I am all for people having their head-canons or au’s. Genuinely in the works of fiction, I say fair game, especially when it comes to anything Harry Potter because I don’t care for jk Rowling due to a list of reasons. (this is to an extent. I don’t f with degenerate shit)

But there’s one thing that’s bothered me for YEARS. and it’s this singular mischaracterization of albus potter.

It is one of my biggest gripes and will always be; ‘albus would be the next dark lord if this-‘ or ‘albus would use dark magic-‘, NO HE WOULDN’T?? Can a boy not be mentally ill without being pinned as a murderer in the making? God forbid we get borderline up in here.

Genuinely, when did he ever show any sign of homicidal-ness? Yes, while the whole time turner saving Cedric Diggory thing was in ways self motivated, he was straight up trying to prevent a guy from dying. ‘He’d do it to spite Harry and his family-‘ girl, if you don’t get outta here. Oh I can totally see a bitter and petty adult albus, but I see him being bitter and petty and working a 9-5 and being a hermit. NOT being the newest dark wizard.

He’s just a highly insecure, introverted, angsty teenage boy. Under a lot of scrutiny. How do you expect the kid to act, honestly. He’s also a little dweeb (lovingly) and at the end of the day, if we surpass all the morals he obviously has and has been taught to him from birth, along with his compassion he shows, do you really think that kids going to want all that attention on him? NEGATIVE ATTENTION??

as all my followers and mutuals might know, my mom is the worst. i can go on and on and on about that. and my dad sucks too, but he's better than mom.

throughout my life, I've been made acutely aware that my parents were abused. both of them were abused and since i was an accident and they had me while still in highschool, they never really got the chance to heal or whatever. but theyve both made it clear that i have it better. theyve both made it clear that i dont have problem, because im not getting hit or whatever. my dad even once said that im lucky that he doesnt break my ribs??? and my dad doesnt say this shit anymore, but how am i supposed to just forget that??? they both say that theyre better, but not by a lot. my mom has threatened to smack my sister so hard her glasses will fly off, and i mean that word for word. my mom once said that if my sister kept throwing a fit, she wouldn't be eating breakfast. then they tried belittling my feelings about that. my dad did too, a little. he tried to get me to drop it because my mom is sick or whatever. THEYRE ALWAYS SICK, DAD. WHEN ARE THEY NOT SICK??? WHEN ARE THEY NOT LYING IN BED AND MAKING ME DO ALL THE WORK???

and my mom just guilt trips me. all the time. my dad does too, but i dont think he's doing it on purpose. he'll say stuff like how im the only reason he's alive and that he wouldve killed himself as a teenager if i wasnt born because his life sucked so hard. hes trying to be comforting but it's so stressful. so many people i know just put their life in my hands and i can barely carry that. as for my mom, they used to ask me if i thought they were a good parent and then got mad if i told them any form of 'no'. i one time expressed (rather harshly and i admit i was being kinda bratty at the time) that l felt like mom favorites my little sister, because they DO. they always buy my sister things without thinking about me, one time they bought themself and my sister food but nothing for me, they always get my sister gifts, they always listen to my sister, they always side with my sister. anyways, i expressed this and they got angry. they told me that i make them feel like a bad parent. they told me that they arent gonna heal from what i said. they told me this and i was, what, maybe 11 years old? how do yu even say this to an ELEVEN YEAR OLD. I've always felt kinda left out since my sister was born. my sister always got the attention. i can handle that now, i dont care for attention and i just isolate myself in my room, but i dont think a 7 year old can. i dont think 7year old me could handle anything put on me. i dont think 7year old me could handle when my mom left to do shit with their friends and made me take care of my baby sister, which i barely knew how to do and so they yelled at me when they got back for not doing it right. i dont think 7year old me could handle when my little sister accidentally let out cat out and my mom used an axe on our backyard and came back saying to my sister "i had to take my anger out on the yard so i wouldnt hit yu". i dont think 7year old me could handle when my mom was hanging out with their friends and also had my sister and their roomate was at work so i was alone in the house for HOURS and i left the house twice, sobbing because i was scared. it was snowing and the second time i was planning to go find them, though i didnt know where they were. the neighbors found me sobbing in front of my driveway and just took me inside their house. i knew about stranger danger and shit and i didnt know these people but bro i was so scared and hungry and tired. i ended up eating an orange in the neighbors' house and explored a little and eventually my mom came back panicking because i wasnt inside our house. the thing is... THEY WERE UPSET AT ME??? they were upset at the roommate too, who was supposed to be watching me apparently, but they got upset at me for leaving. i admit, that was super unsafe of me. but i didnt have a phone, i didnt have anyone to contact, i didnt have anything. i was hungry and alone and tired and i think it was like 9 pm when i left the house.

