iconic doesnt even begin to cover how luke comes into the rebellion five years late with starbucks and his poncho/bucket hat combo while talking about womprats and saving their asses in the span of a few days
tbh the most unrealistic thing in harry potter is when mrs weasley in the first book asks “now what’s the platform number?”
like this woman has been going to that school for seven years and then dropped kids off on the same place for nearly ten like why on earth would she forget the platform number
I still have the headcanon that Molly BAMF Weasley saw a scrawny underfed child with an owl who had no idea where he was going and looked lost and confused and was like, “Ah, yep, new son.” but didn’t want to scare him by outright approaching and asking if he needed help so she was just like, “MUGGLES, MUGGLES EVERYWHERE! DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE PLATFORM NUMBER TO WIZARD SCHOOL IS? WHAT’S THAT? NINE AND THREE QUARTERS? OH, YES, THAT’S RIGHT. THE PLATFORM NUMBER IS N I N E A N D T H R E E Q U A R T E R S!”
Of course seeing as how Harry isn’t the most observant bloke, she probably ushered her kids past him fifty times as different ones screamed the platform number until they finally got his attention.
i hope harry took full advantage of being able 2 say he literally died and came back 2 life to save the wizarding world like *has to queue for ten minutes outside the ministry entrance to get into work* ‘i did not die for this’ *hermione is nagging him for some paper work* ‘i already literally died for the wizarding world hermione is that not enough’ *draco makes a smug comment in the corridor* ‘shut up malfoy i died for your sins’
harry james potter, saviour of the wizarding world:
• Because Minerva McGonagall isn’t gonna let an eleven year old kid beat her at sudden death chess and get away with it.
• Ron is a really good president just ‘cos all he expects from members is that they try. You can be horrible at chess (Harry) or extremely good at it (Dean Thomas and his deft hands), and it doesn’t matter in the end because Ron’ll clap you on the back anyway and say, “Good game, mate.”
• Meetings are held in the library because Madam Pince has always had a softness for wizard chess and trusts Minerva when she promises that no one will [probably] get blown up. (Seamus Finnigan whistles innocently somewhere in the background.)
• The library is actually the perfect place for it. The atmosphere is charming. Books are floating around their heads all the time—some leaning down curiously to watch, others being plucked lovingly from the air by Hermione. The usual quiet is exchanged for whispered exclamations and barely stifled sniggers, and just this once, Madam Pince doesn’t mind. Oh, and the light coming in through the colored windows shines on the pieces in a really beautiful way, I tell ya—reds, blues, and golds flickering off kings and queens like badges of honor. (Everyone kinda loves it.)
• THE GOOD: (i.) Dean Thomas: Vice President. His games are works of art. Dean Thomas is a work of art. (ii.) Justin Finch-Fletchley: He used to play chess all of the time with his muggle grandpa. It took him a little bit to get used to all the moving pieces, though. (iii.) Susan Bones: She learned precision from her aunt and applies it nicely to the chessboard. (iv.) Astoria Greengrass: Boredom and a desire to do something interesting has bred a mean chess player out of little Miss Greengrass. (v.) Cho Chang: Cho doesn’t get to attend all of the meetings because of Quidditch, but she’ll pop in occasionally and make fools out of anyone who dares to cross her. #RavenclawPride
• THE OKAY?: (i.) Hermione Granger: Hermione’s not bad per say. She’d be better if she would stop overthinking every, single move. (ii.) Michael Corner: He’s a bit of a sore loser. (iii.) Neville Longbottom: He’s actually a pretty decent player—just needs a bit of polishing around the edges. Neville likes the patience of chess, how he can sit and think a little while before he has to make a move. (iv.) George Weasley: In many of his and Fred’s wonderful schemes, he’s been responsible for the finer details of the prank, the complexities and the nuances. His attention to detail makes him a player to contend with.
