lik dat I wunted 2 adres da ishu! how du u no snap iant kristian plus hargrid isn’t really in luv wif ebony dat was sedric ok!

Although she seems to take a strange “whatever I want” approach to her own retcons like the most hackish of comic book writers, since we get in that very chapter,

Anyway I was in the school nurse’s office now recovering from my slit wrists. Snap and Loopin and HAHRID were there too. They were going to St. Mango’s after they recovered cause they were pedofiles and you can’t have those fucking pervs teaching in a school with lots of hot gurlz. Dumbledore had constipated the cideo camera they took of me naked. I put up my middle finger at them.

Anyway Hargrid came into my hospital bed holding a bouquet of pink roses.

“Enoby I need to tell u somethnig.” he said in a v. serious voice, giving me the roses.

“Fuck off.” I told him. “You know I fucking hate the color pink anyway, and I don’t like fucked up preps like you.” I snapped. Hargrid had been mean to me before for being gottik.

Hagrid is in this canon simultaneously a pedophile and presumably grown-ass adult, but also a Hogwarts student who may or may not be Cedric Diggory, who not only survived the events of Goblet of Fire, but also managed to fail two years at Hogwarts to join Harry as a seventh-year. He is also a poser who is mean to Ebony for being 'gottik’, but is also in her gothic rock band which sounds like “a cross between GC, Slipknot and MCR”, which as we all know would make it the most authentic gothic rock band since Mungo Jerry.

Except in chapter 14 a Death Eater is referred to as “the fat guy who killed Cedric” so maybe HAHrid really is Hagrid after all?

Then there is the odd decision to align Lupin and Snape as pedophilic voyeurs in the service of Voldemort while bizarrely championing Professor Trelawny, in stark contrast to a fandom that especially in the golden days of Harry Potter fandom, where people would dick ride Severus Snape all the way to the moon on the weight of how 'misunderstood’ he was. A pale man who seems conventionally 'dark’ in his interests and mannerisms is the perfect place to begin projecting on when you’re telling a story about how you’re the exact same things, but it seems almost too obvious a decision. Like the rest of Professor Siniater’s composite existence, she’s so odd a choice that it startles you, and I believe within that shock value is the decision to buck expectations.

A trip to the past begins to paint an even more bizarre picture, as apparently the parents of our heroes all went to school in the 1980s, alongside Voldemort and Hedwig. They were also all Slytherin goffs who at some point seem to have just turned into poser preps whose children had to re-convert out of Gryffindor and into gothhood. This timeline yet again causes a great many headscratching tears in the fabric of space and time, but the most vital and important of all is Hedwig.

In the canon, Hedwig is Harry’s owl, female and not much of a doer, speaker, or goth. But in the horrible alternate universe that My Immortal takes place in, Hedwig is a bisexual human male who is very much a goth, the ex-boyfriend of Tom Riddle, whose dumping of the boy starts his descent into becoming Volxemort. It is a change that is so wrong, so removed from not only the canon but from the possibility of anything ever being accurate to the canon, that it can’t be accidental. One cannot fuck up that badly by accident.

Voldemort himself is a great many things. In the past, he is Tom Riddle, gothic musician at Hogwarts and love interest to Ebony, but also Tom Bombadil, the master of wood, water, and hill. But in the present time, he is both the Bark Lord, as one may expect, but also potentially a young, thoroughly goffik employee at a “punkgoff” store in Hogsmeade, Tom Rid. Tom Rid is described as “OMG HOTTER THAN GERARD EXCEPT NOT CAUSE THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE“ and, like every other guy in the story, is “bisezual”. Tom Rid is never the setup for Voldemort’s secret infiltration of the goth subculture, but nonetheless seems to be a template earlier in the story for the later time travel storyline and Tom Riddle as a love interest. It’s another nonsensical “mistake” thatjust doesn’t mesh with any fathomable stupidity. It would be like introducing a character called Harry Pot and having him be completely disconnected from Harry Potter in any way.

Littered with iPods and anachronistic pop culture that manages to miss its mark in two different time periods, the only reason we know that this is the same world and not just one with suspiciously similar names is the fact that it’s fanfiction. Not a deep AU that interestingly adapts elements into a different world to see how they work out, or which shows characters and how they might develop under different circumstances. This is a mangled mess where muggle bands play concerts in Hogsmeade, seemingly well aware of wizards’ existence. There must be panic on the streets of London.

The big question is “why”. Why would somebody do this bad a number of canon, accidental or not? And the reason is simple.

Part 5. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want – Wish Fulfillment

By changing the context of everything except for the most basic connections of who the characters are 'supposed’ to be, they cease to be J.K. Rowling’s. They instead become Tara’s playthings. The canon is so distorted that it may as well not be fanfiction for how few things that remain intact, and yet it is vital that the world be the world of Harry Potter, at least nominally. Tara needs to turn a world that she loves, as off the mark as she may be, into a wonderland in which to self-insert, to mold into a countercultural paradise that centers completely around her.

We can’t speculate on the life of Tara – who this entire paper of course serves as a document meant to disprove the very existence of – but we can very clearly see the desires of this alleged person. Ebony is the single most important person in My Immortal, supplanting Harry as the only one who can kill Voldemort, whom every attractive character and even many unattractive ones profess their love to and fight for without provocation. Her interests are catered to on an unrealistic level and divine karmic justice makes those who sit culturally opposed to her suffer undeserved retribution solely for existing.

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is, even by those who see her as an entirely genuine creation, often held up as the ultimate self-insert. On top of very clearly existing as an author avatar who holds the exact same interests as her creator, her very presence distorts and twists the canon around her like an eldritch abomination tearing the very fabric of the reality she occupies. One of the more criticized elements of self-inserts in fanfiction is of course the ease with which a narrative becomes wish fulfillment for the author, and My Immortal has this in droves. Ebony is the most important character in the world not because she’s the protagonist or the narrator, but because she has supplanted Harry as the only person who can stop Voldemort, and whom everybody’s 'motivations’ center around.

