therealvinelle

[therealvinelle]

The thing about wizarding demographics is that the magical lifespan doesn't make up for the rampant number of early deaths that we see. They can live to 150, or twice that, but for the most part they don't.

The birthrate is telling of its own, if we assume 40 students per year is representative (and 10 of them are Muggle-borns), that's 30 witches or Muggle wives of wizards giving birth in a given year. This, in a population where child mortality appears to be low (only known example being Sirius Black in the 19th century) and mothers don't get higher education, have children early, and people don't divorce, points to either widespread infertility issues or something else getting in the way of population growth. Such as a lot of early deaths.

It's really interesting and worthy of its own post, but suffice to say: I think 3000 is an accurate guess, gives us 75 as the mean wizard age and by all accounts doesn't seem at all low.

what is the size of UK's wizarding population in your (and Vinelle's) mind?

I was curious and tried to look it up, and it appears that jkr said in some interview that it was about 3000, with a third of that being students at hogwarts. and then multiple people's thoughts on how that didn't make sense with the magical age expectancy and the world building in general, with their own guesstimates on the population size.

do you go with the number jkr provided or do you have your own guesstimate?

@therealvinelle and I actually also guess around 3000, with about 300 being in Hogwarts in a generous set of years. Hilariously, we didn't know this was JKR's guess, we did this based on how many students we saw in Harry and nearby years in Hogwarts. (It's generously forty per class and probably often less)

The Wizarding World is a very very very small town.

#harry potter #harry potter worldbuilding #the carnivorous muffin #thecarnivorousmuffinmeta

[therealvinelle]

Oh noooo.

Muffin showed me the asks she'd received today, one of them was this one, another was "Who would you cast as post-Goblet of Fire Voldemort?"

I replied "The guy who was the xenomorph in Alien, obviously", thinking myself very clever and then Muffin laughs, a few minutes later says "Oh you meant the faceclaim ask. Well, it's too late now."

I wondered what she meant by that.

If you and Vinelle wrote a fic entitled "The King Who Would Be A Man", what would it be about? /silly

@therealvinelle suggests that it'd be about the guy who was the Xenomorph in Alien

#no goddamn clue how to tag #alien #the carnivorous muffin #the man who would be king #my fic #the carnivorous muffin fic

[therealvinelle]

Thoughts on Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Seeing Red?

... I think I'll put content warnings in the post in addition to the tags for this one, as the episode contains a rape attempt.

For those who don't recall, Seeing Red is the nineteenth episode of season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Two main things happen: Tara decides to give her relationship with Willow a second chance, while Spike, having upset Buffy by sleeping with Anya, tries to make amends. He then tries to convince Buffy she still has feelings for him, and the situation escalates into a rape attempt. Shortly after, a man seeking vengeance over a previous incident enters the property, and shoots Buffy and Tara, killing Tara instantly.

The immediate consequences of this are that Spike leaves town, and Willow succumbs to the dark side.

On Tara's fate

I won't touch whether or not Tara's death was fridging, that is not for me to decide.

I will, however, say what I think about what it did for the story.

In season 2 Willow began to learn magic. It was interesting to her, it made her feel useful, and it saved the day on several occasions. From time to time she overexerted herself, or went against Giles's advice because she thought she knew better (notably in season 3 she decides she is powerful enough to break into the Mayor's office and get past Faith, this does not work out for her), but by and large she was nothing like the evil witches Buffy sometimes had to fight. Even when Tara is injured by Glory in season 5, and Willow in a fit of mad rage goes to avenge her, this ends with Willow being defeated with relative ease and needing to be rescued.

Willow was very good, but she was easily overpowered and while she tended to be arrogant or fail to take the feelings of others into account, she was a Buffy character which means everybody has deep personality flaws.

Then comes season 6, and Willow begins spiraling. She poured everything she had into resurrecting Buffy, not realizing Buffy had chosen death and wished to remain that way, and when she finds out she made a mistake she handles it poorly. She attempts to fix things with Buffy by making her forget heaven, and when Tara objects she makes Tara forget their relationship issues as well. Willow starts doing witch drugs, a lot of parallels to things are being drawn and I'm left with the impression that Willow's losing her grip but ultimately remaining herself. She's horrified and humiliated when her newfound behavior leads to Dawn getting hurt, and you have to feel bad for her.

