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firendgold · 9 months

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If you're still doing the choose violence ask game: 2 (👀), 9, 10, 22 ?

I got such a rush from finally answering the first ask that I'm doing this for as long as people send me questions. So here we go again!

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

anon, I'm at work. I'm seeing this at work. :'D

Okay, serious face. Albus Dumbledore is probably my fave if I have to choose between him and Harry on this blog. I just have to figure out why he would never...

Bottom. Albus would never, I'm sorry. He won't. He can't. Like, maybe when he was having his whirlwind summer romance with Gellert, he bottomed every single time they fucked because he was so in love and this was his equal and his partner and so what if he was a little rough and distant sometimes in the bedroom, and always wanted to top and tug his hair and hiss out orders? This was The Man The Universe Had Crafted For Him, and he would absolutely bottom for him every time... and then the summer of 1899 ends. And Ariana dies. And Aberforth breaks Albus' nose. And Gellert fucks off to go be a fascist.

And Albus, alone and heartbroken, resolves to never trust someone that completely again, never love someone that same way, and never let anyone get into a position of power over him where they might be able to use his knowledge and talents for ill. That means physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically... carnally. So he has sex with plenty of other people, and even falls in love with a few of them, but he is in control at all times. He never bottoms again.

That's all I've got for that one.

9. worst part of canon

So the first answer that came to mind is posted here, but for fairness' sake I'll try to come up with another worst thing. (That's not related to ships, because I'm trying really hard not to be THAT violent on the violence ask game.)

I think... that if That Woman was going to introduce international schools, students and characters in the middle book of the series, she should have done more with them than having them vanish after Goblet of Fire, only to come back for either fake romantic tension and one line of exposition about the Hitler allegory Dark Lord of the Before-Times (Krum, Deathly Hallows) or to be married off to a Weasley for an aesop of It's Not About His Looks Now That They're Jacked Up (Fleur, Half-Blood Prince). I'm not saying Fleur and Viktor HAD to be best buddies forever with Harry, but it is weird that they have this unique bond that no other young students have had with each other in hundreds of years, they even lost one of their fellow champions, Dumbledore gives this very moving speech about remaining connected and not letting darkness and prejudice sever new ties, and then... nothing. No side adventures in France or wherever Durmstrang is, no communication from either side, nothing.

Feels like a huge letdown in hindsight.

10. worst part of fanon

Oh, no. That's not fair. There's just so many.

If I had to consolidate what I currently don't like about the HP fandom/fanon into a few lines, I think I would say that I hate the pureblood/Dark side apologism. I do believe in nuance in characters. I do believe redemption and/or walking different paths is an important theme in Harry Potter, and I think it's fascinating to explore that with any and every character you can think of, even characters I may not personally like. But I really, really hate the way the fandom has taken that and twisted it into this idea that we were sold a lie at the start: that the British magical government was fine the way it was, and so was the society around it; that Dark magic Isn't All That Bad, Really, and there are actually Good and non-prejudiced things about a few rich bitches passing down their knowledge and secrets and slurs for generations within the Family, and keeping the Family "Pure" is cool actually, and none of this has any relation to real life ideas about miscegenation and classism and racism and eugenics, what are you talking about?

It's just so worrying. As a minority, when I see people on tumblr/twitter/AO3 gleefully agreeing that we need to eat the rich and fix society and eradicate all the horrid -isms and -archys ruining all our lives, then watch them turn around and write a 200k epic where Dumbledore was the evil one for locking the Horcrux books away and championing marginalized members of society, Hermione is just uppity for wanting to make necessary changes to the darker parts of magical society that That Woman was literally pointing out for a reason, and Tom Riddle is only bad because he took the good segregationist pureblood ideas and added murder to them... and when that fic gets thousands of comments agreeing with them full stop with no examination of any of that... it makes me anxious, at a minimum. The same thing is happening now with Grindelwald now that he's actually a figure on the screen and not just some dude mentioned a few times in the book series: same apologism, same justification of atrocities, same good-guy-blame-games, same blorbofication even.

On the one hand... fiction doesn't always directly reflect or affect reality. On the other... this unironic pro-pureblood meta is a pervasive concept that has popped up in thousands of fics written by thousands of fanfic writers. It's happened for years, and it keeps happening, and I see very few fans speaking out against it or even acknowledging it as a problem. So that makes me ask myself, who actually is willing and able to examine the injustices of our society and build a better imaginary society through the lens of HP fanfiction, and who's okay with the prejudice in the HP world as long as it's coming from the faves they're attracted to?

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Happily, this is a harder question to answer because I've been finding so many like minds in the past 5 years who go feral over the same 20 HP scenes as I do. ^^ But give me a sec, I'll think of something.

...

Okay. Got it.

In order to answer this question, I have to go back to the first time I, young teenager, avid reader, recent reader of the HP series once book 5 was out, realized that Harry and Dumbledore had a much deeper relationship than just headmaster and student. The thing that made me latch on to them and project like crazy, basically.

