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leclerc-s · 6 months

Text

a nonsense christmas

series masterlist

liked by maxverstappen1, nataliaruiz, arthur_leclerc and others

maejones 'i caught that holiday glee, my true love gave it to me.' i present to you a nonsense christmas.

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danielricciardo i thought you couldn't get anymore unhinged after nonsense, i was so wrong.

daphnejones mae, what the hell is this song.

↳ maejones it's a christmas song daph! do you not like it?

isabellaperez brb gonna go play it for christian and my uncle!

↳ maxverstappen1 ISABELLA DON'T YOU DARE!

↳ isabellaperez OH IT LOOKS LIKE JOS IS IN THE GARAGE!

↳ maxverstappen1 ISABELLA!

↳ user89 oh to be apart of this friend group

penelopetrevino sometimes i wonder how people think i'm the horny one when mae writes shit like this.

↳ dulceperez you wrote mayores. daphne wrote dress. mae wrote nonsense. i think all three of you are equally horny

user41 well i made the mistake of playing this infront of my parents i will never recover.

↳ user09 NO! OH I PRAY FOR YOU

esteban ocon i'm supposed to be able to look max in the eyes now?

lewishamilton i renounce our friendship. good luck to fernando and seb, but i'm done. find someone to replace me. maybe kimi or valtteri. hell kevin or hulkenberg might like these guys.

↳ georgerussell63 good luck being able to get away from us

user32 i fear jos is questioning who his son is dating and who his friends are

↳ landonorris oh, he did that way before this song or nonsense came out

isabellaperez JOS VERSTAPPEN IS NOT A FAN OF A NONSENSE CHRISTMAS! I REPEAT HE IS NOT A FAN! MAX TELL HIM TO PUT THE FUCKING FORK DOWN!

↳ user13 there's no way she actually did it

↳ maxverstappen1 I WARNED YOU NOT TO DO THAT! HE WASN'T GOING TO LIKE IT!

↳ user13 i stand corrected

↳ danielricciardo THIS IS THE FUNNIEST SHIT I'VE EVER FUCKING SEEN! NETFLIX BETTER BE RECORDING THIS BECAUSE IT'S COMEDY GOLD!

↳ alex_albon SHE JUST RAN PAST THE WILLIAMS GARAGE!! I THINK I'M ABOUT TO PEE FROM ALL THIS LAUGHING!!

↳ nataliaruiz PEOPLE! IT'S NOT JOS CHASING HER WITH A FORK! IT'S MAX WITH A WATER GUN! JOS LEFT THE GARAGE AFTER ISABELLA PULLED HER LITTLE TRICK!! HE HAD A FORK BECAUSE HE WAS HAVING LUNCH WITH MAE!!

↳ maejones YOU COULDN'T HAVE WAITED UNTIL HE WAS ALONE? I CAN NEVER FACE HIM AGAIN! OH MY GOD, DIGGING MY GRAVE AS WE SPEAK!!

↳ dulceperez she looks like a wet and angry kitten

isabella perez MAX EMILIAN VERSTAPPEN I WILL BE GETTING MY REVENGE!

max verstappen I'D LIKE TO SEE YOU TRY!!

isabella perez DULCE MARIA PEREZ! YOU'RE FUCKING NEXT!

esteban ocon she's in the alpine garage and she does look like a wet cat

oscar piastri i think it's kinda cute

logan sargeant AY-YO? ARE WE JUST GONNA SLIDE PAST THAT?

alex albon i think the songs kinda catchy.

daniel jones-ricciardo i did not need to know max had big snowballs.

mae jones you've literally seen him naked before pierre gasly UM WHAT? daniel jones-ricciardo IT WAS AN ACCIDENT! HOW I SUPPOSED TO KNOW HE WAS NAKED? max verstappen THERE'S THIS NEW THING. IT'S CALLED KNOCKING daniel ricciardo DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE QUOTE ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS AT ME MAX!

fernando alonso i worry for all of you. also what does 'you got a new toy for me' mean? aren't all of you too old to be playing with toys?

esteban ocon i know you're not that fucking naive fernando. stop fucking with them. fernando alonso but it's so much fun

lewis hamilton OH MY GOD! SOME THINGS ARE BETTER KEPT A SECRET MAE!

mae jones so my sister can write dress and scratches down daniel's back but i can't write about max's dick?

carlos sainz i am permanently scarred. some things i can't ever unhear.

george russell i am in shock

esteban ocon i need 3 to 5 business WEEKS to recover from this.

sebastian vettel i'm speechless and not in a good way

mick schumacher ignoring who the song is about and that i know the singer, it's good.

freya vettel a certified christmas bop

natalia ruiz I NEED THAT CHARLES DICKENS. YOU'LL BE SANTA CLAUS AND I'LL BE MRS. I'LL TAKE YOU FOR A RIDE, I'LL BE YOUR VIXEN. I DON'T EVEN KNOW I'M TALKING CHRISTMAS!!

daphne jones-ricciardo i know someday you two idiots will have children and i pray they never find this song. just like i pray they never find mine.

rowan todd digital footprint is real guys, just look at timothee chalamet, the superior french guy.

esteban ocon uh oh, i think they're fighting again. dulce perez alright, what'd you do this time gasly? pierre gasly why is it always my fault? dulce perez it's always your fault bitch, so what'd you do? pierre gasly i didn't do shit, this time, she's just mad because i ate the last croissant. natalia ruiz uh oh, i know those symptoms. charles leclerc the world is not ready for little pierres rowan todd i'm not pregnant (i think) pierre gasly what the fuck??? isabella perez ARE WE GETTING ANOTHER BABY?? SO CLOSE TO BABY LECLERC?? AWWW!! YES!!

max verstappen god i hope not. one mini charles we can handle but a mini pierre no please no.

taglist: @burningcupcakefire @arkhammaid @sunflower-golden-vol6 @applopie

¡leclerc-s speaks! shout out to @bb-swift who replied to nonsense and reminded me that a nonsense christmas existed. let's not talk about today's gp and use humor to cope. as a charles girlie i am struggling today as i have the entire season. i've also created a google form for people to fill out if you wish to be added to the taglist to any of my series.

¡disclaimer! this is in no way making assumptions about the people involved in this story, this is all fake. it is a fanfiction please don't take any of what is said seriously. this is all for entertainment purposes and as a creative outlet for me. enjoy!

#leclerc-s #the honest series #max verstappen #max verstappen x female oc #formula 1 #formula 1 fic #fanfic #fanfiction #f1 #f1 smau #f1 social media au #f1 instagram au #f1 fic

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florsial · 9 months

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Slytherin Skittles (aka Hogwarts' Pantheon) Incorrect quotes!

(+others)

. . . . .

Evan: We’ve been conducting an ongoing study to see what Barty will and will not eat. Pandora: Grass? Yes! Evan: Moss? Yes!! Pandora: Leaves? Ohh, yes! Evan: Shoelaces? Strange but true! Pandora: Worms? Sometimes! Evan: Rocks? Usually nah. Pandora: Twigs? Usually! Evan: Dorcas's cooking? Inconclusive! Regulus: How did you… test this? Evan: You just hand them stuff and say ‘eat this’ and if they eat it, they eat it. Regulus: ... I don’t know how to feel about this. Dorcas: IS THAT WHERE ALL MY SPARE SHOELACES WENT?

. . . .

Regulus: Where's Evan, Dorcas, and Pandora?

Barty: They're playing hide and seek. Regulus: Where? Barty: I don't think you get how this game works.

. . . .

Pandora: Regulus's first detention, I'm so proud. Evan: Whoa, back up. Why did they get detention? Dorcas: Because they're an idiot. Barty, terrified: They can do that??

. . . .

Regulus: I swear to god I'm the only one here with a braincell. Evan and Barty: ALL HAIL the keeper of the sacred braincell!

. . . .

Regulus: What did you guys get in your yearbook? Dorcas: 'Prettiest Smile' Pandora: 'Nicest Personality' Barty: 'Most likely to start a bar fight' Evan: 'Least likely to start a bar fight, but most likely to win one'

. . . .

Regulus: You're a lying piece of shit! Barty: Oh yeah? You're the idiot that thinks you can get away with everything you do, WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD! Evan: I'm leaving and I'm taking Pandora with me! Dorcas, gathering cards: Aaaaand that's enough Monopoly for today.

. . . .

Pandora: Why isn’t the statue smirking at me? Dorcas: It isn’t smirking at anyone, they’re all just imagining it. Barty: Three of us saw it, Dorcas. How do you explain that? Dorcas: *points at Evan* Sleep deprivation. *points at Regulus* Paranoia. *points at Barty* Delusional personality disorder.

. . . .

Pandora: You really put aside everything and came all this way for me? How did you even get here so fast? Dorcas: Several traffic violations. Evan: Three counts of resisting arrest. Barty: Roughly thirteen cans of energy drinks. Regulus: Also, that’s not our car.

. . . .

Barty: How do you connect with a fictional character? Evan: What? Dorcas: What? Pandora: What? Regulus: *pulls up a 500 slide presentation* I'm glad you asked.

. . . .

Regulus: Ah, yes. Here we have a beautiful couple... Pandora: I really care about your feelings! Lily: I really care about YOUR feelings! Regulus, turning their head: ...and then there's the disaster couple... Barty: YOU NEED TO PAY MORE ATTENTION TO ME INSTEAD OF BEING AT THE HOSPITAL! Evan: I WOULDN'T HAVE TO SPEND SO MUCH TIME AT THE HOSPITAL IF YOU STOPPED INSISTING ON FIGHTING EVERYONE WHO COMES WITHIN A FIVE FOOT RADIUS OF YOU!

. . . .

James: What did you get Regulus for their birthday? Pandora: I got them a kitten. Barty: Really? Me too! Dorcas: I also got them a cat. Evan: Looks like we had the same idea. Pandora: James, please tell me you didn't get Regulus a cat as well! James: ...I got them a kitten. *later* Regulus, in their apartment surrounded by cats and kittens: This is the best birthday ever!

. . . .

Pandora: What do rainbows mean to you? Barty: Gay rights. Dorcas: There's money. Evan: The sign of God's promise to never destroy the whole Earth with a flood. Regulus: It is an optical phenomenon that separates sunlight into its continuous spectrum when the sun shines on raindrops.

. . . .

