Do You Notice How Hot The Room Gets When You Two Talk About The Secret?

The Letter. 

Bellatrix, Narcissa and mum reading Andromeda’s farewell. Good for her though.

The Dateless

“Lost your friends Potter?”

“They’ve ditched me.” Harry replied morosely, wondering what had possessed him to plonk down next to Draco Malfoy of all people. He blamed his traitorous friends for ignoring him. “Sickeningly loved up the lot of them.”

Draco screwed up his nose in disgust at that, an action which combined with the alcohol induced pink flush across his cheeks Harry absently noted was kind of cute. Wait, what? Harry glared down at his champagne glass. How many of these had he had?

“No date then?” Harry asked, when it became apparent that Draco wasn’t going to initiate any further conversation.

Draco smirked slowly and raised his left arm just enough that the sleeve of his sky blue dress robe slipped back to reveal the reddened edge of his dark mark. 

“With this glowing endorsement branded into my skin you’d think suitors would be throwing themselves at me wouldn’t you?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Alright you arse, I get it — let’s talk about something else.”

“Oh? What makes you think I’m going to waste any more of my evening talking to you?” 

Draco’s tone was cutting but Harry didn’t miss the way his gaze dropped, could almost feel the caress of his appraisal across his body. Already this ministry ball was seeming a lot less dull.

“Why not? We’re both here tonight, together.” Harry drained his glass and stood. The room was too hot, too loud and he’d spotted a secluded balcony earlier which looked perfect for what he had in mind. He extended his hand to help Draco from his chair. “What have you got to lose?”

@drarrymicrofic prompt: Waste It On Me by Steve Aoki ft. BTS

garden party 💚

I try to stay away from a lot of fandom discourse, but since I’ve been seeing this on my dash again and in tags, I feel the need to make a statement on this, particularly for any young fans who follow me that might get drawn into this mindset.

Stay away from purity culture. Warn your friends away from it too, if you see them starting to fall for it. It’s very easy to get drawn into it

Almost always, it starts with one of three roots, pedophilia, incest and/or abuse. Usually it’s pedophilia. Funnily enough, that’s also what congress usually uses to try to justify passing bills that undermine online privacy & security. Because it’s an easy, extreme target, and when people attempt to argue against it, it’s nice and easy to say “Oh so you like pedophilia” rather then actually engaging with their argument.

The logic goes like this, although there’s many forms of it.

“Pedophilia is bad.” -> Obviously, you agree with this. You’re a reasonable person, and the idea that anyone would do something like that to a child is horrible. This is a normal human reaction.

“Because pedophilia is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.” -> Here you might hesitate, but it adds up, doesn’t it? The thought of pedophilia in any context probably gives you a bad feeling, that makes you inclined to go along with this logic. 

“Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia is also bad.” -> Maybe you pause here, or maybe you don’t. But still, it adds up, it’s a very easy flow. After all, we’ve decided that that is Bad, so why would anyone Good want to create something like that?

“Since people who create content with a fictional exploration of pedophilia are just as bad as people who engage in pedophilia in real life, it’s okay to harm them.” -> Here’s where you might pause again. The argument might not win you over entirely, you might not be willing to do harm yourself, but you may be a lot more willing to turn a blind eye to harm being done to someone. Or to consider it ‘justified’.

The pattern now repeats for anything else that’s considered “morally impure”, and “pedophilia” is expanded and expanded, often to ridiculous points, such as merely shipping two underage characters. “Abuse” becomes any ship that the person pushing doesn’t like, for any reason. And so on and so forth.

This is the foundation of “anti” culture, and it’s important to be aware of it so you can catch this false equivocation. Fictional explorations of something, are not the same as the thing itself. Fictional explorations are fiction. The characters are not real people. There is no actual harm being done. Equating fake harm and real harm is a dangerous, slippery slope, which leads us to fundamentally flawed ideas of moral purity. It’s a form of controlling people & making them feel guilty for their very thoughts, rather than holding people accountable for their actions. 

A very handy trick for when you encounter this sort of argument, is to replace whatever the selected purity term is with murder. After all, we can all agree that murder is bad, but at the same time, we understand that a murder in a book =/= a murder in real life.

Let’s see that argument again, shall we?