also, my mom threatens to hit my sister and shit and if i said they didnt, i would be lying. they do. not often, but if they're angry enough then they will smack my sister on the head. my dad used to (occasionally) hit but he hasnt in YEARS and hes super good at controlling himself. my parents actually had an argument about this once, my mom had breakdowns often and apparently my dad had one (i wasn't home at the time) and now he's the villian or something. i dont know. they were also arguing about how my mom wont let him leave, and he was saying that he wasnt planning to and my mom was like crying and saying how they cant be normal about my dad "packing up" (he was cleaning). they also ended up saying how my dad isnt allowed to have breakdowns because he's not 18 anymore and i laughed. i genuinely laughed. MY MOM IS ALWAYS BREAKING DOWN????. anyways.

Anyways, here's my [writing list]!!!!

This is kind of surprising me because I used to ship Everlark when I read the books years ago but upon a re-read as an adult?

I’m just wandering through the Hunger Games fandom and seriously have to say… I very very much doubt that Katniss and Peeta “would’ve happened anyway” if they were not reaped nor if the Games never existed.

Sure, he had a crush on her which is likely why he gave her the burned bread that day(something that I’m pretty sure isn’t even covered in the movies) which people seem to think makes her required to like him back. Their relationship was also a forced play for the Capitol, she had no choice. If it was “gonna happen anyway”, she would’ve been dating him already by the first book. 

As an (now)Everthorne shipper, I am a little biased but she clearly has more in common with Gale, they had known each other for years, and she even bluntly states that “he is hers and she is his” at one point. Seems straight forward to me. Gale also deserved better than what SC did to him. Yes, he helped to design those bombs but I very much doubt he knew what Coin was going to use them for nor did he know that Prim was going to be there and put in the direct line of fire. Prove me wrong. I’m also slightly irritated that Katniss holds this over his head, and while I understand given that it’s Prim, she should know him better than that. Just seemed like an easy way for Collins to get rid of him so she could pander to fans by putting Katniss with Peeta. Yes, he lied by omission but he didn’t want to hurt her. And I find it odd that she just can’t seem to get over that, while she seems to just instantly forgive Peeta for every manipulation(unintended or not) that he puts her through. 

I do find it funny that some people seriously seem to think that Gale and Katniss actually are cousins. Take the Everlark blinders off, people. You really think that Collins would create a love triangle that involved incest?

She picked Peeta in the end because he could give her stability in a post war world when she had no one, not because she loved him like that. Matches up to “she’ll pick who she can’t survive without” to me. I know people immediately interpret that as “she’ll pick who she loves” but no. If Gale meant it that way, he would’ve said it that way but he also knows the only one Katniss would and could ever truly love is Prim. Peeta does not understand this about her.

The movies just showed a “happy-ever-after Everlark” ending while ignoring that fact that Peeta is still struggling with the hijack(and poses a continuing threat to Katniss because of it) and in the books, Katniss does wonder what kind of future she also could’ve had with Gale like they were talking about before the first reaping. But she dismisses it because she imagines that he’s moved on. Her ending with Peeta comes across to me as “obligation” still. Surprisingly, lots of people seem to get this too I’ve read but most are still “romantic Everlark” anyway. 🤷‍♀️

Katniss had gone through the books pretty adamant that she didn’t want to marry or have children and yes, that was largely because she didn’t want them to have to go through the Games but it’s also been said behind the scenes that she only did these exact things in the end because Peeta wanted it. Literally along the lines of “I didn’t want children but Peeta did and kept asking until I finally caved…” just rubs me the wrong way.

It goes in to a bit of a rant, but hopefully explains why we’re such pedants about why a “British” accent being considered stick-up-the-arse posh is a misunderstanding, and why we might be a bit touchy about the bo’ul of wor’uh thing.

So, first up: accents in the UK are very much a class marker. I know that’s true everywhere, but it is really pronounced here. Because of our linguistic history, we’ve historically had enormous regional variation in accents for such a small landmass, as well as a second accent spoken by landowners regardless of geographical location. Historically, therefore, your social class could be discerned by where you were on the scale of ‘regional accent’ to ‘posh person accent’.

To an extent, this applies/applied to Scottish and Welsh accents, too. Really posh Scottish people do not have, or have a very slight Scottish accent. This is not an accident, nor something people were unaware of - I was reading a book from the 1930s recently where someone was discussing her child’s education and bemoaning his accent, saying “a touch of Perthshire is charming,” but that he’d been spending too much time with shepherds and gamekeepers, and was being essentially ‘too Scottish’.

