Don’t defend Draco Malfoy by saying he was a product of his environment, and then bash Snape for being a product of his.
Don’t say Narcissa Malfoy is a hero for turning against Voldemort after he threatened the people she loved, and then bash Snape for changing sides after Voldemort threatened Lily.
Don’t defend Sirius Black’s “prank” to kill Snape as a misunderstanding, and then call Snape evil for inventing spells such as sectumsempra to defend himself.
Don’t say Snape was creepily obsessed with Lily (he wasn’t), but ignore the fact that James told Lily he would stop bullying her friend if she went on a date with him.
Oh geez, this is a sore spot for me. For the record, I am not defending any of them.
My problem with Snape is not that he joined Voldemort and then had a change of heart(although comparing a mother’s love with a creepy obsession is bad logic), my problem with Snape is not that he crafted spells as a child that hurt people(however, you cannot in any way, shape, or form consider sectumsempra to be a defense spell), my problem with Snape is not even that he attached himself to a woman who never had feelings for him(it does bother me that you’re attacking James’s actions as being creepy, while trying to use that as a way to excuse Snape’s.).
My problem with Snape is that he tortured a ten year old and the fandom wants to ignore that because of some “always” ridiculousness.
The best thing I ever did for myself was admit that my current way of life was not sustainable. I cannot work 40 hours a week at a job that I’m good at, but can’t stand. I will never be happy, no matter how appreciate I am, spending my life like this.
I am a writer. No one can take that away from me. I will do everything in my power to make writing my life, because if I stop doing that, then I run out of reasons to continue on. I write every day because it is necessary for me
But she hasn’t told anyone and doesn’t plan to yet.
The only person that she has told is her editor, and said that her editor felt like vomiting afterwards.
All she will say is that a certain spell is involved, and then a horrific act is performed.
i want to know what it is so badly
Okay, let’s think about this for a second.
We know that making Horcruxes involves murder. It’s essential. So the “certain spell” is probably Avada Kedavra….with some extra words added to it to use the energy created by the death to split the soul.
What intrigues me is the “horrific act” aspect and the fact that the editor wanted to vomit after hearing it. So what could that be? It can’t just be the act of murder itself, which, as horrifying as that is, is exactly vomit inducing in the grand scheme of things.
So if we take the murder itself out of the equation, what other activity could be considered horrific enough to make someone want to ralph? Well, my warped mind can think of at least two.
1) Necrophilia. Now I don’t actually think this is the answer, but it’s gross enough to make anyone vomit on the spot, so I’m throwing it out there. I just don’t think that’s it at all. My personal theory is…
2) Cannibalism. There are a lot of cultures that believe that to eat the flesh of one’s enemies is take your enemies’ power into yourself. Most specifically the heart, though really any flesh or organs would do. So does Voldemort eat the dead as his “horrific act”? I think this one is the most likely and is grotesque and taboo enough that it turns the stomach.
Also, consider this fact: HIS FOLLOWERS ARE CALLED DEATH EATERS. Hmmm. Weird, right?
There’s an obvious problem in these theories though. If either these acts is essential to creating the Horcrux, HOW DID VOLDEMORT ACCIDENTALLY CREATE A HORCRUX WHEN HE TRIED TO KILL HARRY AS A BABY AND NOT KNOW IT? Voldemort didn’t have time to cannibalize Lily. And he certainly didn’t sexually assault her corpse, thank GOD. So how did he turned Harry into a Horcrux that night in Godric’s Hollow?
Consider this: nowhere in the text does it say that Voldemort’s physical body was found in the wreckage of the Potter’s house. Perhaps when the spell rebounded on him….he…ate himself. Not physically chewed himself up and swallowed, but more in a magical way. Think of it like the house being sucked into the Other Side at the end of Poltergeist.
His spirit was so corrupted that it devoured his physical body when the Killing Curse was turned back on him. That would be the cannibalistic act needed to create the Horcrux. And perhaps Voldemort wouldn’t realize that it was a cannibalistic act? He probably wouldn’t even think to consider the fact that his rotten, fractured soul ate his body.
So there’s my theory. What do you think?
What I’ve thought but in better words
Tbh, Necrophilia makes more sense to me.
Sex is supposed to be the act that creates life, to pervert it and use it to split your soul and further your own life makes a lot of sense to me, though I’m probably not thinking about it very well.
Plus…well. Maybe it’s something that shouldn’t be said, but Voldemort murdering Lily and then abusing her corpse in such a manner is much more believable to me than ‘eating himself.’ Lily was a pure blood who opposed him, I have no trouble believing that he would desecrate her in such a manner and, in the blood boiling moment of triumph, not realizing how disastrous it would be.
