skeptiquewrites

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the five homoerotic love languages:

- intimate stabbing

- outright obsession

- confused pining

- "no one knows me like you do"

- lifelong promises that always sound suspiciously like wedding vows

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Preserving Lemons by saintgarbanzo is one of the most beautifully written drarry fics i’ve ever read. i’m really shocked and kinda sad that i haven’t heard about it sooner. it is a MUST read.

harry having palestinian roots and cooking palestinian food for draco 😮‍💨🤌🏽 also exposing the racism of europeans ooh amazing spectacular incredible

#drarry fic rec

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You wrote a fantastic answer about the most “invaluable” quality in dramione dynamic. I was hoping you could indulge the same but for Draco for Harry and Harry for Draco :))

sure anon <3

Harry needs to be loved, plain and simple. He needs to be loved for who he is, and not what he can do for people. Someone who will treat him like a person, not a weapon and not a savior. I think Draco can give him that fierce, honest love.

Draco needs protection from himself and I think Harry can be the one to draw him out. Draco was loved while growing up, but not safely. He needs to be held accountable and be held to expectations by someone who believes he can meet those expectations.

#YES

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Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Characters: Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter, Narcissa Black Malfoy, Millicent Bulstrode, Pansy Parkinson, Adrian Pucey, Theodore Nott, Blaise Zabini Additional Tags: Alcohol, Drinking to Cope, Smoking, Recreational Drug Use, Caregiving, discussion of chronic pain, Sexual Content, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Intercrural Sex, Bets & Wagers, Discussion of Forced Marriage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Down and Out Draco Malfoy, Angst with a Happy Ending, break up make up, Getting Back Together, Cooking Summary:

As with all his friends’ wagers, it starts small. Fifty Galleons for one kiss from Harry Potter is easily done.

#thank you for the rec 🙏🏾💖

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first sentence patterns

rules: list the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern! thank you for the tag, @wolfpants !! what i've learned from this is that i love to drop the reader into the middle of conversations and/or a moment of contemplation.

à bon chat || drarry || 35K || E

The thing about almost getting caught is, when done correctly, it’s invigorating. A rush of blood to the head, chaos unspooling around the eye of a storm.

jerk/off || drarry || 7K || E

Harry doesn’t remember how it happened, when he wakes up in Malfoy’s room.

the waiting || drarry || 43.5K || E

1 JUNE, 2015. 8:45 AM BRITISH SUMMER TIME Harry grips his mug of tea and doesn’t notice when the heat sears into his fingertips.

proven lands || drarry || 3K || E

“You’re late,” Draco calls down the long entrance hall. Harry squints, darkness sharp after weeks in the blinding winter sun.

the sun, shining above you || dronarry, dron, drarry || 14.5K || E

“Draco?” Harry says, in that way he does now – quiet and fond and a little unsure.

draco malfoy's substitute murder service || drarry, harry/charlie || 10.5K || E

When Harry joins the Curse Breakers shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday, he’s surprised to find himself assigned to the Department of Creatures, Cryptids, and Associated Calamities.

historians || drarry || 30K || E

“Now, don’t get upset, Harry,” Hermione said, looking at him in a way that was deeply upsetting.

100 beats per minute || drarry || 14K || E

Draco checked his watch. Again.

the long ways || drarry || 10K || M

The first time Harry sees Draco after the war they’re still at Hogwarts and he thinks, At least I’ll never have to see you again.

the july tree || drarry || 51K || E

Unlike Hermione and Ron, when Harry decided to return to Hogwarts for Eighth Year, it was less a decision and more of a compulsion. 

tagging in @citrusses @skeptiquewrites @sweet-s0rr0w @tackytigerfic @sorrybutblog @dodgerkedavra @geesenoises @basicallyahedgehog @thecouchsofa @nv-md @vukovich @mintawasalreadytaken @phoebe-delia @oflights and anyone else who would like to play, consider this an open tag!

#oknowbeunparalleled more like #fic rec #drarry fic rec

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Tagged by @wolfpants and @oknowkiss , read their truly excellent lists here and here!

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there's a pattern!

Mornings After - 2.5k, Dron

This is trickier as this was a collab and @sweet-s0rr0w wrote the start, so my first line isn't the opener. Still I'll post it here, I think it was this one.

“She was alright about it,” Ron continued, matter-of-fact, hooking a finger into the elastic waistband of Draco’s underwear, “all things considered.”