Ebony is loud, angry, and has access to a time machine. When Ebony isn’t on-screen, all of the other characters ask, “Where’s Ebony?”

The love triangle between Ebony, Draco, and Vampire begins with Vampire solely wanting to reconnect with his ex-boyfriend Draco, but as the story goes on that element is lost and replaced with him instead lusting after Ebony, as evidenced by the time they had sex right in the middle of Hair of Magical Creatures. One of the only connections that two different characters had with each other is slowly replaced with an attraction to Ebony that they fight over, because everyone in My Immortal is defined by how Ebony perceives them. Their own attractions to one another take a backseat to their lust for Ebony, save for occasions where she permits them to have sex for her enjoyment, at which point it is presented as titillation for her.

Also among the characters with stated romantic interest in Ebony are Tom Rid, Hairgird, Snope, Lumpin, Tom Riddle, and Snaketail.

Everybody who has things in common with Ebony is Ebony, essentially. Every character is so interchangeable due to the pre-packaged identity she assumes is the only authentic way to be gothic that nobody feels like an actual character. Willow and B'loody Mary both occupy the role of female best friend for Ebony, save for a brief period where Willow is killed and Lupin has sex with her corpse before her resurrection one chapter later. In fact, the only time a character Ebony isn’t sexually attracted to is complimented is when she tries to lay on really thick her attempt to suck up to Raven in the hopes she’ll return to editing. The only difference between Vampire and Draco is how many times Ebony has sex with them, and that’s not getting into the masses of other goff guys who may as well be nameless, such as Diabolo (Ron), “Crab”, Goyle, and “Dracola” (Navel). In the past, Tom “Satan” Riddle proves to be just as generic a love interest as the other two, and then more faceless characters in Hades (“Serious Blak”), Lucian Malfoy, James “Samoro” Potter, and Hedwig.

Nobody has any character, save for Ebony, because they’re not meant to be characters, they’re meant to be imaginary friends for Ebony to play with, to fawn over her and have everything in common with her. If we buy into the belief that Tara is a rather lonely teenage girl who has apparently pushed away her only friend over a My Chemical Romance poster, then her decision to basically strip away everything that makes the Harry Potter world what it is so that she could rebuild it from the ground up into her gothic paradise makes a lot of sense.

Of course, she isn’t that at all, but first we need to look at all the other things that Tara is and isn’t.

Part 6. Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before – Raven

Fifteen-year-old Eternity Demen'tia Johnson warily took a seat on the Hogwarts Express. As she did so, she heard many giggles in the air. Ugh. Stupid preps. Eternity had hoped she wouldn’t see any when she came to Hogwarts. They had made her life in Los Angeles High School miserable. Now she was supposed to put up with them here? She sighed sadly, and stared out of the window. In her mistery, she took her iPod out of her Emily the Strange bag and blared on some My Chemical Romance (A/N: Don’t they rock?). Oh great. Now even more preps were giving her dirty looks. Eternity tried her best to ignore them. It wasn’t because Eternity was dirty or deformed or anything. Maybe it was something to do with her black leather corset, or her ripped black miniskirt or her black combat boots or the metal music she was listening to. Eternity hated how people judged her like that just because she was a goth.

The above is a snippet from I’m Not Okay, written by Tara’s friend Raven. And in it, you can see a lot of the same themes present in My Immortal. Anachronistic technology, a misunderstanding of what the goth subculture is, preps hating her on mere principle, authors notes spliced in mid-sentence to herald the glory of her taste, and more description offered up for her clothes than for anything else. Throughout I’m Not Okay, we see Draco Malfoy as the gothic love interest, comparisons of characters to members of bands the author likes, and canon Harry Potter characters becoming gothic and taking on nicknames like Dracula, Sea, and Darren.

Good sense and suburban decency run screaming at the sight of a dark name like “Darren”.

Rather than shit all over preps of her own design, Luna Lovegood and Hermione Granger, two characters so far removed from the stereotype of an American high school “popular kid” that it’s almost infuriating, are turned into the superpreps to be hated. Slytherin is still so gothic a house that their common room password is “bleeding kisses” and the portrait is a woman described as the “splitting image” of the lead singer of Sisters of Mercy, an actual goth band whose frontman Andrew Eldritch is most certainly not a woman and not even particularly androgynous.

The same out-of-place theme of sexually abusive adopted parents that plagues My Immortal’s side characters returns in Eternity’s backstory. She sticks her middle finger up at preps unprovoked and veers off course to call out the shittiness of preps. Really, Eternity is in every imaginable way just Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way with a marginally better writer, as is to be expected from the editor of Tara’s disasterpiece.

The authenticity of Raven’s works isn’t in doubt, in my mind. It predates the memetic nature of My Immortal by a great deal, they co-wrote a story entitled Ghost of You that, again, features the exact same terrible tropes and bad ideas, albeit this time with Hermione Granger as the parentally abused goth hated by preps and now in love with Draco Malfoy, And, the fifth and final chapter of I’m Not Okay has,

a/n: TARA IS DA BIGGEST FUCKING BITCH EVERY AND BY THE WAY I’M A BIGGER MCR FAN AND GERARD IS MINE 4EVA SO FUCK U

Eternity was so happy. She went to class with the other fifth-years, Sea, Draco, Shadow, Darren, and Satan. That fucking retard Elvira (whose real name was Lindsay like that fucking ho Lindsay Loan) had gone all the way back to first-year and they put her in Gryffindor where all the retarde4d preps were because she couldn’t even write properly and she had to get her friends 2 do it for her.