When Tara dies, Willow loses her mind. At first she wants only revenge, she heals Buffy's injuries then kills the man who killed Tara, but the dark magic makes her spiral and Buffy gears up to kill her the same as any other evil witch. Indeed, Willow has become Death, The Destroyer of Worlds: she intends to raise a satanic temple that will bring about the apocalypse.

Xander is able to save the day with true love in the end, and a recovered Willow is taken to England with Giles to recover. She then, and I'm sorry, but she becomes a deeply boring and terrible character in season 7, at one point her hair turns white and she's Light!Willow for a second or two there while her rebound girlfriend watches in rapturelike joy.

In other words, I think Dark!Willow was very well built up to, and I also think we did need a cataclysmic event to make her really go over the edge. On her own, she would just have become a sadder and sadder creature, without that rage and drive for revenge needed for her to become Dark!Willow. Only Tara's death could have done that, and an injury would not have had the same effect - the first thing Willow tried was to have her resurrected, it was only after this failed that she moved on to vengeance. Being a sap, I also love that Willow is brought back from the brink by Xander's love for her.

My problem is everything that happened after. Willow goes to live on a farm for a few months, she returns feeling very small and not allowing herself any magic, and then we get her dating adventures with Kennedy. Nothing interesting happens with Willow ever again in this series, not if we don't count the episode where everyone turns on Buffy all of a sudden and kick her out of her own house (an episode so badly written and frankly bizarre) which I don't.

I'm left thinking, "All that for... that" because we got all that for... that. All that Willow was, the sum of her parts, lead to Dark!Willow, but once this was done it seems the show no longer knew what to do with her.

Frankly, I would rather that she had changed her mind about destroying the world, decided to let it live for Xander's sake, but decided there was no going back. Let the shame of having fallen so far and her own pride keep her from coming back, or worse, let her like this version of herself better. Or let her not be all that powerful at the end of season 6, so she goes on a journey to become a god and she is our season 7 villain. Except now we're doing season 2 again, only Willow instead of Angel.

You know, maybe I shouldn't go pointing fingers at the writers, because it is hard to think of ways to make this work. But then, maybe, just maybe, if Dark!Willow was always going to be a three episode wonder, we should not have had Dark!Willow to begin with, at least not the way we did. Maybe Willow should have gradually become a worse version of herself, until the way she felt good about herself, and useful to Buffy, was by using dark magic. A more gradual backdoor to Dark!Willow, and one I would argue necessitates Tara being alive, but perhaps the one we needed.

In summation: I don't directly disapprove of Tara's death, but I do cry in the face of what we suffered in season 7 because of it.

On the rape attempt

I'll just go ahead and say it, I think the show had serious balls for that. Every teen/YA media loves a bad boy love interest, and abusive dynamics are a big hit, only Buffy had the sexy fan favorite bad boy try to rape the main character.

Character wise, it was also necessary for the relationship to progress. Buffy was never going to move past Spike's lack of a soul, and Spike was never going to realize his lack of a soul was a problem. Only hurting Buffy in a way he couldn't justify to himself, that left him desperate to find a way he could truly love her, not just love her in a way that he now knew could only harm her, could make him understand this.

So he leaves town, finds the way to get his soul back, and returns to her. And it works, their relationship in season 7 is the only thing that was written well. She forgives him and quickly comes to rely on him, fussing over him when she tackles him a bit too heavily to the ground while Spike is now able to be the loving partner she needs, without all the abuse he put her through in season 6.

Nobody around them gets it, in fact they sort of avoid the topic. Dawn learns that the reason everyone hates Spike now is he tried to rape Buffy, and she is outraged. End of, after this scene there is no follow-up on what the trusted friend and confidante who protected her for as long as she existed then tried to rape her sister might mean for Dawn. Just as nobody tries to hold an intervention with Buffy, or tell the many young girls staying in the Summer house to stay away from him because guess what he did last summer?

When Buffy's judgement and leadership is called into question during That Episode, her cozying up to her sadistic would-be rapist and vampire isn't brought up, just as when Angel comes to see her and learns she has gotten serious with Spike, it doesn't come up either.

Buffy herself being so quick to forgive and forget does work the way they wrote it, but in light of all the other ways the show avoids talking about it I wonder how much of that was writer's convenience. I am left with the impression that whoever had the balls to write Seeing Red in the first place, swiftly said "okay I'm done being brave about sexual violence now :)" because it seems the show desperately wanted us to forget about that without actually rectonning it. Oh, it's having consequences, Buffy is the only member of the gang who will speak to Spike after this, and he very much got himself ensouled, but the show didn't actually want to get hairy with this subject.