Wield Me - Drarry, 10k

“You’re not an easy man to track down,” Harry said from the doorway, where he was leaning like he was meant to be there.

Fledgling - 2.7k, pre-Drarry

Harry hadn’t thought the sling thing through before he left the house, and now his whole back is aching and he keeps whacking people with the unwieldy changing bag that won’t stop slipping off his shoulder.

I Fall on Grass - 3.1k, Drarry

Harry has a garden.

Let Be, Let Be - 10k, Dronarry

The international portkey to Svishtov deposited them right beside the Danube, under the squatting legs of a cargo crane.

Howl - 9k, Drarry

Draco woke up on a Friday morning in a field hospital in Grasmere, without a single memory of how he had got there.

Take the Moon - 15k, Drarry

“I’ll do it, of course I’ll fucking do it,” Draco was saying, which didn’t make any sense, because he was supposed to be at work; maybe Harry was hallucinating him.

The Edge of Something - 1.4k, Drarry

“Well, the good news is that I’m not dead,” Malfoy said, the voice so very much his that it brought Harry out of bed and to his knees.

Far Side - 1k, Drarry

Harry has a photo on his desk; he says it’s his favourite.

Snow on Snow - 1.1k, Drarry

On the first night in the safe house, Harry was woken every hour by church bells.

Conclusion: hmmm I'm not in love with some of these tbh. I have been trying different things in the last year as my main focus is on a long WIP. So no real stylistic coherence. I'm reasonably happy with most of these fics (though not all, i say, eyeing one or two resentfully) but not sure that any of that necessarily translates into the first lines.

Tagging anyone who wants a go! And @boxboxlewis @elskanellis @fluxweeed @maesterchill @mintawasalreadytaken @myrtlefics @skeptiquewrites @sleepstxtic @stationintern @sweet-s0rr0w @teledild0nix if you fancy it?

#ultimate faves #drarry fic rec #fic rec #masterclass with tacks

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Dronarry Fest Fic: Nightswimming

Title: Nightswimming Creator: @sweet-s0rr0w Type: Fic Wordcount/Length: 5k Rating: Mature Warnings: N/A Prompt: self-prompt Pairings: Draco/Ron, Established Harry/Draco, Implied Harry/Draco/Ron

Weasley flicks the light on. “I got off with a guy once, you know,” he says, casually, holding the torch up between his gloved fingers. “What?” says Draco, glancing over sharply. “No, you didn’t.” “I did,” Weasley insists, and there’s an air of mischief about him now. “Just after the divorce.” Draco tightens his grip on the steering wheel and wills his eyes to stay on the road, a dozen different scenarios playing out vivid in his mind. “But Harry’s never—” “Yeah, well.” Weasley clicks the torch back off. “Turns out Harry and I don’t share everything, after all.”  

Read Nightswimming on AO3!

#dronarry fest #fics that changed my brain chemistry #fic rec

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Dronarry Fest Fic: Welcome, Peasants

Title: Welcome, Peasants Creator: @fluxweeed Type: Fic Wordcount/length: 15.4k Rating: Explicit Warnings: Polyjuice, mistaken identity, deception, dubcon Prompt nr: 62 Pairing: Draco/Ron/Harry

Ron was doing Draco a favour by agreeing to investigate him. Better Ron than someone who’d plant something horrific to get Draco sent to Azkaban—or some pervy Potter fanatic who’d spend the whole hour sniffing the dirty clothes on Harry’s bedroom floor. Even though Ron had to take Polyjuice and break into their flat to do it, Harry and Draco would understand. They’d appreciate it. And if Ron had done more “investigating” and less “snogging his best friend while Polyjuiced as said best friend’s secret boyfriend”, maybe it would have all been fine.

Read Welcome, Peasants on AO3!

#dronarryfest #greatest or greatest ever?

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them after a whole day of bickering who can sign the biggest amount of documents

#drarry #hp fan art #cuties

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long haul - a drarry fic

Long Haul | E | 8.6k

The last person Harry expects to run into on a long haul flight to New York City is Draco Malfoy.