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I just don’t think I fully understand it. Like. The Abrahamic God is supposed to be God of all Creation, right? He’s supposed to have created every human that walks the earth, and every other living creature beyond that. When you stop looking at that story as just God setting ‘his people’ free, and start looking at it as a Father choosing to smite his children rather than gentle their hearts and lead them back to him…How is that a story that gives you hope? How is it a ‘miracle’ that so many died? We’re taught today that open conversation is our only tool for true peace, and to turn away from vengeance.
I’d like to mention here that I am not a believer, I am an atheist who grew up in a Christian household trying to make sense of things.
I just don’t get it. I was taught over and over that we are all sinners, but that even the worst can be forgiven. But no one can be forgiven if they are not given the opportunity to see the error of their ways. Killing someone’s child, sending plague upon plague, is not giving someone that opportunity. Sending the adoptive brother that YOU made walk away from his family back to his once brother, and having his first words be to him, “you’re a murderer”…how can you expect that to have any reaction other than blind stubbornness? There were no apologies for walking away when things got hard, for missing the funerals of mother and father, for the pain and burdens your brother must have born then. There was no closeness, only accusations. Of course his heart was hardened, you did nothing to soften it.
Where was the grace? Where was mercy? At what point did you go to your child and tell him “I’m so sorry that I was closed to you, that I allowed others to mislead you towards false gods, that I did not come to you sooner. I am so sorry that you have had to walk this path alone, trying to find reason in a reasonless world. I am here now, and I will guide you if you will open your heart to me.” Why were you content to strike down your child without first attempting to lead him back home?
Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl. There are only fake geek boys. Science fiction was invented by a woman.
Specifically a teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.
Isaac Asimov.
yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point
If you want to push it back even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole - oft credited as one of the first scifi novels
Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms)was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide “Isaac Asimov” reblogs and stick it
even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could have even cited Poe or Jonathan Swift has a case but Asimov?
PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelly as the mother of modern science fiction you didn’t even do a frickin google search For Shame
And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.
Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:
Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.
Even Isaac Asimov ain’t having none of your shit, not even posthumously.
You know what else was invented by women? Masked vigilantes, the precursor to the modern superhero. Baroness Emma Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905.
The character would later inspire better known masked vigilantes such as Zorro and Batman.
Stick that in your international pipe and smoke it
I have literally been telling people this for over a year.
the first extended prose piece - ie a novel, was not, as many male scholars will shout, Don Quixote (1605) but The Tale of Genji (1008) written by a woman
The first autobiography ever written in English is also attributed to a woman, The Book of Margery Kempe (1430s).
The day may come when I find this post and do not reblog it, but it is not this day.
Hello! I saw on WWC that you had responded to a post about black people and racism in France. I was wondering if you could point me towards any resources/knew anything about at home culture amongst black French people? Obviously it wouldn't be exactly the same for everyone, but I was hoping for some insight. (It's for a story I'm hopefully going to be writing soon.)
I‘m not sure I can really answer your question because it seems to me that you’re trying to find out about a French equivalent to the African-American culture present in the USA (where they have specific speech pattern such as AAVE etc.) but we don’t have that concept in France, where the most generic groups of black people we talk about as different cultures are
People from the ‘Antilles’ (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthélémy & Saint Martin)
African communities
Which is without mentioning black people who don’t particularly have connections to either of those groups and “only” have the French culture(s) used where they live.
I don’t want to overwhelm you with too many details here because it sounds like ou’re kind of in the beginning of things and also because my knowledge is limited (one of my great grandad was a black Guadeloupean man, but my family isn’t very connected to the culture) but on the whole what you need to do first is determine what your character(s)’ background(s) is/are and then go from there.
Because things are going to be very different between a woman who comes from Guadeloupe to study in Paris (for ex) than they’ll be for a black man who was born and raised in the depth of the French countryside. So if I were you I’d start by picking:
Where they live/lived in France (throw a dart if you want to) whether it’s in the mainland or in one of the DOM-TOMs
Roughly their levels of income (not necessarily super specific but having a general idea of the level of comfort you want them to have)
Where their family came from and roughly when (Keep in mind: France is an acceptable answer to that question. There have been black people on our bit of land since well before the middle ages and not every black French person will be able to trace their ancestors back to a specific African country)
This will provide a basis for you to do more refined research where needed and try to figure out how much you need to know about your character’s background. You can try to ask @useless-francefacts if they or their followers know of bloggers who specifically discuss being black in Metropolitan France and/or life in overseas part of France like Guadeloupe, and if you have more specific questions later on I’ll be happy to try and help you find resources/sum up some of the resources I can find in French :)
Et si il y a des frenchies qui peuvent/veulent parler de leur expérience en tant que noir(e) en France (métropolitaine ou autre), n’hésitez pas à rebloguer :D
Native American diversity is a two-pronged topic. First, there is the whole concept of introducing Native American characters, then there is picking which tribe you’re dealing with. This began as a reply to an ask we received recently and has since expanded into a general guide.