My conclusion about the rape attempt is the same as with Tara's death: the consequences are where we fell short, and the lack thereof make me wonder if maybe, just maybe, Seeing Red bit off more than the show could chew.

#murder #rape #attempted rape #sexual violence #buffy the vampire slayer #willow rosenberg #buffy summers #tara maclay #spike #buffy the vampire slayer meta

[therealvinelle]

how did you end up w SIX cats? that sounds like a lot to take care of! :O

I started out with one, and then I had to get him company, and then I took in the first one's littermate, and then the other three just sort of happened.

It works out, though having a large cat enclosure definitely helps as does the fact that they're very well behaved and get along.

#cats #about me

[therealvinelle]

Just coopting to say Muffin is fantastic at doing voices and, importantly, at differentiating character voices and getting the tone right. I may be very biased but Muffin's Heart of the World audiobook would be terrific.

Will you have an audible of your book?

The Heart of the World by me (@janedoewrites). It's good. People should read it.

Maybe?

If there's interest in it, then publishing an audible is a fairly simple process beyond the actual recording process. That said, I would most likely be doing it myself, so listen to @rankheresy and decide if my voice is something people would want to spend hours listening to.

#the heart of the world #jane doe #the carnivorous muffin

[therealvinelle]

Ditto what Muffin said, Dumbledore is one of the characters we struggle most with and we're constantly trying to figure out not only what he'd do, but what he'd say. It's frustrating, it's sad, it makes us cry, and the realest part of it all is that he's framed so positively in canon that no matter how tightly we cling to things he actually said and done as guidelines, we're still going to come off as cynical bashing bastards. At least that's the fear, so it's great to hear we don't, thank you truly anon.

And I'm thrilled with the Minerva praise!

I really enjoy the way you guys write Dumbledore. I feel like there's a fine line people tread when they write him and if they take a step too far in either direction, he either becomes a cackling supervillain who gleefully curses people left and right, or a bumbling idiot who means well and just didn't mean for all this to happen he promises!! Which actually makes it even worse because what the fuck do you mean you had no idea things could get that bad at the Dursleys or that you didn't mean to set Harry up with all these quests to groom him for suicide-

The way you write him in The Man Who Would Be King and Amulette d'amour is just perfect, like yes, that's exactly how he would act and react to certain events and when things go wrong. Things almost never go wrong for him in canon and he was always in control all the way to the very end so it's hard to tell how he would react if his meticulously crafted plans go awry but I really think the both of you nailed it.

It's easy to see why people adore and trust Dumbles, and when the mask starts falling away for some people, almost no one believes them/they just brush it off. The way he can just slip from loveable grandfatherly figure to manipulative bastard is so good. I can almost understand why Minerva is so loyal to him when he basically admitted to assaulting a Muggle woman. Even if it was a genuinely frustrating moment for me (which reminds me- I also love your interpretation of her character! Hope to see more of her!)

The Man Who Would be King by me and @therealvinelle and Amulette d'Amour by me and @therealvinelle

Thank you anon! I can't tell you how flattered I am because Dumbledore is often one of the hardest characters for us to write (there's a lot of bickering over "would Dumbledore do this horrible thing or this horrible thing" and "yes, Dumbledore would think that deep down, but would never acknowledge it and so he'd react by doing X" and many such squabbles).

It's very gratifying to hear when we nail him because a lot of the time... I don't want to bash the guy, really, it's just he's awful. He's so awful.

And ooh praise for Minerva too!

Look, @therealvinelle, praise!

#writing #my fic #the carnivorous muffin #the carnivorous muffin fic #amulette d'amour #the man who would be king #praise #fic meta #(i think this qualifies for that tag)

[therealvinelle]

I mean, there is the "this ship bores me" binary test, which is unrelated to whether it actually works or not.

And ooh, praise!

You know, one thing I’ve wondered since following you and reading your brilliant metas (seriously, you’re a gift to tumblr!!) is the reason for your (general) thoughts on ships/shipping.

I’m not sure if this is just for the Twilight and HP franchises, but is there a particular reason why you typically say "I don’t like this ship."?

Again, I love your and @therealvinelle's metas, but I’m curious 🙈

Thank you! Look, @therealvinelle, praise!