Hot damn. That’s a far more scorching burn than being the offscreen victim of Lumpkin the necphilak.

Raven’s stories being the template for My Immortal is no coincidence. Tara aped everything she saw with gusto, imitating her friend who, while not a very good writer, could write sentences properly and gave description to things. Hell, as far as fifteen-year-old fanfic writers go, Raven is actually pretty decent, just entrenched in some terrible themes–again, pretty typical for teenagers–and does things like describe Eternity 'sadly putting her hair up’. On some level, Tara is trying to be as good a writer as Raven is. She looks up to her and, immediately after in a fit of anger killing off the character meant to be Raven, brings her back and guiltily sucks up to her with as many compliments as she can give.

Whether she is the same person as 'Tara’ or a friend in on the joke, I believe that Raven exists as sort of a proto-Tara, a precursor to the real juicy fun. Her story isn’t very good and she writes the exact same things Tara does with marginally more writing ability. They’re identical in every possible way, with the same interests, attitudes, and bizarre writing sensibilities. Almost no differences in the presented persona emerge, but as much as their obsessions with clothing and iconography bordering on disingenuous poserliness would imply that the pre-packaged nature of their identities is to blame, I believe it was all meant to deepen the character, provide a more grounded contrast to her and help make her seem more real.

Rather than existing as a nebulous beta reader who also has no prior internet history, existing solely through the character of Willow and authors notes that let their ongoing drama spill through into the story for us to see in what I feel is a brilliant piece of meta performance art, she has her own stories that make her very much a real presence in the extended saga of My Immortal. I believe that in the long term, she was meant to continue onward as a developing foil for Tara, someone whose existence helped back up her own. But, as evidenced by the way I’m Not Okay stops at chapter 5, which on the timeline of My Immortal would place it somewhere around chapter 16, this didn’t go as planned.

If “Raven” were a co-conspirator to “Tara”, it’s possible they got bored, didn’t have the insane devotion to a multi-layered and quite frankly absurdly deep prank. If Raven and Tara are one and the same, then perhaps the pressure of developing two 'different’ personas proved too much work, and decided to focus on the big one. After all, Raven’s stories are only notable through her association to Tara, the Art Garfunkel to Tara’s Paul Simon. Mediocre but ultimately harmless stories that by and large flew under the radar and aren’t even well known by people who know My Immortal. I’m Not Okay was never going to draw the same level of interest or vitriol that My Immortal did, thus making it a joke with far less payoff, even if by virtue of not being as poorly written, it was likely easier to write. This is helped by the immense disparity in productivity between the two; whether the primary actor or personality, Tara is more prolific, something that ties directly into the return on investment when it comes to how people reacted to either story.

And as it turned out, she wasn’t needed. The My Immortal Extended Universe has long since been forgotten, and yet people fell for the joke without it. People bought very easily into My Immortal as a genuine piece of work, or at least were so willing to enjoy it as a mockable distraction that nobody ever really asked. Raven became a redundant cog in the machine, and removing her freed up the effort to focus full time on making My Immortal something even more incredible than it began as.

More evidence of this lies in the fact that even once Raven allegedly returns to her role as editor, the spelling only gets increasingly worse; she’s credited as helping in many chapters, but her former sensibilities are gone, and no edits are ever made, as illustrated in the snippets detailing the degeneration in part one. It’s possible that this was meant to convey that Raven wasn’t actually helping; that she quit writing fanfic due to her fallout with Tara, and Tara merely went on pretending she still had a friend in Raven as she sank deeper and deeper into her wish fulfillment paradise. Raven never managed to gain the established foothold that Tara did, so nobody ever questioned it, and everyone was too busy having a good time to wonder how the chapters ever qualified as being 'edited’.

Curious is the fact that even though they made up, Raven never came back. She didn’t continue writing her own stories, the drama between them never resurged, and aside from her supposed beta services to Tara, is absent from the bulk of the saga in its entirety. This is in spite of the fact that in all apparent ways, Raven is not only the more skilled writer, but the one with a clearer passion for it. Her prose may be nothing special, but the bar should not be set too high for what is allegedly a teenage girl writing Harry Potter fanfic. She falls into a lot of the common holes, but her style is that of someone who loves stories and wants to write their own, and for her to so quickly vanish and never return is, to me, evidence that she was always a character too, and that her place in the 'real life’ layer of My Immortal was simply deemed irrelevant.

Part 7. Girlfriend in a Coma – That Time Tara Got Hacked

In chapter 38, a time-displaced Tara opens for Marilyn Manson in Hogsment, which is what Hogsmeade was called before they changed it in 2000. In Hogsmint, a store called Hot Ishoo will change its name to Hot Topic in the year 1998. Tom Riddle possesses future knowledge of both of these events, as well as the certainty that because amnesia potions haven’t been invented yet, he will not be affected by the one being used on his cigar branded with a movie that hasn’t come out yet, which is a shame because he wanted to use the potion on Ebony so that the time-traveling girl he loves will forget about her old life and her romantic entanglements in her own timeline with the sons of two of his bandmates sothat only her love for him will remain. His prescient, almost accepting knowledge of seemingly everything about his future up until his fall is almost tragic; he must know that Ebony’s involvement in his life is going to ruin it

On top of being the Dark Lord and Tom Bombadil, Tom Riddle may also be Doctor Manhattan. But that’s not the point of this part.

After xBlakXTearX performs its first big gig, the band immediately falls apart as, due to Lucian Malfoy playing the wrong song by mistake, Samaro Potter decides to shoot his arm off with a knife. Those of you attempting to follow the bizarre, Ebony-centric take on the universe may be surprised to learn that she is not the Yoko Ono of the band in what may be the only important conflict in the story that isn’t about her. However, since everything has to be about our goffik darling, Ebony jumps in front of the bullet–that, again, has been shot from a knife, like this is the second-worst Final Fantasy game ever made–and enters a coma.

