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#i wanted to add andromeda but she’s not in the movies :(
sofoulandfairaday · 3 months
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Please share all of your Sirius and Bellatrix thoughts ♥️
I have way too many, darling.
The TLDR is it is our choices that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities. The long version is under the cut.
When reading about them I usually prefer stories where their original 8-9 year gap is preserved (it annoys me to no end when people write the Order and the Death Eaters as entirely made up of people in the same couple of years in Hogwarts —really? Was the conflict exclusively waged by child soldiers? Were Dumbledore and Voldemort just chilling before 1977, when they decided to start recruiting?). With that being said, I can also enjoy fics where - for shipping purposes - their ages are more compatible, to make them share time in Hogwarts or during the First Wizarding War.
I think they are very, very alike personality-wise. The narrative draws some delicious writing parallels between them, both physically and in their expressions, vices and virtues, and choices. Directly between them, might I add. The author underlines the difference between Bella and Narcissa more than once, we're meant to see it, and similarly we're meant to see the similarities between Bella & Sirius.
They are haughty, passionate, powerful, competent, arrogant, bright, much more intelligent than the fandom thinks they are. In general, they suffer from the stigmatization that many characters - but some people in real life do too - that someone who is intense and impulsive cannot possibly be as intelligent as people who are meek, soft-spoken, generally more controlled. Think what the fandom does to Sirius vs Remus and Bella vs her sisters, when every arrow points to the fact that they are actually the cleverest in these pairings.
They are both some shade of mentally ill, and not because of the curse of the Blacks - half the Blacks went mad didn't they? What's the saying? Every time a Black is born the gods flip a coin. god the Targaryen-Black parallels are gold - Sirius is very likely horribly depressed in OOTP, something no one around him seems to understand, infuriatingly. The only one that seems to get it is Harry, who has the literal Dark Lord living in his brain (= bigger problems to deal with). Bella is... I don't know what she is, ask me after my psychiatry module next year, but my money is on PTSD after Azkaban - after all, she didn't have the escape of an Animagus form behind bars. She would also very likely be victim-blamed for these different feelings, which would lend itself to a delicious nobody else in the world understands us but us type of post-Azkaban dark!fic which I would love to read.
They are both skilled at magic, and while they might despise each other for their respective political views, they respect each other because of this. Bella is probably above him in terms of magical power and skill, because she's 9 years older and because of Voldemort's training, but Sirius seemed to be keeping up quite well with her during their fight in the DoM.
Speaking of which, I am sure that Bellatrix's scream of triumph was due to her winning their duel, not because she thought she had killed him and that is probably the single thing I love the most about HBC's interpretation of her in the movies. That look. 10/10.
I am of the opinion that Bella is all bark and no bite when it comes to certain members of her family, especially her sisters. Sure, she might say that she wants to prune her family tree but 30 years later in the beginning of DH, she still calls Andromeda sister. I'm sure she would want nothing more than to put him under lock and key for the rest of his life and never let him escape, not kill him. And, to me, the way Sirius speaks of his family is very interesting. I'm sure he firmly believes that he hates them, but his actual feelings are more complex than that. You can hate someone and still desire their love, their respect. You can hate that they are the only people in the world who understand you - and hate yourself more in turn, for it.
Sirius seems to me like someone haunted by his own darkness. He, much like Harry, would be constantly worried that he's becoming like them. I'm sure it's a weak spot for him and I wish we had heard more bickering, or at least a full interaction between Bella and Sirius (I feel like she would claim him as hers, underline how much he cannot escape his own blood, even just to mock him/unsettle him in battle). But what Dumbledore says to Harry is true: it doesn't matter how alike they are, it's their choices that matter much more. And I feel like this is why the two of them would never reconcile in canon. They stand for different things.
I also think there might be some - and I know Freud is controversial nowadays, but bear with me - penis envy, on her part. Because Sirius was born the heir - something she would have given her left hand to be: to be born and die a Black instead of being expected to marry into another family - and he squandered it all away by consorting with werewolves and mudbloods. But no. He got everything and pissed on it, and it's just not fair. And by choosing not to come back, even in the two years after Regulus' death, he made sure that the Black Family name will die with him- and I think that is just something she can never ever forgive him.
Now. Everybody knows I don't like TCC and my preferred view of Bella is someone with fertility issues, even to the point of being sterile.
[I read an amazing fanfic once and a line from it stuck in my brain - "If I can't be life, then I'll be death"]
But. If we do see it as canon. This is also the reason why - despite being overjoyed at Delphi's birth - I am convinced that she wished for a boy when she was pregnant. If she had a boy with the Dark Lord, who couldn't possibly give them his name, the House of Black would have an heir. This is also the reason why I don't thing she was necessarily opposed to having children with Rodolphus - the "spare" would have been her heir.
Bellatrix would say that Regulus was her favourite cousin, but truth be told, it was really Sirius whom she respected more - at her core, in my opinion, Bellatrix is really only someone who respects power. Sirius is like her that way.
But Bellatrix is clearly a cruel person, which Sirius is not (or at least, he tries not to be: Kreacher and Snape are two very particular cases of people who are mean to him back). Also, Sirius' view of the world is much more egalitarian - If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. Bellatrix is clearly someone who sees the world in terms of hierarchies, and lives within them (see: how she acts around Voldemort and what is implied of her treatment of house-elves who obey their masters: there is a scale and some serve others, and as long as they do so well they have certain rights; disobey, you get punished).
(Bellatrix is somewhat a feminist character but let's be real- she's not a revolutionary. She went to the Dark Lord and showed him just how powerful she was - aka my wand is bigger than all these male DEs' - and he said "okay, fair, I'll give you the Mark", thereby freeing herself. She is not a "equal representation for women inside terrorist organizations!!" type of girlie)
I also love how her death parallels Sirius'. It's thematically beautiful and it excuses her death coming at the hands of one Molly Weasley (who could never ever in a million years have beaten her on skill alone). She dies because she is arrogant. It's one of her traits. Overconfidence. She was always meant to die like that.
[coincidentally one of the reasons why she would not be a hufflepuff like some suggest: this woman is not humble]
I could go on, but I think I've rambled enough.
P.S. Let's not sleep on the fact that the two of them together would be hot.
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historyhermann · 1 year
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The erasure of records, digitization, and 1990s Hollywood films
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Gif of one of the scenes from Hackers (1995)
In the past week, I've watched a number of 1990s Hollywood films, such as Sneakers (1992), Hackers (1995), The Net (1995), and My Fellow Americans (1996), where the "everything's on the computer" state of records, as stated in passing in The Andromeda Strain (1971), has been reached. All of these films share a similar theme: the erasure and change of records (mostly digital), which has an increased relevance as archival institutions continue to digitize more and more of their records, although not everything, as I noted in my post about challenges of archival digitization in late April.
Reprinted from post on my History Hermann WordPress blog and Wayback Machine. Originally posted on May 19, 2019.
Looking at the 1990s films
Let's start with The Net, since it was the first of these films that I watched, computer with bulky hand-held phones and dial-up computers. In this film, Sandra Bullock plays an isolated middle-age White woman (Angela Bassett) who is a "program systems analyst from Los Angeles" who lives most of her life online, talking on chat rooms and ordering pizza. That all changes when she takes a trip to Cessna (before which there is a computer malfunction which screws with flights), Mexico, meets a man who basically seduces her in order to get control of a virus which is on a floppy disk, of all things. This plan fails, however, as she realizes, after literally sleeping with him for some reason, that he wants to kill her, so she gets away in a dingy that crashes on rocks, knocking her unconscious. She wakes up three days later in a hospital and the disk has been destroyed. As she is about to go back into the country, after a record was changed that checked her out of the hotel, she is told to sign a temporary visa document which states that her name is Ruth Marx.
As the movie goes from here, she realizes that her identity has been stolen by an imposter, with the change of records by the villains who want to make profits off their security technology and gain access  to every system possible. With this, the movie is a bit of warning that it is very easy for someone to be digitally erased with so much of our lives online, with which you don't even have to spoil the ending. Clearly there are inept secondary characters (police officers, nurses, and jailers), many of whom, like sole archivist Madame Nu in Attack of the Clones think that records are inviolable and cannot be changed. The partially inept villains are even able to kill a few people, like the  Undersecretary of Defense by falsifying a report saying he has AIDS and a friend of Bullock's character. At one point, she says that "our whole lives are on the computer, and they knew that I could be vanished. They knew that nobody would care and it wouldn't matter." Later she adds to the inept court-appointed lawyer, who believes in the inviolability of the records in that they cannot be tampered with, to defend her from false charges:
Just think about it. Our whole world is sitting there on a computer. It's in the computer. Everything. Your DMV records, your Social Security... your credit cards, your medical history. It's all right there. Everyone is stored. And there's this little electronic shadow on each of us... just begging for somebody to screw with. They've done it to me, and they're gonna do it to you...I'm not Ruth Marx. They invented her. They put her on your computer with my thumbprint.
There were some similar themes in the 1992 film, Sneakers, which starred Robert Redford. The film focuses around attempts to create a black box which would crack American codes, allowing access to any American security system. In the process, a team tries to steal the box back and one of the characters purchases blueprints from the county recorders office for $50.00, leading the movie to be cited as an example of "the use and portrayal of records in film." [1] With the information from the county recorder's office, and their own observations, they are able to break-in to the company of the villain and get the box, but before it is handed to the NSA of the characters removes the main processing chip.
There is more than that. Redford's character is basically a hacker, as was his friend Cosmo (who is the film's villain) who was arrested and thrown into prison for computer crimes. The black box has a similar power to malicious code in The Net. Again, the focus is that records can easily be changed, or in the case of this movie, mimicked, to certain ends. Like the previously mentioned film, the cast is mostly White, but a bit more diverse in that they have a former Black CIA agent on the team of the "heroes."
There's one other film which has similar themes: Hackers, which features Angelina Jolie in a starring role. It focuses on a group of teen hackers who work to take down a villain who wants to sink a few oil tankers while getting wealthy in the process. In this "cult classic" film, as some places call it, there are computers running on dial-up (like in The Net), huge portable phones, people in some of the nerdiest clothes ever, and moving of information around on...floppy disks! In fact, the virus itself is on a floppy disk.
The altering of records is a key part of this film as well, as the villain alters criminal records of the male protagonist and his mother to list them as criminals, blackmailing him to give up the floppy disk. In the end, this group of hackers, all men except Angelina Jolie's character, and all White except one kid with dreadlocks, sets out to take down the servers of the villain's mega-corporation,  succeeding thanks to help from two Japanese hackers and their subsequent "electronic army" of hackers. Somehow they basically get off from their prison sentence thanks to a television broadcast from one of the hackers, which seems strange as he could be utterly lying. As with most movies of this nature, the plot doesn't always completely add up.
Finally, there is a bit of an outlier: the 1996 film, My Fellow Americans. This is perhaps the most hokey film of all, although archives is a main part of this film. Ex-Presidents, played by James Garner and Jack Lemmon, discover a scandal in the current administration. Lemmon discovers that conspirators have altered his official records, at his presidential library archival vault, in order to "erase traces of a meeting." At another time, Mark Lowethal's character goes to the National Archives, finding that the presidential appointment log does not show this meeting. [2] It turns out the culprit behind these changes is the current sitting present, the former vice-president, with his chief of staff being the one whom "doctored the Archives log and the log in Kramer's library."
In this case, the film does not involve the changing of a digital record but only the changing of a paper record. Still, this has a similar theme to the other three movies in that records can be doctored, manipulated, and changed to the benefit of certain individuals. Although, this can be, at times, easier to do with digital records than with paper records. I would also say the theme that records can be changed, erased, or rewritten follows through the Halt and Catch Fire series, along with shows like Mr. Robot, going into its last season this coming fall.
Why do these films matter?
"If  I  could take  all the  things  that  I  am, all the  feelings  I  have, all the  things  that  I  want,  and somehow  get  them  on a  computer  card, you would be  the  answer. I  don't  know  why  or  how  you've  come  along at this  particular  point  in my  life. See, that's  the  magic part. I'm  not  gonna  let  you  go."- Dr. Sidney Schaefer talks to his girlfriend (who ends up being one of the people who is spying on him) in The President's Analyst, a 1967 film
They matter because more and more of the records held by archival institutions are digital, specifically "born-digital" (like tweets, Facebook posts). Of course, they are a bit dated, as they came out between 1992 and 1996. However, the point that records can be changed and manipulated should be considered. There should be measures in place to make sure that the records, especially digital records, are not tampered with. Perhaps this would require fixity checks, but also could necessitate rules on the usage of records themselves.
At the same time, the archives themselves should not be like the dark and haunting Thatcher Memorial Library in Citizen Kane, which has what some have described as having one of the world's meanest archivists, played by Georgia Backus, with hair up in a bun "and an intimidating stare on her face, a real dragon lady at the gates of knowledge." This is not the type of archives you want to go to! This is not the image which should be projected. [3]
What I have said so far is only scratching the surface. These 1990s movies have standing importance because born-digital files which are entering archives across the world, like some in New Zealand, include "photos, radio broadcasts and documents," requiring appropriate workflows. Margot Note, a prolific writer in this field, described that as a former lone arranger who directed all archival management at an organization she launched a project to digitize a set of records, creating digital surrogates of 2,000 of the collection's best images, adding that such surrogates are superior to past formats like microfilm since they can be delivered through networks "offering enhanced access to simultaneous users around the world." In the same article she advocated the importance of digital collections, saying they grant "valuable remote access to the information contained within the original records" if they are created within the appropriate archival infrastructure, with metadata and search functionality, indexing. She adds that digital collections of archival records can not only provide for "multiple points of access and enhanced image details" but it can allow for more in-depth study than analog originals, increase interest in items which have often been ignored,and it can also act as "an advocacy tool for an archives." She also argues that different types of digital surrogates of records can be created, either for web display, storage, or print reproduction. She ends by saying that while "electronic copies suffer no degradation through the duplication process," a copy of a digital photograph is "indistinguishable from its source" meaning that the "original" loses its meaning, and that with digitized images, "researchers risk losing information that enables them to understand how the image was accessed and how its physicality changed over time." As such, there should be efforts to limit or eliminate such a loss.
But there is another aspect to archival records. Librarian Carrie Wade argued back in December 2018 that information is political with information loss affected by federal funding decisions of research repositories ruining the work of professionals. Similarly in the case of archivists, they should not be completely neutral not only because who "we elect impacts our ability to do our jobs well and the access that people have to information," as she argues, but they literally cannot be neutral as they are human beings with viewpoints, emotions, and thoughts of their own.  Building upon this, there are clear archival silences or "gaps in the archival record," with these silences "created and enforced within archives" as a result of practices that are  "central to the work of archivists." Digital records, whether born-digital, like social media posts, or digitized paper records, can help bridge this gap. After all, paper or analog records can be digitized in ways that allows access to them through online channels while originals are restricted.
All of this is relevant to the 1990s films I referenced in the first half of this post, as it requires having effective records management programs. The policies regarding records not only in Hackers and The Net, or even My Fellow Americans and Attack of the Clones were clearly outdated, and should be taken as a warning to have correct policies. This also requires taking into account challenges with capturing resources that are born-digital and making it available, effectively curating this information for the user. Furthermore this is important as a major trend in libraries is collection of data to prove their value even though this has its downsides especially when it comes to ethical concerns with data mining and big data, even though this can be useful. At the same time, how material is defined for easy access is a challenge "to every content owner," as is choosing the right metadata, with "important detail work" in this process. The same is the case for finding more "accessible ways for people to find and scan content" and ways to share these "images with your target audience." [4]
Concluding words
All of this ties back, of course, to the classic animated sitcom, Futurama, with its mentions of "technical support," CDs, CD players/CD racks, and floppy disks (some of which are 15-inch). In fact, in one episode, "How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back" (season 2, episode 15), the last half of the episode is about going into the central bureaucracy to get back a disk with Bender's brain on it, which is floppy disk. Others mention existing government records, databases, a record vault (safe  box) and an arrest record. In one episode Fry even declares to Bender that "I'm not a robot like you! I don't like having disks crammed into me" while in another he downloads "a celebrity from the Internet" from a parody of Napster, which is kidnapping celebrities and illegally copying them, with the "backup disk" being a floppy disk. Others focus on big data and concentration of information, digital cameras and operating systems.
I mention all of this because it shows the relevance of record erasure, digital archives, digitization, and the changing digital environment. This requires of course that you don't have "unauthorized data access" like Fry accessing the computer connected to the brain spawn. In the end, while these 1990s Hollywood movies are dated in various ways and problematic in others, they still have relevance connected to present developments of archival institutions in response to new technologies and making records more accessible to online users.
© 2019-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Notes
[1] Kyle Neill, Senior Archivist of the Peel Art Gallery Museum & Archives also argues that there are archival themes in The Dark Knight (2008), The Avengers (1998), Chinatown (1974), and Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy (2011).
[2] This reminds me of a major plot point in Thrill Seekers, a 1999 TV movie, where the protagonist finds out that there are people who travel in time (from the future) to disasters and serve as tourists, disgustingly watching people die. In the process, the researcher on staff at a local newspaper, a bit like a records clerk, has databases of newspapers on her computer, which he searches to find information, which she lets him use even though she just met him (not good records management). Ultimately she says that she will go to the National Archives to find the original images, proving that he was not lying about the time travelers. Later, the protagonist goes back and time and saves her. But, I thought I'd just mention this, as the fact she is a bit of a records clerk brings in line with the records clerks in Erin Brocovitch (2000) and Chinatown (1974). The former has a clerk who flirts with a law firm filing clerk (Erin Brocovitch) who uncovers wrongdoings of a water utility company on her three visits to the records office of the Regional Water Board, letting her into "a records storage area, piled high with files, papers and binders, where she proceeds to copy water records," allowing her to complete her work. The latter has a sullen young man who does not like his job, grudgingly providing assistance, with Jack Nicholson's character "tearing out part of a page from a record book by covering the noise with a cough" after he is told he cannot check out the volume.This clerk, as one reviewer puts it, has "a well crafted scene presenting a stereotypical records keeper" with the clerk/archivist as "an impatient, unhelpful civil servant guarding over his records domain who treats the public as trespassers" while the "records are in long aisles in bound volumes." Some have compared Erin Brocovitch to another film with records as central, specifically A Civil Action (1998).