The UGLY:
(i.) Harry Potter: Harry J is constantly distracted by everything and everyone in his tragic life to be any good at chess, but he wouldn’t miss a meeting for the world. Ron gets this big, stupid grin on his face when he’s playing that’s worth every second of it. (ii.) Draco Malfoy: “Did you see the way Potter moved his chess piece? It wasn’t very graceful, was it? I’m much better than Potter. Besides, chess is for inferior people. LIKE POTTER. Have I mentioned that I’m better than Potter?” “Oi, Draco, you lost.” “Oh.” (iii.) Daphne Greengrass: She only joined because her sister made her. Most of the time, she just sits in the corner and reads a wizard comic. Nerd. (iv.) Ernie Macmillan: Brags ceaselessly when he wins. Threatens to quit when he loses. Finally acts on his words when Astoria creams him with many pawns to spare.
HONORABLE MENTIONS: (i.) Seamus Finnigan: Did not blow a single person up. (ii.) Fred Weasley: Isn’t really interested in the chess part, but enjoys alternating between cheering his brothers on and pranking them. (iii.) Hannah Abbott: Her weary apologies for Ernie’s pompous behavior should be duly noted. (iv.) Luna Lovegood/Dobby: Their collaborative banners for the club are lovely.
• In light of Dumbledore’s Army, the Hogwarts Chess Club is later renamed Dumbledore’s Pawns. Too on the nose?
• Over the course of the club, there are certain match ups that everyone gets really hyped over: Dean vs. Ron, Draco vs. Harry (even though both of them are horrible at it), Astoria vs. Ron, etc. But no game is more anticipated than the occasional one that Minnie McGee and Ron play. It’s epic. The pieces are all but broken by the time they finish up. At the end of Ron’s sixth year, the record is in his favor, but only just.
• (Quite a few Weasleys have come and gone in Minerva’s time at Hogwarts—many of them extremely gifted and well liked by her—but for this, for his prowess at a game that she loves, she will always have a particular fondness for Ron.)
• Other teachers stop in to play, too. Flitwick and Pince have a delightful rivalry. Snape has never beaten Minerva McGonagall for all his sneering. Lupin is okay, but his main contribution to the club is giving chocolate to unsuspecting members. (Where does he get his supply??? Does it just randomly appear up his sleeve?????) Dumbledore himself once popped in, won against Ron and Minerva alike with a twinkle in his eye, and then Apparated out of the library just because he knew Miss Granger’s mouth would fall open.
• You have to admit, that man has style.
• Just Hogwarts chess club, y'all.
• I think Ron would love it just as much as his Chocolate Frog card. (Okay, maybe a little less.)
I absolutely love Ron Weasley, he’s one of my favourite HP characters. He is smart and loyal and sarcastic and strategic and cruel and funny and witty and just an incredible character. I hate how much the movie assassinates his character. He is basically turned into bumbling comic relief and it’s so frustrating because there is so much more to his character. From his raging insecurities to his incredibly brave and loyal tendencies, to his dry humour to his emotional immaturity, he is an amazingly complex and rich character and he grows and evolves a lot over the series.
As for Romione, I literally shipped them right from Philosopher’s Stone. I remember thinking “No two people fight that much without an underlying attraction, even at such a young age”. They’re such a great pairing, they balance each other and support each other and, most importantly, respect each other. I love how protective of Hermione Ron is (without diminishing her as a person) and I love how Hermione loves Ron for who he is and never tries to change him. They’re a great paring and I will love them forever.
Joyce Byers wins Best Mom of Forever award and not just for what she went through to get will back but how she interacted with eleven too…that little girl she’d just met was her only hope for getting her son back and up until then she’d been angry and harsh with anyone who got in her way but when eleven is basically her Only Hope joyce doesn’t see her as simply a vessel for finding will, she still sees eleven as a human being, a traumatized little girl, and lets her know that if anything gets too scary for her, she can stop. Even if it means not getting the information she needs. She’s never anything but gentle with eleven and even as she’s so close to finding will joyce comforts her and tells her she’s there and she’s not going to let eleven get hurt. She cares about eleven’s well-being as her own person and not just A Way To Find Will and doesn’t consider jeopardizing eleven’s safety for will’s. I love Joyce Byers so much
lets talk about wlw (witch loving witches) at hogwarts!! girlfriends in the same house not having to worry about the barriers not letting boys into their bedrooms bc ew boys are gross anyway! slytherin and hufflepuff girls dating and the slytherin will punch anyone who says anything homophobic to her girlfriend! ravenclaw girlfriends curling up and studying together by the fire! a slytherin girl cheering for gryffindor because her girlfriend is their seeker even though all of her friends are mad at her for not cheering for them! girls in differing houses wearing each other’s scarfs and first-years get confused and ask a ravenclaw how to get to the hufflepuff common room but she knows how anyway because she sneaks in to see her girlfriend at nights! pls add more I’ve been thinking about wlw at hogwarts all day and it’s making my heart happy!!!