Bear in mind, she does this knowing that Lucian survives this attack, going on to find love, have Draco, and despite two stints as a wizard nazi manages to avoid jail time and lead a life of incredible luxury and comfort. This also requires her to ignore her very important mission to prevent Tom from ever becoming Voldemort and the insane repercussions of dying in a timeline that isn’t her own, leaving behind all of her possessions that are even more anachronistic in the 80s, including a time machine that anyone could suddenly begin misusing.

All in all, an incredibly stupid decision with no purpose other than to insert Ebony and her useless ass selfless heart into conflicts that she has nothing to do with, because she’s the 'hero’ of our story.

Before we could see the resolution of that nail-biting cliffhanger, Tara’s account was allegedly hacked by a 'guest writer’, who claimed to have been able to crack her password with incredible ease. While there, the password cracker gives her own take on My Immortal, involving the death of Ebony, which undoes all of Tara’s damage upon the universe and returns everybody to their proper states, while sentencing Ebony to a terrifying ironic hell where she is doomed to an eternity of wearing infinite layers of preppy clothing brands.

While there, the hacker also shares with us the real chapter 39 as an act of kindness to those of us who were clinging onto the saga for dear life and wanted to know how Ebony was going to survive jumping in front of the knife-propelled bullet. Allegedly, this chapter was already written and waiting to be posted in the document area. It ends up being such a bizarre element of time travel that even the Terminator franchise never went there.

“What the fuk happened?” I asked dem. “Oh my satan!11 Am I lik dead now?” I gosped.

“Enoby u were almost shot!11” said Serious. “But da ballet could not kill u since u were form anodder time.”

“But fangz anyway!1” said Lucian holding oot his arm. I gasped. He had two arms!

Which opens up a lot of questions, then shoves them aside so I could wonder for a second if Lucius Malfoy was missing an arm in the canon. He wasn’t, making this another perplexing note of Tara’s that rewards a familiarity with the source material by highlighting all the ways in which it’s wrong. But then, after being told that Snap was Death Dealer, despite being the classmate of a Tom Riddle who hadn’t yet gone dark, Ebony comes across Snape raping Draco, and is so distraught by her boyfriend’s betrayal in this act that she runs to her room, takes out a steak, and uses it to slit her wrists.

Neither steaks nor stakes work like that.

The next chapter begins with her “back in Tim” due to her suicide, but the endgame plot batshit of My Immortal isn’t something we can even tackle in full yet.

There is a lot about the hacker that’s peculiar, and that’s because I believe that the hacker is Tara herself. A lot of minor elements of the breach of her account actually betray this secret, and it’s one of the few things in My Immortal I’m unsure about in regards to its intent.

The way that fanfiction.net handles posting a story involves uploading the story file to a document area, and then from the story menu selecting the relevant document. I always found it kind of clumsy personally, but what stands out about it is the fact that the chapter was allegedly written and left online for an indeterminate amount of time. There aren’t many reasons to upload a completed chapter to the website and then not post it. For someone like Tara, who does no editing and is clearly no longer sending the story off to Raven to be edited, there seems to be absolutely no reason for the story to be sitting idly in the documents area. I imagine Tara finished each chapter and immediately shoved it online in a frantic hurry to get it out there, as opposed to leaving it online to age like a fine vintage of toilet moonshine.

The original posting of the chapter was actually from the original document being copy/pasted into the one that contained the fake chapter nine. However, chapter 40 is then posted some time later as, “Chapter 40. LOL! Someone has taken my account over” by what seems to be the hacker. Which is odd, since they already pasted it into chapter 39, and posting it again from the document area seems rather pointless. It even includes an addition of, “THE IDIOT’S NOTE: Well… this was in the doc area… might as well let the whole world see what the real Tara wanted to show us… Have a nice day!” that the chapter 39 version lacks, meaning this hacker allegedly went into the doc, copy/pasted it into a new file with her chapter and Tara’s, but then edited the original document and posted it too. It’s an odd thing to do, like someone went in with very little idea of what the plan actually was and stumbled redundantly over ideas as they went.

But particularly odd about this whole thing is that Tara does nothing about it. She doesn’t delete the insulting notes or remove the fake chapter, she leaves them both there even though the author’s note of chapter 41 makes it clear that she’s very aware of her account being compromised, not only letting the mockery of herself remain, but even letting it effect the numbering of subsequent chapters. Which may seem like just Tara not caring enough and going with the chapter numbers listed by fanfiction.net, until you look back at chapter 10.

Chapter 10 was posted twice, and Tara never removed the second, identical version of it. It remained on the site up until the day the story was purged by site moderators. And yet, Tara always remained consistent in her renumbering of the chapters, always subtracting one from the chapter count when she posted it; what the site claimed was chapter 12 was really chapter 11. For a story with only the barest minimum of shits given, to properly compensate for this numbering accident for almost thirty chapters is a surprising amount of misplaced effort, but it establishes that she does care about the chapter numbers, and makes the sudden slip a lot more suspect. Why only go halfway in on her effort by continuing to count her double-posted chapter, but not this fake one that she’s allowed to remain as a part of the saga?

Part 8. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore – Bringing it all together

I’ve prattled on for well over ten thousand words now about a myriad of My Immortal’s issues, but you could look at each individual flaw of the story and say that on their own, they hardly form evidence of trollery afoot, even if some of the more glaring issues are harder to explain away. But surely I’m going to show how they connected to form the cohesive peak of my argument, right? “How soon are you going to get to that?” you shout into your screen, not knowing how computers work.

Well how soon is now?