[3] The same goes for Hollywood images of old archivists like in Vampires (1998) where the church archivist is introduced, a "slight, bearded man with glasses" whom is sent along on a quest," in They Might Be Giants (1971) where a wealthy lawyer, who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes, teams up with a psychiatrist "to try to rid the world of evil" and in the process, one person plays an aged archivist who, despite his problems, "does come across as the sanest person in the movie and he finds clues to track down Moriarity," or in Amityville II: The Possession (1982) when a father uses a local archives to find out about a hosue causing trouble for his family, and in the process he is helped by an elderly archivist, a person who says "I've worked here for 25 years." There are other mentions of archives, but without archivists in Arlington Road (1998), Batman Begins (2005), Beverly Hills Ninja (1997), Broken Lullaby (1994), GoldenEye (1995), Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (aka Doppelganger) (1969), L.A. Confidential (1997), Message in a Bottle (1999), Ninth Gate (1999), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2017), Secret Nation (1991) [Canadian film], Shooting the Past (1999), Smila's Sense of Snow (1997), The Dark Knight (2008), The Name of the Rose (1986), The Phantom (1996), and The Shadow (1994). Also, there are said to be flirtatious archivists in Carolina Skeletons (1991) and Just Cause (1995), along with helpful ones (either initially or ultimately) in Cloud Atlas (2012), Deceived (1991), Quatermass and the Pitt (1967), The Fugitive (1993), and The Mask of Dimitrios (1944). There are also a number of films which have archivists in the background: Charlton-Brown of the F.O. (1959), Macaroni (1986), Red (2010), Ridicule (1996), Rollerball (1975), and The Age of Stupid (2009), and those that are said to have nasty or mean archivists: Blade (1998), In the Name of the Father (1993), Scream 3 (2000), The Nasty Girl [Das Schreckliche Madchen] (1990), and The Watermelon Woman (1996). Please, do not constitute this as an endorsement of any of these films, as likely they are mostly terrible.
[4] Also see articles about how libraries lead with digital skills and a cryptic finding aid.
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lunatheseus · 8 months
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My thoughts on the upcoming Harry Potter TV series: a list
It could either be a hit or a flop, no in between: One good thing about this is that the tv show will stay true to the actual books down to the details. It would definitely fill in some of the major gaps that the movies had. (Ex: the whole backstory of the marauders, Peter Pettigrew's death, the two-way mirror, S.P.E.W) However, it's not usually a great idea to produce an adaptation/recreation of a franchise that isn't really all that old. It was filmed in the early 2000's after all. To add on, it will never be as iconic as the original: Let's face it, the Harry Potter movies had so many silly, iconic moments that are still used in edits and social media today. This doesn't give a great set up for the directors or the child actors that are preparing for the release of this TV show.
The poor poor child actors: If you really think about it, rarely did the original, main cast of Harry Potter actually make it big again in the industry after Harry Potter ended. They of course, still made movies, but not many of them starred in enormous blockbuster, worldwide famous movies and TV shows. Even though Harry Potter was immensely popular at the time, the actors would forever be mostly only known for their performances in Harry Potter, therefore not allowing them to create as many opportunities for themselves after the franchise ended (typecast issues). If the original popular series didn't produce the best outcomes for the main character's actors and actresses, then how will this adaptation tv series create better outcomes for their own respective actors and actresses?
There's a better option: Or- there are so many better options. You could literally make a spinoff show about the marauders. What frustrates me the most is that there is an ENTIRE PORTION of the Harry Potter fandom that are fans of actors and their marauder roles that THEY NEVER PLAYED. Literally, fans have fan-casted actors to play these roles. Directors can LITERALLY give the fans what they want and make a ton of money off of it. The idea is right in front of you!! HOWEVER, if you're one of those people who doesn't want the marauders fandom to be ruined because of a potentially shitty movie, not to worry: there are so many other backstories that directors could dig into. One of the reasons why I love Fantastic Beasts is because they dive into Dumbledore's backstory and his history. Directors could literally do the same about other characters. For example: PROFESSOR MCGONAGALL. Did you know she was an incredible quidditch player? And that she worked at the Ministry as law enforcement?? And that she GOT MARRIED?? Like whaaaat? Another example is Hagrid: let's not forget that he went to school at the same time as Tom Riddle (AKA the Dark Lord). There's a ton to unpack there for sure. Doesn't he have a brother? What about his relationship with creatures? That doesn't come out of no where... How about stories based on the three Black sisters: Andromeda, Narcissa, and Bellatrix? Their situation is so interesting and it'd be amazing to get to know them better. I could go on tbh... maybe I'll do a post about that later?
Anyway, those are my thoughts on the new series, of course I'll be rooting for the actors and actresses, hoping they'll do great! I'm excited that Tom Felton is coming back but as Draco's dad! HAHA that'll be a sight to see! I hope they do the original plot justice.
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Frank Darabont's The Walking Dead
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Season 2 would be completely different. It was supposed to be more action packed with Rick killing a massive number of zombies at some point and would have more accurately adapted Miles Behind Us and Safe Behind Bars with the addition of a few original arcs in the early episodes like the conclusion of the Vatos storyline and T-Dogs infection being a major story point in the beginning. Frank wanted to get more shots in Atlanta so perhaps a couple episodes there, 3-4 episodes of the Barn, and Sophia (Madison Lintz) would live since her death was caused by Darabont's leaving along with Dale and Shane's. The Lori/Rick/Shane love triangle would become a major story arc but presumedly better written. Tyreese and Michonne would appear along with the Greene's and Shane's character would be explored throughout this season. Andrea would come under Shane's influence and Rick would also reach his first breaking point.
Season 3 would adapt the Governor arc differently then in the show taking up a full season instead of four and a half. The character would have been more like his comic counterpart and many of the shocking acts shown in the comic would seen or implied in the show.
As for the rest of the series, things get more complicated as even less is known about most of Frank Darabont's and the original cast's since the first season but there are a few major ones that I think are interesting or at least unique.
Darabont intended a eight season run with him planning to create a general outline for what he intended for the series with Robert Kirkman telling him the ending as well as future plotlines. However there were already signs that he didn't intend to entirely follow the comics, apparently intending to go on and off the comic at different points, going back and forth into canon comic material depending on Frank's own original ideas as he intended to add a couple new major plotpoints.
For starters, the Walker's wouldn't be just props, they'd be smart and fast and constantly evolving with the Walkers resorting to cannibalism when starving and eventually forming communities. Now I know that sounds stupid at first but there's no such thing as bad ideas just bad execution. The series would also have a episode per season that was a anthology, examining the lives of Walkers featured in the show before they got bit. Darabont would also push the envelope each season by adding new zombies that were particularly disturbing and grotesque to become iconic of the show. The show would have also had various celebrities cameoing as Walkers.
The Wildfire Virus, it's origin, a vaccine, a cure, and whether there is still structure of government would be a major plotpoint throughout the series, making the show a sci fi horror like the Andromeda Strain.
Dale was supposed to live until comic death and Andrea would have become the strong confident badass she is in the comic and marry Dale. She and Rick would not be a couple and Darabont implied he wanted Glenn to survive as well.
More famous actors would play iconic characters.
Merle would be a recurring threat throughout the series.
There would be homages and references to famous horror or zombie movies throughout the series.
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dgcatanisiri · 11 months
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So yeah, there's The Quarry finished.
In retrospect, me thinking that there might be a cure, an alternative to killing, probably got more characters killed than anything. Note for next run.
Aside from the mandatory heterosexual bullshit, which, let's be real, it's pretty much the price of admission for any media not 100% made for a queer audience, I'm exhausted but I'm used to this, I did greatly enjoy it, like I have all of the Supermassive catalog. Let me get my replays of Cyberpunk and Andromeda, and maybe a play of another game, I'll easily go back in and try again.
Though I DID make a quality of life choice and disabled the "Don't Move" checks. Those screwed me over enough in Until Dawn for me to not want to deal with their bullshit again. And next time through, I'll probably turn down some of the other choices as well - The idea for first time is to do it with no takebacks or particular foreknowledge. Now that I know how things will play out with only my intuition guiding me, it'll be time to go with guides.
On a character level, though, I will say that Emma was easily my least favorite character of the group. Like her whole thing is saying that she doesn't want anything more with Jacob, but... She not only actively tries to make him jealous, she also is actively and intentionally flirting with him as well, so it's just... Clearly you want different things here, he wants a steady relationship and you want things to just be fun and casual, and this can't be justified as "getting the point across."
On the flip side, I feel like the narrative is basically out to make Jacob a designated whipping boy, considering the way that he is both easily killed AND quickly forgotten about by the others (like no one even MENTIONS him after he leaves the group, when no one even really knows that werewolves are involved). Like, I know he's responsible for the group being stranded there in the first place, but the karmic kicking he takes throughout the rest of the game...
Okay, yes, full disclosure, I do think he's cute and I have a tendency to forgive things for attractive characters, but still. It seems excessive to me. Like, it feels like the game, in knowing that it's a send up of like campy (pun intended, by both me and the developers) eighties slashers, stories where a character like Jacob would be defaulted as the hero, so here he's not just responsible for the problems by the narrative, but he's also both punished for it AND shoved out of that hero position by the characters more likely to be the hero in a modern story, but I feel like the writing goes so far in flipping that script on its head that it turns around to abusing him for the crime of... being a dumb teenager with no way of knowing that he's been put in the middle of a horror movie.
Seriously, I want him to just embrace the fact that he's clearly a himbo and needs a nice boy to get over the girl with.
And... the gay content. What there is of it. Like, on the one hand, it's handled in a way where no one ever comments on it, and while this IS a horror game sending up slasher movies, so the characters CAN end up dead, that's true up and down for the straights, too, so that's fine. But it's WEIRD how, once Laura appears in the group, she's thrown together with Ryan and even other characters comment on their interactions being "sparks," especially factoring in that Laura's primary motivation is her BOYFRIEND. Like, I can't even say that it's trying to make him seem not-queer, because it doesn't even make sense for either character. It's just a bunch of weirdness, like the writers couldn't give these characters interactions without trying to add that spark (which, given that I'm gonna go out of a pretty firm feeling limb and guess that the writers were all cishet, could easily just be the case).
Like, going back to the feeling of Jacob being written as the eighties version of the protagonist thrown into the modern setting and getting taken to task for his behavior, this feels like the characters' interactions being pulled from another story where they're totally meant to be together.
I mean, y'all know me, I'll call out forced heterosexuality in video games all the time, but this one is just WEIRD because it doesn't even make justifiable sense in universe that these two would be flirting, and I can see TV Tropes has an entry on it, which means even THE STRAIGHTS noticed.
Anyway. On the queer scale, this is probably no higher than a four. Taking that scale and applying the standard "media is so frustratingly heterosexual" curve, I'd still put it in a solid 8 to 8.5 range. If you have played and enjoyed other Supermassive titles, you'll enjoy this one.
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archivyrep · 1 year
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The erasure of records, digitization, and 1990s Hollywood films [Part 1]
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Gif of one of the scenes from Hackers (1995)
Some time ago, I watched a number of 1990s Hollywood films, such as Sneakers (1992), Hackers (1995), The Net (1995), and My Fellow Americans (1996), where the "everything's on the computer" state of records, as stated in passing in The Andromeda Strain (1971), has been reached. All of these films share a similar theme: the erasure and change of records (mostly digital), which has an increased relevance as archival institutions continue to digitize more and more of their records, although not everything, as I noted in my post about challenges of archival digitization in late April 2019.
Note: This article is reprinted from my History Hermann blog, with this post published there on May 19, 2019. I published it on my Wading Through the Archival Stacks WordPress blog on Aug. 28, 2020 with some revisions because I thought it was relevant to archives, at least when it comes to films.
Looking at the 1990s films
Let's start with The Net since it was the first of these films that I watched, computer with bulky hand-held phones and dial-up computers. In this film, Sandra Bullock plays an isolated middle-aged White woman (Angela Bassett) who is a "program systems analyst from Los Angeles" who lives most of her life online, talking in chat rooms and ordering pizza. That all changes when she takes a trip to Cessna (before which there is a computer malfunction which screws with flights), Mexico, meets a man who basically seduces her in order to get control of a virus which is on a floppy disk, of all things. This plan fails, however, as she realizes, after literally sleeping with him for some reason, that he wants to kill her, so she gets away in a dingy that crashes on rocks, knocking her unconscious. She wakes up three days later in a hospital and the disk has been destroyed. As she is about to go back into the country, after a record was changed that checked her out of the hotel, she is told to sign a temporary visa document which states that her name is Ruth Marx.
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As the movie goes from here, she realizes that her identity has been stolen by an imposter, with the change of records by the villains who want to make profits off their security technology and gain access to every system possible. With this, the movie is a bit of warning that it is very easy for someone to be digitally erased with so much of our lives online, with which you don't even have to spoil the ending. Clearly, there are inept secondary characters (police officers, nurses, and jailers), many of whom, like sole archivist Madame Nu in Attack of the Clones think that records are inviolable and cannot be changed. The partially inept villains are even able to kill a few people, like the Undersecretary of Defense by falsifying a report saying he has AIDS and a friend of Bullock's character. At one point, she says that "our whole lives are on the computer, and they knew that I could vanish. They knew that nobody would care and it wouldn't matter." Later she adds to the inept court-appointed lawyer, who believes in the inviolability of the records in that they cannot be tampered with, to defend her from false charges:
Just think about it. Our whole world is sitting there on a computer. It's in the computer. Everything. Your DMV records, your Social Security... your credit cards, your medical history. It's all right there. Everyone is stored. And there's this little electronic shadow on each of us... just begging for somebody to screw with. They've done it to me, and they're gonna do it to you...I'm not Ruth Marx. They invented her. They put her on your computer with my thumbprint.
There were some similar themes in the 1992 film, Sneakers, which starred Robert Redford. The film focuses on attempts to create a black box that would crack American codes, allowing access to any American security system. In the process, a team tries to steal the box back and one of the characters purchases blueprints from the county recorders office for $50.00, leading the movie to be cited as an example of "the use and portrayal of records in film." [1] With the information from the county recorder's office, and their own observations, they are able to break-in into the company of the villain and get the box, but before it is handed to the NSA, one of the characters removes the main processing chip.
There is more than that. Redford's character is basically a hacker, as was his friend Cosmo (who is the film's villain) who was arrested and thrown into prison for computer crimes. The black box has a similar power to malicious code in The Net. Again, the focus is that records can easily be changed, or in the case of this movie, mimicked, to certain ends. Like the previously mentioned film, the cast is mostly White, but a bit more diverse in that they have a former Black CIA agent on the team of the "heroes."
© 2022 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Notes
[1] Kyle Neill, Senior Archivist of the Peel Art Gallery Museum & Archives also argues that there are archival themes in The Dark Knight (2008), The Avengers (1998), Chinatown (1974), and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011).
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authormikamathews · 5 months
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Writing Diversity in Media... not as hard as people make it out to be.
( I write this as a white gay male, but I think I make a good point)
 So, so, so many people talk or whine about writing diversity in media, be it books, TV shows, movies or whatnot. There is so much to be said about this topic, but I think I can add a clear voice to the loud screams of those on both sides. Something a bit cleaner and more interesting, at least I hope so...
To start, the whole argument against Diversity in media... is dumb and lacking in reality. Let me give a few examples I have heard, and let's debunk them shall we? This specific article will deal with Race, but next time we will deal with sexuality. 
First off, there were no black people in Europe! This is a broad statement, add in country in Europe or time in European history and you'll see the point. Africa, specifically Egypt, had a trading network with Greece and Rome for eons. Mythologically speaking, I can think of Four Greek Myths that involved Egypt at the top of my head, major myths actually! 
Perseus ( From The Medusa story) found his wife Andromeda being chained at a rock at a kingdom at the northmost tip of Africa. Perseus is Hercules' half brother and ancestor, so like... pretty big part of mythology. 
Triton, Poseidon's son and heir, had daughters called the nymphs of Tritonis that lived in Africa and trained Athena. One of which was Athena's closest friend who she accidentally killed, taking her name Pallas as a part of her own. Another huge part of mythology. 
Io, a nymph and abuse victim of Zeus and Hera, was turned into a cow and traveled all over to flee Hera and eventually landed in Egypt where she married a Pharaoh and had a kid. She is also Hercules' ancestor, another tie to the greatest of Heroes in Greek Myths. 
Finally, when the Greek Gods were fleeing the Monstrous Typhon ( the greatest monster in myth) they fled in animal form to Egypt. The Early Greeks saw this as a way to explain why the Egyptians worshiped animal gods. This was a form Syncretism, where two ancient practices and beliefs melded together. Still, a clear sign of connection. 
Cultures melded, immigration happened, conquering happened. The Greeks had African people, the Romans had African people, people that then migrated when Rome ate the Mediterranean. People that would have moved to modern day England, Scotland and Wales as Rome conquered. A similar effect happened when Alexander the Great moved through the world and devoured all he saw. 
Seriously complainers, open a textbook, the world has been interconnected for eons and people have spread as a result. People all over the world, have a variety of bloodlines, connections and ethnicity. It is silly, foolish, to ignore that and keep your head in the sand. 
So, if you want to write Dark Age England for example, you can most definitely have black characters! Same with Black Gladiators, Black Pirates and so on... the world has almost never been all white and it should not be so in your fantasy stories!
So... yeah!. 
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sapphicwhxre · 3 years
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harry potter + mothers
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drabsyo · 3 years
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I was wondering...I was always confused about Narcissa’s hair. It’s been a while since I read the books. Did she color it blonde to show her now belonging to House Malfoys. Or was it naturally blonde? Movies confused me a bit I guess.
Yes, this had me confused too! I've agonized and toiled over it, more than I probably should, about how I should draw her hair because people have generally different views, which is totally understandable! 💕
And I've always wanted to discuss it, so now that I've been given a reason to... Well.