Regulus: Poison is a magic transmutation potion that turns people into corpses. Barty: This knife is actually a magic wand. Evan: Meet me in the Denny's parking lot for a wizard duel. Pandora: * cocks gun* Magic missile. Dorcas: What the fuck is wrong with you people.

#regulus black #marauders #barty crouch jr #marauders era #pandora rosier #dorcas meadowes #evan rosier #the slytherin skittles #slytherin #slytherin skittles #incorrect quotes #slytherin skittles incorrect quotes #pandalily

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capybaraonabicycle · 2 months

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The Doctor's Ship (Tenteen x Mels)

Please, @whenyourunwiththedoctor put them into my head this morning with her beautiful collage of pictures and quotes and now I need them to be a thing! So I wrote a tiny bit of a scene for them - don't ask me how this fits into canon; do ask me about the circumstances though, I would love to work on yet another Mels AU tbh

[ID: two images, the first one is of the Tenteen (14th) Doctor looking out the TARDIS door, smiling cheekily, the other one of Mels Zucker, looking upwards with a determined expression and the hint of a smile. end ID]

Mels has seen the police box stand in their garden with doors closed for so long, she has almost forgotten it is supposed to open. There is a flutter in her stomach when John turns the key and he looks over his shoulder, winking at her, like he knows exactly what is going on inside her mind. He probably does. John always seems to know.

He doesn't open the door though, stepping to the side and leaning against the TARDIS's corner – because this is the TARDIS, right? Mels is honest-to-God about to enter the TARDIS, the Doctor's spaceship, step into his realm, experience the wonder of timetravel for herself.

“Would you do the honors?” John asks, tapping the handle invitingly, before pulling back to continue staring at her.

He does that as lot, stare at her. Always has, even before they started seeing each other. Sometimes it feels like he knows her in a thousand different lives and realities, like he looks at her but he's seeing someone else who is also her, who she will grow into, perhaps. He is a timetraveller after all. Or is he?

There is a soft smile playing at his lips, the kind he reserves for her and Donna and Rose and Mel.

“Don't mind if I do, honey.”

She tries to put on a brave face – she is just opening a door after all, nevermind what that might change between John and her – but she can't quite hold back the jitters in her voice. John seems to notice, because right away he is streching out his hand towards her, fingers wiggling back and forth, eyebrows raised in question. She accepts the hand gladly, palm sliding against his calloused skin – he spends way too much time in his tinkering shed, cooking up a present or other for her (or Rose). Still, the pressure is reassuring and now she is pushing open the door, slowly.

She knows immediately. It's hard to miss a 'bigger on the inside' spaceship, but she knows at first glance on the white floor and walls that this is her. Awestruck, she steps inside, John following behind her. It's like the air is buzzing with time, but maybe those are just her nerves, flaring up at the realisation that she has actually found him. The Doctor. She had known, of course, but having the confirmation, finally – frankly, it is dizzying.

“Hello” Mels breathes and the TARDIS hums in response, a sound that goes through her body and into her mind. It feels like coming home.

John is pressing her hand again. “Are you okay?”

He's standing very close, she can feel his breath on her skin. So close. So vulnerable.

It's John, she tells herself. That's all that matters, that's all she has to know. Just John, her friend, her love, who is stupid enough to try and keep the Doctor safe from her and yet is trusting her with this knowledge now. Well, he doesn't know that she's out to get the Doctor, does he? Because he isn't him.

She turns around to him and again he is watching her, all caring eyes and adoring smile. No trace of fear. And why would there be?

“Perfectly” she lies, smiling back, and his own grin grows, showing his teeth.

“Come on!” he beams. “You've got to check out the coffee machine!”

“Your - This ship has a coffee machine?” she laughs, letting him pull her over to the console.

“The best coffee machine in the universe” he boasts, startling when he already finds a cup waiting. He picks it up, sniffing carefully, before plunging his tongue into the scalding hot contents. He winces, pulls a face and hands the cup to Mels, shaking his head, huffing and puffing.

“It's for you” he says and the words sound airy as he's trying to cool his burnt tongue. Mels bites back a grin, taking the cup. He shakes himself violently.

“Triple macchiato with a pinch of cinnamon” he coughs. “I don't understand how you gulp that stuff down.”

“You mean without a bucket of sugar to go with it?” she teases and he glares.

“Careful, love” he then warns, belatedly. “It's hot.”

“Yeah, dear” she deadpans. “I noticed.”

She blows onto the cup, looking around the console in wonder. He passes behind her, lightly touching between her shoulder blades.

“Be careful not to spill onto the console either” he mutters. “Or we could end up Rassilon-knows-where.”

She raises an eyebrow at the haunted look in his eyes. “That sounds like you've got experience.”

He huffs. “Don't remind me.”

She chuckles, taking a small gulp of the coffee. It tastes heavenly. She can definitely see John's clumsy self spilling coffee onto the console and jettisonning the Doctor far out into space. The Doctor was probably livid with him. Mels wish she could have been there to laugh at John and then hurt the Doctor for shouting at him. No one but Mels (or Donna) gets to be cross with John on her watch. Sylvia is on thin ice and only because she annoyingly tends to be right.

“So” John call out at her, putting a hand onto the engine lever. Mels doesn't know how she knows it is the engine lever but she is dead certain and it sends her stomach down to her knees to see John in a position ready to start the ship. Can he fly the TARDIS? “Where are we going?”

“The Doctor lets you fly the TARDIS?” she blurts out and he grins.

“Sometimes” he confirms. “If I'm good.”

Mels blinks. This is getting into dangerous territory. The Doctor is the only one who knows how to fly the TARDIS, isn't he? That's what they all say? So how does John-? No, she is not thinking about that.

Oblivious to her inner turmoil, John winks at her again. “Want me to show you how?”

She forces a smile, putting down the coffee cup and meeting her – very human, very much not the Doctor – friend. “I'd love that.”

“Come on then!” he gently guides her towards the lever, steady arms wrapping around her to help her along.

“John” she says softly, fingers grabbing tightly around the cold metal on the lever, not daring to start the engine yet.

“Yes, Mels?”

He is right behind her and she leans back, craving his embrace more than ever.

“You know I will have to kill you some day?” she asks and he goes still.

Then he hums in confirmation, low and contemplative, before tenderly pulling her against him with one arm, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“Anything you want, sweetie” he promises like she had asked him whether they could adopt a pet and not told him of her plans to murder him. “But not before we've seen the stars!”

#mels zucker #tenteen #fourteenth doctor #doctorriver #mels zucker x tenteen #doctor who fanfiction #the doctor x river song #melody pond #doctor who #river song #watch me ship mels with any incarnation of the Doctor's #there's already lore to go with this btw #because of course there is #I have not completely figured out the family dynamics though so that'll be fun #Donna and Mels are definitely besties though #just to please me

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fog-and-rust · 8 months

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Hogwarts Legacy Incorrect Quotes Part 4 (feat. my Hufflepuff!MC, Ellie)

Sebastian: Dear Diary, my teen angst bullshit now has a body count.

***

[At some point in the beginning of the game. Let's pretend that teachers are concerned with bullying]

Professor Weasley: What would you do if one of your classmates viciously teased you again and again?

Ellie: Oh, that’s easy. I’d take a quill—

Professor Weasley: To write something to your teacher?

Ellie: —make sure that it’s really sharp, and ram it into their eye at full tilt! Leander always says the quill is mightier than the sword because they can’t outlaw bringing quills to school!

Professor Weasley: *internal screaming*

***

Sebastian: I have yet to encounter a problem where an Unforgivable Curse didn't factor into the solution at least in some way.

Anne: This is why uncle doesn't fucking love you!

***

Ellie: You really put aside everything and came all this way for me? How did you even get here so fast?

Leander: Several school rules violations.

Ominis: Three counts of using my relations.

Garreth: Roughly thirteen vials of my latest experiment.

Imelda: Also, I used the enchanted bludgers to hurry them up.

***

[MC keeps using her friends to break into Ravenclaw common room]

Ravenclaw knocker: What is a dream?

Ominis: Dream - the first thing people abandon when they learn how the world works.

[the door opens]

Ellie: That's too dark, edgelord.

***

[After Astronomy lesson]

Garreth: Ellie has no survival skills, her need to win has replaced them.

Amit: That can't be true!

Garreth: Watch this.

Garreth: Hey Ellie, race you to the bottom of the stairs!

Ellie: *jumps from Astronomy tower*

***

[After she and Poppy freed a dragon]

Leander: What in Merlin's name is wrong with you??

Ellie: What? No good morning?

Leander: Good morning, what in Merlin's name is wrong with you??

***

[The squad gathers in the Room of Requirement]

Ellie: Alright, listen up you psychos.

Ellie: Not you, Amit. You’re an angel and we’re thrilled you’re here.

***

[In the goblin mines]

Ellie: We have fun, don’t we, Amit?

Amit: I have never been more stressed out in my entire life.

***

Ellie: We are not mad, Sebastian. We are just disappointed.

Ominis: No, we are mad.

Ellie: Yes. We are. We are livid. But we are going to let this one slide.

Ominis: No, we’re not!

Ellie: I am not a mind reader, Ominis!

***

Duncan: Everett, Ellie keeps bullying me, what should I do?

Everett: Ask a teacher for help.

[The next day…]

Duncan, to Professor Ronen: Will you help me beat up Ellie?

***

Professor Weasley: Godric's heart, how would you explain this kind of crude behaviour?

Sebastian: I'm gonna have to say verbally.

Ellie: Because judging by that tone of voice...

Garreth: ... You might not be in the mood for the dance performance we've prepared.

***

Ellie: That has to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.

Amit: For the benefit of everyone present, I will clarify this is not a challenge.

Sebastian, Poppy, Natty & Garreth: Awww...

***

Ellie *going on another quest*: If there's going to be a big dramatic scene, wait until I get back.

Poppy: Of course, I can't flip this table by myself.

***

[AU where Leander and Ellie are the ones who fight a troll in Hogsmeade]

Ellie: Just stay calm! You already have everything you need to beat it!

Leander: The power to believe in myself!?

Ellie: No, you already know Diffindo! Slash it!

***

Sebastian: Am I going to far?

Ominis: No, no, no. You went too far about 2 weeks ago. Now you’re going to Azkaban.

***

Ellie: *sneaking in Hufflepuff common room late at night*

Poppy: *sitting on a sofa and casting Lumos* You want to tell me where you've been all night?