Tara Gilesbie wrote a story that set her up as the ultimate caricature of a teenaged fanfic writer who is just the worst in all of the best ways. All of the elements of bad writing on every level came into a perfect storm that only grew more powerful over time as it sank further and further into its own madness until it didn’t even resemble what it had started out as. From the self-inserted wish fulfillment to a startlingly creative use of the English language, it hits every hallmark of a bad fanfic one would think to roll up into one neat and tidy little ball, save for perhaps a massive panfandom crossover of everything the author has ever liked.

There is a clear story arc in My Immortal, but it isn’t Ebony’s tale of romance and destiny, it’s Tara’s slow descent into gibbering madness, like the story she had created was an eldritch being that she was unable to comprehend the sight of. As I went over in part one, the writing style breaks down steadily over time, becoming more typo-ridden, filled with more and more casual abbreviations and chatspeak until it’s become apparent that she simply doesn’t care, and while the decline in writing 'quality’ certainly begins with Raven’s absence, it is a steady drop for many chapters afterward. Tara’s character is not one that seems like she has a grasp on subtlety or moving slowly, but that’s the pace with which the boundaries are pushed.

Let’s look at the plot in a rather brief rundown. The story starts out fairly simply, with Ebony and Draco falling in love and having poorly written sex in the forest. Vampire comes in to complicate things in a love triangle that is surprising for leading to attraction angst in all possible directions. Voldemort’s introduction adds to the melodrama of the story, and it weaves in and out of slice of life romance angst and the Voldemort subplot rather strangely. Then, in chapter 17, my favorite part of the story occurs, and it signifies the moment where My Immortal jumps the shark in a way nobody would have ever dreamt of.

Gerard was da sexiest guy eva! He locked even sexier den he did in pix. He had long raven blak hair n piercing blue eyes. He wuz really skinny and he had n amazing ethnic voice. We moshed 2 Helena and sum odder songz. Sudenly Gerard polled of his mask. So did the other membez. I gasped. It wasn’t Gerard at all! It was an ugly preppy man wif no nose and red eyes… Every1 ran away but me and Draco. Draco and I came. It was…….Vlodemort and da Death Deelers!

“U moronic idiots!” he shooted angstily. “Enoby, I told u to kill Vampire. Thou have failed. And now……….I shall kill thou and Draco!”

“No no please!” We begged sadly but he took out his knife.

Sudenly a gothic old man flu in on his broomstick. He had lung black hair and a looong black bread. He wus werring a blak robe dat sed ‘avril lavigne’ on da back. He shotted a spel and Vlodemort ran away. It was…………………………………DUMBLYDORE

It’s important here to note that this is very soon after Raven left the story. and remember that this is around when the story began to stop caring about spelling and typing. After this point, everything in the plot goes off the rails. The melodrama ramps up, Ebony is revealed as the only one who can stop Voldemort, time travel is introduced, despite supplanting Harry as the chosen one who can defeat the Dark Lord she instead tries to seduce a teenaged Tom Riddle… Everything goes completely off the rails.

And that’s the plan all along. The angle of Raven and Tara’s feud never went anywhere, probably because nobody really cared much about two teenagers yelling at each other on the internet. At least, not until 2015 when some asshole would examine the shit out of it for very little discernable reason or gain. I believe that when it was scrapped, the brain trust behind My Immortal decided to go in a different direction. Readers may not have took the bait of their public dispute, but they were buying the troll hook, line, and sinker. People genuinely believe, or at least want to believe, that the story was written in earnest. Even a lot of the people who have doubts about it have them on the grounds that they don’t want to accept that someone could write a story so terrible. The unexpected appeal of the trainwreck that was My Immortal itself, rather than the meta saga of Tara Gilesbie, terrible writer and object of mockery, drove the project into a different direction.

The story and spelling both degrade at the same time, steadily creeping further and further into the most ludicrous things the author thinks they can get away with. As the readers continue to accept what they see as genuine, the author pushes further, which is why we see new elements constantly introduced into the story where they make no sense. It’s not Tara throwing the kitchen sink into her story in a misguided belief that a lot of everything will make her story good, it’s Tara setting the narrative on a trajectory of the most ludicrous thing she can think of, and watching as people believe it. Because they do, completely.

Sex is introduced into the story, because of course it is, through the most unappealing of ways possible. Genitalia are referred to by 'thingy’ as though using the word penis is too embarrassing for her to handle, even though later she refers to Snap’s 'clook’ without issue. To further the wish fulfillment, she must be having sex with her love interests, and it must be terrible.

We went on the bed and started making out naked and then he put his boy’s thingy in mine and we HAD SEX. (c is dat stupid?)

I believe they call that docking.

I’ve already explained how I believe Tara Gilesbie to be just as much a fictional character as Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, and what I feel that character is meant to be is the most mockable and stereotypical fanfic writer one could ever dream of. A teenage emo girl delusionally believing she’s a goth, who’s into boys kissing but has no problem throwing homophobic slurs around, who violates the Harry Potter canon in every way possible for the sake of creating her world of wish fulfillment where everything centers around her. Every bad writing trope wrapped up into sensibilities that set themselves up for mockery. Throw on a tragic lack of self-awareness that opens her up to be laughed at as she smugly highlights her mistakes, and all the pieces fall into place.

Tara Gislebie is a parody of fanfic writers.

Before My Immortal hit the scene, bad fanfiction was not as popular a fandom passtime as it is now, owing largely to new forms of media allowing us to better share the stories and our mockery of them than we had access to in mid-2006, but also because it was always rather contained within fandoms or specific LJ groups meant to deride them. But My Immortal crossed boundaries and spread far outside the reaches of the Harry Potter fandom, to become more than just a story. It was a sensation, a fic so notorious that even people who weren’t around back then have still at least heard of it, even if they haven’t gone out looking for it. While bad writers are nothing new to fandom, My Immortal set off a slew of imitators and tributes, fake sequels, adaptations using its basic setups in different fandoms to produce interesting results, and with more attention suddenly on badfic with the intent to mock it, troll writers came out in droves to try and reproduce the magic.