If you take a look at some of my Narcissa fanart, you'll notice the different ways I'd color her hair. I was so confused. Is she a light blonde? Dark blonde? A mix of raven hair and blonde hair? If she has blonde hair then why does her family have (mostly) dark hair? And WHY does she have blue eyes?! This woman is absolutely confusing! (Which is kind of, you know, fitting because Narcissa always loves to be a mystery to literally anyone lol)
So I did my homework, asked around, and scoured every bit of information, canon or otherwise, that I could find about her. It led me to this:
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In canon, this is what the Black sisters look like. You can find the page here. Narcissa is a child here, and already has blonde hair. So we can go ahead and safely assume that she was born with natural blonde hair. But in the films, Narcissa has black and blonde hair. I don't actually know why they gave her that hair color, maybe so that the audiences wouldn't question her blood relations with the Blacks--I don't know. I really don't. But now we have a book version Narcissa, one who has full blonde hair. And a movie version Narcissa, one who has raven and blonde hair. At least, that's how the different hair colors started: a movie version, and a book version.
So... here's where it gets confusing.
To my knowledge, it isn't actually explained why her hair color is the way it is in both the movies and the books. Having blonde hair does raise many questions, how is she the "only" blonde in a family of dark hair and dark eyes? To top it all off, it gets even more confusing, because fanon writes and draws her either as a full blonde or a mix of raven and blonde hair. We just have this large pile to sift through of her having either hair color. No one actually explains anything. She's just... infuriatingly there. She's either blonde or raven haired and blonde. BUT fanfiction writers, as I've observed, give their own reasons why Narcissa's hair color is the way it is in their respective stories. And it's actually pretty creative and interesting! It adds even greater depth to her character, and it fits the narrative of the story even better. Remember, the character we're dealing with is Narcissa Black. One of her main traits is "she won't do anything unless there is a clear purpose behind it." This character is deliberate, meticulous, and she makes sure to plan ahead at all times. And so, some fanfiction writers decide to play on that.
You can skip this part if you want to avoid spoilers but I've compiled a small list of instances in (Cissamione) fanfiction where Narcissa's hair is mentioned.
🔹 In Extinction by rubikanon in Chapter 10: Build and Break, Hermione asks Narcissa about it. Here, Narcissa has black and blonde hair. She explains that she only decided to dye it blonde to "fit in with the Malfoys." We can gather two things from that alone, which resonates with her character perfectly: 1.) Narcissa is loyal and 2.) Narcissa purposefully wants to show the rest of the world how loyal she is by committing to having blonde hair. The woman has some serious commitment, and it shows. But now, the way that it's slowly growing back into her natural black hair color, hints that perhaps Narcissa no longer wishes to fit in with the Malfoys. However, if we take an even closer look, we can safely assume that Narcissa isn't the kind of person to just leave her hair color "unattended" like that. Remember, she's meticulous. And this is a big deal for her, the fact that she's just kind of letting it grow back instead of either fully dyeing it back to black, or dyeing it back to blonde. It suggests that perhaps she's a little unsure this time, perhaps it is her uncertainty that is the reason why it's now a mix of both. Another grey area? Or maybe it's actually something more deliberate? Maybe now, she likes that it's a mix of both. That other half now being solely for Draco, and not to fit in (completely) with the Malfoys any longer. Who knows why Narcissa does things the way she does? We can speculate to the ends of the earth, or be as smart as Hermione Granger (or with the case of Extinction, see Hermione's thoughts), but something tells me we'd still be a good step behind.
"Which one is your natural hair color?" I wondered aloud.
(Narcissa) She glanced up at the unexpected question. I was relieved she hadn't sensed my attention yet. It's not like I meant anything by it, I told myself. She was so beautiful, one couldn't help but notice. And feel physically drawn to her. And want to see her two-toned hair fanned across her back, slipping over the bare skin, silky beneath my fingers...
"Why do you ask?" Her query brought me back to reality, and I hurriedly corrected my imagination to include a pretty dress covering the rest of her.
"I don't know." I chewed the inside of my cheek, suppressing my other thoughts. "I'm just curious."
Her gaze returned to the fire. "You've seen enough of my relatives to guess which color is genetic. The blond is something I added to fit in with the Malfoys, after Draco was born." She was quiet for a moment. "He looks so much like his father. I suppose I wanted to share some resemblance."
🔹 In Killing Me Softly by Looktotheedges in Chapter 4: Nagging, Hermione suggests that perhaps Narcissa is part Veela because of her blonde hair and very attractive features, like Fleur. Which is this whole other theory/plot that's very interesting, but won't be discussed in this post. Narcissa tells Hermione that Sirius has always been blonde, and that it isn't out of the question for her to be blonde either. Sirius Black. A blonde. I know! Maybe it's there because it's funny that Sirius is actually blonde like Narcissa. Prissy, haughty, lady-like Narcissa. Arguably the 'girliest' cousin that he has. No, no, no. He doesn't want to be anything like Narcissa. Anyway, if that's the reason, I think that's hilarious and cute.
Narcissa turns away. 'I am aware my appearance is frightfully drab. Work has been…'
Hermione holds back a disbelieving scoff. 'Narcissa. You always look beautiful. And you’re talking to the witch with grass in her hair who practically lives in her office all week.'
Narcissa just leans further over the crib. 'A blonde little boy. It has been so long since… I can almost imagine…'
Hermione stands next to her. Looks down at the peacefully sleeping Louis. He does look remarkably like Draco. 'Are you sure there’s no Veela blood in you? You weren’t secretly switched at birth?'
'Like a changeling?'
'It would explain your blonde hair.'
'Sirius was also blonde, it is not completely out of the question for us Blacks.'
What?!
(...) 'I know. But it is the truth. He was blond until he was about seven… then it began to darken. Mousy. Dull. He wanted to look cool and brooding instead, so he got his hands on some kind of charm right before he set off for Hogwarts. A new, edgy Sirius. It was around then he forbade us from calling him Siri. Said it sounded too girly.'
🔹 In Fixed in Time by TheWorldsaBeastofBurden in Chapter 9: Sisters and Saviors, it's also tackled a little humorously. Andromeda let's a little comment slip while they're in the middle of trying to heal Hermione. Something funny, something that suggests Andromeda and Bella, when they were children, have always wondered why Narcissa is blonde unlike them.
The first words spoken occurred after they’d risen and attempted their casting. Andromeda’s preparedness to take on their task had been clear in her mind so Narcissa rose with her sister, wrapped an arm around her waist and held her near as the woman raised her wand to draw up the rest of the injury she’d dropped, half a slash across Hermione’s hip bone…
That remained half, as Andromeda growled out, “...it isn’t working.” she looked to Narcissa, “Why aren’t you powering me?”
What nonsense? “I am!” she insisted. She was! Or “I- I am trying to!” Her magic was active and alive, pulsing to rise from her skin and transfer into Andromeda’s but it- it wasn’t working! “Could...could it be that you were disowned?”
“Disowning doesn’t take away the fact that we share blood, our magic is directly related. Ugh, Bella always said you were adopted!”
“Oh ha- oh.”
“...oh?” Andromeda returned.
“...it’s not an issue of power. It is what I intend to aid in casting,” Narcissa slowly worked out. Oh, it was most blessed Mister Goyle could be brought to assist the present Hermione. If her present self had been brought to aid Andromeda? “...I cannot harm Hermione.”
Andromeda sighed with some frustration. “I understand you are so tenderly in love-”
“It isn’t- I’m avowed! I- when we arrived from the future we had to escape Malfoy Manor, I couldn’t bring Hermione through the wards without...I couldn’t add her directly, that would be visible. I had to...attach her permission to mine.”
🔹 In Glass Silence by Zarrene Moss (Menzosarres), which probably gives one of the most interesting backstories for Narcissa's hair, for why it's blonde. I can't put a clip of the scene here without hogging up a huge chunk of space on your dash, so I'll try to explain it as best I can instead.
Understand that these come with serious 🛑spoilers🛑 so please do read it at your own risk.
In Glass Silence, Narcissa's hair and eye color was black at birth. But after an accident with raw magic, something Bellatrix wasn't able to control when they were children, Narcissa almost dies. Bellatrix, using even more raw magic, tries desperately to pull Narcissa's "life force" back, but at the cost of losing the eumelanin that made Narcissa's eyes and hair black. Narcissa survived, but now has very little eumelanin left, which is why she's so pale, blonde, and has blue eyes. Every time Narcissa looks at a mirror, her reflection is a reminder of the day she almost died. Bella, on the other hand, is reminded of that day every single time she looks at Narcissa.
So! These are only a few fanfictions I could think of at the top of my head that tackles the issue of Narcissa's hair. In the books, to my knowledge, she is described as having blonde hair and very pale skin.
But let's take another deep dive, if you're up for it.
These are mostly theories, which are largely unconfirmed, but I think they're interesting to think about.
There's this description in the wiki:
"Narcissa Malfoy is described as tall, slim, "nice looking", and very pale, with blue eyes, long blonde hair, and a clear, cold voice. Her hair colouring thus differs from most of the House of Black, who generally have dark hair, though Narcissa does possess the arrogant good looks characteristic of her family."
There's also this pinterest photo of the Black sisters being compared to each other side by side, descriptively and physically. I'm so sorry, I don't know who drew it, but here's a link to the post on pinterest.
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"Narcissa threw back her hood. She was so pale she seemed to shine in the darkness... long blonde hair streaming down her back."
Which is interesting because this hints that she's... different. It's a bit literal in this sense--she comes from a pureblood family, arguably the most influential and notorious one, the Blacks, who mostly have dark hair and eyes, and yet her physical appearance directly contrast that. There's also the matter of her namesake. She's the only Black to be named after a flower instead of a galaxy or a star. We aren't really given any explanation why she's the only one who's different. Even Sirius, who fought and died for the side of the Light, is named after the brightest star in the sky. Even Andromeda. It's been said that this is actually meant to be a parallel of some sort to Lily Evans. Narcissa and Lily are both named after flowers, even Petunia (Lily's sister). And I know there's this thing where it's a tie up to how Harry was ultimately saved by a mother's love: Harry lived at the beginning because of his mother's love, and Harry lives once again at the end of the books because Narcissa, a mother who wanted to save her own son, saved him.
If you read that scene in the books where Harry is saved by Narcissa, the whole scene is actually... pretty soft? There's that sort of disarming softness about Narcissa in that moment, where Harry expected to be callously dragged and prodded for a heartbeat. Instead, he gets a surprisingly gentle touch, a curtain of long blonde hair shielding him from the darkness, and the kind of tenderness he wouldn't expect from his enemies, "Is Draco alive?"
It's almost like Narcissa's appearance is something of a "tell". With Andromeda, she's described to have kind eyes, open, unguarded. She inherited her family's dark eyes and dark hair, and she even looks like Bellatrix's twin. I suppose we could say, Andromeda wants to fight that in any way she can by being openly kind. Narcissa is quite literally the opposite--guarded eyes, stoic expressions, cool and calculated emotions. We're veering into this fine line between fanon and canon in terms of their characterization (but only due to lack of canon materials) but personally, I think Narcissa having blonde hair and blue eyes is somewhat more fitting for her character. Again, this line:
"Narcissa threw back her hood. She was so pale she seemed to shine in the darkness... long blonde hair streaming down her back."
It's like that one glaringly obvious hint that everyone overlooks simply because... because it's the most obvious one. "Me! I'm different! I'm the last person you'd expect, but it really is me!"
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Anyway. I've rambled on long enough. Hope this clears up some of that confusion, anon. Hoping it didn't ADD even more confusion... 😂 At the end of the day, this is just me speculating, gushing, and being One Big Fool™. So.
But either way, blonde hair, dark hair, mix of both, I adore her. Pretty much.
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HASO, “Perfect Timing.”
Alright everyone. I am beginning to realize that maybe expecting myself to write a story every week day with a job and trying to get into grad school and writing a second novel might be a bit..... excessive?
So I am going to try for three times a week. I hope you all stick around :)
And I hope you enjoy today’s story as well. 
Adam stood with his hands behind his back, feet spread to shoulder width. He would never have noticed by himself, but the men and women around him stood a little straighter and stepped a little faster under his watchful eye. Once upon a time they might have only hastened their work if he directly asked them too, but just his mere presence these days could send his crew scurrying to do their work. He hadn’t really changed anything about the way he commanded his men. He was firm when he needed to be but allowed for brevity when it would suit the situation.
However, a few years and some tough lessons was slowly shaping him into the kind of man who could command thousands, sharp posture, calm confidence, and a keen eye. 
But then again anyone who could appear professional while wearing high top heelies was a man to be reckoned with.
Sunny walked up next to him her pearlescent white armor glowing under the light as she leaned on the shade of her matching spear. Her head was held high like his. Where once she had been locked up, and defensive, she now stood with the calm confidence of someone who understood what control meant.
Together they had come a long way.
She tilted her head, “You really think he’s going to let you race this…. It’s a million dollar piece of military hardware, they don’t stand a chance.”
Adam didn’t move, hands still clasped behind his back as he  stared up at the F-90 Darkfire he was preparing for the race, “I wouldn’t be so sure…. I’ll be lucky to come in last place.”
Sunny frowned confused, “I saw those shuttles, they were junk shows.”
He lifted his head as the F-90 was rolled across the deck.
“This is a race, it isn’t combat. She was built for dogfights which means she is going to be heavier than the others. Wing tip to wing tip she is also going to be a little longer than the other shuttles and jets making maneuvering around obstacles more difficult. Sure she likely has a more powerful engine, but that can be as much of a detriment as it is a leg up.”  He gestured in the vague direction of the race course, “We are going to be racing through the planet’s smaller rocky ring. It has an unusual amount of larger, thick chunks which we are going to have to manuver around: the kind of conditions you might see in science fiction movies when they talk about an asteroid field. Asteroid fields are generally too far apart to cause any real issue, but here the rocks are dense, and my flying is going to have to be on pont, having a more powerful engine is going to make her more touchy, and my fitness on the controls is going to have to be absolute.”
Sunny tilted her head listening as he continued. She liked it when this side of him came out. There was something about the analytical, logical side of Adam she found….. Very appealing.
He walked forward to examine the jet himself, “Furthermore, I don’t know if you noticed, but there were a few jets there that weren’t exactly junk shows. A few of them were pretty top of the line, and most of them were built for racing. Lighter, sleeker, faster, and with more engine control than mine.
A lot of my maneuverability is lost out of the atmosphere. This isn’t about how well you can manipulate wind currents, this is going to be all about the very minute rotation of the rear and and wing engines. Their wings are smaller and closer in meaning they are going to rotate more easily than me.
She walked up with him and put a hand on his shoulder, “You forgot to fact in one thing.”
He frowned and looked up, “Oh, what did I miss.”
She smiled slightly, “The skill of the pilot, and I know for a fact that we have the best pilot this side of Andromeda. You can have the best plane in the world, but if you have a shit pilot, then a good pilot in a flying trash can has a chance of winning.”
He Smiled, “Thanks, I needed that.”
He stepped back, “Still it doesn't pay to be too cocky. I have a feeling these people have raced this before, they are going to know what they are dealing with, and I am going tinto this completely blind. This is a test to see if my instincts are better than their practice…. Who knows it could be a very close run thing.”
He moved forward to do an extra check on the outside of the ship despite having a whole team of people to do it for him. Adam had learned to delegate a lot of his responsibilities onto others to avoid burnout, but this was one thing he never left to other people. He came back after a thorough check of the ship and stopped next to her.
His head was tilted to one side as he looked at the machine sitting before him.
“It is missing something.”
Sunny turned her head to look at him, “What?”
He smiled, “Do we have anyone here who has experience with graffiti?”
***
Donavan Red met him when he entered the hanger, wearing his flight suit and holding his helmet under one arm. He had gone for some of his more simple equipment. Didn’t want to give the guy an excuse to blame his skill on technology.
Red looked him over.
“Nice suit, princess.”
Adam just smiled thinly looking around at the other pilots, “I see I might be under-dressed.”
To be far though, he wasn’t exactly sure what he would have described the dress code, if he had to put it on an invitation. 
The most apt description seemed to have been.
Dress for Pissing contest.
The men and women wore their uniforms in the same way NASCAR drivers might, covered in logos and patterns. Some of them were clearly custom ordered with personal designs on the backs or the helmets, some sporting flames, others cartoon animals, one guy was just covered in black and white skulls.
The affect up close was ok, but from a distance he just looked like an over excited dalmatian, or maybe some kind of flamboyant cow.
A few of them went for color themes, neon red on black. Neon green on blue.
Most of them tried to coordinate with the matching colors on their ship, each trying to outdo the next.
Red smirked.
The docking bay light began to blink red as the airlock was engaged, and the all turned to watch as the doors opened, and Adam’s jet rolled into the docking bay. She was simultaneously both very impressive and very not impressive. She was an instrument of war, and he rockets lined up on either side of her wings said as much. Adam had once considered her rather sleek in comparison to other jets of the day, but looking at her now in comparison with the racing planes and he couldn’t help but compare her to a pitbull or a bulldog next to greyhounds or whippets.
She rolled up slowly and Red raised an eyebrow.
“A whose guy huh?”
Adam smirked, “I don’t know, I kind of like it.”
They both looked up as the F-90 stopped in place, and along her side in delicate blue cursive script was the name Cinderella. The man who had done the graffiti  had even taken the time to add some stylized pink roses to the front and end of the word giving it a finished look.
Donavan seemed both amused and annoyed at the same time.
The men and women around him turned to look over ridicule dying on their lips as they saw the smirk on his face.
It was made pretty clear.
He was going to beat them, and when he beat them, he was going to have a princess logo on the side of his jet, never mind all of their cool paint jobs.
Donavan frowned but then turned to everyone, “Alright load up!.” Adam did as ordered, switching seats with the young pilot in the cockpit and strapping himself in. he adjusted his controls, did a quick once over, and then pulled some power from his engine.  There was going to be an overwhelming desire to go fast, but he knew that speed wasn’t going to win him this race.