Hufflepuff girlfriends braiding each other’s hair and end up braiding most of their house’s hair because a first year thought the braids were pretty. Gryffindor girlfriends daring each other to jump into the lake, threatening to withhold kisses until they do. Hufflepuff and gryffindor girlfriends slow-dancing outside in the middle of winter, bundled under beanies and bed socks and scarves. A slytherin girl playing a study game with her ravenclaw girlfriend until midnight because she’s stressing too much about a test. A gryffindor girl jumping up onto a table in the great hall and declaring her love for her ravenclaw girlfriend to embarrass her.
“The infamous final three words of Deathly Hallows was: “All was well.” No, it was not the most polished, most sophisticated of endings. It certainly wasn’t the most brilliant sentence of her seven-book saga. Still, I like knowing that all was well. I like knowing that, after every heartache, horror, and loss endured by these beloved characters, they simply…lived their lives. They found jobs that fulfilled them, that showcased their talents. They got married. Bought houses. Raised children. Learned to drive cars. Harry and his friends became adults in the simplest, greatest sense. I could see that from afar, and feel happy that they got there. And I’ve only come to appreciate that even more as I grow older, and start to do some of those things. To be told, now, after all this time, that all was not well, and that all was not well for their children, particularly, comes more like a blow to me than an exciting new journey.”
1: Fed all of her friends almost every day for ten years without complaining.
2: Excelled in a traditionally masculine career, (yes, cookery as a profession is generally male-dominated) and in traditionally masculine hobbies (football), without compromising her femininity or sexuality.
3: At the same time, revelled in traditionally female interests such as babies, marriage and housework without apologizing for them, or suggesting they made her inferior or weak.
4: Overcame teenage obesity.
5: Grew up in an emotionally abusive home, with a mother who subjected her to relentless criticism and verbal mistreatment….But still emerged with a sense of her own self-worth, determination to fulfil her dreams and huge capacity to care for others.
6: Stayed friends with her brother who bullied her as a child, and contributed to said-emotionally abusive home. Didn’t blame him for her mistreatment or show resentment towards him.
7: Took former best friend – who abandoned and rejected her for a ‘high society’ life – into her home without question.
8: Prior to this, accepted a woman who had previously lived on the streets, as her roommate and welcomed her into her group of friends.
9: Went through unemployment and shitty jobs, but refused to take unfair advantages she hadn’t earned (i.e. Pete buying her a restaurant). Eventually gained a prestigious head chef position based entirely on her own merit.
10: Walked away from the man she thought was the love of her life, because she wanted children and he’d only have them to make her happy. Even though that option would have been 100 times less painful for Monica, she knew that wasn’t fair on him and refused.
11: After marrying the actual love of her life, she waited until Chandler was ready to have kids, because she knew about his fears of raising children. When they discovered virtually the only option for children was sperm donor-ship (so they’d be her kids but not his), she refused and insisted on adoption.
12: Was also the one-woman cheerleading team for the aforementioned love of her life, in telling him he could be the amazing boyfriend, husband and father that he never saw in himself. Was proved 100% right.
13: Resisted her control-freak coping mechanisms to give Chandler the power of making the big decisions about their future, (saying ‘I Love you’, moving in together, marriage), so he could work through his commitment phobia. Again, proved it was 100% worth it.
14: Encouraged her husband to quit a job he hated, then supported him – financially and emotionally –through his subsequent unemployment and helped him find his dream career.