Some succeeded. Many failed, and I believe one of the main reasons is that people continue to take My Immortal at its word. They just whip some typo-heavy dreck up in their word processor, and ignore all of the subtler elements of My Immortal. It gets so much wrong from the very beginning, but it had to slowly stew in its own crazy long enough to become the poorly written train wreck we’ve come to love. For a story so over the top, that combines all of the elements of a bad story into one perfect package, it does it cleverly enough that it continues to fool people almost ten years later.

You may believe that this is all way too much work for anyone to put into a stupid fanfic. That if it’s meant to be a joke, that it’s a long way to go. Developping characters, faked account compromises, and an active effort put into writing as terribly as possible. And it is a lot of effort, which is meant to throw you off, because it’s the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.

Haha. Wondering why this post isn’t where it’s normally found?

Well, my friends, ask no more!

On a dark lonely evening, sweat drips through your hair

Warm smell of your butthurt, rising up through the air

Up ahead in the distance, see the laptop’s blue light

Your head grows heavy and your sight grows dim

Gotta stop for the night

There my posts on the display

Rang the warning bell

And you were thinking to your self

Give it a week and I’d surely quell

Then I flamed all the posters and I showed you her name

There were voices ringing in your head

Swear you’d heard them say

Welcome to the Hotel Tarafornia

Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)

Such a normal place

Plenty of room at the Hotel Tarafornia

Any time of year (Any of time of year)

I can smell your fear

Her mind is Tumblr-addicted

She got them means behind ends

She got a lotta commie, commie kids

That she calls friends

How they dance in the Discord

Sweet doxxing rush

Some post to remember

Some troll to forget

So I called up the admin

“Please bring my ban”

And he said

We haven’t had that spirit here since GC toured Japan

And still those voices are ringing from far away

But still those posts are comin’ from far away

Wake you up in the middle of the night

Just to hear me say

Welcome to the Hotel Tarafornia

Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)

Such a horrid face

Living it up in the Hotel Tarafornia

What an awful lie (What an awful lie)

What an alibi

Mirrors behind mirrors

Men behind the man

And she said: “We are all just copycats here

Of a copy of a fake

Among the moderators

They gathered for a feast

They stab it with their steely knives

But they just can’t kill the beast

Last thing you remember, you were

Grasping for your mouse

You had to find the permaban

To restore what was before

“Relax”, said your bete-noire

“I am

Programmed to deceive

You can ban me any time you like,

But I will never leave!”

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minervahopebeyond · 4 years

Text

Blood Daffodils.

Hi!! I’m so glad I got to update, I have to prepare midterms this week but I promise to try to update as soon as I can (mostly because I know that it’s horrible to wait to know what the fuck is going to happen next). Please let me know what you thought of this one!! ✨ I’m really nervous because it took a lot of work and rewrites 💕Ps: I’ve checked but sorry if you find any errors in this one.

Chapter 12: The aftermath.

The water was so cold that he felt his skin burn as soon as he jumped in, maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

He was already in, though, and he needed that sword. Draco swam, diving into the chilling waters, he was having troubles seeing clearly, so he casted a wordless lumos while he still was underwater. The blond boy attempted to take the sword by the grip, extending his arm to grab it. Come on.

A slender hand closed its long fingers around his wrist. The daffodils reacted almost instantly, cutting him, warning him that they needed to get out of there. The panic was spreading through him like a wave, touching every single fiber in his body. It’s a trap. No, fuck no.

Afraid to look up, still holding his breath, Draco gathered the courage to lift his eyes. As soon as he saw her, as their eyes met, something in his breathing changed...

“You have been running away from me, boy”

Somehow, being under water didn’t seem to affect her at all. Her voice was as enchanting as he remembered, hearing her was like hearing the perfect melody on a piano and wanting, needing to play it over and over again. His heart pumped a little slower at the sound of her voice and Draco was just happy that he had, at least, some strength to free himself from her hand.

He swam up as fast as he could, knowing full well that he was leaving the sword behind him. Just the surface, he just needed to reach to it. At the same time, he was trying to picture the cute little boy in Madam Malkin’s; it was so hard to focus... When he got to the surface he took a breath from fresh air and yelled as he waved his wand.

“Expecto Patronum!”

What came out of the wand wasn’t a lion, he was too distracted for that. The ball of silver was floating and Draco couldn’t be any more thankful. He called the only person who would understand what was happening.

“Weasley! Help!! I-“

Those were the only words that he got to pronounce because he was being sunken back in the lake, being pulled by his ankle with such force that it was unavoidable.

He allowed himself to look at her, the fabric of the white transparent dress floating around her, her silky long black hair framing her beautiful features as she drag Draco into the depth of the lake. When he stopped struggling she took his face in her hands and muttered something that he couldn’t understand.

Suddenly, they weren’t under water. He felt like he was, because the cold was the same, but around him... There wasn’t anything, not water, not air, no stars, no earth... just darkness and nothingness.

“You can’t get out of here unless I allow it.” She stated, standing a few meters away from him.

“Is this the other side?” He asked, fearing that his soul had crossed the veil without realizing it. Her melodic laughter filled the silence.

“No, boy. You still have time. Is that why you keep running away?”

“Maybe...”

“Foolish, I just wanted to talk. You were so polite and kind when we met the first time, I thought that you liked my presence.”

And Draco thought that lying was the most logical option, to say that yes, he loved her and all the things she had in her realm, but he didn’t find it in him to say any of those things.