The jets began lining up next to each other, and to his surprise, one of the sleek racing models sidled up next to him, and when he looked over, he saw Donovan Red cambering into the cockpit.
That didn’t exactly bode well, but what was there to do about it.
He felt cool oxygen spilling  onto his mouth and nose as the orange tinted visor dropped down over his eyes. He opted not to use the heads up display preferring to see everything around him as he was flying. 
They were all in a line now, and up ahead a large projection appeared on the docking bay doors.
Red lights began to blink as the docking bay was cleared of everyone except for the jets.
The image of a woman appeared on the screen before them.
It was one of the women he had seen before in her cut off jean shorts and tight tank top.
“Ladies and gentlemen start - your - ENGINES!”
All around him the room was filled with a roar as the group of people pushed their engines to an idle.
He could feel the jet underneath him as it thrummed and whined vibrating into his gloves and down into his skin.
His very bones could feel the trembling.
“The course is simple, one lap around the rocky interior ring of the planet. Rules are only this, no leaving the ring, no weapons, and no teams, every man for himself. If the race moderators see any of this, you will be thrown from the race.”
She smiled and leaned back to reveal two green flags in either hand.
She began to wave them.
“On your mark!”
He took a deep calming breath forcing his hand to relax.
“Get set.”
He felt his heart beating  hard against his ribcage, his stomach crawled up into his throat, and he felt the sudden and overwhelming need to pee.
“GO!”
THe airlock doors shot open faster than they should have been able, a clear sign someone had bypassed safety protocols. Caught off guard by this, Adam shot out of the gate slower than he would have liked. Already the racing  jets streaked ahead, their quicker sleeker designs looking right at home against the blackness of space.
He had to remind himself that in space, without wind resistance, sleek didn’t mean shit.
If he was good enough he could have piloted a brick to win.
He gave more joice to the engine and shot forward. He cut under one of his other opponents and then cythed up next to a second.
He was there for only a moment when he saw something coming in from his right.
Instincts had him move fast, and he turned horizontal  shooting upwards just as another jet tried to push him out. He was flying over the two of them now, and gave another burst shooting forward and past them.
This open stretch was the only time he was going to be able to use the power of his engine to his advantage, so he gave her a little more juice and shot forward catching up quickly with the racing models at the front. Two of them cut sideways attempting to block his path. He cursed, forced to fire his engines backwards so as not to go crashing into them. 
The ring was approaching quickly now, and he could see very clearly that they had not been kidding. The belt was dense, less mate out of fine sand, and instead made up of billions of rocks some the size of him, others the size of cars, and even some the size of large houses. It was the strangest sort of formation he had ever seen around a planet, and he wondered idly how they stayed in orbit.
The two jets ahead of him cut right and then left as a rock came barreling towards him.
He shouted and rolled to the side barely avoiding a head on collision, his instincts saving him where his active brain could not.
He snarled.
“Pull it together.”
There was no time to be thinking, there was only time for flying.
WIth a practiced hand he toggled a switch on the side of his thumb, and his helmet was suddenly filled with the sound of music and drums. His brain focused inward and stopped thinking. He shot over and then under rolling between rocks just inches away on either side. Off to his right the planet below was glowing with the light of it’s star, a lightning blue halo around it where the atmosphere glowed.
He cut the left dove down and then rolled up.
He could see the other jets ahead of him cutting in and out through the rocks. His breathing grew even, his body relaxed, his brain heard nothing but the beat of the music and saw nothing but the obstacles ahead of him.
One of the jets pulled up next to him from behind recklessly rolling around one of the rocks. They were racing wing tip to wing tip now.
They cut right and left under and over he rolled left they rolled right. They were shaky just hanging on, but his flying was smooth.
Up ahead one of the other jets lit up with glowing orange as a set of flares broke from it’s back end shatting against the debris behind it.  Rocks were thrown off their normal course and went smashing into each other turning the rock field ahead of them into a meat grinder. Adam shot forward and dived downward while rolling tight, behind him the racer was unable to replicate the move and a piece of rock caught their wing sending them spinning off to the side and out of the ring.
Adam dodged a piece of debris coming in from his left, flipped upside down and shot diving upward and then righting himself just under the jet up front.
He could see the leader now, and recognized it as Red himself .
The jet above him attempted to drop down and knock him out of position, but he gave a burst to the engine and shot forward.
The jet behind him punched downward and nearly collided into a rock before pulling back into the palace.
Adam took their place in second.
Red could see him coming.
Another set of flares was released.
He checked his forward momentum and rolled three or four times to his right. G forces tugged at his consciousness forcing blackness to the edge of his vision. He tightened the muscles of his chest and stomach forcing blood back up into his head as he breathed out in short controlled bursts.
A rock flew overhead, he cut low, bumped up and then executed a rolling turn over a massive rock pulling in behind red and just up to the right to avoid another burst of flares.
The two of them were fighting for the front now.
And red was good, he knew how to handle a jet, but so did Adam.
They roared past a field of rocks splitting apart as a massive chunk came between them. Adam roared forward, and panicked for a single moment as he saw an impenetrable wall of rock appear just before him. Then a crack appeared. He fired the forward engine and cut horizontal passing through an opening that left him only feet to spare. Rock rose up to meet him, and he rotated his engine up dropping vertically before cutting sideways and passing under a rock. Teeth gritted, he punched upward passing through a gap just as it closed behind him.
A yell of exertain escaped his lips as he pulled straight up cutting up the side of a massive mansion-sized rock before diving right back down into the thick of it.
Red was gone, he didn’t see him anymore.
Was he up front?
And then the sleek black jet dropped down from above cutting him off.
He cursed and swerved low past another rock forced to cut diagonal back into line.
He pulled up wing to wing with the men again.
They dove, they pulled up and they took a wide turn ac coordinated together as a military formation never more than four feet apart.
They were going faster than they probably should have reacted. second by second he rolled left Red went right. They both met in a dive rolling past each other, wings almost touching before cutting upwards mirroring each other in opposite directions. The sound of the music melded with the path of his flight.
They were racing side by side just as one of the other jets roared over them careening out of control in a desperate attempt t o reach front. They watched him dive pull up cut left, and then a rock rolled right into their path. The two of them barely had time to react as the rock hit their right wing and then sent them slamming into the next boulder. There was an eruption and a brief ball of fire as oxygen was consumed from inside the cockpit. Debris blossomed up around them in a miniature explosion.
Adam greeted his teeth, eyes wide .
What was once a race suddenly turned into a battlezone. He and Red dove together rolling around the debris desperately trying to avoid getting cut in two. At these speeds, one hit would be the death of them. His heart raced in his chest as he pulled forward cutting  in the triangle made by three boulders side by side. Red mirrored him below.
A chunk of metal shot towards him, and he toggled his right wing burst just in time, lowering his left side just in time for the chunk to go flying past him. He pulled up with a gasp as a massive chunk of rock cut up before him. Red shot below and he rolled over the top coming into second place.
Up ahead a mining barge ascended through the line of rocks.
Adam roared with exertion as he pulled up and leveled out shooting right under the attached arm of the barge. Red lights erupted over it’s hull in a proximity warning as he went just inches overhead.
The barge driver, clearly spooked twisted to the side and the arm of the barge rolled with it, catching a boulder and sending it flying towards the grouping next to it, there was a sudden explosion of rock and again he was forced to roll to the side. Up down, over and under, cything between lines of rock.
He was almost hit once, then twice.
He toggled the forward engines, slowing himself down and then shooting straight up before continuing forward.
The rocks around him were rolling unpredictably colliding and then exploding into smaller pieces. There was no way he was making it through that alive.
He was rolling diving spinning twisting, and then, he felt it…. Something he had only felt on occasion. The world around him went silent, everything seemed to slow, and he was filled with…. With a feeling. It was like light, bursting out from his chest, rolling up through his skin and into his head.
He entered a moment of perfect execution. He cut into a tight roll his wings cything through the minute gaps between debris with timing so perfect it shouldn't have been humanly possible. Rocks passed by him at hundreds of miles an hour inches away  from the glass of his canopy, one wrong move and he’d be dead. He cut through a gap that gave him inches on either side rolld right dove down, turned left, spun once and then twice, and made a completely vertical ascent. Rocks flew past him on his right and on his left.
Up ahead he could see a gap slowly closing before him. He opened up his engine and shot forward so fast everything was a blur.
The rocks collided behind him as they snapped shut, and he flew into the clear firing forward to slow himself, and then red was there too descending from above spinning and wobbling, almost out of control and careening directly towards a house sized boulder.
He panicked firing up and down at the same time and sending him into a spin.
He was heading directly towards the rock .
WIthout thinking Adam locked onto the rock, and fired. A rocket under his wing detached and shot forward exploding violently just in time for Red to pass through unharmed. Red jolted awkwardly and rolled to one side. Adam cut past under from right to left and rolled straight over red to avoid a rock.
There was a moment where the two of them were staring at each other through the clear canopy.
Eyes met for an instant, and Adam could see the wide eyed fear on the man’s face., Then Adam rolled ahead ducking under the last rock and then bursting out into space.
He let the F-90 have her moment, and completely opened the engine shooting forward and cutting through the finish line which flashed bright green. In that moment He was hit with such a sense of exhilaration and joy that he couldn't imagine anything better. Who needed drugs, who needed love, who needed any of that when you could fly.
Hed did a triumphant loop whooping the whole way.
Of course, a feeling like that can never last long and slowly began to fade away. THe reality of what he had just done was both terrifying and amazing to the point he felt his body begging to shake. The tension and fear he had been holding back exploded inside him just like that joy and he found his hands trembling on the joystick.
He let it overtake him. He had been like this since he was young and fighting it would only make things worse. Despite his shaking hands he flew back to the docking bay and landed his jet with the precision of a surgeon. Finally when the engine was off and the flood stable underneath him he slumped back in his seat shaking and racked with rolling tremors. He closed his eyes and breathed long and slow.
Behind him the others came limping in.
None of them were completely unscathed, at least one person was dead. His hands continued to shake as the airlock doors shut, and as soon as the room was pressurized, he opened the cockpit. As soon as it did, Sunny came running into the room and up the ladder. SHeleft her spear on the floor and helped him to climb out.  His legs were shaking and he almost fell if it weren’t for her support.
She knew him too well, sitting him down on the lowest step and kneeling next to him.
“Are you ok?”
He grinned at her, “That was…. Holy shit.”
He held up his hand to watch the shaking, “I’m having an earthquake.”
It was just then that Red jumped out of his jet onto the floor. He staggered when he did but pushed away the men who tried to help, “What the ever loving FUCK just happened. The field had NEVER been like that. Jaz DIED out there, what the FUCK.” 
The people milled around in confusion.
Red turned to him, eyes narrowing as he stalked over. Adam sighed and looked up as the man stopped to stand over him
“I’m sorry, I’ll get out of your hair.”
The man paused confused, “What?”
“I broke the rules. Means I forfeit.”
Red looked almost nonplussed, “What are you on about?”
Adam slowly took to his feet taking a few more deep wreaths to steady himself before drawing to his full height. He was stead now and looked down at Red with an unwavering gaze. He held out a hand, “I used weapons during the race, that was against the rules. These weren’t flares to move the rocks. I used a targeted missile during the race and that means I broke the rules.”
Red stared at him.
Then he snorted, “Damn the rules. You saved my ass.” he turned to look at his people, “I am more than man enough to acknowledge that.” HE turned back to Adam, “You saved my life you crazy bastard. I am not even sure how you are still alive ….. Because that flying…. That was….. Holy fuck.” He grinned and took Adam by the shoulder, “you shaking, man.” He held up his hand to show a tremor, “Me too, now let's go get some drinks and talk this out. I owe you after all.”
The two of them walked off through the forest of shaken pilots, “You are the kind of man I can see myself doing business with.”
229 notes · View notes
justauthoring · 4 years
Text
To Be Loved (1/?)
Prompt: Perhaps, you understand Harry Potter better then anyone else. Perhaps, it’s why, when your eyes meet his for the first time, you feel an instant connection. Perhaps, it’s why, you love him.
Based off of: The Harry Potter Series Pairing: Harry Potter x Black/Tonks!Reader, slight Fred Weasley x Black/Tonks!Reader A/N: So here it is!! The very first part!! I really hope you guys enjoy the series because I am so incredibly stoked for her -- specifically movies POA, GOF, and OOTP!! I have so much planned, lol.
Also, Fred won the voting poll -- meaning, Y/N will have a small bit of romance with him, before she eventually ends up with Harry.
Chapters will also be longer after this one, but I felt an introduction was needed, so it’s a tad bit on the short side.
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“Lupin, I... we...--”
There’s an echo of silence. Andromeda finds herself unsure of what to say, or rather, how to say it. Her mind was fuzzy with great confusion, her chest tight with fear. She could hardly believe it -- how could it... it couldn’t possibly be true.
Her husband seems to understand her meaning though, understanding the thoughts that race through her mind. With a brief glance her way, taking in the lost expression in her eyes, Ted swallows thickly before glancing over to the young man sat in front of him. He looked tired, terribly so. He looked misplaced, as if he didn’t belong where he was sat; uncomfortable too. His eyes were dull, no light in them, no spark of joy.
Ted didn’t blame him. This man had lost four friends in one night. This man had lost his happiness completely. The dull look in his eyes was an understatement of what he’d endured, witness and gone through.
“It’s true then?” Ted asks quietly, not really sure how else to phrase the question. He felt like he was walking on eggshells, not wanting to set off either of those sat around him, but desperate to know the truth. “He... really did do it?”
He doesn’t have to say a name for Lupin to know who he’s talking about.
“It would seem that way,” Lupin whispers, voice gone, faint, cracked. Ted regards him carefully, with a watchful eye, but also, pity. Understanding of something he didn’t truly understand. He had no idea the severity of how the young man must be feeling, and in all truth, he didn’t want to. Ted had been friends with him too, but not like Lupin. “He’s being sent to Azkaban.”
“What about the boy?”
It’s the first coherent and full sentence Andromeda has managed to find herself able to speak. It’s the first time she’s felt she’s been able to find her voice again. Her eyes flicker to Lupin’s and hold his own scared and sad ones firmly, worry in her gaze for that young baby. The Boy Who Lived. The boy who no longer had parents of his own. The boy who was alone in this world.
“Dumbledore says he’ll be staying with the next of kin,” Lupin explains, voice numb. “Lily’s...--” And he chokes at the mention of her name. “Lily’s, uh, sister and her husband. The have a child Harry’s age.”
Ted nods, makes the most sense. Of course, he didn’t know what Lily’s sister really was like.
Lupin did though.
Andromeda’s head turns, glancing up at the stairs of her house, to where you lay, peacefully asleep. She’d put you asleep herself not an hour ago, held you in her arms when the world had seemed alright. She’d told you that your father would be back soon, that daddy was coming to see you. At the time, it’d been true. Now, Andromeda felt like nothing but a filthy liar.
Turning back to Lupin, her mind set; “we’re keeping Y/N.”
“D-Dromeda--” Ted stutters, appalled by her words. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel the same, he didn’t want to give you up either. Not with everything that’s happened. Not after your father...-- But, he didn’t know if it was their place to be making any demands. He didn’t know if they’d be allowed to keep you. 
Andromeda’s fierce and determined eyes fall on her husband. “She belongs with us.” She says, voice firm and raising slightly with distress and plea. “We’re her next of kin. We’ve already taken care of her this much. She needs to be with us, she needs a sense of familiarity. I won’t just pass her off like some trophy for the winning and I certainly won’t let my family have her.” Then, she turns to Lupin. “We’d take great care of her. We already have. We’d raised her loved. Adopt her so she’s really part of the family, last name and all.”
“Dromeda,” Ted hisses lightly, placing his hand over her own, squeezing it tightly. “Lupin’s her Godfather.” He turns to Lupin, whose yet to say anything. Or really even react. “Y/N belongs with him just as much as us.”
There’s an air of silence. Both Ted and Andromeda turn to Lupin, waiting, expecting.
Shifting in his seat, Lupin leans forward, clasping his hands together on the table. A small, almost thoughtful smile curls onto his lips as he keeps his gaze lowered. “Sirius named me her Godfather,” there’s a pause at the sound of his name. “It’s true. And I love Y/N like my own daughter. But, you,” and his eyes set on Andromeda specifically. “Will raise her better then I ever could.”
Andromeda eases, and a small smile curls onto her lips. Ted seems a bit more reluctant.
“Are you sure, Lupin--”
Lupin nods. “I have one request however.”
“Anything.”
“I’d still like to... visit her.” Lupin whispers, body tensing as his vulnerability shines through. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to see Harry because Dumbledore would like him to grow up away from magic. But... I couldn’t bare to...” And he doesn’t finish, not sure how to.
Andromeda reaches across the table, taking Lupin’s hand in her own, which elicits a soft gasp of surprise from him, before she squeezes it firmly. When Lupin meets her gaze, her eyes are warm and inviting, and despite everything she’s found the strength to smile. “Of course,” she whispers with certainty, “you can visit Y/N anytime. Our home is yours.”
Lupin nods, smiling his thanks.
They finish the night off with a promise from Andromeda that she assures Lupin that Ted and her will take great care of Y/N. Lupin has no doubt that they will. Sirius had left you with them in the first place, as protection from everything. And even now, after everything, Lupin is assured he’d never cause harm to you. Never you.
Ted and Andromeda Tonks home was the best home for you. 
He makes his way up the steps, wanting to say farewell one last time because it might be a bit before he can see you again. He creeps into your room, making sure to be extra quiet when he sneaks past the Tonks daughter Nymphadora’s room, slipping into your own. A sense of ease floods him at the sight of you, peacefully sleeping away. Your tiny little thumb was in your mouth and your H/C hair came out in wisps around your head.
But Lupin knew, if you’d open your eyes, he’d see Sirius staring back at him.
Lupin finds himself then, glad that you’re asleep.
Leaning over the edge of your crib, the tips of Lupin’s fingers ghost across your skin softly, touch gentle, eyes adoring as he smiles faintly down at you. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes, but, he does find himself at peace with you. An innocent baby who had no idea what your own father just done.