Tags: EWE, NYC, mile high club, professor Harry, ward expert Draco, a history of missed opportunities, past background ships, drinking, sleeping together, competent Draco, flirting, mentions of infidelity (not between Drarry), hung Draco, public sex, dirty talk, pet names, mild D/s elements, mild humiliation kink, praise, blow jobs, deep throating, face fucking, light choking, exhibitionism, facials, these tags are kind of ott but this fic is v cosy I promise, kissing, morning sex, hand jobs, anal fingering, finger sucking, spanking, rough sex, anal sex, happy ending

Harry glances at Draco’s hand again, and this time, Draco catches him looking. “Oh.” Draco spreads out his fingers, turning them over. “That.”  Harry blushes. “Sorry. I’m being nosy.” Dry and amused, “Subtle as ever.” “It was in the paper.” Harry shifts, turning to rest his arm on the back of the couch, his head in his hand. Draco does the same, mirroring him, crossing his legs. Their knees graze. He doesn’t move away. “The announcement, I mean,” Harry says. Draco pulls in a measured breath and nods, looking at his naked ring finger. “That was a long time ago.” He looks up with a smile. “They only gave us a few inches. You must have been looking very hard.”

read on ao3 here

#drarry fic rec #!!!

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#drarry #hp fan art

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Just Like Heaven

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter || E || 6.1k

Summary:

Harry appears in London once or twice a year with a slow smile and no apologies. Draco hates Harry's hold on him and how easily they fall into bed, but he's helpless to resist. Only, this time, Harry shows Draco everything...and asks for so much more. Or, when your intermittent hookup winds up promising you forever. And he means it: forever.

There's also: powerful Harry, helpless to resist Draco, a little bit of smut, and a journey into the unknowable known.

Many, many thanks to @nv-md for excellent the beta! This fic started at a toxic hookup story but Harry pulled an uno reverse and whoops, there's something else at play. I had (still have) no idea how to properly explain it and when I sent it to Ali with the vague request to, 'um let me know if it works like...at all', she enthusiastically came along for the strange journey, provided amazing feedback, and assured me that it did work, even if neither of use really knew what happened. Sometimes stories do that *shrugs* and you just have to take Ali's advice and follow the muse.

Read on Ao3

#gorg #drarry fic rec

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Why Draco can't move on.

It's not because Potter's famous. Beloved. In the papers every damn day.

It's because there are pieces of Potter everywhere. In the faces of men Draco sees all around London, men with skin carved from tiger's eye, men with strong jawlines, men with holly green eyes that pierce Draco's heart.

50 words for the @drarrymicrofic prompt "Pieces"

#love it maester #the longing! #drarry ficlet recs

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It stands to reason that Harry’s holding groceries when he runs into Draco Malfoy for the first time in twenty years.

Well— doesn’t run into, exactly. No, more like peers through a shop window like a right barmy bastard, bits of overspilling lettuce brushing his arm and passers-by on Diagon shooting him strange looks.

Of course Malfoy has to look up from the till— because, yes, Draco Malfoy is a shopkeeper on Diagon Alley apparently— and see him goggling. So, of course, Harry has to step inside, as though he meant to make a stop at— right, yeah, Narcissus Needlework Studio— all along, holding brown paper packages of vegetables.

Malfoy’s frowning when Harry makes his way over to the till.

“I don’t want any trouble,” he says. “I’ve registered the shop, everything’s perfectly within regulation—“

“Trouble?” Harry blinks. “Oh, no. I’m not an Auror. Anymore.”

“I know that,” Malfoy says unhappily. “The whole Wizarding World all over Europe knows that. Only you’ve never left well enough alone, have you, Potter?”

Harry’s forty next month. He’s lived twenty years seeing hide nor hair of Draco Malfoy, and he’s never gone looking. Well, except for that one time when he was twenty one and went to the Manor as a trainee Auror for a— well, it was a routine check, really. And that other time when he was twenty five and thought he saw a man at a club who looked just like Malfoy from the back and was convinced for four months Malfoy was back in London and must be up to something if no one knew about it. And that time when he was thirty two— and, oh, alright, Harry hasn’t ever left well enough alone, not when it comes to Malfoy, at least.

This time, though, Harry really didn’t go looking. And it’s definitely Malfoy.

“I just wanted some— thread,” Harry says. A needlework studio should have some of that, shouldn’t it?

“Thread,” says Malfoy. He looks down, deliberately, at Harry’s lettuce.

“For Molly,” Harry says. “As a, um, birthday present. New shop on Diagon, thought I’d pop by. Seemed the place, you know. Didn’t know it was yours.”