Ellie: I was stargazing with Amit?

Amit: *sitting on another sofa and also casting Lumos* Wanna try again?

***

Ellie: I have so much energy, I want to compete with Imelda or commit a petty felony... which should I do?

Leander: Please don’t get arrested.

Ellie: No promises!

Sebastian: Why not both? Get creative!

Ellie: Wonderful suggestion, thank you.

Leander: Please don’t encourage her, Sebastian.

***

Amit: Small creatures are much more vicious because they have a smaller body to bottle up all their emotions.

Everett: Ridiculous. Give me some examples.

Duncan: Puffskeins?

Samantha: Cornish pixies?

Ellie *chilling in Ravenclaw common room*: Chomping Cabbages.

***

[the Squad at flying lesson]

Garreth, Leander, and Amit: *flying normally, enjoying the view and talking*

Imelda, Poppy, and Ellie: *flying past them, as fast as they can, chasing Duncan who is screaming*

***

Poppy: Could you at least try to see this from my perspective?

Natty: *crouches down*

Imelda: *kneels down*

Ellie: *sits on the floor*

Poppy: ...

Poppy: I hate all of you.

***

Ellie: *falls down the stairs*

Amit: Are you okay?

Leander: Stop falling down the stairs!

Duncan: How’d the ground taste?

Ellie: *getting up like nothing happened*

Ellie: *releases Chomping Cabbages*

Duncan: Mom, pick me up, I'm scared.

#hogwarts legacy #incorrect quotes #hogwarts legacy incorrect quotes #hogwarts legacy mc #sebastian sallow #professor weasley #leander prewett #ominis gaunt #amit thakkar #garreth weasley #everett clopton #samantha dale #imelda reyes #duncan hobhouse #poppy sweeting #natsai onai #anne sallow

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thrushforreal · 11 months

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Core 4 + Trace Incorrect Quotes. I put names in a generator, and these were spat out. Have fun.

Bart: Tim! This soup is flaccid!

Tim: LITERALLY WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS MEAN?!

~~~

Trace: You really put aside everything and came all this way for me? How did you even get here so fast?

Bart: Several traffic violations.

Cassie: Three counts of resisting arrest.

Kon: Roughly thirteen cans of energy drinks.

Tim: Also, that's not our car.

~~~

Tim: Problem, I can't tell if this food is under-sauced or undercooked.

Kon: Solution, just pop it back in the oven for another 10 minutes. There's at least a 50% chance that'll fix it, right?

Bart: Result? Food has somehow become unpleasantly soggy and unpleasantly crunchy at the exact same time.

Cassie: No better time than this to pull out my favorite word! Slunchy!

Trace: ...put it away.

~~~

Trace: Uh, Cassie? Tim is in the pool, and I don't think he's waterproof.

Cassie: What?

Bart: I think they meant, Tim is drowning.

Cassie: WHAT?!

*Meanwhile*

Tim: *is drowning*

Kon: OH MY GOD, TIM. KEEP SWIMMING!

Tim: I can't swim, dumbass - *sinks*

Kon: TIM!

~~~

Cassie: You're a lying peice of shit!

Tim: Oh yeah? You're the idiot that thinks you can get away with everything you do, WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD!

Trace: I'm leaving, and I'm taking Bart with me!

Kon, gathering cards: Aaaaand that's enough Monopoly for today.

~~~

Tim: How do you connect with a fictional character?

Kon: What?

Cassie: What?

Bart: What?

Trace: *pulls up a 500 slide presentation* I'm glad you asked.

~~~

Cassie: So don't panic, but one of us is possessed by an owl...

Kon: ....

Tim: .....

Bart: ......

Trace: ..Who?

Cassie: That's the thing we don't -

*Everyone stares at Trace*

~~~

Cassie: Kon is late again.

Tim: How did this happen? I called him at 8 o'clock this morning and pretended it was 11.

Bart: I printed up a fake schedule for him, saying we were starting at 9 instead of noon.

Trace: I set his clock to say PM when its really AM.

Cassie: Oh boy. We may have overdone it.

*Kon bursts through the door*

Kon: WHAT TIME IS IT?

~~~

Tim: You might not know this Trace, but I am a deeply flawed person.

Trace: I do know that.

#batman oc #trace drake #trace drake-wayne #tim drake #tim drake-wayne #cassie sandsmark #conner kent #kon el kent #bart allen #batfam incorrect quotes #dc incorrect quotes #core four #young just us

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somerandomwizard · 1 year

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Hazbin Hotel Incorrect Quotes Pt. 2

Molly: You have to apologize to Anthony.

Arackniss: Ugh, fine.

Arackniss @ Angel: 'Unfuck you' or whatever.

---

Angel: If you can't beat them, dress better than them.

---

'Can I copy the homework?'

Charlie, Molly, Niffty: I can help you with it!

Crymini: Yeah, sure

Angel, Cherri, Lucifer: Bold of you to assume I did the homework

Alastor, Husk, Vaggie: lol Nope

Sir Pentious, Tom Trench: Wait, we had homework???

Katie Killjoy, Arackniss, Henroin, Lilith, Baxter:*Read 5:55pm*

---

Charlie: Violence isn't the answer.

Alastor: You know what, my dear? You're right.

Charlie: *sighs in relief*

Alastor: Violence is the question.

Charlie: What?

Alastor, pulling out a knife and looking at Angel: And the answer is YES.

Charlie, running after him: NO-

---

Husk: With great power comes great need to take a nap. Wake me up later.

---

Valentino, holding an antique bottle: Is this whisky or perfume?

Velvette: *chugs entire bottle*

Velvette: It's perfume.

---

*Cherri and Angel sitting in jail together*

Cherri: So, who should we call?

Angel: I'd call Vaggie, but I feel safer in jail.

---

Vox: Hey, Val, what kind of flowers do you like?

Val: Sunflowers.

Vox, pulling out a bouquet of Venus Flytraps: Well, shit-

---

Niffty, taping a knife onto a Roomba: Be free, my child.

Husk, entering with a small cut on his ankle: Who the f-

---

Rosie: How do you connect with a fictional character?

Alastor: What?

Mimzy: What?

Husk: What?

Niffty: *pulls up a 500 slide presentation* I'm glad you asked.

---

Aracknniss: Do you ever get pre-annoyed? Like you already know someone is going to piss you off?

Vaggie: What? No, I-

*Angel enters the room*

Arackniss & Vaggie: *jaw clenches*

---

*when the squad drops food on the ground*

Alastor: Eh, oh well.

Charlie: FIVE SECOND RULE!

Husk: FUCK!

Vaggie: *just gets more food*

Niffty: *drops to her knees and mourns the food*

Angel: *eats the food off the ground*

---

Angel: What if Cinderella was a baking slave instead of a cleaning slave, and her name was Mozzarella?

Arackniss: Don't ever speak to me again.

---

Alastor: Underestimate me. That'll be fun.

---

Charlie: Oh fiddlesticks.

Alastor: Look, I know this is a a tense situation, but let's watch the fucking language.

---

Angel: Vaggie has no idea I'm high.

Vaggie: YOU'RE HIGH?!

Angel: Oh, I'm sorry.

Angel, leaning over to Husk: Vaggie has no idea I'm high.

---

Husk: We're playing scrabble. It's a nightmare.

Alastor: Scrabble? But Scrabble's great.

Husk: Not when you're playing with NIffty, it's not. She puts words like 'ephemeral' and I put 'dog'.

---

Charlie: Is that a gun?!

Angel: It's not what it looks like!

Charlie: It looks like a gun!

Angel: Okay, maybe it is what it looks like, but in my defense, it doesn't have anymore bullets, so I technically can't shoot anymore.

Charlie: ...ANYMORE?!

---

Okay, I know that Vaggie is a Lesbian and Angel is gay, but I just love this ship. Please don't attack me.

Angel: Can you at least cut me some slack, Vags? I'm sort of in love.

Vaggie: I'm sorry, but that's not my problem.

Angel: I'm in love with you.

Vaggie, now blushing: O-oh. That brings me in the loop a little.

---

Charlie: Hey Angel? Can I get some dating advice?

Angel: Just because I'm with Vaggie doesn't mean I know how I did it.

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delicatebluebirdruins · 4 months

Text

Lockwood & co 5-8

part one, and with the colours same rules apply. link to my thoughts/ reactions to the first two books

episode 5: not to repeat myself but i want a set tour so bad

"nothing we can't handle together" Lockwood is great

I love Lockwood's little recoil when Lucy tells him "to make an effort"

roleplay version 2. I love the little movements on Lockwoods face when he saw Danny's body. missing scene (sort of) does Barnes ever find out who the body is? and that Danny was someone Lockwood knew?

talking about Flo and then meeting her at night. inbetween: what was happening? what were they doing?

the way "her" was said and Lockwood yelling "run"

book quote "Flo Bones annoyed me" came through loud and clear. I love Lockwood's face watching Flo and Lucy bicker.

Sugar count: 6/7 I think

I love Flo noting the buttered toast exchange (makes what she says later on so much better.) random note: what's on the board

I actually really like the design for Joplins flat and this conversations with her

"incase anyone misses me. unlikely..." poor George

missing scene: they should have had a Winkman thug killed by the mirror which was partially why they wanted to get rid of it so quickly

love breaking and entering, and there being so many things in the warehouse

scene: I hope Leo gets to be a little shit like he is in the book (though i do love Lockwood and Lucy are so sweet when talking to him)... George is not doing well is he? (so glad they showed us this)

Poor Lockwood but he is so funny talking to Winkman

Lucy: "my friend is really hurting"

Winkman "is she a friend? is she family?" good questions the answer is yes and more

still don't know why Lockwood poured the brown bottle onto the floor. Love this small confrontation between Lockwood and Lucy and poor George was so worried about them.

I love this bit with Carver final words being "come with me" is so eerie

episode 6

such a ritual to prevent ghosts (the salt and light is pretty)

again Barnes cares for them in his own way. I love how nervous Lockwood was watching Lucy think before answering Barnes. and I love the little insights we get into how Barnes works and his thoughts on them as a trio.