“Your father wasn’t always like this,” Lupin whispers, wistfully. “There was a time he...he--” And he can’t finish. It’s too painful. Memories of his friendship with your father, with James and Peter too... it hurts too much that words can’t even properly explain it.
“I’ll see you soon, Y/N. That’s a promise.”
When he’s making his way out the door, bidding farewell to both Andromeda and Tonks. he finds himself making one last request. “Don’t tell her about Sirius. No one really knows he even has a daughter.” And at the confused and baffled expressions he receives, he adds. “At least, don’t tell her the truth. She doesn’t deserve to have that weight placed on her.”
Sirius Black’s daughter; just as crazed and evil as he is.
Sirius Black’s daughter; a murderer for a father.
Sirius Black’s daughter; hated by everyone because he killed James and Lily Potter.
You don’t deserve that.
And Andromeda and Ted have no reason to argue. Because he’s right.
-
11 YEARS LATER
-
You wake with a start. 
Today’s the day.
Jumping up to your feet, you hastily start to get ready. Your feet bounce with each step you take and you can hardly contain yourself as you start rushing about your room, trying to brush your hair and teeth at the same time. Trying to pull on your shirt while washing your face.
You can hear the distant sounds of pots and pans downstairs and know that breakfast is being made. But even as your stomach rumbles in hunger, you find you don’t really much care about whatever’s being made for breakfast that morning. Because, today’s the day.
You come bounding into the kitchen, a knowing smile on Andromeda’s face as she hears your racing footsteps come barreling down the stairs. Ted smirks behind his coffee cup as you come running into the kitchen, breathless, your hair a knotted mess upon your head, the sleeve of your sweater hanging off your shoulder.
“Good morning, darling,” Andromeda greets with a light laugh, quirking a brow over at you as you take a seat at the kitchen table. She places the prepared plate of food before you, before turning to do the same with Ted, who presses a grateful kiss against her cheek in response, before moving off to grab a plate for herself, not saying anything else.
Your eyes watch her carefully, anxious.
“My God, Y/N,” begins Ted, setting down the paper he’d been reading to glance over at you, feigned shock plastered on his face. “You can barely keep still in your own seat. Is there something on your mind?”
You huff at him, shaking your head. How typical of him to forget. “Today’s the day!”
Teasingly, Ted glances back at Andromeda, who, like him, feigns understanding.
“What’s today?”
You only shake your head again, choosing not to answer -- they should know -- and exasperated with them as you take a big bite out of your toast, As you quickly sip some orange juice, you turn your attention back on them. “Has the post come yet?”
“Oh!” Andromeda calls, setting down her plate before walking back over to kitchen counter to grab a handful of letters. “Thank you for reminding me, darling. I’m expecting a letter.”
Me too. You watch carefully, food forgotten, as she stifles through the handful of letters, leg pouncing with anticipation. 
It has to be in there. It has to be in there.
But it isn’t. Andromeda goes through all four letters in her hand and not one of them is for you.
Your heart falls with devastation, plummeting to the pit of your stomach as your shoulders slack and you glance down at your lap. You almost want to cry you’re so disappointed. But today was supposed to be... It should’ve come today...
“What’s the matter, Y/N?” Ted questions, taking another sip of his coffee. “Were you expecting a letter?”
With a moan, you nod, poking at your food.
“Perhaps a letter from... Hogwarts?”
You raise your head, eyes flickering upwards as a bright, big smile curls onto your lips when you see the letter levitating before your eyes. A glance back at Ted and Andromeda and you can tell, if it hadn’t been obvious before, that they’d been teasing you purposely and with a roll of your eyes, you quickly snatch the letter, practically ripping the envelope open.
You open it with with eager eyes, barely able to contain your happiness as you begin reading aloud:
Dear Miss Tonks, 
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. 
Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall. Deputy Headmistress.
Your excited eyes fall on your adoptive parents. “It’s true then?” You question, voice pitching, hopeful. “I’m going to Hogwarts? Really?”
Laughing, Andromeda nods. “Yes, it’s true, dear.”
A squeal of joy leaves your lips and you practically hug the letter tight to your chest, eyes clenching shut in joy. You’ve only ever heard about Hogwarts from your parents and your sister, Nymphadora, who had graduated not that long ago. They were all in separate houses, and every story they told you, you held on tightly to, absorbing it with great fascination and interest for the day you finally got to go yourself.
And it was really happening!
“I wonder what house i’ll be in,” you wonder aloud, voice soft with curiosity, nervous eyes peeking over at your parents. “I wonder who my friends’ll be.”
“I do believe the Weasley’s youngest son starts his first year this year too,” Ted offers, nodding to himself as he smiles over you. “I’m sure you and Ron will be able to help each other out.”
You smile, nodding. “And the twins too! They’ll be in their...” You pause in thought for a moment, before grinning. “Third year!”
“Yes,” Ted laughs, nodding. “The twins too. They’re quite fond of you.”
A small blush comes to your cheeks.
“And,” Andromeda moves to add, meeting your gaze firmly. “We’ll support you no matter what house you end up in. I was in Slytherin, Ted, Ravenclaw and Nymphadora in Hufflepuff.” She pauses, before a thought occurs to her. “And then, Lupin was in--”
“Gryffindor!” You answer for her, smiling big. “Ooh! I’ll have to send him a letter, tell him i’m going to Hogwarts. He’ll be so happy. Do you think he’ll be proud?”
“Of course he will.” Andromeda smiles, “maybe he can take you shopping for your school supplies.”
Biting your lip, you set down your letter. “Do you think he will?”
Ted shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”
“I’m sure Uncle Lupin would love too.” Andromeda assures you, before her eyes fall on your plate. “Now, eat, darling. You’ve got a busy few days ahead of yourself, what with starting Hogwarts and all.”
Your stomach rumbles as Andromeda finishes, and you comply without complaint, moving to finish your breakfast eagerly. But still, even as you eat and the two of them chatter off absentmindedly, all you can seem to focus on is Hogwarts. On what you have to expect. All the wonderful new things you’ll learn...
You hope you’re Gryffindor like Uncle Lupin. He also told you that your father had been Gryffindor, and even if your father would never be able to tell you, you’d do anything to make him proud. Plus, almost all of the Weasleys are Gryffindor’s too. You’d love to be in the same house as Fred and George.
Slytherin would be cool too. Especially since your mom was apart of it. So would Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff.
But Gryffindor... to be closer to your dad...
That’d be nice.
-
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twoidiotwriters1 · 3 years
Text
Pure Blood 2 (Sirius Black x Fem!Oc)
Book II
Words: 2, 349
A/N: Now, meet Perseus John Black-Singh. I couldn’t resist casting Logan Lerman, he’s so beautiful. -Val
Masterlist:
Chapter 1: / Chapter 3
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“Hey, Sirius.”
“Hi, Jenna,” He greets with a frown. "Uh, Persephone isn't-"
She raises a hand, stopping him.
"Can I come in?"
Sirius nods, stepping aside. They both sit in the living room of the apartment.
"I don't mean to be rude, but what are you doing here?"
She sighs.
“I waited for Persephone to not be here. This is not easy, but I didn't want you to hear it from someone else.”
"What happened?"
"It's Regulus,” She looks him straight in the eye. "What was the last you heard from him?"
Hearing the name of his younger brother Sirius feels a strong pressure on his chest. He understands why Jenna doesn't want Persephone here. Whatever the news are, he knows it won't be good for her and the baby.
"He joined the Death Eaters, as was his plan," He answers uneasily. She nods. "Just tell me, Jenna."
“Well, he achieved his and your parents' goal. He became a great member of the Dark Lord's followers. Some say that it’s close to him, but,” She fidgets on the couch. "I'm so sorry, Sirius. He died.”
A huge lump forms in Sirius's throat. The news these days are rarely good but he wasn’t expecting this.
“Shit," He says with difficulty. His breath hitches and feels his head spin. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, trying to control himself. “How— how did you find out?"
Although she and Sirius have never been close, no one deserves to go through all of this.
“He’d been missing since last year. The Death Eaters knew he was dead, but did nothing about it. Moody got that information.”
"Missing? Don't you know where the body is?"
"Sirius, please don't get hopeful. No, they haven't found the body, but it's been over a year now. You know that now that doesn’t guarantee anything.”
"How do you not want me to if—”
"What would you do? Go get him? Nobody has an idea where he might be and if he hasn't shown any signs this year, what makes you think he’ll come back? " She knows that she’s being very hard on him, but for that very reason is why she offered to break the news. If any of her friends did it, they would end up with some crazy plan, or if it was some authority, Jenna knew that the first thing Sirius would do would be to disobey. "You have other things to worry about, Black."
"It's my brother, Jenna,” He answers through clenched teeth.
“Yes and I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing you can do. Persephone needs you now more than ever. Your baby’s coming soon and I don't think she’ll allow you to go out on a risky mission right now."
"I can't stand idly by.”
"You must do it. For the sake of your family. Think of your son.”
The place remains in a tense silence. Jenna hopes Sirius doesn't do something stupid, while he struggles on what he should do.
"You're right,” He whispers.
Jenna takes his hand and squeezes it.
Feeling helpless, Sirius's eyes fill with tears. He holds Jenna's hand like his life depends on it. She lets him cry, she doesn't know what to say or do. After a few minutes, he wipes his face and breathes calmly.
"Will you tell Persephone?"
He shakes his head.
“I don't want this to affect her now. I'll talk to Remus, maybe after we have the baby, I don't know. I don't know what to do— I, uh…”
“Don't worry, it's okay. No one from the order will interfere in these matters. I took care of this.”
"Thanks, Jenna,” He smiles sadly at her.
All of this reminds him of the time he was told the news of his uncle Alphard. Him without being able to do anything, not even make a dignified funeral. With another person notifying him of the tragedy. Both in the wrong places, he can't help but feel chills at the thought that the most important people in his life were alone at that moment. And no one could say goodbye.
"Can I ask you a favor?"
"Sure"
“I want Reg to have a headstone in the same cemetery as my Uncle Alphard. I don't want him to stay with my parents."
"I can do that.”
"Thanks. I know it's a lot to ask, but now I have to ask permission for everything…”
"I understand, Sirius. You don’t have to worry. That's what your girlfriend's best friend is for.”
That makes them laugh a bit, until the apartment door opens.
"Sirius, you won't believe what we bought!" Persephone walks in, Remus at her back. They both have several shopping bags on both arms.
Sirius wipes his face completely, gets up from the couch and walks over to his girlfriend with the best smile he can do.
"Tell me everything, love,” He kisses her lips and brings a hand to her belly.
***
1991
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" He frowns.
I was scared.
"I wanted you to know what it is to have a normal life.”
His gray eyes look directly at me. Damn, he's just like his father.
“But it was never normal, I have never been normal. Everyone at school says so.”
"They don’t know what they say. They tease you because you're different, but it doesn't mean that's bad, my star. Besides, you're always going to face those taunts, both Muggles and wizards,” I grimace. "They'll always find something different in you to use against you, but—”
"I must not let them affect me, I know,” He rolls his eyes.
Smartass.
“Exactly,” I laugh.
"So, I have magic?" He says.
“Yeah, but it's not like in the movies, darling. It's not that you can manipulate everything with your hands. You need a wand, books, the teachers will teach you to control it…”
“A school for wizards. Cool.”
"Aren't you upset anymore?"
"I don't know,” He shrugs. He thinks for a few minutes and then smirks. "Does this mean that I’ll never see my classmates again? Nor Harry?”
Oh, no.
“You’ll no longer go back to that school, but you’ll still see Harry. He’s a wizard too.”
"What!?" He screeches. "Why? It's not fair, why does he always have to be everywhere? Who else is?” He crosses his arms.
"Uh, Harry, your uncle James, Remus, Andromeda, Dora, Jenna, Apollo, Jane, your cousins,” I look at him as his brow continues to frown. “Me."
"No, that's not true. I've never seen you do magic.”
“I had to hide it from you. Wait. I told you all those names and you just distrust me?"
"Sometimes you tell lies, mum.”
"It's not true,” I say offended.
"I know you forgot Uncle Moony's birthday, and you went to buy his gift when you said you were going for more soap," He says raising an eyebrow.
"That was different.”
"Who ate the last slice of the Phoenix cake?"
“Apollo."
"You had chocolate on your cheek.”
"Okay! Those were little lies, but I also have magic.”
“Show me.”
Now I raise an eyebrow.
"Why don't you look in the mirror, kid?"
His eyes widen and he runs to the bathroom.
"My hair is blue!" I laugh. “We're wizards!" He squeals excitedly, but his smile doesn't last long "Dad is too?"
"Yes, he is " I smile tensely at him.
“He studied at holwarts too?"
“Hogwarts," I correct him. "Yes, we were both there.”
"Wait, do you think he's in the wizarding world? I can look it up!”
The knot in my stomach tightens.
“Percy, we've already talked about this. He doesn't want to be found.”
“But—”
“Please."
He sighs.
“Okay," He says, looking down.
It hurts to see him like this. Telling him that his father is far away was not a good idea, but at that moment, I didn’t know what to say to him, despite having a plan. I couldn't just tell him that his father had died. I just can’t.
“Hey," I clear my throat and take his hands. "You should know more about the magical world.”
"What?"
"Well, in the school there are four houses and depending on your aptitudes, they’ll choose you in one of them, it’s like being in a team with the whole school,” He watches me attentively. "They are Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor.”
"Which one were you on?"
“Slytherin, and your father in Gryffindor.”
"What do I have to do to get elected to one of them?"
“You'll know when you arrive.”
“Mum,” He complains.
“No, I won't screw it up. I— uh, there is something else,” I try to sort my ideas. "All houses have their history and Slytherin is not the best of all, but don’t get carried away by that. It doesn't matter where you stay,” I smile at him. “What matters is who you are, okay? I want you to continue being the same clever boy as always.”
"I can do it.”
I nod.
"Do you remember the story your Uncle Apollo told you about our family?"
“Yes."
“Well, it's all true, only with magic. The Singh have been very important wizards and witches in the wizarding world, almost all of them were in Slytherin… Listen, maybe someone they will recognize your last name and they know very… uh, scary stories about them. I just want to warn you of what could happen.”
"Don't worry, Mum. I'll be fine.”
"Okay, but if you need help, you know your cousins are there too,” He nods. "Okay, I think that tomorrow we can buy your books and everything you need,” I tell him, handing him his letter.
“Great," He’s about to leave, but he returns scared. "Can you return my hair to normal? I like blue, but not in my hair.”
I roll my eyes. I’ll never understand why Sirius and Perseus care so much about their hair.
“Done."
He sees his reflection in a pot and sighs in relief.
***
"And now everything’s ruined by Perseus,” says Harry when we reach his side at the station.
“I’m not excited to see your horrible face, four-eyes.”
"A beautiful day to take the train, isn't it?" James says to then hug me. I laugh corresponding.
"Do you have everything you need, love?" I ask Harry. "Your father can be very messy.” I raise an eyebrow at the man.
After witnessing the two Potters wanting to buy everything, distracted by pretty things in Diagon Alley, I had to help them.
"Everything on the list, Aunt P.”
"And a little more,” adds James sharing a giggle with his son. I roll my eyes. "Harry, why don't you introduce Ron and Perseus?"
"No, I saw him first. Perseus can get his own friends.”
"Harry," James says in a more severe tone.
“Fine."
"I don’t need his friends, surely he’ll be just as stupid as him.”
“Percy!"
"Fine!" He growls.
They both walk towards a red-haired boy along with a lady and a little girl.
"You know they don't have to share everything, right?" I tell James as the two of us watch our sons interact.
“Yes, but I've already given up on their friendship. So, I decided to have fun watching them fight,” He answers making me laugh.
"So, Ron?"
"The Weasleys. I think I heard that last name at school, but we never met them, their parents Molly and Arthur, they have seven children, counting Ron."
"What?"
"I know,” He laughs. "They seem like good people, and the boy was nice.”
“Okay…"
The whistle is heard throughout the station, all students must board the train.
"Ready?" I tell James and he nods.
When the two boys return, I ask Harry to come over and James does the same with Percy.
I crouch down to his level.
"Okay. I just want to tell you that I’m very excited that you are finally learning the truth about magic and that you’re starting your classes at Hogwarts,” He smiles at me. "We both know that things won't be easy with your whole story," He nods. “But, I want you to know that if at some point something happens, you can write to me. Hedwig will know where to go. If you have a problem, or just want to talk to me, don’t hesitate to do so, I’ll always answer you.”
"Thank you.”
"Come here,” I hug the boy tightly. "Oh, and something else,” I say as we part. “I know you don't like the idea, but I would like you to take care of Perseus too,” He’s about to complain, but I interrupt him. “I'm not saying that you’re his babysitter, I just want to know that if something happens, you’ll be there for him when I can’t,” He sighs. “Please? I won't be able to sleep if you don't promise, love,” I pout.
"I promise," He says through clenched teeth.
I laugh and kiss his cheek. I get up and we meet the others, now it is my son's turn. I hug him tighter.
"You won't give me another lecture, will you?" He says when we part.
"You've already gotten a lot,” He nods, I kiss his hair. “But there’s something I forgot to tell you. An advice.”
"What?"
"Have fun.”
One last goodbye and they both get on the train.
"Ha! I told you we would make it,” I turn to my right and laugh as I see Jenna and Marlene say goodbye to Josephine, who then runs and gets on the train.
"Who fell asleep?" I ask them.
"It was the silly muggle traffic, my wife didn't want to use any other faster means," says Jenna.
"I don’t regret it.”
The train begins to move, in the distance I see the small head of Perseus, as soon as he sees me he smiles and says goodbye. I wave at him back.
Little by little he goes away. Only until this moment does nostalgia come to me.
"Aw, you’re both crying," says Marlene.
I turn to James, who’s doing his best to hide his tears from us.