Molly’s birthday, Malfoy doesn’t need to know, is in December. It’s June.

Malfoy continues to stare at him, until Harry’s unsure whether to get indignant about it all or turn tail and flee.

“Well,” says Malfoy before he can make a choice. “Embroidery yarn for you, then, Potter. Come along.”

-

“I’ll see you again, I assume,” Malfoy says at the end of what transpires to be a surprisingly smooth purchase.

Harry nods.

He only realises after he leaves that there’s no reason for him to come back. He’s seen it for himself— what Draco Malfoy’s up to these days. Nothing nefarious or suspicious, just yarn and needles and tapestries on Diagon.

Except, well, he’s committed now, hasn’t he? And Harry Potter’s a man of his word. He said yes, when Malfoy asked— Malfoy asked!— so he’ll be back.

And really, if he has to invent Hermione’s sudden new and passionate interest in needlework— well. That’s between Harry and his lettuce.

written for @drarrymicrofic’s prompt “sewing”. i just personally think harry james potter could be seventy five and still rapidly become obsessed with draco malfoy at any given moment.

#perfect #drarry ficlet recs

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HP Bodice Ripper Fest 2022 drarry recs

Here are some of my favorite fics from @hp-bodiceripper 2022. Listed in alphabetical order.

Good Boy by @lqtraintracks [15k]

This is a love story between a trans lad and his werewolf boyfriend. It’s about loving someone in their very furry entirety. It’s about being your true self and loving that self. It’s about getting absolutely railed.

Yours Truly by @skeptiquewrites [14k]

Every single one of Harry’s exes has gone on to marry the next person they date, and with the upcoming nuptials of numbers six and seven to each other, Harry’s feeling exhausted by it all. It doesn’t really matter if he lets people assume Draco Malfoy is his boyfriend for a moment of peace. In any case, Draco’s been away for five years and there’s no way he would find out, right?

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did!

#🥺🥺🥺 #thanks bridenore! #it means a lot #rec of my fic #nice things

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Malfoy was laughing then as he stepped closer, his hands coming up to cup Harry’s face. “You’re a bit of a mess, aren’t you?” Harry tried to turn his face away, but slender fingers held him in place, the pad of Malfoy’s thumb running along his cheek and catching on the start of stubble. “Mostly when you’re around,” Harry admitted softly, focused on the thudding pulse at Malfoy’s throat, the way the skin shifted around it, the freckle there under his ear.

Quote from Heart to Hearth by @jtimu, a beautiful fic with fantastic worldbuilding, competent Draco, and smitten Harry (Drarry, E, 6.8k)

#YES #quick quotes recs #drarry fic rec

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What parts of canon do you find the most frustrating/that you are dissatisfied with/wished that was handled better/explored more? Mine is the inconsistency of Voldemort as a character. How he is described as being perhaps the most talented student that Hogwarts has ever seen and so powerful and intelligent but regularly made such dumb decisions e.g. in the final battle where he still uses Avada Kedavra despite seeing it not work before. I like the explanation that Horcruxes rotted his brain

thank you very much for the ask, @sarafina-sincerity!

the parts of canon which i find the least satisfying all have the same thing in common: their morality is individualist.

the harry potter series has - at its core - a really profound and very black-and-white belief that good and evil not only exist but are rooted in the individual. and while i understand why this is the case - the later books in the series are governed by the genre conventions of folkloric epic and, especially, of christian folkloric epic, which means that the whole seven-book narrative arc ending in a battle between christ and satan after which all is well is only to be expected - i don't like it.

so here we are... ten things i hate about canon, for fanfic writers to win my heart by interrogating in their work...

i hate the series' insistence that everything is fine once voldemort is dead

the middle books in the series - especially goblet of fire - do a really interesting job at hinting at the endemic rot in the ministry of magic, and the ways that the state and its enforcers perpetuated harm during the first war that was indistinct from that perpetuated by the death eaters - above all the use of internment without trial for suspected death eaters [which is a reference to something the british state actually did in the 1970s!].

they show how widespread blood-supremacy and magic-supremacy is, even among people who don't openly support voldemort; how the wizarding population is kept deliberately ignorant by what appears to be state-controlled media; and how no serious efforts have been made to eradicated the conditions which enabled voldemort to attain such power.