I love Lockwood and George showing their anxiety waiting for Lucy then going after her (random thought chalk would be great make arrows on the ground or wall showing which way she went)

should have been added: the boneglass ghosts asking for their bones back. It would have added to the emotional moment of freeing them at the end.

the lockwood slide hand hold I love the umbrella stand of swords

hello Flo. I love this moment between Lockwood and Flo the shared history, the history of the house still being present and her talking about Lucy. Also George calling Lockwood "Locky" and him being all smiley at George and Flo getting along to him going "only one person in the world can call me Locky"

also I think there is a piano in the background and I need someone to play it (go tomorrow from Hill House specifically no idea why but you know)

I love the bit with Kipps honestly. And how emotional they made the gift of the necklace (in the book it was like a paragraph) and him fishing for what's on her mind after seeing the talk with Kipps.

just noticed the map George draws has Lockwood written on the other side

the relic collumns are gorgeous and i love the delivery of "famous legacy" so much. this chat is so funny

I get the impression that they changed Penelope Fitters to daughter of Marissa instead of granddaughter is a good change (05/01/23 I say this as I have not read Empty Grave yet so it might change). and i love the "you feel safe with him. Mr Lockwood" and Lucy fiddles with the necklace.

I love the bit in the library them leaving evidence that someone was in there and it being spotted (and them fleeing the party is so pretty)

episode 7

random note: where did Lockwood put the book? and if it was in his pocket the entire time how did it not get soaked?

love the way they hide. and love Cutter.

"you were petrified at the thought of me leaving you" i always think of this entire scene and then think of Steve Crains quote about walls at the end of Hill House "I thought that wall kept the both of us safe, but walls don't work that way"

thought: someone had to get killed when covering the mirror right

I love the chat between Flo and George.

I love Lockwood's smile at Winkman as he steals the Sources.

Love the look between Lockwood and Cutter and the music and how how differently Lockwood and Lucy handle everything

the Golden Blade is so cool but such a jackass.

love the musical transition from "you, me and herons" to cruel world. and the shove

episode 8

Love the sopping wet look. and this bit between the two (imagine if Lucy told Lockwood what Penelope said to her at some point)

"don't give up on us... don't give up on me"

I love them reading the book together

Love the skull. and Lucy blaming herself and them leaving with "For George. For George"

I love this bit with Kipps

Joplin is so manipulative and plays on George's curiousity so well

love this chat with skull telling Lucy how best to use the boneglass

just reckless enough + completely necessary touch = love them

I love this "parade of Fittes agents" and the hype speech "lets bury them"

Not to let my resident evil brain rot come up but this bit with Winkman reminds me so much of Jack Baker it's insane

I love the fight with the thugs and searching the catacombs with commentary from the Skull

Love the reveal of Joplin being a bad guy

"scrubber girlfriend"

I love Lucy and looking into the boneglass with the skull

Poor Kipps is freaking out this entire time. Lockwood looking like how he feels

the frozen Lockwood bit in the boneglass visions could this be a reference to a certain walk he and Lucy go on in the Creeping Shadow

"you set them free" I really wish they kept the bone glass ghosts request.

I love Lockwood saving Lucy and George and collapsing to his knees

I love how long they made the ride to the surface feel

I love Barnes (George or Lucy should have got a pat on the shoulder maybe)

and the actor for Kipps did his scene talking about his Talent fading deserves praise as I love it so much

and I love Penelope Fittes and the golden blade

imagine: how Norrie's parents feel if they listen to Lucy's messages for her

"George turned out to be a bit of hero" love it

narration: when Lucy talks about herself it's a little weird and doesn't quite work as it should on rewatch

Love this end between them all. George getting excited over a mystery and Lockwood needing to recover and the shoving of donut into George's mouth to shut him

ending: I wish we saw a little of the inside of the room and just see the look on their faces as they see what lays inside.

random thoughts that didn't fit anywhere else they could have had Lockwoods sunglasses and could have worked in the toy mobile scene not in this season but maybe future seasons (you know if we had any)

#lcokwood and co #lockwood & co #anthony lockwood #lucy carlyle #locklyle #george karim #whatever you do DON'T think about all the netflix shows ending this year you will get annoyed #eta the link for the first two books post #hopefully the one person who reblogged doesn't mind

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compressednerve · 7 months

Text

Exploring Zachariah Trench's Office with @parasitefun

So many crazy white boy moments in his office so here's rambling about observations we made together. BTW we haven't finished the game yet (we're at The Prime Candidate Program and just found out who P7 is) so PLEASE DON'T TELL ME IF THESE ARE CORRECT OR IF I THEORIZE THE WRONG THING. I don't wanna be spoiled on anything >:O thank you.

Analysis, headcanons, and observations below!

What does his diploma say? Lets zoom in

DIPLOMA THIS CERTIFICATE IS PROUDLY PRESENTED TO

Zachariah Trench

One morning, when Zachariah Trench woke from troubling dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

..........oh!! oh ok, the Kafka quote about becoming so disabled you can no longer work? And you see yourself as A HORRIBLE VERMIN because you're disabled? And they put that on a diploma and proudly gave it to Trench! Jesus Christ!!! Go listen to some of The Downward Spiral, Zachariah!!! My god I'm so fucking heartbroken over how Zachariah talks about being old and frail and weak and BROKEN!!!!!!!!!!! and useless and-I could go on. I'm a mostly bedridden disabled person myself and I usually find myself relating the most to the older characters in casts of media because they're usually the ones portrayed with the same issues I have as a younghead (arthritis, brain damage/brain fog/amnesia, fatigue and exhaustion, difficulty moving and speaking, just.. yum). And being bedbound myself is something that I feel really deeply in Kafka's work. To realize Trench relates so deeply to Gregor Samsa as well is just such a juicy delicious detail for him. And it's a diploma? My head is spinning! His self-hatred is infinite...

I love that the diploma is tucked away behind the slide projector as well. I'm not sure if this is The Slide Projector that's been hinted at but it'd be neat if it was!

NOBLE SHERIFF: "There can only be one Sheriff in town" ... :rolling_eyes: ok Mr. The Only Person You Should Fail Is Yourself ok Mr. She Knows I Don't Like Relying On Other People ok Mr. I Need A Team To Clean Up My Horrible Mistakes (k!lls self to avoid taking accountability for his actions and dumps it all in Jesse's lap). He was just drinking straight from the fucking bottle at his desk!! That's so disgusting I love it, no chaser or anything. I love the tasteful rolodex, the smooth marble pen holder (with silver in the black, but, kind of evocative of The Astral Plane hmm?), his stapler, his disgusting jug of booze, and the FRESH PACK OF CIGGIES!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!! God, Trench's addictions and compulsions being literally on his desk, the most intimate and well-frequented area of his general daily life, is just so fun! Remedy does so good with environmental storytelling.

I love how even the brands he uses are manifestations of his inner thoughts. The booze label, the tool that relaxes him and dampens his inhibitions, is of course praising him. The Lone Sheriff. The Director. The Last Line Of Defense. Zachariah Trench sees himself as the sole protector, and The Oldest House his town, his community, his ward. The most likely intentional framing of the documents he was signing being splattered with blood, acting like a barrier of his Work vs his Needs (need to relax, need for a painkiller cuz booze is a great painkiller)

I got to his documents piles and literally shouted, "HE HAS SO MUCH MORE WORK TO DO!!!!". I love that the OUT pile is more full than the IN pile, Trench is so judicious with his correspondence :pleading_face: he's so tired. I bet he wishes he was still a Field Agent a lot of the time :sobbing: Looking at all the stuff on his desk like the sheer amount of documents and phone calls and other shit he has to do in a day to day as The Director must be sooo overwhelming...

It was during this moment that Paras and I realized that the greater joke of Control is about older people who stay in their jobs and refuse to make room for other workers, and they get Promoted To Incompetence! lmfao because like, Zachariah was so focused on Field Agent Stuff (in one of his Hotline calls he says, "I kept my head down. I worked my ass off." in a classic blue collar way) and being all tragic and putting his life on the line for his squad, then suddenly and forcefully being promoted to The Boss Of Everything. No wonder he has such a complex about Failing The Bureau :O

the same applies to Dr. Darling--! He's been in The Bureau for a 24 years!! He has 22 labs spread across the ever-shifting expanse of The Oldest House. He, mainly, wants to Do Research and Write Essays and all sorts of other shit that mainly revolves around being an isolated scientist with a modest team. And instead he has to make presentations for the laymen of The Bureau and he has to manage all THE ENTIRE RESEARCH SECTOR, who sends him catty memos about how their department deserves more funding (parakineseology department bribing him with his favorite booze???), and interns and junior scientists who don't know the first thing about The Astral Plane, and as Dr. Underhill complained about- The Bureau's ultimate goal is to exploit what they find, rather than actually comprehend what it is they're dealing with. Most Rangers retire due to cognitive collapse because The Bureau just shoves them in the meat grinder of trying to contain/control Everything. Ugh!

So anyways Zachariah Trench isn't a bad Director but then he's literally such a bad Director, the Worst Director Ever at the same time because it just wasn't his archetype. He took it way too seriously with a hammer in hand, seeing every problem as a nail. Dr. Darling fits the opposite of this niche as well in his own archetypical way- going from goofy underling to The Guy In Charge Of Everyone. They're both socially awkward, domineering, prone to pettiness/hostility, and under so so so much pressure for roles they were universally understood to not be able to fulfill.

All of the people we see in Control that are actually useful and agreeable with Jesse (who has been a dropout who mainly ever worked manual labor jobs up to and including janitor) so far are like, Ahti the mid-60yr old janitor who also just so happens to be the first friendly face you see when you enter the FBC and like, Simon? And fucking Langston (who is so hot I gotta write some Jesse/Frederick later)!

Langston, who is what I imagine is a direct parallel in a positive light compared to Dr. Darling and Director Trench, as in, how he entered The Bureau (he worked in the Postal Service of all places and an uncle at The FBC got him a job there), and Langston, like Trench, worked his ass off, kept his head down, but schmoozed enough to get a nice promotion, and then continued to work at a slow, steady incline for 15 years until he became Panopticon supervisor. He's like one of the only dudes in a high ranking spot who actually respects his position.