“Murder is bad”

“Because murder is bad, all fictional explorations of it must be equally bad.”

“Anyone who creates content with a fictional exploration of murder is also bad.”

“Since people who create fictional explorations of murder are just as bad as the people who commit murder in real life, it’s okay to harm them.”

Hopefully, it’s now easy to see why the above argument is fundamentally flawed.

Keep your eye out for purity culture in your fandom spaces, and when you see it, refuse to engage with it. Warn your friends if you see them falling into the same traps, although try to be kind about it; this is a very easy thought pattern to fall into. I don’t recommend trying to argue/debate anti’s. The attention only feeds them. Block them instead. Don’t let people control or shame you for what you create or consume, and don’t control or shame others for what they create or consume.

Also, as a note, let me be clear about something. If you are uncomfortable with any of the above discussed things, or anything in general in fiction (ie, underage ships, murder, incest, abuse, penguins, needles, etc), that’s perfectly fine (it’s also called a squick, for those that haven’t heard that term before). Absolutely control your fandom experience by blocking people, filtering tags, unfollowing, etc. However, just because you are uncomfortable with something, does not give you the right to control other people. Other people have no right to control what content you create or consume, and you have no right to do that to them either. 

Okay?

@kinkuary Day 1/28: Gagging

Incredibly late to the game, as usual, but here's some Harry fanart... I can hardly believe how much fun i had!

My brother passed away last year during a time when I couldn't see friends or all of my family due to lockdown. AO3 absolutely helped me get through the darkest days of my life.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m perfectly happy to explain my philosophy. I’ve had a quarter of a century in fandom to think about it, after all.

No one can donate to every cause, and every year there are horrible things going on in the world.

You have to pick.

If you try to do everything, you will accomplish nothing.

I don’t owe anyone my time or money and I don’t feel guilty when people try this hackneyed anti-AO3 tactic on me. It’s common in every activist space too as a form of sealioning. It’s not a gotcha: it just means you have bad values and don’t understand how to be an effective activist in real life.

For a lot of people, their AO3 donation is part of their entertainment budget, not their ‘help starving people’ type donation budget, so they aren’t even related in the first place.

For me personally, supporting arts organizations is about recognizing that spiritual and emotional needs are valid too. Literal physical survival is only one small part of human existence.

AO3 has been fantastically important for people’s mental health during the pandemic.

writing should be fun.

make oc playlists. spend hours on moodboards that have no purpose. write self-indulgent fluff that’s never going to be published. scribble three lines of poetry in the back of your history notebook. draw fanart of your own characters. write stupid dialogue that your publishers might hate. start new wips that you might never finish but write those three chapters that make you happy because if you don’t write them, who else will?

writing shouldn’t always be about “will publishers like this” or “i have to reach this word count” or “how do i get the most likes”.

have fun with your writing.

Knight Duties by La Draws

Broke my own heart writing this unrequited Jegulus drabble based on Radiohead's Creep this morning, so the day's off to a great start! 🖤

My eyes are glued to you. Gryffindor’s golden boy, your reckless hair and persistent smirk. You never catch mine, always peacocking for someone else's attention. But it's mine you have.

Maybe if I was shinier, like my brother or Evans, you'd notice. If I controlled a broom like you did, or if Dumbledore hadn't already given up on me by the time I sorted along party lines at eleven.

I wish I was special.

You're so fucking special.

I knew taking the Mark was wrong, but I didn't fight my parents when they told me what was expected of me. I thought maybe you'd notice then, your sneer and derision better than nothing. But it wasn't enough to turn your head.

And now I'm in too deep. I don't belong here, among our peers. I don't belong with him either, though the way his dead eyes bore into me tell me he feels differently.

I have one final act, one way to go out in a blaze of glory. I'm not naive enough to think I'll survive. You all underestimate him. He's intoxicating. He'll control more of you than your side is willing to let on. You won't know until it's too late, until you're looking the knife in your back in the eye.

But maybe this weirdo can slow him down a notch. I'll do it for you. I'd do anything for you.

Protect Sirius for me. Save yourself, you reckless angel. Maybe someday you'll know what I've done.

I'll creep, this one last night in the shadows. I'll watch you hold court, feel your ignorance pierce my heart one last time.

I don't care if it hurts. I want to have control.