this is then forgotten completely in deathly hallows, where the fact that almost the entire civil service keeps working for a government which is committing genocide is hand-waved away with "oh, people are scared", and both the epilogue and jkr's post-series writing take the view that kingsley manages, as minister, to preside over a government which easily sheds all its old prejudices and starts working properly.

i don't like this! i think it's just much more interesting for corruption to be impossible to fully eradicate from the government, for blood-supremacy to have long-standing causes which actually take a lot of very hard work to untangled [especially the fact that the wizarding world not appearing to have a welfare state means that those whose lives are poor or unstable are prime targets for radicalisation], and for kingsley to have the same capacity for leaning on the prophet and worrying about his polling numbers as any other politician...

i hate that the series changes how the death eaters are written between half-blood prince and deathly hallows

connected to this shift from the series hinting at the broader issues in the wizarding world to a flat battle between good and evil is that the death eaters, their aims, and their modus operandi are written very different between half-blood prince and deathly hallows. in the former, the death eaters can be situated very easily as anti-state sectarian terrorists who have all sorts of complex analogies within british history and politics. in the latter, they're just caricatures of pure evil - which is why the death eaters introduced from the latter stages of half-blood prince onwards, especially the carrows, are considerably less interesting as characters than those, such as lucius malfoy, barty crouch jr. and bellatrix lestrange, who are introduced earlier.

it's also why the voldemort of deathly hallows feels so uninteresting. i don't like the fanon that the horcruxes render him insane at all - when he's shown outside of the epic battle between good and evil in that book, he's shown to be as lucid and cunning as always - but he ends up having to flop because his only purpose in the overarching narrative is to be killed. in the earlier books, in which he's a paramilitary kingpin poisoning and corrupting a society which was designed to exclude him because of the fact of his birth in revenge for its treatment of him, rather than satan and hitler's lovechild, he is so much more interesting.

i hate the series' belief that slavery is fine

obviously, one of the biggest examples of state malevolence in the series is that wizards own slaves. like many readers, i loathe that the house elf plotline ends up being reduced from its potential for radicalism in chamber of secrets - in which dobby mentions whisper-networks of elves who decry their treatment at wizards' hands - to what we see from goblet of fire onwards - in which elves love being enslaved and think that any attempts to free them from their subjugation is cruel.

i also hate that elves' freedom is then hand-waved away as part of the general race towards "all was well" with the implication that hermione found it easy to undo what appears to be centuries of state-sanctioned oppression without any pushback at all.

the house elf plotline is one of the clearest distillations of the series' individualistic morality. harry abhors the treatment of dobby at the malfoys' hands entirely and only because he doesn't like the malfoys. he abhors voldemort's treatment of kreacher, but sees absolutely no issue with sirius' because he likes sirius - and he clearly sees no issue at all with his own legal mastery of kreacher, seeing as, literally minutes after the end of a war in which the good guys fought for the rights of muggles and muggleborns to be seen as fully human... he is considering ordering his slave to make him a sandwich.

i hate that the series doesn't show the realities of resistance

the reason i think the whole "why does voldemort keep using avada kedavra, isn't he supposed to be clever?" question arises is because the series is incredibly resistant to the idea that the good guys must have to kill as well, which makes it look like it's only the death eaters using it while the order use lots of clever magic that the stupid terrorists are too thick to think of.

this is idiotic - not only because the killing curse is canonically flawless unless the thing you're blasting is your own horcrux and so the order would use it for efficiency's sake alone, but because the reality of being a resistance fighter is that, even if you're on the "right" side, you are going to have kill people or they will kill you.

lupin is completely right in deathly hallows that harry is breathtakingly naive to avoid shooting to kill and that - without the protection of genre conventions allowing him to be preternaturally merciful - his resistance to killing is going to result in him being destroyed by the enemy. it is inconceivable that the rest of the order don't using the killing curse - and the question of what this does to their souls [is it murder if you believe yourself to be justified in your actions?] and their senses of self post-war is so interesting to think about - and i wish we were shown this in the text.

especially because molly absolutely blasted bellatrix with it.

but i also hate that the series thinks that violence is fine when the good guys do it

this is primarily another example of the black-and-white "this is fine because harry's good" theme which runs through the series, which we see in things like harry using sectumsempra on draco malfoy in half-blood prince or the cruciatus curse on amycus carrow in deathly hallows. harry's overarching response to committing attempted murder is to sulk that the incredibly minor punishment he receives is reducing the time he could spend hitting on ginny, and his response to torturing amycus is "lol. lmao."