15: Never, ever fucking gives up on anything or anyone.
so i have a birthday curse. you know all those people who are like “oh no i hate my birthday” but secretly love it? no. i fear my birthday. every year something goes catastrophically wrong. like catastrophically.
one year i broke my wrist. another i accidentally set my hair on fire. one year i was so hungover from the night before that i spent the whole day curled up in bed with a bucket. i plan a party outside, it rains. once the movie theater i’d planned to go to had a bomb threat and was closed for the day. this year i spent my day at the doctor’s. yeah, blood-test birthdays aren’t the best.
which brings me to say: fuck it. you know what, 2016 fucking sucks. but i’m giving myself do-overs now. your birthday isn’t beautiful? congratulations on your new birthday on a day that works; enjoy your cake. you spent your prom sick in bed? guess what i am your new prom date, get dressed up, we’re gonna take a ballroom dance class (many are free) and then go and get ice cream and fries. christmas felt like a joke? ho ho ho july 25th is christmas in july, give out presents, santa; go ice skating and eat snow cones.
we live in a world that gives us one day to get something right. we build it up in our heads and then when the day comes around, we feel oddly empty. that’s just not working and i’m your mom now and i give you permission to make any day as magical as you want it to be. no more waiting for an excuse. this is your excuse. we only have so many days. why only spend a few of them celebrating.
I’ve written before about how theatre can teach trust, empathy, compassion, peaceful conflict resolution, deeper cognitive thinking, delayed gratification, create community and understanding. The men in Rehabilitation Through the Arts have far fewer disciplinary infractions inside the facility and a dramatically lower recidivism rate upon release than the general population.
I often wish I could take the guys to the theatre. You may be able to imagine that a fair number of these men had no access to the arts as children. (That’s a separate post.) We make do with production photos and the occasional “adapted for television.” Until the cast of Hamilton beautifully and powerfully performed their opening number from the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre for the Grammy ceremony, and then performed at the White House. Until Lin-Manuel Miranda free-styled in the Rose Garden with President Obama. Which I promptly burned onto a DVD and waited for clearance to bring into the facility.
Tonight we watched Lin-Manuel perform a piece from his ‘concept album’ at the 2009 White House Poetry Jam, and we talked about how that audience received his work. We talked about what happens when people laugh and you’re serious, about the decision to stand one’s ground and follow one’s purpose, which is a hot topic in our rehearsal room as we get closer to sharing our months of work with the population of the prison. “He gets more confident as he goes.” Some of the men are worried that the population won’t understand Shakespeare; some are worried that they will laugh at the serious parts. Tonight, one of the elders in our circle says, “We have to tell the story.”
We watch a Broadway show in the Big House. Well, four minutes of it. We watch the Grammy performance of “Alexander Hamilton.” Heads nod to the beat; some of the men snap along. “Can we watch it again?” We can.
We talk about how Hamilton is performed on a bare stage, just like we’ll perform Twelfth Night. “No one laughed when he said his name this time.” We talk about how Miranda uses language, leverages rhetoric to find each character’s voice, just as Shakespeare did. We talk about working for six years on something you believe in, and we speculated about the long, uncertain nights somewhere in the middle of year three, year four. The men know more than the rest of us can imagine about long, uncertain nights in the middle of a very long bid to survive. I attempt to describe the beautiful specificity of the physical and vocal choices that Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, and Anthony Ramos make to differentiate Lafayette from Jefferson, Mulligan from Madison, Laurens from Philip Hamilton; we’ve been working on character walks.
We watch the cast perform “My Shot” at the White House; we woop. We joyfully behold the son of Puerto Rican parents and the first African American President freestyle in the Rose Garden. We cheer. (One or two of us might tear up, but we don’t need to discuss that.)
These gorgeous, thoughtful, wounded men rarely see themselves represented in the world. As they fight to become the men they want to be, they still mostly see themselves in the narrative as junkies, dealers, thugs or the latest Black man brutally gunned down in the streets by the police. According to an Opportunity Agenda study, “negative mass media portrayals were strongly linked with lower life expectations among black men.” (Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story?) But tonight, in the midst of our shared creative endeavor, they saw themselves smack in the center of the narrative of creation, possibility, pursuit, and achievement.
Representation unabashedly made me weep tonight as I watched a few of the men lean in.