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historyhermann · 1 year
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Challenges of archival digitization, Robert Caro, and digital archives
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Recently, when going through LinkedIn, I came upon a post by Margot Note, whom wears many hats simultaneously as a records manager, archivist, author, and consultant, about the shifting concepts of preservation in the digital world, which had been written last fall. She argues that information professionals, like archivists, have questioned existing assumptions about preservation, with the creation of new principles to born-digital materials (like tweets, Instagram and Facebook posts) and those materials which are digitized. This change is happening while physical records deemed to have "enduring value" are still acquired, stored, and made accessible. She goes on to state that the ever-changing digital landscape has added complexities to archival practice, altering existing procedures, especially in the realm of preservation, since those methods used to preserve physical paper materials no longer translate to digital resources, requiring new methods. For example, she notes that you can't reverse preservation treatments for digital records, unlike with paper records, such as migrating digital files to new formats when old ones are not usable anymore. These are transformations that, hopefully, do not constrain the original functionality of records.
Reprinted from my History Hermann WordPress blog and also the Wayback Machine. This post was originally published on April 25, 2019.
She also adds that for digital materials, the content is what important, not the carrier for such content and that unlike physical paper materials, which may not deteriorate rapidly if they are ignored, digital files are stored on media that "deteriorates, and rely on hardware and software that may no longer be available" which means that neglect is not an option. This means that despite differences in preserving digital and paper materials (often called "analog" or "legacy" materials), some practices can apply to both, like appraisal and addressing information as a collection rather than on an individual level, while recognizing that all materials have "the tendency to decay." She ends by saying that digital and paper preservation considers needs of patrons, with action needed, ultimately, to preserve materials in the immediate future, "ensure the survival of research materials for our users," and ultimately sustain "cultural heritage for the next generation."
While this is a good start, there is a lot more to talk about. I could bring in some of her other publications, like a book on family archives [1], but I'd like to broaden the scope. This article will talk about the challenge of digitization in archives (with connection to Robert Caro's recent comments) and challenges of digital archives. There will also be a connection to sister institutions of archives, libraries, which are distinct in and of themselves [2], as I have noted on this blog in the past, even as you get a MLIS/MLS (Master of Library and Information Science or the rapidly dwindling Master of Library Science) to study...archives. As the SAA notes on their "So You Want to Be an Archivist" page, the "number and content of archival education offerings, especially multi-course programs, has continued to expand in recent years, and a few institutions now offer master's degrees in archival studies." I've recently wondered why degrees like archival science (or perhaps archival studies) are not more widely offered, but perhaps that is a discussion which can branch out from this post.
Robert Caro's faulty argument and archival digitization
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From the NARA Strategic Plan (2014-2018).
In order to begin this discussion, I am reminded of some dialogue in the 1971 science fiction movie, The Andromeda Strain. One character, Mr. Mark Hall (played by James Olson) asks "where is the library?" to which his colleague, Dr. Charles Dutton (played by David Wayne) responds: "No need for books. Everything's in the computer." And the movie goes on, as there is no more discussion. Later on, the computer does have an error and overload when too much information is inputted by the scientists, the "heroes" of this film in this top-secret facility in the Nevada desert called "Wildfire." The fact that everything is stored on the computer is not mentioned in any reviews of the movie I have found, and as such, perhaps people should revisit this movie for just this reason, as it is still relatively enjoyable. We have gotten to the point that everything is "in the computer" like in this film, not only with libraries and other public institutions, but more and more with archival institutions in recent days.
That brings us to the recent debate of what Robert Caro, a presidential scholar of the Johnson Administration said about digitization, whom was criticized by fellow archivists on the Twittersphere (and likely elsewhere), of archival records. He tried to describe how people are differently interacting with the records now than they had in the past, in the "pre-internet" days, those before the internet was publicly available, the days in which it was available only to universities and the government which Joe McMillian tried to exploit in a few episodes (starting with the Yerba Buena episode) of the third season of the short-lived series, Halt and Catch Fire, but not having much success as the show is all about failure.
Caro's words come from a recent interview by Eleanor Hildebrandt of Popular Mechanics because of the publication of his new book, Working, about his research process, apparently a #1 best-seller on Amazon. He told the interviewer  that he still does much of his writing on a typewriter although he has a laptop on his desk (apparently a Lenovo ThinkPad). This is because he was told by those at the Johnson Presidential Library that his "typewriter was so noisy, it was disturbing the other researchers" which is telling. He also tells the interviewer that he took notes on his computer but still uses his typewriter and writes in longhand (who does that anymore?). While some would argue that this is fine, what he stated next is what was criticized by archivists on Twitter:
It [writing on a typewriter] makes me think more. Today everybody believes fast is good. Sometimes slow is good. Almost two years ago, Ina [Caro’s wife] and I went down [to the archives], and I’m sitting there, in the reading room, writing my notes. Everybody else is standing there taking photographs of their documents. They do it with cell phones now. If you saw me there, you’d see one person who’s not in the modern age.
Now, while each researcher can choose their own way to use documents, it seems like he is glaring down on those whom use their phones, or other electronic devices, to take pictures of documents. How can you even argue that those individuals are not taking their own notes or that they can think the same amount when using digital devices? As Jan Murphy, a family historian whom is a big fan of encouraging people to take notes, added on Twitter, it wouldn't be right to "insist on all handwritten notes all the time," the latter of which is "just nuts." Adding to this is the fact that digital photos can be transcribed at home, even comparing information from different archives. Additionally, sometimes people like Caro, whom could be considered to be part of the traditionalist/silent generation since he was born in 1935, may not even be able to read their own handwriting! This is the case with other people, especially those whom have dysgraphia, with the extent this learning disability affects the general population not currently known. With this, we should also consider that not everyone has the leisure/ability to transcribe material needed from an archive in longhand. Some, as Murphy noted in another tweet, would rather "spend the time in the archive, having taken my photo, making notes about the record's condition & taking notes for my source citation etc." The question is simple, as Murphy, who sometimes wishes she had a small manual typewriter when electricity is off, asks, posing a question which Caro never really answers: "But what's wrong with taking digital photos of records in archives?" I could concur with that. I don't see anything wrong with it. In fact, I would argue that institutions like the Maryland State Archives are examples of institutions which allow electronic devices such as phones to take photos of documents.
After this, he goes into the use of paper records:
I feel there’s something very important, to be able to turn the pages yourself. I don’t want anything standing in between me and the paper. People compliment me on finding out how [Johnson] rose to power so fast in Congress by using money. That happened down there, and it was a vague, amorphous thing. I was sitting there with all these boxes, taking all these notes. And you saw letters, his very subservient letters—“Can I have five minutes of your time?”—and then you see the same letters coming back to him. And I said, Something happened here. What’s the explanation? Why is a committee chairman writing to Lyndon Johnson, asking for a few minutes of his time? So I sat there and put my notes into chronological order. And then it became absolutely clear. Would the same thing have happened if I’d stood there taking photographs and went back? Possibly. But I don’t believe it. To me, being in the papers is really important.
While I understand what he is saying here, more and more records are online than ever before, meaning that the records of the Obama Administration and future presidencies will undoubtedly be different from those of the Johnson Administration. Caro is almost stuck back in time, part of the old guard of presidential scholars whom inhabited presidential libraries (which can more accurately be called presidential archives). I won't touch on the plans for the Obama Library only because I have written on that topic for one of my classes at UMD and it may be published in an academic journal in the future (fingers crossed), so I don't want to tread on the same topics in this post. I would add that using paper records is not the only way to interact with records, as users can easily interact with them online using new and exciting methods.
From here, Caro becomes a bit ridiculous:
Well, there’s no reason why that [a deep dive through thousands of digital pages of emails] has to be a different kind of research. Someone else could come along who was nuts like me and say, I’m going to look at every email. What’s more worrisome to me is that, when you talk about digitization, somebody has to decide what’s digitized. I don’t want anyone deciding what I can see. It’s very hard to destroy a complete paper trail of something. Lyndon Johnson was very secretive, and he wanted a lot of stuff destroyed. But the fact is, they were cross-referencing these pages into ten or twenty or thirty different files. There’s always something. But the whole idea of emails—I don’t use emails, I may be wrong—I’m not sure there’s a trail like that. It’s too easy to delete.
While he makes a good point that there can be the same kind of research, that doesn't mean he is right overall. It is laughable for him to claim that "when you talk about digitization, somebody has to decide what’s digitized" and to then declare "I don’t want anyone deciding what I can see." Clearly, he does not, understand the fundamental archival principle of appraisal, which has been debated from the time of those like British archivist Hilary Jenkinson in 1922 and U.S. archivist T.R. Schellenberg in 1956, the selection and description within archives. The records he is looking at, while researching at the Johnson Library, are chosen by professional archivists, specifically those from NARA, so people are deciding what he can see. As such, deciding what records are digitized is also a responsibility of archivists, which will be explained later in this post.
He further claims that it is "very hard to destroy a complete paper trail of something." I'm not actually completely sure about that. Taking from NARA's official history of presidential libraries, they write that before these libraries came about, with impetus from FDR in 1939 when he donated his personal papers to the federal government, presidential papers were often dispersed by former presidents and their heirs after their time in office. They further note that while many collections of records exist of presidents before Hoover at the Library of Congress, others are divided between historical societies, libraries, and private collectors. Even worse, as they acknowledge, "many materials have been lost or deliberately destroyed." So, a "complete paper trail," as he described it, CAN be destroyed.
Considering that "Lyndon Johnson was very secretive, and he wanted a lot of stuff destroyed" as he notes, this contradicts his point that it is "very hard to destroy a complete paper trail of something." I mention this because it would mean that if Johnson wanted, he could have worked to destroy a complete paper trail, especially since it was after Watergate that presidential records were considered property of the federal government rather than "private property" of the former Presidents, a view also widely held in the archival profession at the time. Furthermore, when he talks about cross-referencing of the pages, he seems to not understand how emails work. This is no surprise from someone who doesn't "use emails," as he admits! He claims that he is not "sure there’s a trail like that" and that "it’s too easy to delete" emails. While it is true is easy to "delete" them, think about "deleted" files on a computer. They are not really deleted but rather the directory to them is eliminated. The same is also true of any file, whether a PDF, a photograph, or something else you upload online: the file is never truly deleted, but only the directory to it is deleted. Just like when you throw something away in a garbage can, it is not simply eliminated, but it is sent somewhere else, like a horrid waste-to-energy plant or an overflowing landfill. There was actually a whole Futurama episode about an overly wasteful society back in May 1999, titled "A Big Piece of Garbage."
As Curl Hopkins wrote in The Daily Dot six years ago, when a user "deletes" an email normally it becomes "invisible to that user and is immediately a candidate to be overwritten" but until then it exists and it may even "persist longer on company servers." He further notes that even if a computer is "taken off your computer, it may still be available on the host’s server," adding that you must "presume that any email you compose will be available remain accessible forever," although secure email services are available. There may still be "elements that indicate the prior presence of the email" and logins that are often retained, to say the least. Even one article recommending how to delete emails forever warns that "some online email services maintain an offline backup of email accounts," adding that "your permanently deleted email may still reside in these inaccessible backups...There is no way to force immediate deletion of emails in these backups." Also, there are specific data retention rules on the federal level and likely within various organizations, which require retention of such emails. I am also reminded here of "Testimony" (S4, ep9) of Veep. I mention this because, at one point during the episode, Mike McLintock (played by Matt Walsh), the incompetent press secretary, is brought before a congressional committee. He thinks he deleted the voice memos of then-president, Selina Meyer (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus). In fact, as the committee reminds him, these memos exist in the cloud and they plan to listen to them for any further evidence in their investigation! [3]
With that, it leads to the next part of this post, which goes to a question that the public, taken in by stereotypes about archivists, often asks of archivists and archival institutions.
Why can't everything be digitized?
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In May 2017, Samantha Thompson, an archivist at the Peel Art Gallery Museum and Archives, wrote a post which aimed to answer the question of why archivists don't digitize everything since it is a common question. As such, it is clearly important to remind people who not everything is digitized and that, in fact, "only a tiny fraction of the world’s primary resources are available digitally," coupled with the fact that archivists and librarians themselves are "behind the abundance of primary sources already available on the internet" while organizations like the Internet Archive, or Ancestry.com have raised "public expectations about access to historical resources." [4] She goes onto argue that digitization, the "production of an electronic image of these record," saves information from a paper record, but it does not produce "a clone of the record" but rather results in an "approximation...of a dimension of the record," often called a surrogate. She further notes that while archivists commonly digitize records in order to increase access (which some cataloguers do as well), they also argue (rightly) that mass digitization is costly in time and money, which sometimes people are skeptical of, not realizing that "large-scale digitization in an institutional setting is not your average home scanning operation." There a few reasons for this, including archives holding vast amounts of material, with digitizing of even small archival collections as a big-time commitment since many groups of archival records are not easy to scan in quickly.
For instance, while you could use an automatic feeder to quickly scan a stack of pages, the benefits of such speed must be "weighed against the risk of a one-of-a-kind document being mangled by a paper jam" which is always a concern! This means you must engage in manually scanning which includes tasks such as removing staples (and paper clips), positioning the item, processing the images, and entering the appropriate metadata, all of which is a lot of work. As such, "scanning a single archival box of records can take days" as she puts it. This is even more the case if records within the file are various shapes and sizes, or if they are large enough that they must be scanned in sections and "digitally stitched together." While sometimes taking a photograph is the best option, you need a "high-quality photographic set-up including lighting, document holders, and a camera with an appropriate lens" which obviously is expensive enough that not all institutions can afford such a set-up. This means that scanning produces not an exact copy of the record "but only an impression of certain aspects of it" and it may be hard to convey annotations (like sticky notes) on the paper record itself in a digital form, or physical characteristics of the paper records. This brings us to one of the most important parts: linking the digitized record to crucial information, which is often called metadata, some of which is technical and other parts that describe the record itself. The latter is information like a date or time the record was created. But some elements are more complex like determining the "story of the person or organization that created it." As she puts it rightly, an individual record "within an archival collection does not tell us its whole story." This means that without vital descriptive work of paper records in the first place, those electronic records which are produced through digitization would be an unusable and undifferentiated mass.
She goes onto note that since digitization involves investment of resources and time, archivists need to be clear that the electronic files produced adequately represent the originals, meaning there need to be quality control checks in place. This involves factors such as scanning resolutions, typing accuracy and photographic skill, since archivists are responsible for ensuring that "people are getting a reliable and authentic view of records." There is another conundrum with digitization itself: archivists are required to not only retain the paper originals but the digital files as well. These are files that are subject to disorder and decay just like paper records, with a tiny shift causing a set of errors, with even unused data subject to random degradation and loss, often called "bit rot." Coupled with this is the question of future readability of the data, since digitization of files is not worthwhile if no one can open the files as software and the accompanying "hardware inevitably becomes obsolete." Luckily for all of us, especially those in the archival field, archivists are at the forefront of pushing boundaries of digital longevity as technologies and file format standards are improving. However,as she notes, the "average lifespan of a hard or flash drive is still a fraction of that of a piece of paper stored in optimal conditions" with digital data needing to be stored in specific temperature conditions as well. All of this means that when anything is digitized, archivists commit to maintaining the digital file and the original on which that file is based.
This connects to the resources required for digitization and post-digitization duties. For one, cameras and scanners which are high-resolution which can accurately capture the data are relatively expensive, with the same being the case for software to process images and attain digital storage which is secure. In order for digitization to "make a dent" in an average archival collection, a scanner, or several scanners, need to be constantly working, with some large archivists maintaining specific digitization units while smaller institutions fit it in when and where they can among their other duties. As a result, digitization of specific records is often part of projects which are funded by partnerships or grants, as she notes. In terms of the post-digitization duties, it is needed to make sure that the records are responsibly shared on the web, after checking with donor(s) to make sure the records can be freely shared in the first place with some not wanting this to happen for various reasons or due to copyright restrictions. Such sharing is important as it allows archivists to make the full meaning of records available to those accessing them online.
As such, digitization itself, as she argues, is a process that is approached by archivists methodically. This requires, of course, assessing archival collections beforehand in order to determine whether the records are worth being shared and digitized. Such a process takes time, even if an "inexpensive pool" of labor can be mobilized, along with a big investment of resources and time. As a result, as she puts it, we may never, in fact, have everything digitized, with trials and triumphs of digitization being a "constantly unfolding process" while new models are coming about. With that, access is still important, as is digitization, with archivists continuing to "grapple with this immensely powerful way to broadcast the knowledge we steward." Her article ends by stating that everyone can help support digitization through sharing information that goes with a photograph from an institutional collection, and to, most important of all: "be curious about what archivists, information professionals, and cultural workers do." The latter requires, of course, asking questions and spreading answers, since the more people who understand the value of archivists, the more support they will get, and the more support archivists can provide to the public at-large.
It is worth recalling here a paper I wrote last semester (which will likely never be published anywhere academically) where I asked different archival institutions about their approach to digitization, using different forms of interaction, like Twitter, email, web-form submissions, and web-chat (AskUsNow!), the latter which is relatively horrible/annoying from my experience, although others may have had different experiences. [5] One of the best responses I got was from Corey Lewis of the Maryland State Archives (MSA) whom told me that I could personally contact him if I was interested in their digitization efforts. It was a response of high quality I wouldn't have gotten if I had just looked on their website. To this day, they still don't have their digitization strategy on their website from what I can tell (perhaps its hidden somewhere). I also got responses back from the Council of State Archives (CoSA) on digitization and even from the Oregon State Archives, the latter of which I hadn't even tweeted to, which was impressive. In a similar manner to the person from the MSA, I got a message from Joanne Archer, the head of Access and Outreach Services at Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Maryland Libraries, which said I could send her any further questions. Interestingly, when it comes to digitization they do not "directly solicit campus input."
With that, we can move into the final part of this post which focuses on challenges of digital archives and the digital world.