It's the scene in Goblet of Fire chapter 36 where Harry has been rescued from Fake Moody and he's in Dumbledore's office with Dumbledore and Sirius. Dumbledore asks Harry to relay everything that happened to him once he touched the Portkey in the maze—and immediately Sirius tries to protect Harry from having to relive it now, so soon after it's happened. And then this scene happens.

Dumbledore stopped talking. He sat down opposite Harry, behind his desk. He was looking at Harry, who avoided his eyes. Dumbledore was going to question him. He was going to make Harry relive everything. “I need to know what happened after you touched the Portkey in the maze, Harry,” said Dumbledore. “We can leave that till morning, can’t we, Dumbledore?” said Sirius harshly. He had put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Let him have a sleep. Let him rest.” Harry felt a rush of gratitude toward Sirius, but Dumbledore took no notice of Sirius’s words. He leaned forward toward Harry. Very unwillingly, Harry raised his head and looked into those blue eyes. “If I thought I could help you,” Dumbledore said gently, “by putting you into an enchanted sleep and allowing you to postpone the moment when you would have to think about what has happened tonight, I would do it. But I know better. Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. You have shown bravery beyond anything I could have expected of you. I ask you to demonstrate your courage one more time. I ask you to tell us what happened.” The phoenix let out one soft, quavering note. It shivered in the air, and Harry felt as though a drop of hot liquid had slipped down his throat into his stomach, warming him, and strengthening him. He took a deep breath and began to tell them. As he spoke, visions of everything that had passed that night seemed to rise before his eyes; he saw the sparkling surface of the potion that had revived Voldemort; he saw the Death Eaters Apparating between the graves around them; he saw Cedric’s body, lying on the ground beside the cup. Once or twice, Sirius made a noise as though about to say something, his hand still tight on Harry’s shoulder, but Dumbledore raised his hand to stop him, and Harry was glad of this, because it was easier to keep going now he had started. It was even a relief; he felt almost as though something poisonous were being extracted from him. It was costing him every bit of determination he had to keep talking, yet he sensed that once he had finished, he would feel better.

This is one of the best scenes in the entire book, the entire series. It completely refutes the fanon Dumbledore who is often cold, cruel, inflexible and unrelenting in his quest for whatever the author wants him to be inflexible and cruel about at the time. It shows that Dumbledore, the real Albus Dumbledore, is one of the few people who understands what Harry needs and is able to provide it to him, even when others who also care for Harry would rather protect him or shield him from what he needs.

Kid me was particularly taken by how gentle Dumbledore is with Harry here. It made me look back and see how in some ways this scene, this closeness, is the culmination of all the times they've met and spoken before.

(You can imagine how painful it was reading Order of the Phoenix right after this.)

But yeah, that's probably one of my favorite scenes that other people ignore or haven't talked about/drawn/written about much. Which is ironic, because the scene right after that where Harry talks about Voldemort taking his blood and Dumbledore's eyes do the triumphant "lol Voldemort just fucked up" gleam is probably one of THE most talked-about scenes in the fandom (even though to this fucking day in 2023 people still don't realize what the gleam meant, when even That Woman has clarified what it meant in INTERVIEWS).

...And for me, safely at the end of the questions, that's all she wrote.

#fireandgoldposts #thanks for the ask!#choose violence ask game #Albus Dumbledore #not y'all making me put more gr*ndeld*re on this blog :') I forgive you tho #it's my own fault for having that headcanon. and to think I didn't think I'd be able to answer that question #I'm poking a real bear by finally talking about how much I hate the pureblood politics/pureblood supremacy/misunderstood bad guys trifecta #another thing that was perhaps interesting 20 years ago when people first started doing it but is now stale and infuriating #since it's now seen as fact and not fiction #the fiction of fiction even #I can't believe I didn't just write ''the worst part of fanon is every independent!Harry/manipulative!Dumbledore fanfic ever written #that's growth for me #oh god the worst part about no expanded roles for Fleur and Krum is that most fans only give Fleur an extended role #when they're SHIPPING HER WITH HARRY as some kind of ''ooh foreign beauty'' thing where he naturally resists her allure #and oh my god here comes the nausea again because flowerpot is another ship that's been done to death the very same way haphne/wolfstar has #and I love Krum/Hermione as much as the next person but fanon Krum is like NEVER allowed to move on from Hermione unless he's gay/bi #which is VERY rare to see. like please give me Harry/Krum fanfic recs if you have them #or Ron/Krum because that is so narratively satisfying #honorable mention for question 22 would probably go to the scene where Hermione and Ron try to get Harry to go to Dumbledore in year 5 #after they find out what Umbridge is doing to him in detention and Harry just. CAN'T. properly explain why he doesn't want to go #but he's thinking about how Dumbledore has ''ignored him since last June'' and it's one of the few times we see him acknowledge that hurts #he mentions it several times throughout the book in his thoughts but that's one of the first times he refuses help from Albus #even though Albus would help him in a heartbeat oh my GOD it's been like 20 years since that book came out and I'm still feral about those #Goblet of Fire #Fleur Delacour #Viktor Krum #pureblood propaganda #and how much I am anti-that lmao #not fireandgold #oh my god having to reformat this every 3 hours because the bolds and italics won't stick is a fucking NIGHTMARE