Native American characters are wildly under-represented in media, as a whole. 0.5% of movie roles go to Native actors, there are 0 Native protagonists in the top 100, and less than 1% of children’s books feature Native people (source). As a result, it can be very intimidating to even consider writing them, because there is so little good representation. It can become tempting to change it, especially after an initial fling with the stereotypes.
There are a lot of stereotypes about Native Americans, and it can be extremely difficult to figure out what’s fact from fiction. Where is the line between Noble Savage and a spiritual character who puts stewardship of the earth as a priority? It can be very difficult to tell.
That being said, making a respectful Native character is not actually that difficult in the grand scheme of things. The steps are simple:
1- Pick a nation/tribe 2- Research that tribe’s customs to get a rough idea of how their upbringing would influence them 3- Flesh out how that character relates to their identity and the rest of the world 4- Basic character building stuff 5- Get somebody of the group to look it over for glaring issues
And you’re done.
Ethnicities are not “flavours”. They’re not something you pick out of a grab bag of “Oh, I should have this.” Yes, they can start that way, but you can’t just toss away a huge part of a character’s background without due thought.
If you can throw the ethnicity out, then you were nowhere near to creating a good character in general. Changing characters happens, yes, but things like race impact so much of the character growing up (especially a marginalized identity) that simply tossing them out without a thought is, to me, a sign you really didn’t try for good representation. You just wanted a flavour, a little extra special something, and once you realized that was hard, you cut it.
If you changed it because you didn’t have a reason to be diverse, why? Do people need reasons to be diverse in real life? Can you really not imagine a world where a Native character would exist in a group of friends? From Nikhil:
You don’t really have to have to reason to make a character a specific ethnicity, but the usage of that ethnicity has to be appropriate. So it’s probably best to settle on a character’s ethnicity early on and use that as a starting point for proper research, instead of just using the ethnicity as decoration and then having to redo your worldbuilding and/or characterization halfway through because you realized you were falling prey to stereotypes.
Diversity is not optional. That’s really the bottom line. Spend a day people watching and you’ll notice that the world is extremely varied just on external appearances. This doesn’t count what you can’t tell from a single person standing still (such as mental disabilities, sexual orientation, trans status, invisible illnesses), or the ridiculously wide variety of life experiences.
Just picking and choosing an ethnicity like it’s the character’s favourite colour is wildly disrespectful. If you’re avoiding it because it’s too scary, too hard, too fill with minefields— know they won’t be disarmed until there is good representation to draw from. Would you rather be one of the reasons future writers struggle with this, or do you want to be part of the solution?
And you know what? The way you get better at writing marginalized identities is to write marginalized identities. I would not be where I am as a writer or a researcher today if I didn’t have ten years of experience writing non-Western fantasy under my belt. Yes, I will admit I started off with a certain amount of exotification, but it has been a better education unlearning that exotification than avoiding it. Now, I’m far more cautious about what I research, how I research it, and respecting the culture on its own terms instead of mine.
The hard truth is: you will only unlearn all this stuff and start asking better questions if you admit you know nothing at the start, everybody starts somewhere, and there are resources out there to help you. It will be difficult. It will be painful, cause you’ll probably come across dozens of call outs like this. You’ll probably get tired of reading them.
Natives are just as tired of writing these callouts. We’re tired of people taking our identities, thinking they’re doing a good job, and not knowing what they don’t know so much that we have to give them an education— again— because we are not represented and they genuinely do not know better.
Don’t shy away from learning. It’s how you grow.
~Mod Lesya
😨 Omg I started this… Is this good or bad? I PROMISE YOU I KNOW BETTER NOW PLEASE EXCUSE MY PAST SELF OF IGNORANCE I ACTUALLY TRUELY THOUGHT I DID ENOUGH RESEARCH!!! IM SORRY! 😖
Here’s the thing: your reply means nothing. Not because it’s lacking any sincerity, but because it’s addressing the wrong point.
This has nothing to do with friendship, or forgiveness, or past offences. What you’re exhibiting right now is a form of white guilt wherein you try to show how sensitive and sorry you are for making a mistake— which means you never truly move on from it and instead wallow in “I messed up forgive me I didn’t know”. This is not an apology.
Apologize with your actions. Swallow how you have privilege and admit you know nothing, then work on unlearning the racism you grew up with. It’s a long, hard process, but it means you are genuinely improving. You thought you’d done enough research, you found out you hadn’t, so now you go do more research.
Messages like this simply feed into the idea that racism is a moral choice, when it’s a systematic norm. Yes, some people are very amoral in their racism and purposely go out to hurt others, while others simply grew up in a racist system and don’t know any better.
Everyone is racist by default, because we grew up in a racist system. Grovelling for it and begging for forgiveness doesn’t help undo the systematic power structures in place. Writing better representation and learning how to write ethnic minorities, on the other hand, does.