“I apologize, your highness.” Was the only thing that came out instead.

“There is no need for such formalities. I’ll just cut to the chase, your friends are coming.” Thank fuck.“You have something that belongs to me, I want it back.”

Draco frowned, his heart pounding against his chest.

“Yo-you made a deal! You can’t take James away-“

“Do you always jump to conclusions? I will not take James Fleamont Potter back with me, nor do I wish to take you sooner to the other side.” The flowers seemed to relax at her clarification. “It is not a soul. I can not tell you what it is, there are rules that forbid me to speak of it. But I want it back, I was young and reckless when I made it and I wish to have it back.”

“And I have to find this...? Even if I don’t know what it is or how does it look like?” He tried not to offend her but it sounded ridiculous.

“The only thing I can say is that you actually have two things that belong to me. One you can keep, I do not care for it, the other one is the one I want.”

He felt the change of temperature, like a distant sensation that was surrounding his body. He looked around, still nothingness.

“Your redhead friend does not like me very much, he is threatening me, saying that I should let you alone or else.” She said smoothly, chuckling as she mentioned Weasley. “Do you promise to find it?” Draco nodded.

“I’ll do my best.”

She walked to where he was, putting a hand on his forehead.

“I know, you are an awfully committed soul.” She said and pushed him back, the ‘nothingness floor’ disappeared under him and he was falling into the darkness.

He could hear their voices, like they were muffled. His head was killing him and his eyes were heavy, he tried to opened them but failed. There was pressure in his chest...

“Come on, Draco!!” He heard Granger scream. “One, two, three, four..”

“Kid, please wake up.”

“Enervate! Enervate, you stupid ferret!”

“Ron you are not helping!!” Her voice achieved a high pitch tone that Draco had never heard before. Then, he felt someone open his mouth and pinch his nose. Air was being blowed into his mouth repeatedly... when the press in his chest started again, he coughed.

“Oh thank god.” Granger breathed out in relief.

Draco was coughing, the cold water coming out from his lungs with the daffodils included. He tried to formulate the words in between the coughs.

“The...sword-“

“Ferret?”

“She- Her “ The petals wouldn’t stop coming out. “Is in the lake- I - I have to get it.” He said and pushed himself up, or at least he tried to... His legs failed him and he was caught by someone. The cheap cologne filled his nostrils... Potter.

“You are not going anywhere”

“The sword of Gryffindor... In the lake... I have to...”

I have to get it.

His eyes were heavy again, Draco wanted to remain awake... He tried to, with all his strength to walk again.

Everything went black.

—————————

"Harry, you need to go to sleep." He raised his eyes when he heard the voice of his father.

He needed for Malfoy to wake up, actually. In just a couple of hours it would be a whole day since the boy passed out. They had casted the heating charms as soon as Ron got him out of the lake and throwed him in hot water when they got to the house... His temperature seemed to rise, which was a good thing because he was so cold... But the truth was that, now, the coldness was replaced with a fever. It worried him, Hermione said that it was normal, with the temperature that he had to endure it would be worrisome for him not to get sick.

“I’m fine.” He replied as he moved on the chair, trying to be more comfortable.

His father sighed and closed the door again, he could hear him talking with Padfoot outside, complaining about the situation. They should mind their own business. After what the horcrux said to Sirius when he was trying to destroy it...

‘I know you, Sirius Orion Black. Your soul is the darkest. Neglected by your parents who always liked your brother better. Disowned by your family because of a love that was never requited... You never were his first choice, were you? Even now, he is only with you because his true love isn’t here. He feels pity for you, just like the Potters did. They never loved you, not truly, Euphemia just put up with you because of his son-‘

And Sirius brandished the sword, breaking the locket. After the horcrux was destroyed he said: ‘That’s a lie, I was Euphemia’s favorite’ While that made Harry like his grandmother a whole lot, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they should talk if the man still thought that his dad was only with him because his mother wasn’t around.

He turned to look at the blond boy again, and reached to move his hair out of his face before checking his temperature. Still high, fuck.

“You have no idea of how angry I am. None. I swear.” Harry said with an exasperated tone. “But... It will be worst if you don’t wake up. Is... Is She keeping you there? Ron told us, he screamed bloody murder when the patronus came to get him, woke us all up.” He took a deep breath and got up from the chair to sit at the bed, next to the boy, to be closer to him. He grabbed the boy’s hand and started to trace the line on his palm. “Why didn’t you tell me, Draco...? I keep trying to understand why did you lie about the cottage, and I find no explanation, you know? Because there is none, you should have told us.” Harry felt the tears start to course down his cheeks, his glasses were starting to get tarnished from the crying so he took them off. “ I’m not useless. I can help you, I swear... I- I know I haven’t been much help with all this except for maybe distracting you, but I’m trying.”

He felt so helpless. He loved this boy so much that his body physically ached when they were not together and Draco didn’t even consider him to tell him his problems. ‘He would have told Nott’ The toxic little voice in his head kept on whispering, making him feel madder and madder by the minute.

“I care about you.” The words left his lips, his voice so thin and weak. “I know that we are not supposed to talk about our feelings or whatever but I do. And I don’t want you to die,much less before we get our time together... I’m babbling, I know. You hate when I do that.”

“Harry...” Draco’s voice sounded rough and tired, he widened his eyes.

“Draco?” The dark haired boy moved to check his temperature again, the fever was increasing. Fuck. The other boy opened his eyes, they seemed lost, even when they found Harry’s green ones.

“I- I’m sorry.”