And of course who could forget dear Emily Pope :pleading_face: she's been Dr. Darling's underling for idk how long but clearly a while and she's so so ambitious like Darling is ambitious but she's so so so inhibited and held back by Darling's misogyny and higher ranking and having to be ordered to research shit but not actually be able to ask the real questions. You can really get a feel for how passionate Emily is in her work by like, not just how she talks to Jesse but in her correspondence and especially her research papers. The way she words documents ordered by Dr. Darling vs how she words documents ordered by Director Jesse Faden is literally night and day, but not for lack of enthusiasm. You can tell under Darling's mentorship she's soooo stifled, and with Jesse's lax permission "please just do whatever you want so long as it advances my (and The Bureau's) understanding of things". Emily's like a kid in a candy store and it's exactly what she needs to flourish.... Oh to bask in the light of a manual laborer :heart_eyes:

Another angle of his documents which I find titillating. The majority of his blood splatter landing on the IN pile... efflorescent....

THE FUCKING. BLACK ROCK PRISM ON HIS DESK. Paras has something to say about that later in a fic or some art. The other pack of ciggies that he was in the process of smoking (I counted the cigarettes. He has 8 ciggies left which means he's smoked 12 already. There are 4 in the ashtray which means at some point after opening the pack, he smoked 8 and then dumped the ashtray. This shows he keeps his ashtray relatively clean, which is a specific kind of character quirk about Tidiness and Cleanliness for Trench because chainsmokers like me and Paras are disgusting and our ashtray is overflowing by like, three packs and it smells horrible). The way it sits atop all his other shit he needs to sign, he's just drowning in documents (sort of like how I imagine Alan is drowning in manuscripts? WHO SAID THAT?)

*looks over Jesse's shoulder and realizes Trench's body is gone* *nearly shouting to Paras, who is sitting right next to me* WHERE IS TRENCH'S BODY? WHERE DID HIS BODY GO? WHY IS HIS BLOOD ON THE FLOOR BUT NOT HIS BODY? DID THE FUCKING BOARD TAKE HIM? DID THEY EAT HIM? WHO ATE TRENCH?

I've been likening Zachariah Trench a lot to Rorschach in his perpetual death-wish (he wants to die so bad but he'll fight everything that tries to kill him to the bloody end because he feels he can only die when he's ready to die ugh yum). The empty blood splatter after you come back from The Hotline Chamber for the first time (and realizing that The Hotline Chamber is DIRECTLY CONNECTED TO TRENCH'S OFFICE? HELLO?) is soooo fucking reminiscent of Rorschach's final death scene, where the blood splatter is the shape of his mask :hand_over_mouth: soooo symbolic sooo iconic. Note to self: Paras and I need to write/draw something about different people devouring Trench's corpse (yum).

(SIDENOTE: PLEASE DONT TELL ME IF THERE'S A CANONICAL REASON FOR WHY TRENCH'S CORPSE DISAPPEARS. THAT'D BE BALLER IF THERE WAS A CANONICAL REASON BUT WE WANNA FIND OUT ON OUR OWN!)

I wanna lick the blood off his desk and phone. Oohhhhhhn n the way it drips down the edge of the desk. I want to give him so many head wounds here. He spilled his final blood all over his classified documents and telephone and finished work and desk that he sat at a lot :pleading_face: and he was only 64 years old wah. He was so tragic and so sad and what if there was a dude who was so sad he DIED because his boss was like "put the gun to your head and see if we still like you" and Trench was like "oh good, finally, an opportunity to see if I'm still worthy" AND HE FUCKIN. WAS PROVED. UNWORTHY? OUCH, DUDE!!! HARSH!!!

Zachariah's Personal Signature Rubber Stamp (CUMS UNCONTROLLABLY)

Dude I had no fucking clue he had a picture of himself when he was younger (and healthier, and happier, and) with his kid that he accidentally killed. Like what??? He's so miserable and he sits at his desk with TWO packs of cigarettes and a giant bottle of like i'm guessing whiskey or scotch, and he just sits there and gets nosebleeds from using The Hotline and chainsmokes and stares at his Former Glory. MY GOD!

...............pistachios :pleading_face: he eats pistachios. he has pistachio snack. he enjoys pistachios. there is a bag of pistachios at his desk. he had to have gotten that at a vending machine. zachariah trench had to either ask someone to get him some pistachios (vulnerable) or he had to get up and go to a vending machine and put his money into the vending machine because he wanted a snack and he chose to get pistachios and he had to bend over and get the pistachios out of the bottom of the vending machine. zachariah trench eating pistachios. he has to crack the shells open and dispose of them somehow. pistachios are green. he eats pistachios. he wants a snack. i am literally a shell of a human being.

Imagine the smell of his nice leather briefcase. The weight of it in your hand. The privilege to watch Trench open it up and rifle through the papers, or *gets lightheaded* being able to hand him a document that he then has to place in his briefcase. I can't breathe. I like the pneumos in the background too. He has a very natural gentle clutter to his desk, like I imagine how he perceives the clutter of his mind. There's so many things to keep track of, and he's so tired... :weeping:

I'm so utterly enraged that he didn't finish two of his cigarettes. He didn't even finish his ciggie before he died!! are you fucking kidding me?! I was somewhat bewildered because the texture of the inside of the ashtray (the ashtray) looks... wet? and the two finished cigarette butts are visibly wet (distorted color, swollen cotton) and Paras said that the ashtray probably has a sort of perpetually wet sand inside it. Works for me!

Did you know if you shoot the Prism, it's breakable? I didn't know that. Makes the screenie a bit goofy but I don't care. Look at his over half-finished pack of ciggies. I would pay. kind of a lot of money. for like a collectors edition of real Black Pyramid Cigarettes are you kidding me? What kind of nightmare dimension tobacco do they put in those things?

He looks so moe here receiving his gay little medals or whatever's happening (idk if this has story relevance and gets revealed later or not). His hairdo is so cute??? Did he... did he bleach his hair? It looks like his roots are showing thru old bleach... is... Yung Trench a bleached hair baddie? I'm gonna pass out.

Me: look at that! Trench is watching the presentation! Paras: LOOK AT HOW SMOKY THE ROOM IS! HE'S HOTBOXING HIS OFFICE WITH NICOTINE! Both of us: *gagging*

So first of all this is such a big moment in terms of setting up Zachariah and Casper's relationship to each other, and how they interact with each other. Jesse uses The Hotline, and then we're treated to an interdimensional 3D Memory Flashback of observing Trench. He's sitting in his office, which is dimmed so the projector can play. He's chainsmoking so much that the ENTIRE VOLUME of his MODESTLY LARGE OFFICE is FILLED with CIGARETTE SMOKE. I genuinely am so disgusted and enamored by Trench's hardcore nicotine addiction, his.... dedication to the Ritual of Smoking. So anyways, engaging in his comfort ritual of Smoking, sitting in his nice chair and watching Darling's presentation. Imagine him ordering Darling to put together research on The Hotline immediately after his first call with The Board... and he's the only one who can communicate about what the experience is like... and then when Dr. Darling is done he delivers the video to Trench and then Trench sets aside specific dark-room-and-smoking time JUST to watch The Presentation? CAN IT GET ANY MORE HOMOSEXUAL THAN THIS? I *will* be writing about this later.

Sidenote the perspective of viewing behind his head like this is so intimate. I feel so voyeuristic, I want to hover closer to the back of Trench's neck and feel/see the hairs rise up in extrasensory response to my presence. I want to nibble on his ear.

I need him. to blow smoke in my face.

...

Well that's all the screenshots I have at the moment! Thank you for reading my post and please feel free to contribute your own ideas and observations to this because I LOVE META!! And I love hearing other people discuss it too >:3

#zachariah trench #remedy control #compressednerve writing #jesse faden #dr. darling #casper darling #emily pope #ahti the janitor #simon arish #frederick langston #meta and analysis #parasitefun

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fateheartblog · 1 year

Text

“You’re well-read, Ezra,” Mirabel remarks, sliding down from her perch.

“I’m well-mythed,” Zachary corrects. “When I was a kid I thought Hecate and Isis and all the orishas were friends of my mom’s, like, actual people. I suppose in a way they were. Still are. Whatever.”

-The Starless Sea, Erin Morgenstern, Book III: The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor, 4th Zachary section

I think this quote is the single most important piece of characterisation for Zachary Ezra Rawlins in the whole of The Starless Sea. Or at least it is for me (though I appreciate that there is a distinction between what you might value as a reader-for-pleasure and a reader-with-hellbent-ulterior-intentions-to-write-this-man-into-a-corner-watch-me-gooo). I kept coming back to this line as I wrote Fateheart (my fan-sequel to The Starless Sea - you can read it here on Ao3), and it has become the lynchpin for a lot of my thoughts about who Zachary is - especially as the story of Fateheart unfolded in front of me and I was trying to keep up with what was happening and grapple with why it felt inevitable.

Here are some of those thoughts, for any of you who are interested in thinking this much about Zachary Ezra Rawlins (and his relationship with Dorian, which is ever central to who he is), about myth, and about The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.

One of the reasons I ended up writing my fan-sequel to The Starless Sea was a desire to continue following the story of what had already begun in Morgenstern's book, which is Zachary's descent into myth - and I don't mean his passage through the wonderlands beneath the world - I mean becoming one himself.

This quote captures what I love most about Zachary and what I find most powerful about him, which is something I came to think of whilst writing as his "belief in the real and the unreal". He is deeply post-modern, and has an acute grasp of myth (gonna define 'myth' in a truncated but convenient way here as a type of story which offers a moral or identity truth, alternative to a history, which gives you facts and assumes the 'truth' is implicit through them). The combination of these two things is very potent, and has allowed Zachary's sense of what is true to develop separately from and at times directly in opposition to what is factual or historically, empirically verifiable. Simply put, when it comes to making sense of his reality, historical truth does not interest him. Stories interest him ("He believes in books, he knows that much" - Book I: Sweet Sorrows, 3rd Zachary section). Not only does a rationalist presentation of value or truth not have any of the significance that it would in a modernist worldview, it is almost irrelevant to Zachary. He does not navigate the world according to its empirical qualities but according to its stories, and he is very adept at reading them, because these are the paradigms by which he got to know the world in the first place.

The blurring of reality into unreality which happens in the quote - he thought that the goddesses were friends of his mother's - "actual people" - tells us possibly more about Zachary's mother than about him. Or perhaps tells us so much about him by telling us about her first: Madame Love Rawlins raised her son in an environment which valued stories, and specifically myths, above all else. Zachary does not gain his sense of identity or context of self whilst growing up from integration into a historical narrative or a sociological connection to his own time or place - even his sense of a wider family context and adult society was defined by a profound connection to a global pantheon of myths. You can imagine how Madame Love Rawlins must have spoken about Hecate and Isis and the orishas - how effortlessly, personally, and often - to create an environment where they seemed this real. And you can conjecture that she herself was not in the business of drawing a distinction between her regular old human friends and the more divine voices of influence over her life. So why should Zachary?