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freebooter4ever · 2 months

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Hey thanks I thought I was the only one who didn’t like the joke. Everyone laughed yuck

Ahhhhh yeah :/ i thought the joke was definitely funny, but with that harsh twinge of sadness at just how normalized and accepted this sort of sexism STILL is.

' i was never good at telling jokes but the punchline goes, i get older but your lovers stay my age '

And its not necessarily a damnation of the man himself - obviously rami is a favorite of mine but i dont think hes ever dated anyone over 30 and is veering towards jake and leo disease too, and i still think rami is one of the most brilliant character narrative builders in the business currently - but its a damnation of a culture that treats romantic partners not as equals but as disposable play things with an expiration date. Look, i got flirted with by much older guys in pittsburgh all the time - usually it was cute, they were friendly, very complimentary and flattering about it, and they never treated it seriously or asked me out. Then i came to LA and the difference was night and day. Older (rich) men here feel entitled to younger women in a way that is frankly scary - at one point in a bar when a guy in his 60s was hitting on me my muscular male friend had to physically step between us and scare the guy off to get him to go away.

And it doesn't help that im sort of in the 'one of the guys' category, so i've heard the way these super rich dudes talk about the models they date behind their back while hanging with 'the guys', and, ugh, its not nice. I will say one thing for sports dudes - i imagine guys like ja*gr have way more respect for young women who are passionate about health and fitness than computer science executives.

But there's negatives in the sports world too - yall know how much i adore taylor. But even i recognize that she's not 'sports bro hot' - she doesn't have silicone, her make up is understated, she doesn't have that social media defined 'hotness' that sports fan dudes expect their sports heroes to date. So while i was naively scrolling insta looking for cute snapshots of taylor and travis being all lovey dovey at the end of the game, a good half the comments were men complaining about her. Saying they cant understand why travis is dating someone so old, that she will never be able to give him kids, that she's already showing her age (both of them are 34 btw). So far travis seems to ignore these types of comments but it would be hard to judge him for giving into peer pressure because this stuff is just so prevelant and exhausting.

And it does effect us older women - while i was dating Pilot Boy i was absolutely hyper aware of the fact that here is this rich, handsome, successful, and extremely smart guy dating beneath him. Like we bonded over being literally the same age - we had mutual friends in college without even knowing it. But i was always questioning like what does this guy see in me - why isn't he dating a gorgeous 25 year old whose only goal in life is to live on the beach with him??? Like he was honestly more the type of dude i would be friends with while he dates hotter women, lol. So i really was not surprised when he ended things (i was mostly sad that we couldnt stay friends and continue geeking out on airplanes and history together LOL), it just felt like it made sense, of course he wouldn't be serious about me, a guy like him should be dating a fresh, youthful, less bitter and cynical 25 yr old blonde. Six years in LA and this is just the pattern i see repeating itself over and over.

And im the romantic - when i fall in love its ALL in. Usually it's personality, usually its intellectual - that comfort in finding someone who just understands how you think. I love being so close to someone that you know them better than yourself, that you can communicate wordlessly. Shared humor, shared experience. As i age im learning that i actually dont pay much attention to the signs of aging when it comes to attraction - who notices wrinkles when what you're in love with is that look in their eye when they smile at you? The mental connection between romantic partners is the most important for me in my book. For me this typically means someone within the ten year range plus or minus - though i prefer it even within a five year age gap.

#But i also really feel for the women because when i was 22 i got myself into a relationship with a man a decade older #Who only valued me for my youth and tight skin #And even back then no matter how much in love i was (and i have since deleted all the posts but even after he dumped me i was still #coming on this blog sighing about how much i loved and missed him)#The feeling of being only valued for your youth was still skeevy to me #In the back of my mind i knew that this was a trait i was eventually going to lose because everyone ages #And i was not confident enough to think i would ever have any value beyond Young #And thats not to say there are not relationships with age gaps that are healthy - there totally are look at ally and justin they ARE love #Its just a very specific type of relationship where the older partner keeps dating younger and younger and only values youth #that creeps me out #And in our culture that narrative usually is an older man with a younger woman and i tend to side with the woman #THE GOOD NEWS is if you notice in the clips and gifs it looks like the younger guys on the pens are laughing a lot less than the old guard #i think the newer generation - the dudes in their 20s are starting to realize how shallow all this is and that things are changing #and that the generation of women after me will deal with a lot less pressure #At least i hope!!!#Jrnlsht #Sorry this got long

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