the series thinks - again and again - that cruelty and violence are completely fine when the person they are perpetuated against "deserves" it, and it does not bang.

and that the series allows the good guys more complexity in characterisation

the role played by the house system in the story - and, above all, the fact that our heroes are all connected to one particular house with straightforwardly admirable associated characteristics - means that the villains receive less opportunity to also have positive traits intermingled with their negative ones - and, therefore, complex and interesting personalities.

i also dislike that when non-gryffindor characters - especially slytherins - do reveal themselves to be brave and loyal etc., instead of recognising that this is because bravery can be multi-faceted the series suggests that they should be recategorised as "belonging" to a "good" house.

or, in other words, me and dumbledore's "i think we sort too soon" line in deathly hallows are enemies for life.

i hate that the series blames merope gaunt for dying

and - of course - the main way a villain isn't allowed as much complexity as a hero is that the series never examines the impact of voldemort's childhood on his adult self. while we see hints throughout canon of just how profoundly affected he is by his institutionalised childhood and the weight of his grief over his parents [his mother especially] - such as him learning as a baby never to cry for attention because it's futile - this is hand-waved away throughout the series by dumbledore-as-the-voice-of-god as irrelevant. the eleven-year-old tom riddle is straightforwardly evil, that he grows up in an orphanage is used as nothing more than narrative colour to underline how creepy he is, and dumbledore's spectacular mishandling of their relationship is viewed by the series as undeniably correct right up to the very last moment [when harry imitates dumbledore by - and we should call it what it is - deadnaming voldemort in their final confrontation].

but the most egregious thing that dumbledore does when discussing the course voldemort's life takes is blame merope gaunt for her own death in childbirth, by implying that witches are immune to one of the most common causes of death throughout human history if they just try hard enough and then saying that a nineteen-year-old girl whose life appears to have been nothing more than unrelenting abuse and misery [perpetuated both against her and by her] lacked the moral fibre to try hard enough.

and this infuriates me.

i hate how the series treats female characters who don't fit its narrow spectrum of "correct" womanhood

merope is but one victim of the series' general issues with treating women who aren't its heroes - all of whom are exactly feminine and beautiful and clever and talented enough that we know they're good people, but not any of these things in an extreme which could make them vapid or arrogant or defiant of social norms or so on.

the series takes a very low view of women who exist outside of narrow boxes - whether they are interested in a hyper-feminine aesthetic [lavender brown, rita skeeter] or a more masculine one [marge dursley]; conform to stereotypes about being bitchy, flighty, or vapid [pansy parkinson, romilda vane] or refuse to adhere to social expectations to be polite, meek, and demure [fleur delacour]; are unmarried, are not inherently maternal, and/or are cruel to children [bellatrix lestrange; petunia dursley; dolores umbridge]; are unrestrained emotionally [cho chang; moaning myrtle] and so on. and i don't like it.

and i also hate that - connected to this - the series uses physical appearance - especially weight - as a shorthand for [female] characters we're supposed to dislike.

what it says on the tin, really - if the series doesn't like a character, especially if the character is a woman, you can almost guarantee that they will either be fat or be unusually thin.

and finally...

i hate that the series prioritises one form of love - love as suffering and as sacrifice - over all others

part of the series' march towards the epic two-person showdown between good and evil is that harry is made to endure trial after trial - including his death for the salvation of mankind - in the name of love. obviously this is because he becomes, by the end of deathly hallows an allegory for christ, but it also fits into the series' view - articulated most frequently by dumbledore - that love, suffering, and sacrifice are all synonyms.

the acts of love the series foregrounds - snape's willingness to endure anything because of his love for lily; sirius' willingness to rot in azkaban and caves and grimmauld place because of his love for james and harry; harry giving up a love that's like "someone else's life" with ginny so he can go die - are all sacrificial, and the series generally takes a dull view of love that is fluffy, silly, carnal, selfish, soothing, transformational and so on. lavender and bellatrix's open adoration of their lovers is mocked; dumbledore's sexual desire for grindelwald is punished by his sister's death; tonks and lupin's uncomplicated happiness in the birth of their son is not to last.

but happy endings and silly jokes and forehead kisses are love too. and the hill i will die on is that they have even more potential to bring about the salvation of the world than constant suffering and abiding.

#hp meta #very interesting #an excellent take