But that blurring of reality with unreality is not nearly as telling as the other blur that happens in the quote above, which is, "I suppose in a way they were. Still are. Whatever."

This is three things happening in quick succession, and I think they are all equally fascinating, and they all delight me equally.

The last and least of them is in the word "whatever": it implies that Zachary is not interested in firmly deciding whether or not he thinks they are 'real' people. "Whatever" is applying to the question of past or present tense, but in its dismissiveness it waives any of the gravity of his placing his blurring of reality in the past. Yes, he's identifying that perception as a younger, past version of himself, but then he brings it forwards, catching himself: "I suppose in a way they were" reasserts the belief; "Still are" updates it, identifies it in himself now; "Whatever" carries it beyond what he feels the need to define.

The second thing that's happening is the "Still are." There is some ambiguity, but not much, in the quote - is Zachary supposing that these mythical figures may actually have been real? That's how I'm primarily reading it because that's the most obvious reading. But one could argue that he's equally supposing that they may well have truly been his mother's friends, and possibly still are - that he's not questioning their actuality so much as the familiarity of their role in one's personal world. They still are friends of his mom's. Or they still are real in some way. Either one is compounded by the "whatever", and "Still are. Whatever" is a telling rhythm of Zachary's thought process here: he is comfortable with indistinction. The factuality is not relevant.

But the most important and the first thing in "I suppose in a way they were. Still are. Whatever." is the supposing itself. That these myths are people who have had an impact on his life relationally, emotionally, interpersonally, and truly. Voices he has known and names he has called and referenced in conversation on the same level as any other. His almost throwaway acknowledgement that this blurring of the line between real and unreal is very much still part of his internal system says a great deal about how deeply foundational this sense of myth and truth is to him: the indistinction is not a problem with the thing, but the thing itself.

And never, in all his academic travels and independent adult life away from his mother (his independence of identity and situation is well established) has Zachary found reason enough to redraw the lines - to reassess this post-modern prioritisation of myth over history - to anchor himself according to what is real, regardless of the value of its truth, as opposed to what is unreal but true. And his wider characterisation as an academic at a good school and a devotee of stories in all forms tells us it is not for lack of self-awareness or intelligence. Assuming he has interrogated his own beliefs before, he clearly has not seen reason to dismantle his worldview. In fact, we possibly see the first thing in his life which really does force him to consolidate his beliefs, and it is not the real challenging the unreal, as must have happened to him and has not left a mark, but the unreal suddenly encroaching upon the real. The moment he assesses this internal balance of the real and the unreal is in the same chapter I quoted above (Book I: Sweet Sorrows, 3rd Zachary section), as he reflects upon seeing his childhood encounter with his door written in Sweet Sorrows and thinks upon what the book is telling him about what lay beyond it:

"He wonders why he believes it because someone wrote it down in a book. Why he believes anything at all and where to draw mental lines, where to stop suspending his disbelief."

Zachary is aware that he primarily operates in a territory where all disbelief is permanently suspended: this is not him asking whether he should start believing that this door did in fact lead to a Harbour - this is him wondering if he ought to believe this much that it does - and what it means for anything real if he carries that belief forwards as he intends to. Questioning whether the space he holds within him for the powerful truth of myth is now starting to truly consume the concrete, factual world in a way which is leading him into new territory. And it is. The mythical does in fact start to consume the real world for him. That is what happens to him in the rest of The Starless Sea. And this is the moment we see that crossover: he chooses to remain faithful to the unreal, and to pursue a story. He asserts what he was raised believing, which is that the unreal is more true and more valuable than the real, and therefore ultimately must be more real. Only someone who is intimately familiar already - from their earliest childhood - with the blurring of these lines - would react the way Zachary has to finding himself in a book - running with it, and allowing it to envelop him completely, as he is ultimately enveloped by the door, the Harbour, and the Starless Sea itself.

And what I love most about this passage is that we see it happen - we see him interrogate himself, we see him follow his internal logic, and we see his belief in the unreal win:

"Does he believe that the boy in the book is him? Well, yes. Does he believe painted doors on walls can open as though they were real and lead to other places entirely? He sighs and sinks below the surface."

To be fair he is in the bath in this scene, but also: "he sinks below the surface": he submits to the authority of myth over fact. And - crucially - to him, myths are real not as accounts of an abject moral value or a history, which is still quite abstract - what's real to him is myths as people.

Writing Fateheart was an exercise in loyalty to characters I fully believed in deeply, and for different reasons. I could write this much again about Madame Love Rawlins (and might/probably will) and Kat (might/probably won't) and don't get me started on Dorian (will/definitely will), but Zachary led the way for me here. I was fascinated - absolutely, devotedly transfixed by the process we get to see the start of in The Starless Sea, which is Zachary becoming part of a myth. He is the close of one story and then the beginning of the next, stepping from the periphery of one myth to the heart of the next.

So that became the paradigm for Fateheart: how do I take these characters, all of whom start as human, and draw from them a new myth? A story which is at once human and deeply personal and realistic in the sense of being true to human experiences of feeling and danger and cost and wonder and love, but is also more than itself - is broad and vast and contains profound, elemental gestures towards values and archetypes and fundamentals of what we are and choose and love as people?

And Zachary made it so easy. Because the myths are already people to him - real, breathing, blooded people. So his passage into that role was intuitive.

I find it wonderful that in the title quote here Zachary is correcting "well-read" to "well-mythed" - the difference is not one I was immediately tuned into, but one which turned out to be vital. He is able to navigate stories so cogently not because he knows them as books, but because he knows them as people. There is a reason he understands Mirabel the way he does - and loves her. He is used to relating to mythical, archetypal powers as close personal friends: he's been doing it since he was a child. Maybe meeting Mirabel forces that mental pathway out into the open - and cements it for him - but it was already there.

It is also the reason he is able to love Dorian the way he does - deeply, intuitively, and uncompromisingly. This relationship was a joy to explore for a number of reasons (most of which are bleedingly obvious hello i am a fanfic writer) but the most captivating dynamic (for me) is their respective positions with stories. Dorian tells them, carries them, gives them - Zachary receives them, loves them, and keeps them.

There's a language that developed organically for this as I was writing Fateheart, and actually grew from Morgenstern's own imagery: the deep night sky within Zachary - which in terms of vernacular I extrapolated from the details of Allegra's painting ("Zachary’s chest is cracked open, his heart exposed, the star-filled sky visible behind it"), developing into a way of referring to that space of pure and certain belief in the unreal - a vast constellation of myths, points of truth which connect across empty space to make sense of the world - which is Zachary's internal landscape.

When Dorian sits in the Gryphon bar and watches Zachary he cannot read him - though it is made clear that he can read just about everyone and everything else, and has been able to do so most of his life. What, then, is Dorian seeing? Most people are reducible to stories, but myths do not reduce to stories - they reduce to truths. Stories, at their best, might extrapolate to myths, which in turn reveal true things, but people are not usually myths - or if they are, they are myths first, masquerading as people (there are plenty of those in The Starless Sea.) And in Fateheart, I try to push this the other way by having three people slowly begin to masquerade as myths. And Dorian sees it first - long before there is language for it - or need for language for it, because, admittedly, there isn't need until you get deeper into the narrative of Fateheart. But Zachary is not a series of facts that build a narrative: he is a constellation of personal relationships with myths. He is a system of beliefs which merrily crosses the boundaries between the real and the unreal in a superb tangle of truths.

Dorian cannot read him because he is not a story. Nor is he, at that point, a myth - but he is a man whose grasp of the world hovers over the edges of what is real, prepared when push comes to shove to fall straight down the rabbit hole. Dorian cannot reduce him because he is already more than himself, hovering in the doorway of the unreal, beginning to follow his age-old belief into territory Dorian has been living in for a long time: the borderlands. Walking the face of the real world but allegiant to the unreal one.

How must Zachary have looked to him? An academic, operating within the structures and annals, the very factual, papery, process-laden architecture of the strictly real - yet relating to it as if it is one myth amongst many. Post-modernity in action: the historical, the rational, the empirical is just one more story. No more or less real than all the others he met at his mother's knee.

And how must Dorian have looked to Zachary? A man who clothes himself entirely in stories - who weaves between the language and the embroidered details of fables and legends and books - moving too quickly to be framed as either fact or fiction. Comfortable presenting the truth in a myriad of ways - with any name he chooses, in any shape he wills.

Dorian presents himself as a story - not just to Zachary, but to the world. Because it is an extraordinary position of power and an acutely slick one: in a world where most people think stories are not real and value them accordingly lowly, being a story allows him to control how he is perceived. From his name to every farthest extrapolation of his position and occupation he presents as fictional. Which is a very guarded way to walk the world. But Zachary draws absolutely no distinction between the people in his life who are stories and the stories in his life who are people. So Zachary is able to simultaneously accept that Dorian is a story and that he is a real person - able to hold the real alongside the unreal, and able to love it entirely as a self-contradictory package deal. Which must have been deeply disarming for a man who has mostly found that his ability to tell a story makes for a good way to present a false identity. Dorian is very good at being a story, but stories at their best extrapolate to myths, and Zachary knows how to love myths as people. He's been doing it all his life.

And this is where I watched them go in Fateheart. Zachary is more equipped to understand Dorian than Dorian is. He readily opens to him the space he holds within himself for stories - the well-populated night sky of the mythical, the unreal, the wondrous, the true. Zachary is a very, very good reader - which I am asserting by my own metrics, but I'll define it as this: if you can hold in perfect conjunction that a story is not true yet contains truth and is therefore more true, then you are a good reader. You can get more out of a truth if it's told in a good story than you can if it's presented as clean fact: a clean, dry bone of a fundamental is very clear and easy to handle, but you can see best how it moves when it is part of the dancing flesh of a living body - even though on one level you cannot see the bone anymore at all.

Zachary sees all the dressing and falls in love with the truth of who Dorian is - not in spite of the stories he hides within but because of them. He offers Dorian a way to make sense of himself - a way to make sense of his entire life, which has seen him caught over that boundary between the real and the unreal - serving a Harbour he never sees, hunting those who cannot be killed. Hiding in plain sight, operating beyond the limits of the real world without ever being free to cross into the unreal. And that grey area is very familiar to Zachary - he is unbothered by it and comfortable there.