Challenges of digital archives and the current digital landscape
In the "Mars University" episode of Futurama, which first aired on October 3rd, 1999, the Planet Express crew go to Mars, which has, in the universe of this wondrous animated sitcom, been terraformed and has a typical college campus called Mars University. Before the episode becomes an homage/parody to Animal House, there is a scene where Professor Farnsworth tells Leela, Fry, and Bender about the Wong Library, adding that it has "the largest collection of literature in the Western universe." After that, Fry looks in and sees these two disks:
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That's obviously the joke, and is more than a "bookish moment." It's basically saying that all the knowledge can be stored on two disks. It's still kinda funny, although the joke is dated, as these are supposed to be something like CDs (which first came about in 1982). In a future post I'll definitely bring in the Futurama episode ("Lethal Inspection") that fellow archivist Samantha Cross of POP Archives reviewed, when I get to that season, as I'm currently only on Season 2 of the show as I plan to re-watch all the show's episodes, over time.
This brings us to digital archives, specifically, which goes beyond the digitization of paper files. This applies to files which are born-digital. It requires, of course, a digital preservation policy as Margot Note, who was cited at the beginning of this article, writes about, which would need to be integrated into the program of an archives itself. It would also necessitate collaboration with other institutions and individuals in preserving digital records, and making sure that digital preservation is specifically tailored to your institution. Beyond this, there are two elements that apply to digital archives: choosing what will be preserved and file formats that are sustainable.
For the first element, I turn to an article, again, by Margot Note. She writes that selection and appraisal of digital records is similar to physical records,but that long-term preservation of digital records relies on "understanding of how file formats work." It also requires, as she notes, access to the appropriate hardware and software, with the appropriate skills, with the unavailability of these factors in an archival institution meaning that preservation of the digital files will not be successful. As such, technical appraisal of the digital files, themselves, considers whether they can be read, then subsequently documented, processed and finally preserved. Helping choose what digital archives preserve depends on whether the content itself is relevant to the mission of the archival institution, the historical value of the records, specifically if they have enduring value or are significant socially or culturally. For the digital records themselves, archivists also need to consider the integrity of the files, if they are usable or reliable. This means answering whether the materials themselves are in "preservation-friendly file formats" and if there are limits on the records, in terms of privacy or intellectual property, which makes them "inaccessible for research." Another important factor, as she describes is funding since the preservation and management of such digital records is by no means cheap. Finally, she notes that one must consider whether the digital records are unique or whether they are fully documented. She adds that keeping everything, when it comes to digital files, is not wise, since there are limited resources and mechanisms to search (and access) collections of a large-scale are often not adequate, and that selection curates collections which will ultimately have "high research value." She ends with her point that no matter how complicated the systems for managing digital records become, people need to be involved in choosing what is preserved as digital archival records. Even with the possible automation of some decisions in days to come, archivists would need to balance benefits of saving certain digital records over other digital records, at a time that archivists continue to rise to the challenge of selecting and maintenance of "digital artifacts in a changing technological landscape" as she puts it.
In a related article, she writes about archivists choosing the right and sustainable file formats. This relates to digital archives because the sustainability of digital records in and of themselves depends on file formats that will last for long times, with the Library of Congress putting in place "some criteria for predicting sustainable file formats in digital archives" as she puts it. It further requires considering whether a format is widely used, the files can be identified, specifications of file formats are publicly available and documented, the files can function on a variety of services (be interoperable), and they have an open format since issues with licensing, patents, digital rights, and property rights complicate preservation efforts. She points to efforts by the Digital Preservation Coalition to analyze file formats which are commonly used. She also writes that over time some file formats have become preferred over others, like TIFF files used as master images for preservation during digitization and PDF/A as a standard file format. Even so, some standards for file formats are still in flux, with no consensus among archivists, as she puts it, as to what "file format or codecs should be used for preservation purposes for digital video"! At the closing of her article, she argues that regardless of the preservation actions you take, having file formats that are sustainable is crucial, since having file formats which are lasting influences the "feasibility of protecting content" in the face of a changing environment in the technological world where repositories and users co-exist at the present.
Speaking of all of this, I am reminded of an ongoing study by S.C. Healy, a PhD candidate in digital humanities at a university based in Ireland (Maynooth University), trying to find how "wider research and cultural heritage communities’ can progress from creating web archives to establishing paradigms to use web archives for study and research." I plan to sign up for this study as I've talked about web archiving in several classes. This is relevant since, as Genealogy Jude, as she calls herself on Twitter, noted, "the Internet...has shifted the demographic profile of genealogists." This matters to archives and archivists because many of those genealogists are some of the most common users of libraries. [6] In fact, one of the articles I found during my research for my paper on the Obama Library, a scholar in the 1990s (I don't remember the exact date), National History Day, where I am being a judge again this year on the state and national levels, and connecting with genealogists as a way to bring in more users to archival institutions.
Perhaps we can even bring in one of the SAA words of the week, specifically level of description. Simply it is defined as the "level of arrangement of the unit being described" and the "completeness or exhaustiveness of the description." It connects to recent discussions like one at Hornbake Library recently which focuses on impact of digital repositories, which is in the same realm as digital archives. Perhaps discussions like this will make it easier to define what archivists do and what archives are, as some have tried to do through teaching.
I also think about, apart from creation of some digital archives portals, of what Lilly Carrel, archivist at the Menil Archives in Houston said about digital preservation: "I think digital preservation offers creative ways to enhance the post-custodial approach and ensure important records are preserved" whom was recently interviewed by Vince Lee of the SAA's Committee of Public Awareness, also known as COPA. That is even more the case when there are digital archives, whether completely digital or part of traditional archival institutions like those at universities or serving specific states. There is also a job at the Library of Congress about web archiving, with applications that close on May 1.
With all of this, there is, not surprisingly, a debate among scholars, especially in the field of archives and libraries, over a possible difference between a digital library and a digital archives. Some within the field say there is a difference, while others dismiss that, arguing that there is not. Currently, I don't want to go down that road, or talk about some continuing tension between historians and archivists, despite past efforts by the SAA to make connections with the AHA, the American Historians Association. I also could talk more about the challenges when it comes to archiving born-digital material, but perhaps I will revisit that in a future post on here.
I'll end with what one archivist, blogging on the New Archivist WordPress over five years ago, put it, "please keep up the discussions, and contribute in ways that you think have value," adding that the "seeming lack of support in public" doesn't mean that archivists are not doing anything. [7] That is what I am trying to do with post and this blog, as a whole, changing from a focus on historical explorations about the Maryland Extra Regiment, the Maryland Loyalist Regiment, reprinting past posts and biographies I wrote when I worked at the MSA on the First Maryland Regiment, which is often called the Maryland 400, and other topics, as readers of this blog from the beginning will know. This all connects to my newfangled newsletter on SubStack, which I recommend readers of this blog subscribe to, which I hope expands in the days to come.
Until next time! I look forward to all of your comments.
© 2019-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Notes
[1] She has written so much that I recommended that she could even write a few e-books. She has actually written a number of books already, like Creating Family Archives: How to Preserve Your Papers and Photographs, a paperback book, and two other books more specifically for information professionals: Project Management for Information Professionals (seems like a textbook, although she calls it a "handbook") and Managing Image Collections: A Practical Guide (Chandos Information Professional Series) (a guide for those at institutional archives, perhaps?).
[2] If you want to know more about the distinction between the two, there is a new book published by the SAA (Society of American Archivists), titled Archives in Libraries: What Librarians and Archivists Need to Know to Work Together, which seems to make these distinctions and could be a good read. I can't give a firmer assessment as I have not read the book.
[3] Interestingly, in the review of this episode by Kate Kulzick of A.V. Club, this part of the episode is not mentioned. In fact, Mike's role in the episode is not mentioned at all!
[4] If you are interested, I'd also recommend reading "How do archivists organize collections?", "How Do Archivists Describe Collections? (or, How to Read a Finding Aid)", and most importantly "What do archivists do all day?", two of which are also by Samantha Thompson.
[5] Perhaps at a later time I'll bring in my other papers I have currently uploaded to academia.edu like "The concept of a Baltimorean Homeless Library (BHL)," "Uggles and the University of Illinois: a very furry situation indeed!," and "Strategic Plan Analysis--Maryland State Library Resource Center (SLRC)," the latter of which is relatively technical. All of these are mainly in the realm of libraries rather than archives, however.
[6] She also stated, in a tweet following, that it is good that genealogy has found new people with "energy and new ideas, otherwise it would be a dying hobby" which I will agree with, as a millennial genealogist myself, beyond what someone like fellow genealogist Amy Johnson Crow will describe. Others whom responded to her said that its a time-consuming hobby, while others said that retired people still have some advantages over young people, and her responding to a concern that the internet has isolated people (not an invalid concern), that "the Internet has enabled people to contact relatives and share research much more easily than before" which also is a valid point! This also includes, as Carolynn, another genealogist, argued: "challenging racist, misogynistic and xenophobic genealogists" even if that can be hard. At the same time, I see those, in the wake of the racist ancestry.com ad (for Ancestry Canada) to grumble about how much they "hate" them, for justified reasons, although I don't necessarily feel the same as a person whom runs two genealogy blogs and is a family historian for both my mom and dad's side of the family. I seem to sympathize more with those whom say that there are reasons "why you can't rely on search engines like @Ancestry" with misspellings and mistaken listings.
[7] They also said that the lack of supportive views on Twitter or lists "does not mean that the vast majority of people are not appalled by the few rude ones" but rather that the latter are shown indifference by the many.
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quentinblack · 3 years
Text
Your 5 biggest gripes with the HP movies
Okay so some of these might be controversial, but here are my five biggest gripes with the Harry Potter movies:
1. They don't handle the Weasley family very well at all for the most part. Ron is dumbed down and often comic relief, with some scenes downright character bashing. I actually think that movie Ron's portrayal is part of the reason why Ron-bashing become such a mainstream HP fandom thing. Ginny is handled terribly, in terms of book to movie, out of every character in the entire series she is possibly the one who gets the worst treatment. I don't really think it was Bonnie Wright's fault per se, more just bad writing or limited screen-time. Charlie doesn't feature in the movies at all and is completely cut other than the odd reference and a small picture in the newspaper. Bill was completely cut too, until JK Rowling wrote Deathly Hallows and they pretty much couldn't not include him, given his wedding and Shell Cottage were two events/bits of the book that rendered it near impossible not to cast him. Percy's entire redemption arc was completely cut from the story. I feel like Fred's death could've hit a lot harder if they'd had the Percy redemption arc, with us even seeing Fred's death actually happen as well.
2. I don't think they handled the Lupin/Tonks plot-line in the last few movies very well at all. They both have extremely limited screen-time and their relationship is kind of glossed over and doesn't have much time to breathe. We never even meet Andromeda or Ted Tonks and they completely cut out Lupin and Harry's fall-out, which was one of the better scenes from Deathly Hallows. It ultimately kind of means that when they die unless you're a hardcore book reader it's sort of a "oh right, yeah, those background characters were a thing" moment to casual film watchers, instead of the devastating moment it should have been. Teddy is then completely cut from the Epilogue, not really sure why as he was cast, although I'm guessing they just thought given how little mention they'd given to the Tonks/Lupin plot nobody would even know or care who he was anyway. 3. Peter Pettigrew doesn't even die. The only logical conclusion I can come up with is that Peter choking himself to death would have meant the rating went up a notch, which obviously they don't want, but how hard was it to give him an on screen death? Doesn't the chandelier fall down or something in the next scene when they're upstairs in the Manor? Just have the chandelier fall and crush him to death (without the audience seeing any gore or whatever) and you've at least killed him off. Or the metal hand makes his wand back-fire and kill him? I don't know, emiting him from having an on-screen death was completely bizarre. 4. This is a controversial one and I do actually prefer Alan Rickman's portrayal of Snape in the Movies than book Snape, but I think that's part of the problem. The movies play up Snape as a much more sympathetic/"nicer" character than he is in the books, which again, I feel is part of the reason why Snape being such a liked character in the fandom kind of came from. There's a few things here and there which the movies add in to make Snape a nicer character, one of the main things that springs to mind is when he forms a protective barrier around Harry, Ron and Hermione against Werewolf Lupin, but I think the bigger problem is what the movies choose to leave out. They leave out his angry megalomaniac rant at the end of POA when Sirius escapes which is really very nasty. They leave out some other nasty things he does, but I think also in some movies they try and portray his bullying of the students as kind of comic relief, having Ron agree with him bullying Hermione for being smart etc. Another big omission is they completely leave out the bit in his memories where Dumbledore asks him why he doesn't ask Voldemort to spare Lily and just kill Harry, and Snape says he says, after which Dumbledore says he disgusts him. This moment is a pretty big omission and again, paints Snape in a nicer tone than the character actually is. I only really noticed this on a recent re-read of the series and there were many moments where I sort of remembered how much of an ass-hole book Snape actually is. 5. Voldemort/Bellatrix death scenes. For some reason they had the stylistic choice of making Voldemort evaporate and Bellatrix sort of smash into lots of little pieces. I've got no idea why they wasted so much CGI money on these two deaths, when both of them laying on the ground dead is much cheaper to film and would have humanised both of the characters a lot more. Sometimes less is far far more, and their deaths was one of these times.
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otheenglishsetters · 3 years
Text
WIP (AKA, I never published my work on Tumblr before and I am TERRIFIED)
Hello! I finally gave in and splurged on a Xbox this year, which may have also coincided with my rising anxiety and boredom since I’ve decided to take a year off of college (my senior year to be exact). Luckily, my boyfriend and friends, knowing how I tend to throw myself into fictional worlds when I am stressed had recommended to me this sweet little game series. It was filled with space and wonder and characters so wonderful that they will make your heart hurt.
That, dear readers, was Mass Effect. 
I had already played a little of the first game of the original trilogy at the very beginning of 2020 at my boyfriend’s house, long before all of my post-college plans came crashing down (as did the world too!) 
So I finally invested my time (and money) into Mass Effect Andromeda in November of 2020. Let me tell you, after loosing control over everything else in my life [laying panicked in bed, constantly praying that the pandemic would not claim the life of my middle aged father after already losing my mother to lung cancer just two years prior], it was unbelievably refreshing to be able to have some resemblance of control in this fictional world (And yes, I realize that this is a video game and of course I have control). And the fact that what Bioware was doing was...pretty freaking great.
So, I apologize if this is coming off a pity-party, I promise, it isn’t supposed to be. It’s more like I had just finished my first playthrough of my first videogame ever and I am filled with feelings and emotions. I never post original content on Tumblr, and that’s mostly because I got scared off posting my work after receiving mean-spirited reviews when I posted my fanfiction on Fanfiction.com years and years ago (which is fair, because looking back my work wasn’t that great, but holy crap I was 14 guys!) I have not written creatively since my high school creative writing class in senior year, but this game and this winter, I thought I would try? And hopefully get to connect with other fans? Let me know what you guys think; I’m planning to add more chapters/content soon. Okay, I’ll quit rambling...
He notices that she tends to have a lazy eye. He’s not sure when exactly he notices this, but it’s becoming more and more apparent.
Which is not a problem, absolutely not. In fact, he thinks it’s adorable in a way, especially when she’s tucked into a pillow and loudly craving sushi. 
“I wondered if she was mocking me,” Keema notes one day. Out of all the Angara Reyes has had the pleasure to meet, she still seems one of the few who can truly read humans in a non-lateral sense. Her favorite so far was when she discovered the music genres of both EDM and metal in the same day, “it wasn’t until I was approving shipping orders from the docks the other day I realized why. The Pathfinder needs glasses.”
She also loses control of her lazy eye, it seems, mostly at night, usually by 2300 hours standard time. 
“I’ve been reading studies about team bonding.”
He hums as he rubs her back. Sara, despite commenting on the numerous things she’s done throughout her day, seems wired and intent on rambling. He’s okay with that. More than okay, it’s been years practically since either of them has had a free moment to even been able to just relax in bed and daydream. They probably both haven’t been able to enjoy this luxury since they were…teens? Finishing school and about to launch themselves into the military? For him, he figures it was before that, probably when he decided to work for that florist at 12. Sara gives bits and pieces of her life in the Milky Way but he thinks she was definitely a kid who tried to ‘help’ C-Sec with their cases, constantly looking for ways to help people in any way she can. He smiles. It’s probably a never-ending itch for her. 
And now? He’s just content that he convinced her to come down to Kadara to ‘inspect Ditaeon’, or whatever bullshit she told Tann. Luckily, it seems that life is, slower? No, that’s not it, people are more than excited to create themselves anew here. Stores and trading posts are popping up everywhere and another hospital has just been built in Prodromos. There’s practically a whole shopping district in Kadara now, with outdoor venues and a movie theater that plays cinema classics every night. It’s more like they both are finally properly settled into their positions, like when a CEO is situated in a new company. Sure, the CEO may face numerous problems at first, especially if it’s during a recession or the company is about to go bankrupt. The CEO may even have to intimidate secondary managers and fight to gain respect; however, once the dust settles, whilst there may be everyday problems, it’s nothing compared to what it used to be. Usually, these problems are solved by lunchtime, mid-morning if either of them are lucky.
In the old days, when she appeared to be this amped up, Reyes would subtly (or not so subtle, it depends on how you look at it), swoon her until they had sex. It probably didn’t feel that way at the time, but sometimes Reyes cringes when he thinks of how rushed their attempts at romance used to be. Back then, they didn’t know how long she would be in the area and they would race to make the most of the evening. Now he wonders how much he used to unconsciously push aside the thought that either one of them could be dead the next day. 
Errrr. Negative bedtime thoughts. Not good for sleepytime. 
“Darling?”
“Yes?”
“Are you listening?”
“You were just telling me how you were reading various theses on social exchange theory but then you were already anxious about the thing that you have yet to tell me so you decided to read something familiar like one of the works by Dr. Brené Brown,” he pauses to give a quick glance at the data pad in his right hand. “Mi cielo, I have been informed to tell you that your contacts have been delivered as they were just sent in, along with the rest of the Tempest’s supplies, this morning.” 
He liked to think he was a good boyfriend.
“I hate when you do that.”
“What?” Listen? Dearest, it’s part of the job description as your lover. Speaking of, remind me to pick up toilet paper tomorrow.”
“No, multitask.”