As for why I don't ship things, well, whenever people ask, I usually state my reasons I think it won't work or it will. I don't think there's an overarching reason for "yes" or "no".

I think that's actually part of the problem, I don't really do vibe shipping or aesthetic shipping.

#praise #the carnivorous muffin

[therealvinelle]

I was busy obsessing over dinosaurs.

Any thoughts on the original animated Barbie movies from the early/mid 2000s?

Did you watch/like them? Do you have a favourite?

Sorry, anon, I missed out on the animated Barbie films and don't think I've seen a single one.

You, @therealvinelle?

#barbie #the carnivorous muffin #thecarnivorousmuffinmeta

[therealvinelle]

Ooh, praise!

I’m so grateful that I found the writing that ypi two do. Even though I’ve lost sleep when your fics have updated when I should be going to bed lol

Thank you!

Look, @therealvinelle, praise!

#my fic #the carnivorous muffin #the carnivorous muffin fic #praise

[therealvinelle]

oh oh oh can you please please prettiest please show us your six cats?

How about one cat, but it’s a video?

#cats #if you’re really serious about seeing my cats I sometimes post them to the Rank Heresy discord server

[therealvinelle]

May 2024 challenge: Honey I Killed a Butterfly

Or a grandfather.

This month's challenge is time travel, be it Aro getting his hands on a vampire with the gift of time distortion, Hermione Granger fudging the settings on her time turner and now she's in 1399, not 1993, or a Doctor Who fic.

Blow us away, people, and submit your work here.

Fics will be revealed on June 1st.

#rank heresy #rank heresy writing competitions

[therealvinelle]

Yes, it's... Lawrence of Arabia, Labyrinth, Silence of the Lambs, Dirty Harry and Unforgiven, and a few other films made strong impressions.

please ignore the previous ask im a fool and forgot to turn on anonymous

——

“

hey do you guys have a face cast for tom riddle in yours and venille’s fic “the man who would be king”? 🤔

like how you previously assigned omar sharif to alphard and jodie foster to lily? correct me if this is no longer the case

“

No worries.

As it is @therealvinelle and I have gone on record with Peter O'Toole for Tom Riddle (we also have for Carlisle Cullen and in an attempt to be less weird @therealvinelle said David Bowie)

(The savvy blog reader will notice that several lead actors in a very iconic film keep showing up on this blog.)

#harry potter fancast #twilight fancast #the carnivorous muffin #thecarnivorousmuffinmeta

[therealvinelle]

So I've been really enjoying the Rank Heresy podcast and I was just wondering what your posting schedule is?

Oh thank you! Look, @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin, praise!

The schedule was originally intended to be every other Sunday, sadly this slid out very quickly. Currently the schedule has been made uh difficult by time zone differences (I can write at 1 AM, I can not make a cohesive argument) and the fact that I own six cats who all love to interrupt.

Episodes come out when we can manage is the new schedule (though I pedantically like to have them out on Sundays all the same).

We do have one recorded, as of yet unedited, episode about Tom Riddle's horcruxes which hopefully should be out soon.

(And it helps to ask us about this! Otherwise we tend to default into writing, as we assume that's what people want most.)

#rank heresy #rank heresy podcast

[therealvinelle]

https://www.tumblr.com/therealvinelle/661164001318846464/how-in-all-of-the-years-carlisle-has-been?source=share

Here you go!

Oh thank you anon.

Link for people on mobile.

(On the topic on why Carlisle didn't make venom syringes sooner.)

[therealvinelle]

Why wouldn’t vampires freeze in Atlantic cold waters?

Possibly relevant post on vampires in the deep ocean.

Possibly relevant post on vampires vs. volcanoes.

Same reason why the plan was for Edward and Bella to live among the penguins while she acclimatised, temperature doesn't appear to be an issue to them.

#twilight #twilight vampires #twilight renaissance

[therealvinelle]

So I don’t know much about biology, but there are organisms that are genetically very very close to humans, so way what if a vampire (the cullens 💀) bit a monkey or an ape or something. Would we have vampire!monkeys?

Already answered!

#already answered

[therealvinelle]

Alphard and Tom preferences pop quiz! sweet foods or salty? hot weather or cold? boxers or briefs? swing or jazz? radio or live music? more power or more time?

Based entirely on projection?

Neither (they live in Britain), hot weather (too bad given they live in Britain), and... you have thoughts on the remaining four, @thecarnivorousmuffinmeta?

#alphalord