And in return Dorian is the consolidation of Zachary's belief in the real and the unreal: he is at once a person and a story of himself. He is blisteringly close to being only the stories he tells and is told, and existing primarily as a way of delivering and performing those stories - and Zachary perceives him as an entire constellation: taking the stories he has become and focusing upon the truth in them. Seeing the bones in him even as they dance. Loving him as myth and human at once without drawing a distinction - and without needing to.

Writing Fateheart was an opportunity (or really a shameless excuse) to explore Zachary and Dorian's relationship with each other. They are just on the cusp of their lives colliding at the end of The Starless Sea, and there is enough substance there, enough tantalisingly unconsummated (ahem) chemistry, that it is a legitimately fun exercise to carry it forwards and see what happens. And I was delighted over and over again in writing them to discover the myriad ways in which they work together - ways they understand each other and overlap and seem stronger for it than they did on their own - all of which is full credit to their original characterisation. I had a distinct impression of following events that had already been set in motion - and rather than developing what an active, steady relationship looks like from scratch, revealing the outworking of what it promised to be from the off.

The blurring of these boundaries between the real and the unreal is literalised in their passage through the caverns of the Starless Sea: the two of them cross into fairytales, into stories and the settings of fables Dorian has told and memorised and had tattooed into his skin. But I do not think that their respective motions are in mirror image - for all Dorian is already living in the unreal, I think it is Zachary who carries the two of them into the territory of myth. In The Starless Sea they each traverse a wilderness of literary and mythical realities in an effort to find each other, but it is Zachary's trajectory that shapes the language surrounding him and his increasingly mythical identity in the book:

"And so the son of the fortune-teller does not find his way to the Starless Sea. Not yet." - Book I: Sweet Sorrows, chapter three - To Deceive the Eye

Zachary's process of heading down the path of fully embracing the unreal is his journey to the Starless Sea. The story hits its climax - and the old Harbour finds its breaking - when he finds it - but his actual passage into it is through the death of his physical, actual self.

Which, of course, comes at Dorian's hand. But the action of killing Zachary is two-fold: he frees him from the last traces of whatever he was clinging to of real, rational, folllowing-the-rules-of-a-normal-world life by pushing him entirely out of the world and into the place where the bees dwell - where the old gods are larger than life - where real, rational, following-the-rules-of-a-normal-world business is a vague, dollhouse style, boxy, undetailed approximation - a secondary feature, one worldview amongst a bigger context - and where he eventually drowns in the essence of the story itself, despite his final efforts to escape this. And then the completion of the process is to bring him back to the world - to take his body and replace the heart of what he is with something that is itself a story - a myth.

Dorian and Zachary are falling increasingly in sync with each other throughout The Starless Sea, but it is Zachary who leads the two of them to the shore of the thing itself - the very edge. Dorian is looking for a way to get home, which turns out to be Zachary, and Zachary is looking for a way to the Starless Sea, which turns out to be Dorian.

Dorian giving Zachary the heart - which is the heart of a story - 'of' in the sense of its position at the centre, but also in the sense of 'a heart produced by, having its origins in a story' - is the resolution of Zachary's passage into myth. He has travelled all the way to the Starless Sea - he has submitted to the dismantling of any last vestiges of scepticism in the face of the magic or absurd to such an extent that he has died for it - and then he is brought back.

And for what? To drift on a ship in the belly of the world, out of time, out of the story? Or is the absolution of his identity in that death and resurrection enough that wherever he goes he will bring with him the central, burning core of belief that makes stories like these possible?

At the beginning of The Starless Sea Zachary is in the process of returning to his old favourite books:

He has been reading (or rereading) a great many children’s books as well, because the stories seem more story-like, though he is mildly concerned this might be a symptom of an impending quarter-life crisis. - Book I: Sweet Sorrows, chapter 4, first Zachary section

The eclipse of the mythical over the real, the reconnection with the powerful, foundational truth that what is fictional is just as real as what is physical, is already hinted at here: his instinct to draw closer to what seems like a purer form of story - worlds where the lines are blurred more perfectly, where the distinctions are already eliminated. This is the first sign of his overall character arc in this book - and it ends with he himself becoming a story.

And I love that he's concerned this might be a symptom of an impending quarter-life crisis. And I love even more that he's only "mildly" concerned. Because that's so Zachary: an intuitive sense that something's coming, and possibly something huge - and his response is to turn back to stories. The "mildly" here has the same feeling as, "I suppose in a way they were. Still are. Whatever." He is easy with a sense of deep upheaval. Because you can't shock someone with the unreal when they've known it all their lives.

He didn't open the door because he wanted to keep on believing that there was something behind it. He has resisted re-wiring his sense of how real all the orishas are not because he wants to keep on believing and knows he won't if he looks too hard, but because he absolutely believes it but is fearful of what this will mean for his grasp on the rest of reality and his place in it. Because really embracing this postmodernity means accepting that everything ultimately reduces to myth. That to walk truly in the deep places of what it means to be alive does not mean banishing a sense of madness but embracing it - following through to the point of total undoing - death of the real self - and further than that, into a new kind of life.

To sail the Starless Sea is to become the story of oneself. The air is haunted by the death and reformation of what is real. Only the bones of the real things ever return - dancing as part of the flesh they have been clothed in. Truth that is clothed in stories: myth.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins has known since he was a child that stories are true. And maybe his hesitancy to embrace this has been because he knows that if he embarks on this hero's journey he will have to leave behind anything that might resemble his own sanity by the world's standards. He knows that to embrace those relationships with the mythical as closely and as truly as he did when he was a child learning to relate to his mother's circle of friends will be to become himself a story. To relinquish his grip on the rational and to give up, ultimately, his heart.

To go mad, and to return more deeply yourself than you could ever have anticipated.

And you know who gets this? Dorian.

“How are you feeling?” Zachary asks. “Like I’m losing my mind, but in a slow, achingly beautiful sort of way.” “Yeah, I get that. So better, then.” - Book IV, Written in the Stars, 3rd Zachary chapter

That's the second most important line for Zachary's characterisation - in my opinion (and let's face it when it comes to Zachary Ezra Rawlins I have an absolutely absurd amount of opinion). That once he chooses to cross the threshold of the world and walk the halls of a myth he's always suspected he had a part in, he knows that by some standards he is losing his mind - the rational part of his 'self' - his life, by the standards of what the world thinks a life is.

But he's only mildly worried about it. He's never really held much with the sense that rabbit holes ought not to be for falling into. That he should be beyond it. That it shouldn't be real.

The point of departure for Fateheart was a Zachary who has finally, with the aid of Dorian, become himself. A Zachary who has left behind the world and the life that went with it. A Zachary who is so at one with the mythical that he himself is a myth. Zachary at the final, gasping, awakening stage of losing his mind - but in a slow, achingly beautiful sort of way.

"So better, then."

A myth. A story told by someone who loves him well enough to bring him back as exactly what he always was: a heart alive and alight with the unreal, carrying it in the vast night sky within him, bright enough to illuminate the world and reveal all the things in it that have always been true:

[an] enormous, spinning truth, turning like a star in the sky, close enough to be a sun, burning with enough light to illuminate the world. - Fateheart, part two, chapter 16

And Dorian follows him there - is the agent of the final stages of this transformation. Is the hand by which the story is told: one who tells the story, one who carries it.

It felt like the most obvious thing in the world that on the strength of such a pairing one could dream a whole new story - felt, to me, like it was clear that having transcended into myth, the new Harbour could and would form around them - could have at its centre a love story that is at once about real people and about something mythical.

The old myths are completed, and the new myths find their footing at the end of the story. And I wanted to know - was absolutely desperate to see - what the next story would look like, with these two people at the heart of it.

So that's what I wrote.

--BoogleBoot

#Zachary Ezra Rawlins #The Starless Sea #Erin Morgenstern #Fateheart #literature #books #Dorian #character study #I could write for this long again about Madame Love Rawlins alone #and don't get me started on Dorian #actually do #someone I beg you #I have so many thoughts about that man #about both of them

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apollo-the-frog · 9 months

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im just gonna make a list of my favorite rwrb quotes

(sorry for any mistakes)

"you decided to put your dick into the heir to the british throne" zahra says, as she is actively pegging the equerry to the heir to the british throne

"HRH PRICE DICKHEAD💩"

to alex from henry

("is alex claremont diaz going to be a father?" news)

to alex

"but we were ever so careful dear"

The turkey /cornbread knows my sins,

Henry

-alex

(I totaly... Privately called that)

-nora abt henry kissing alex

(I have no idea what a maypole is... Are they known for their homosexual tendencies?)-alex

"Who says make love anymore? Are we gonna like... Listen to Lana del Rey while we do it?) -alex

"everytime I see you it takes another year off of my life" -zahra after she sees henry in alexs closet

[ALEX READING ONE LAST STOP]

"it's like there's a rope attached to my chest and its pulling me towards you"

-alex on the dock with henry

"if you want me to leave you'll have to tell me to leave"-alex at the palace after henry ghosted him

(WHEN THEY WRITE THE HISTORY OF MY LIFE I WANT IT TO INCLUDE YOU. And my LOVE FOR YOU!!)

-alex (i think) at the museum at night

"HISTORY, HUH?

BET WE COULD MAKE SOME"

-alex at the museum at night

(and I'm not gonna get any work done until you let these lovesick homosexuals on the phone with one another) -zahra on the phone to shaan after email leaks (the lovesick homosexuals are alex and henry)

"the phrase 'see attached bibliography' is the single sexiest thing youve ever writen to me"-henry (i think) in emails

"Sugar, I cannot express to you how much the press does not give a fuck about who started what," Ellen says. "As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn't your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term."-ellen claremont, after the cake incident

“You and me and history, remember? We’re just gonna fucking fight. Because you’re it, okay? I’m never gonna love anybody in the world like I love you. So, I promise you, one day we’ll be able to just be, and fuck everyone else.”-alex, after email leaks

HRH Prince Dickhead @

You are the thistle in the tender

and sensitive arse crack of my life.

Text from Alex:

yo there’s a bond marathon on and did you know your dad was a total babe?