He sighs and reaches up into the upper center of her back. Oof, she really is tense there. “You do it too.”
“Not at nighttime!” She scowls and rubs her eyebrow. “Ew, when did I become an old prune as soon as it gets dark?”
He starts tenderizing the hard muscle. Mentally, he makes a note to remind her later when she’s not grumpy to do her prescribed yoga. “We’re all getting older dear. I’m thirty-one and the other day I heard my knees crack.” 
She was silent. Any other fool would think that she was lost in thought while others would be jealous of the close bond she shares with her AI. Honestly, Reyes is just grateful she spends any of her time with him, let alone his bed. And if she occupies a part of it in a mental showdown with SAM, who is he to complain. 
“SAM thinks you should get an appointment. Even if Dr. Nakamoto is busy, there’s plenty of others who are just as qualified. Also, I think Peebee and Jaal are sleeping with each other.” 
  Both he and Sara know the in(s) and the outs of their jobs so well by now, that he can probably predict easily what his men will ask for even before the message is downloaded on his office’ terminal. However right now, as Reyes stops reading a report on corn being grown on Havarl that he already skimmed over this morning over his huevos rancheros, all he can think about before checking to see if he is correct is how her left non-dominant eye is floating far out to the side. 
Hmmm, who knew fraternization would be cutting into his beauty sleep? 
*************************************************
If you made it this far, thanks so much for checking this out! I apologize for any grammar mistakes. If you’re confused, this is set to take place three years after the Hyperion first makes contact with the Nexus in the Andromeda Galaxy. I was just so intrigued by the dialogue between Jaal and Peebee. And then, after the initial curiosity, I was about to forget about it when I came across some interesting dialogue while driving the Nomad...
Jaal: Vetra, I catch Peebee looking at me. Frequently.
Vetra: Peebee likes new shiny things. Uhh… and why not? You’re genuinely interesting.
#
Jaal: Vetra, remember when I told you that Peebee was looking at me? Frequently?
Vetra: Yeah? Is it getting annoying? Want me to say something?
Jaal: No, no, no. It’s… just that… lately, I find myself… looking back. 
Vetra: Huh.
**
So of course I had to dig into that! And what better way to do so than by using my new favorite ship: Reyes and Sara? (Domestic times!)
Anyways friends, hopefully my writing isn’t awful and you enjoyed yourselves. I may wake up in the morning and delete this. Who knows. 
Have a great day guys!
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pathofcomets · 3 years
Text
soldier, keep on marching on (14)
fandom: mass effect andromeda (AO3)
pairing: jaal/ryder
summary: Sara Ryder will replay that moment before she died for the first time many times afterwards.
playlist: spotify
“You do not want to step on Kadara dressed like that,” Peebee says, tugging at Sara’s uniform collar.
She frowns. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It screams of being Tann’s pet,” Vetra adds, helpful.
“And you’d be the target of any mediocre, good and amazing pick-pocket thief in that damn entire port,” Drack says.
“I don’t even have money!” Sara says, pushing Peebee’s hand away from her waist, where it started tugging her shirt upwards.
“You look clean enough to seem that you do,” Vetra says.
She wrinkles her nose. “Do they not shower?”
“On a desert planet where the water is rationed by Sloane Kelly and otherwise poisonous? I’d say no.”
“A planet as bad as the rumours say,” Jaal adds, shaking his head.
His entire body language is off, clearly disapproving of this course route they’ve taken. Kadara port has a reputation that well precedes it, and most people agree that it is as bad as everyone complains it is. It is also the only space in this galaxy where the exiles managed to gather together in a somewhat organized manner.
“You should go undercover, Ryder,” Liam says.
“This is not a James Bond movie,” Cora replies, frowning at this entire spectacle but not exactly offering a solution for it either.
Sara disappears for just a few minutes, but when she returns, she would have been unrecognizable if not for the fact that they are on a travelling ship and everyone else aboard is in this meeting room. She is wearing a pair of overalls, a shirt with its sleeves rolled up, and thick heavy boots. In a large pocket against her thigh, she is struggling to make her pistol as inconspicuous as possible.
“Well, you look odd,” Peebee says, turning her head to the right to stare at Ryder.
She passes a hand over her chest, smoothing invisible creases, suddenly self-conscious with everyone staring at her like this, even when she is in the clothes that she has felt most comfortable in, since arriving in this galaxy.
“It’s… my old uniform,” she provides, weakly.
“It’s great,” Vetra says, a satisfied rumble accompanying her words.
“For Kadara standards, obviously,” Peebee says.
Drack sighs. “Kid, just call her ugly outright.”
“I just can’t take you seriously when you look like an oversized toddler,” the asari adds again, wrinkling her nose as she continues, still, to stare at her.
Sara sighs, already tired of this port and its so many unwritten rules. She is the fool for trying to entertain it, and trying to entertain this gang of ungrateful bastards too. As everyone disperses, getting ready themselves for landing, Jaal approaches her. His hand is warm around her elbow, a touch that has grown familiar – and his touch itself, so much more often sought and found, in their blooming friendship – and she looks up at him.
“You look good, Ryder,” he says, his words softening the discomfort and awkwardness of this entire situation.
“Thanks for lying for me, Jaal,” she pats his arm, and steps away from him.
He feels empty, without her so close; he has been so stunned, at her blatant dismissal of his words, to have time to correct her. Because she has looked at ease and so comfortable in her own clothes, like she could finally stand without the shade of a title. It has allowed him a look at who Sara Ryder was before being a Pathfinder, but he doesn’t know how to say how grateful he is for it.
***
Jaal sits next to Drack, watching carefully over the rim of his cup how Ryder approaches the meeting spot. She is, still, probably the most put together person in the bar at the moment, the red of her lips pulled into a charming smile, a swagger to her hips that the other human man doesn’t miss in his approach. Drack snorts, and makes himself comfortable for what he expects to be a long conversation. The angara finds nothing amusing: not the terrible pounding of the cheap music in the place, not the sulphurous smell of this entire planet that will take ages to clean out of his clothes, not the crude laughter and language of every single individual here. Not the obvious flirting going on several tables over, between Sara and that other man.
It’s like someone pushed a hidden button in her, so surprising the change in her behaviour is. Her entire posture softens, her hand tugging at her hair, pushing it behind her ear as she leans closer to Reyes. Jaal catches the second when his eyes turn to the edge of skin that the movement shows at Sara’s chest, before the man’s hand rests at the back of her chair, their closure irking him even if he does not acknowledge why that is. Most of all because he doesn’t understand it: making herself small and weak should be a desirable trait in their females? And would someone supposedly trading in the secrets of this damn planet fall for such an act?
Sure, maybe Sara is attractive in human terms, though Jaal is not sure he can understand what exactly Reyes can see in her. There’s nothing of her fiery determination or kind voice, and when she giggles at something he says, the sound grates him, because he can tell it is fake. She is acting, pretending to be someone else and he is torn between the pleasure at knowing her well enough to be able to tell, and the frustration at having her put so much effort for another man.
Drack snorts, again, this time at Jaal, and pushes his refilled glass of alcohol in front of the angara. Jaal eyes it warily, the colour too close to the one of his skin, but when Reyes finally leaves Sara – with a wink on top of it all! – he downs it all in one go. It takes him a long, stretched moment to calm the burning of his throat, enough not to make him choke on the feeling, and Drack’s entire body is shaking with silent laughter.
Peebee is ostentatiously looking at Reyes’ ass as he leaves the bar. Sara’s shoulders fall, the act finally put aside, a disgusted look pulling at the corner of her mouth when the asari owner has her pay for both their drinks. When she joins their small group, she’s brimming with a barely contained indignation, the one that overcomes her when she has to deal with something she dislikes.
Peebee uses her hands to talk, for once. Two of her fingers form a circle, the pointer of her other hand pushing through the empty space of it. Sara sputters, red rising to her face, slapping Peebee’s hands away. Jaal stares, fascinated, between the two of them.
“What?! Don’t tell me you don’t want a piece of that sexy dude after he flirted with you all meeting long!” Their researcher sounds entirely offended.
Sara sighs, a hand coming to rub her forehead, feeling an incoming headache. Suddenly, Jaal understands Peebee’s gesture – a crude and simplistic version of sexual coupling, and this time he chokes for good. Drack’s hand comes to pat at his back, harsh, and he has to hold on to the bar’s edge, so that he doesn’t stumble fully into the Pathfinder.
“If he truly meant it, he wouldn’t have had me pay for both of our drinks,” Sara offers at an explanation. “It implies I am stupid enough to fall for it and,” her eyes narrow, thinking of the information that she has been given, not even sure if she wants to trust it, “it’s bad manners.”
“Aren’t you a badass space woman able to pay for your own drink?” Peebee continues egging her on. “I didn’t take you as such a traditional romantic.”
“It’s not about romance. He’s the one with an actual paid job. I survive on coins I scavenge off dead bodies. It’s a principle thing.”
And with that, she flips a coin towards the bar owner, sighing.
“Keep the change.”
“I always do.”
It’s Kadara, Jaal thinks. Of course they do.
***
Sara Ryder is terrible at asking for things. Which, in retrospective, should make her a terrible candidate for her job. She expects everyone to have the same amount of common sense that she possesses, she thinks that a good argument can win the war, and she is a horrible negotiator because absolutely every single thought shows on her face. Really, quite an unfortunate choice for the person who is supposed to keep galactic peace.
But uprisings don’t grow out of nothing. Whatever the hell happened on the Nexus before their arrival, she can barely get a hint at it, with Anderson’s lost looks and the passing comments that Kesh allows. If she wants the truth – and the truth coming from the side that’s been so antagonized so far, she needs to meet Sloane Kelly. It doesn’t make the fact that this woman actually has an actual throne from which she rules Kadara any more less intimidating.
It takes Sara Ryder, the person who expects everyone to have the same amount of common sense that she possesses, thinks that a good argument can win the war, and is a horrible negotiator, a total of four minutes and twenty-one seconds to fuck up all talks with Sloane. SAM counted.
The door hisses close behind her, and it might be the tantrum of an immature petulant child, but she can swear it sounded more like a slam. The guards stare at her, gun pointed at her head and chest respectively, and she frowns at them for some heavy sixteen seconds – SAM counted – before one shoves at her shoulder and she starts moving. There’s highly unlikely she will ever enter that room again, unless trespassing.
Well, it’s official. Kadara is the second worst planet in the galaxy.  (The first remains, always, Habitat-7) She storms past Vetra, her pointer finger raised in the air.
“Do not sa-”
“Told you so.”
Sara groans. And then, because Sloane Kelly barred the easy way, she has to do things the hard way. Yes, she breaks into Kadara’s prison. And yes, she goes on hunting against Roekaar afterwards, though she is not particularly pleased to do so at the request of Reyes. But there’s no one on this damn planet that would trust Initiative folk – and she needs him for all the intel that he possesses and she doesn’t. So when the last enemy goes down, the man having saved her life, she pretends: talking sweetly, seeming even more unsure than she feels about this entire planet, this whole galaxy. Reyes Vidal always seems to be ten steps ahead of her and charmed to find her so lacking.
Jaal follows her, at her request, his own information important in their investigation, but every single thing he witnesses just makes him hate this place even more. The entire hopelessness, fuelling so much hate and crime. The ruthlessness of the people, who are just living together in one place, but not forming a community. The pain that they all seem to carry. The killing, so much killing.
Even war makes more sense.
He stands to the side, waiting for Sara to finish her discussion with that man. Vetra is a bit further, watching him watching her, and he is not sure he likes the conclusions that the turian might draw, because he doesn’t particularly like himself much right now.
When she is close enough, the Pathfinder smells entirely like the sulphurous waters of this planet.
“This place must be cursed,” Jaal says, softly, closing his eyes. “And your people are not helping.”
This makes her stop in place, one eyebrow raising at him: in concern, in fear, in awareness. Vetra is already walking towards the Nomad.
“My people?” Sara asks, finally.
“It was a human who gave us this information, it is a human supposedly ruling Kadara port.”
She can hear the disgust in his voice, a hate not entirely unearned. Her people have toiled in this galaxy for barely a year, and have turned into killers and looters and smugglers. His have been fighting a war for decade, barely any angara left remembering a world without constant fighting and suffering. How weak they are, when compared to his people. She understands his anger, she truly does. But she does not understand its direction.
“And it is your people’s prisoner we were looking after, and your people killing mine in an organized manner. I don’t understand why it’s me you’re angry at!”
She shouts the last sentence, and it falls like a heavy load between the two of them, chests heaving with their anger, both staring at each other like it’s the first time they’ve truly seen the other. Sara’s expression fickles, almost crumpling, and Jaal doesn’t think she has a right to do that.
“You want to know why? I have sand in places where sand should certainly not be, my body is overheated to the point it is barely functioning anymore and you are flirting!”
“Wait – what?”
She steps close to him, fast – the rhythm of a battle, and he is so stunned by her proximity that he does not even think to defend himself when she raises her arm. He closes his eyes, bracing for impact, but she simply, gently, presses her entire palm against his forehead, humming to herself. He flinches, the kindness feeling like mockery, and he slaps away her hand.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“You said you felt unwell, I was trying to check if –”
Her hand falls next to her body, her gaze lowering to the ground and she bites her lower lip to stop herself from continuing. She remembers what she’s read, what she’s been told, that this is a sensitive topic for angara, and she has just managed to cross too many boundaries in too little time. She takes a couple of steps back, resuming their previous distance.
“I apologize.”
Jaal sighs, a loud sound in the silence between them.
“No, Ryder, I apologize.”
She smiles, weakly, at him – but it is not a real one, and that’s what hurts.
“You don’t mean it.”
He shakes his head, mostly trying to shake her off. Maybe she has learnt to read him as well, and what an uncomfortable yet delightful feeling that is. The mortifying ordeal of being known.
“I don’t.”
She’s the one to sigh now, an impasse in their argument. She just dusts off her knees, and turns around on her heels.
“Will you at least talk to Lexi about it?” she asks, her back to him.
That in itself a monument of her trust in him. Good grief, they’re never-ending.
“Yes, Ryder.”
“Thank you.”
***
Drack grabs the collar of her shirt, and she swears a string of very colourful, precisely chosen words. Though, held a few centimetres in the air by a massive ancient krogan, she is not really in a position to make her threats any real.
“You look like a drowned kitten,” he rumbles.
“And you look like a pile of rocks,” she mumbles back at him, crossing her arms across her chest because how on earth is his arm: 1) that strong and 2) not getting tired.
He carries her like that all the way back to Kralla’s Song, her least favourite place on her second least favourite planet. Drack sure knows how to make a girl feel special. But when he shoves the blue liquor in her face, she downs it all like a shot, even if the glass was the size of her hand. Peebee woops loudly, as she lets her entire body weight fall on Sara’s shoulders. Jaal, in a very typical un-Jaal manner, sits the furthest away from their Pathfinder.
A theory forms inside the asari’s mind – but she needs more input before making her decision. So she drops a coin on the bar, gives their young human another glass of alcohol. After all, the night is still so young.
Peebee has seen her, fumbling over her words in the doorsteps of the tech lab, hovering next to Jaal and asking awkward questions. Then, like twisting a knife in her back, she now mentions she’d like to try and make babies with their angara friend. And Sara has to sit there, taking in Peebee’s enthusiastic blabber, because biology has never been an issue for an asari, blushing at the implications and hurt with the knowledge that Jaal looks back at Peebee, long glances trying to figure out Peebee’s own. These two are, definitely, flirting.
Drack laughs and laughs, until Sara, in her dreamlike state of warm tipsiness, almost begins to consider it his own language. He offers her another drinks, she accepts happily, trying – and failing – to stop looking in Jaal’s direction. After all, what is a soft human body compared to that of an asari? And how far-away and alien she has to look in his eyes! And how stupid and childish she must seem to everyone else. She knows herself well enough to at least know she cannot pretend not to have an interest in him. It was just inflated ego that allowed her to think he might feel the same.
Peebee loses the rock, paper, scissors game that night – though she swears it was a scissor which she held up, but everyone, drunk off their faces, saw as a paper. She is still the one that has to carry the Pathfinder back to the Tempest, and she complains loudly about it, the sound booming in Sara’s ears, just enough to force a headache that should last at two days.
“I hate you, you know,” Sara mumbles in her shoulder, and Peebee huffs, annoyed.
“Doesn’t seem like it from the tightness of your arms around my neck, pretty face.”
“You think I’m pretty?”
“You’re getting cocky now.”
“And you want Jaal’s babies.”
Peebee blushes, and Sara sighs softly, struggling to help as much as she can, though her knees feel like jelly. So maybe she shouldn’t have drunk so much unknown alcohol, especially if krogan approved, and definitely shouldn’t have had it mixed with the slightly fluorescent pretty cocktail. But maybe she just needed to forget for a bit, that she is not allowed to be anything resembling a normal 20-something young woman lost in space. But maybe she finally decided to act like a spoiled brat, and be upset at how unfair it is to find herself all alone, galaxies away from the slightest semblance of home. But maybe she just needed to get over a stupid, big, alien crush. She’s sure everyone on the Tempest has already placed their bets on what exactly tipped her off the edge.
Peebee drops her on a spare bed in the team quarters, since she doesn’t know the password and she doesn’t want to offer Ryder a good night’s sleep anyway.
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” she asks, kicking at Sara’s shoulder until she turns around on her side, making sure she won’t die in her sleep because of fucking puke choking.
“Right back at you,” she mumbles, before hugging close a blanket around her body.
She can hear SAM softly chuckle on their private channel, but she doesn’t have it in her to reply to him, especially as – as always – he’s absolutely right in laughing at her and this current situation.
She wakes up to Liam’s dirty socks on her pillow, so she adds salt in his coffee as revenge. Drack asks Jaal to check the age calculations with him, because these humans are sure acting childish first thing in the morning. When Lexi comes around, giving orders in a loud voice and sharing pills around, both Sara and Liam calm down enough to nurse their respective coffees and simply throw ugly glares at each other.
Gil laughs when he passes by with his toast.
“Glad to see you’re human like the rest of us, Ryder.”
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