“Don’t talk, please. I’m going to call someone, see if we can give you pepper-up again-“

“I’m sorry for maki- making fun of you.” He was gone in his own thoughts... Harry knew that because his eyes couldn’t focus and his voice was all sleepy. He felt like his heart was being squeezed just from the sight. Why did this felt like a goodbye? “I saw your mother... Lily is nice... Maybe we can be friends after-“

The blond boy’s rant was cut short by Harry’s screaming, asking for someone to come quick. He saw his mother, the boy saw his mother and Death all in the same day and now his fever was higher... This felt like a goodbye because- No. He wasn’t going to think about that. Not now, they still have time.

The door opened and everyone entered the room. It was normal now, after what happened they were all equally worried. Originally, they were going to take turns to look after Malfoy, but since Harry refused to leave his side, it didn’t work out.

“Ferret! You are awake!” Ron exclaimed with happiness, the dark haired boy let out a sob as more tears came out of his eyes.

“He is not, I think he is hallucinating or talking in his sleep... I don’t think he will remember what he is saying. He just apologized to me, for everything, he said he saw my mom-“ His voice came out strangled, talking through the lump in the back of his throat was getting painful. “I can’t be here if he is saying goodbye. I can’t- give him something, please. His fever-“

Suddenly he was being pulled out of the room in Padfoot’s arms, the man said that he couldn’t be there for a goodbye either and that just made Harry cry even harder because it felt too real and he wanted for all to be just a bad dream.

His godfather pour him a glass of water and put it in the little table next to them. Not that he could drink anything right now but it was a thoughtful gesture. They sat on the couch, hugging each other while they listened to the other three argue up there about what could be the best thing to give to the boy. It was too much.

“How did you do it?” Harry asked with a thin voice. Sirius didn’t respond, maybe he was waiting for a him to clarify what he meant. “How did you live fourteen years of your life without him? I can’t even picture myself existing if he doesn’t call me Potter or Scarhead once a day. I can’t imagine not hearing his voice, I-“

“It’s the pain.” Padfoot answered with a calm voice as he brushed his fingers through Harry’s hair, trying to sooth him. “The pain reminds you that you are alive and you keep living because it’s what they would have wanted. In my case, knowing that I had to get to you eventually was a big help... focusing on other things.”

“I don’t want to focus on other things. It’s hard enough knowing that he is going to marry someone else and I’m going to die alone, because I don’t want anyone else. But... but I thought that maybe i could still be in his life, you know? Being his friend... I’ll put up with Nott, I don’t care.” He looked away, embarrassed because he was about to confess something that he had never told anyone, something that made him feel like the worst person ever. “And... maybe with time I could be something more... I wouldn’t mind keeping it a secret-“

“Oh, Prongslet, no. You don’t want to be-“

“Don’t lecture me, Padfoot. Wouldn’t you have done the same if dad offered? Even if he was married and had a family.” Sirius sighed, a sad look on his eyes.

“Yes.” His godfather replied and Harry was glad to hear it.

At least he wasn’t the only one.

—————-

Harry woke up in his own bed, alone. He remembered talking with Padfoot on the couch, he didn’t remember falling asleep... Just drinking water... Oh. Sneaky little bastard.

“Good morning.” Was this..? Was he still dreaming?

He turned around and there he was, looking all gorgeous. He had one of Ron’s sweaters on, maybe he was still cold, but he didn’t looked sick at all. Harry felt like a weight on his chest had been lifted.

“Before you say anything, I’m going to talk because every single person in this house has already lectured me.” Malfoy said before taking a sit on his bed and grabbing Harry’s hand. It was warm... but the right amount, no fever, no freezing water temperature, alive and well. He locked his green eyes in his stormy grey ones, encouraging for him to go on. “I didn’t tell you about the cottage because I was afraid that She was looking for your father or for me, and I didn’t want to worry you. I went looking for the sword because I saw your mother’s patronus, given the fact that I’ve been seeing Death I thought it could be her so I followed. We are not sure that it was her now, or Death trying to pull me closer... It doesn’t matter though. I’m sorry, okay? For everything. For not telling you, for going there alone, for making you cry, I’m sorry.”

“Can you kiss me?” Is the only thing that Harry could reply after his monologue. He tugged Draco’s hand and guided him close, he needed to feel like everything was real.

And when Malfoy kissed him, he felt like everything was alright again, like the day before was just this nightmare and the blond boy just came to wake him up, like he always did.

“I have this vague memory that I’ve already told you this... But I’m sorry about mocking you about your parents... For both of them. They are great and you are just like them... That’s a good thing. And what it’s not like them, it’s like Sirius and that’s amazing too.”

Harry blushed as a soft smile appeared on his lips. How could this boy make him be even more in love with him? How? It wasn’t normal, this amount of love for a single person wasn’t natural.

“I-“ ‘I love you, so much that you can do with me what you want, okay? I’m going to be happy being whatever it is that you want me to be: your friend, your lover, your partner, your husband. Just ask for it and I’ll do it.’ It was in moments like this when he understood why he was supposed to be in slytherin. The words died in his throat, there was no way he could say that to Malfoy’s face. He lacked the courage, it just wasn’t in him.

“You... what?” The grey eyed boy was looking at him, expectant, like if whatever Harry was about to say was the most important thing ever.

“I like you. I really really like you.” He said and his face was blushed crimson red. But the smile in Draco’s face was blinding, so it was worth the embarrassment. The blond boy leaned and planted a soft kiss on his lips again and another one on his nose, playfully.

“I really like you too. Really” He said and then he pushed some of Harry’s hair off his face. “Do you forgive me? I mean- you don’t have to. I know I was a terrible person for a long time but-“

“I do.” He said calmly as he offered a smile to the boy. “I think I forgave you a long time ago but thank you for apologizing. It means a lot.”

And he kissed Draco again, smiling in between the kisses and feeling utterly happy the whole time.

He is here, he is here and he is safe and healthy and we have time.

#drarry #fanfic #fanfiction #prongsfoot

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