Text from Henry HRH Prince Dickhead:

I BEG YOU TO NOT

A: "You are gonna go be, like, five hundred feet away from me for the rest of the night, or else I am going to do something that I will deeply regret in front of a lot of very important people."

-after alex and henry make out in the red room

"O, fathers of my bloodline! O, ye kings of olde! Take this crown from me, bury me in my ancestral soil. If only you had known the mighty work of thine loins would be undone by a gay heir who likes it when American boys with chin

dimples are mean to him."-henry in emails writing a story abt them to alex

"Christ, you're as thick as it gets," he says, and he grabs Alex's face in both hands and kisses him.

“I don’t give a damn what Joanne has to say, Remus John Lupin is gay as the day is long, and I won’t hear a word against it.”-(henry i think) in texts

"The next slide is titled: EXPLORING YOUR SEXUALITY: HEALTHY, BUT DOES IT HAVE TO BE WITH THE PRINCE OF ENGLAND?"

-ellen claremont, the powerpoint presentation

"Sometimes you just jump and hope it's not a cliff."(idk who said that but i think henry)

"Wait. Zahra. Oh my God. I just realized. You're... my friend." "No, I'm not." "Zahra, you're my mean friend." "Am not."-alex (idk when)

"I've been gay as a maypole since the day I came out of Mum, Phillip."-henry, with the queen

"Diaz, you insane, hopeless romantic little shit, says the voice of the President of the United States, muffled in the bed. "It had better be forever. Be safe"-ellen claremont, on voicemail

oh shit i forgot the agenst the walls one sorry 😢

if you know the page # or character/time mistakes put in tags :)

#red white and royal blue #rwrb movie #rwrb spoilers #firstprince #fsotus #rwrb quotes #red white and royal blue quotes #ellen claremont for president 2024 #history huh #bet we could make some #taylor zakhar perez #and #nicholas galitzine #have #so #much #chemistry

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studentbyday · 6 months

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src: left & right "You can’t have a better tomorrow if you’re still thinking about yesterday." ~Charles F. Kettering

yes, it's another one from the inspirational quotes about studying website + no other work of fiction other than winnie the pooh puts me in the mood to stay in the present, which i need to do today if i wanna...

finish half of biochem section 4/5 ✅ (the original plan was to finish the whole section but my brain was fried)

work on the last mol bio section for this week ✅ (i was supposed to finish 15 slides which would be ~half...instead i'm stopping at the 10th slide bc it's late and i'm tired and i will get more done if i wake up early tmr. i COULD'VE gotten through all 15 tho if i had not procrastinated on tumblr, etc. today 😑 also i have a question on 1 of the topics, so unless they reply tmr, i'm gonna continue taking notes on what i DO understand...)

finish psyc ch 2/3 ✅

physio exercises ✅

journal ✅

here's to doing better tomorrow!! 🌟

also, in first year, i was as burnt out as i currently am 1-2 weeks before reading week. it is now 1 week after reading week, so i'm considering that progress 😂

🎶 happy morning jazz - bgm café

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artemisia-black · 2 years

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BCS and BCJ : Like Father, Like Son.

The Three Broomsticks Server have been doing a re-read of Goblet of Fire and it has sparked my interest in the dynamic between Barty Crouch Snr and Barty Crouch Jnr (for brevity I’ll refer to them as BCS and BCJ from here on).

In this meta, I’m going to argue that both men are mirrors of each other and are actually very similar to each other.

1.0 The Unforgivable curses

In the chapter ‘ Padfoot Returns,’ we learn a fair bit about BCS, especially his attitude towards the use of the Unforgivables. Sirius explains that,

“Crouch fought violence with violence, and authorized the use of the Unforgivable Curses against suspects. I would say he became as ruthless and cruel as many on the Dark Side.” GoF

From this quote, we can extrapolate that BCS has a sadistic side and uses the legitimacy of the institution he leads as a means to both indulge it and gain power.

These tendencies are mirrored in his son BCJ. The latter uses the safety of his position as a teacher at Hogwarts (a deeply respected institution) to use the Unforgivables on his students and the spiders.

He uses the Imperius on his students during their second lesson, and I have thought about why he does this. At first, I thought he was collecting information for Voldemort as he puts it on Harry several times. But re-reading the quote, there seems to be an edge of enjoyment to it.

“Look at that, you lot ... Potter fought! He fought it, and he damn near beat it! We’ll try that again, Potter, and the rest of you, pay attention — watch his eyes, that’s where you see it — very good, Potter, very good indeed!” GoF

Indeed, it’s not in BCJ’s interest to teach Harry how to fight the Imperius, particularly as this wouldn’t be a skill that Voldemort would want him to possess. And there is evidence that BCJ doesn’t tell Voldemort about this:

“You won’t?” said Voldemort quietly, and the Death Eaters were not laughing now.” GoF

In this quote Voldemort seems surprised that Harry can fight the Curse, so as @ashesandhackles so astutely pointed out, the unforgivables lessons are most likely BCJ’s own personal power trip

2.0 Appearances V Reality

BCS is first presented to us as follows:

“ Barty Crouch was a stiff, upright, elderly man, dressed in an impeccably crisp suit and tie. The parting in his short gray hair was almost unnaturally straight, and his narrow toothbrush mustache looked as though he trimmed it using a slide rule.” GoF

Everything about BCS 'carefully curated appearance is meant to convey the impression that he is ordered, meticulous and most importantly is a stickler for rules. His description continues with:

“ Mr. Crouch had complied with the rule about Muggle dressing so thoroughly that he could have passed for a bank manager.” GoF

Indeed the use of the descriptor ‘bank manager’ conjures images of someone who is authoritative but a respected member of society.

However this appearance stands in stark contrast to reality. Instead of being the rule following, model ministry official in that very moment he is guilty of several crimes:

-He freed his son without due process

Side note: can we talk about the hot mess that is the wizarding judicial system. A father was literally the judge in his own son’s trial. LOL

He is using the Imperius curse on his son. This is particularly hypocritical as we later see him sending people to Azkaban for using Unforgivable curses.

He is taking a personal interest in the disappearance of Bertha Jorkins when he knows that cast a powerful memory charm on her. A memory charm that according to BCJ:

“...... Too powerful. He said it damaged her memory permanently.” GoF

The idea that BCS’s charm caused Bertha permanent damage is backed up by Sirius’s rebuttal of Bagman’s account of Bertha’s memory:

“Blustering on about how bad Bertha’s memory is. Well, maybe she’s changed since I knew her, but the Bertha I knew wasn’t forgetful at all. “ GoF

So BCS causes permanent damage to Bertha - which in my opinion counts as Grievous Bodily harm at the very least.

These three crimes, demonstrate that BCS’s appearance of respectability is a smoke-screen. He is willing to bend the rules, he publicly enforces and uses both his appearance and the gravitas of his ministry position to do so.

This is mirrored by his son, who performs as Alastor Moody for an entire year. Using the respectable facade of Moody to perform his crimes in the background- the polyjuice potion being his version of his father’s suit.

Indeed, BCJ is so comfortable with his facade that he openly outlines what he has done in front of everyone (including his father). In the scene after Harry is selected by the Goblet, Moody/BCJ appears and states:

““Imagining things, am I?” growled Moody. “Seeing things, eh? It was a skilled witch or wizard who put the boy’s name in that goblet. ...” GoF

“Because they hoodwinked a very powerful magical object!” said Moody. “It would have needed an exceptionally strong Confundus Charm to bamboozle that goblet into forgetting that only three schools compete in the tournament. ... I’m guessing they submitted Potter’s name under a fourth school, to make sure he was the only one in his category. ...”

This serves several purposes:

It fosters trust in Harry

It demonstrates BCJ’s understanding of how Moody's reputation renders him beyond reproach- something he has probably observed about his father.

He takes pride in his account using words like ‘exceptionally strong’, he is rubbing it in their faces (particularly his father’s - but that Freudian Goldmine is for another meta).

3.0 Laws unto themselves

Both BCS and BCJ demonstrate a tendency towards self-rightousness and both believe themselves to be agents of justice.

For BCS this is literal and despite committing crime himself, he is very willing to impose the law on others in a dictatorial manner.

He sends Sirius (and others) to prison without a trial, but it is in the Pensieve scene that we really get a look at how his personal ambition makes him almost fanatical in his show of self- righteous indignation.

During the trial of Ludo Bagman, BCS is the only member of the court who wants to send him to Azkaban:

““Ludovic Bagman, you were caught passing information to Lord Voldemort’s supporters,” said Mr. Crouch. “For this, I suggest a term of imprisonment in Azkaban lasting no less than — ”

But there was an angry outcry from the surrounding benches. Several of the witches and wizards around the walls stood up, shaking their heads, and even their fists, at Mr. Crouch.” GoF

When Bagman is acquitted, BCS the rages to Dumbledore:

“Despicable,” Mr. Crouch spat at Dumbledore, sitting down as Bagman walked out of the dungeon. ..” GoF

This is in stark contrast to the cold voice he uses during the trial (a voice which forms part of his facade) and indicates how BCS potentially revels in exerting the power of his position and the institution behind it.

Then during the trial of his son, he yells:

“ Take them away!” Crouch roared at the dementors, spit flying from his mouth. “Take them away, and may they rot there!” GoF

This quote demonstrates his ruthlessness, the temper that lurks underneath his controlled demeanor and both his understanding of how awful Azkaban is (the fact people rot there) and his lack of remorse for sending people there.

However, this self-righteous attitude can also be seen in BCJ during the Malfoy Ferret incident, where he ‘disciplines’ Malfoy. In this scene he acts as Judge, Jury and Executioner and more importantly in a manner that is very similar to his father.

“I don’t like people who attack when their opponent’s back’s turned,” growled Moody as the ferret bounced higher and higher, squealing in pain. “Stinking, cowardly, scummy thing to do. ...”

Malfoy even ‘squeals’ in pain and BCJ does not stop. He also later says to Harry:

“…Oh if there’s one thing I hate,” he muttered, more to himself than to Harry, and his magical eye was fixed on the left-hand corner of the map, “it’s a Death Eater who walked free. ...”

In conclusion both BCS and BCJ are both evil men who hide behind facades, they are both self-righteous and are similarly willing to be ruthless in pursuit of their ambitions.

#barty crouch junior #harry potter #sirius black #harry potter meta #barty crouch snr #hp meta

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