So, because the vast majority of the Very Posh and Very Wealthy were educated at about three schools, two universities, and inhabited once social sphere, they all spoke - and were taught to speak - in the same way. The name for this accent, as I’m sure a lot of you know, is “Received Pronunciation,” or RP, and we all know what it sounds like, right?

Or do we?

What Maggie Smith (and most of the other actors there) are speaking *is* RP, but it’s not a particularly thick RP accent. Smith - because she’s a great actor and knows what she’s about - is speaking thicker RP than the others, and that’s doing the work of letting you know she’s posher and more old fashioned than anyone else she’s talking to - but still, her vowels are mostly soft and broad, her consonants clearly articulated. It is stage RP, schoolroom RP - but not from an Eton/Harrow/Westminster schoolroom. It’s the sort of accent you were taught at grammar schools, or small private schools to rid you of your regional accent.

Now, of course, if you speak like that in any normal place in in the UK, people *are* going to assume you’re posh. But it is upper middle class posh, working in the Professions posh, rather than “owns half of Buckinghamshire” posh. It’s designed for clarity - which is what people think RP is all about. But it isn’t.

RP is a shibboleth. It’s actually not a particularly clear accent, and it is designed to mark the people who know it apart from those who do not.

Here is a much thicker RP accent: https://youtu.be/mBRP-o6Q85s

(apologies for the national anthem at the start)

If you see, the vowels are a lot higher and tighter, the consonants less clearly pronounced. But it’s still fairly intelligible - Liz is public speaking here and the majority of her audience will not be RP speakers, so she’s speaking slowly and clearly, and she still wishes to be accessible and comprehensible. If you want to hear a seriously thick RP accent, it’s worth looking up some early 20th century radio broadcasts.

The difference is in the emphasis given to vowels over consonants, as well as how much you move your lips. I’m not good at writing IPA as I’ve only done a bit of linguistics, but to give an example - if you wanted to say “I am speaking clearly,” stage RP might pronounce the word “clearly” as KLEER-lee, two distinct syllables, with a clear but simple vowel sound. A sort of mid level RP might say something more like KLE-ahr-lee, giving more vocalisation to the a and the r, making it almost three syllables, although one without emphasis. Really thick RP almost pronounces it as klAR-le, with almost even emphasis between the syllables, and the stress on the ar, rather than the kl.

But although plenty of people still use it, that very thick RP accent has become almost invisible over the course of the 20th century, as part of (if I put my paranoid socialist hat on) a campaign to render invisible the hereditary privilege and enormous wealth disparity which affects pretty much every aspect of British life. Which is to say, the very small number of people who can speak with and identify each other by a thick RP accent still literally own most of the country.

Even if I’m to be a little less red, the fact is during the 20th century, it became expedient for the accepted voice of radio and television to become less that of landowners and hereditary authority, and more like that of the middle classes. Even ‘The Queen’s English’ changed, as the Queen and several politicians took elocution lessons to sound “warmer and more approachable.” At the same time, Britain had a period of unprecedented social mobility in the post-War period and - much like the American conception of “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” - there gradually emerged this cultural idea that everyone was, or perhaps could be, “middle class.”

Even as this was starting to happen, and markers of “middle class respectability” spread (especially in the South East of England) the countercultural movements of the 60s and 70s rejected this very move and identified itself with everything their parents found ‘low’ or ‘shocking’. One of the markers of this was that middle class boys from the Home Counties adopted a kind of ‘mockney’ accent, which along with the success of a handful actually working class artists meant that having a vaguely working-class, vaguely South-Eastern accent became a sign of counter cultural validity and authenticity. (All of this is, ofc, a vast oversimplification - but it’s a general trend.)

From here we have the rise of the Estuary accent. Estuary English is a vague conglomeration of RP and the accents found around the Thames Estuary. It’s neither Essex, nor London, nor Kent, but a broad mingling of the three. It is easily learned and adopted, and - as a composite accent - has none of the shibboleths of real cockney, or Essex, or RP. To speak cynically, it is an accent uniquely suited to code switching. If you have access to RP, then estuary is an accent where you can ‘choose’ how thickly you speak it, or whether you intersperse it with another accent. (An example my mum always points out, although this is a bit pre-Estuary, is in Mother’s Little Helper, Mick Jagger pronounces all his “th” as “v” - but doesn’t use a single glottle stop.)

Beyond the “clear, warm, and authoritative” idea of a mild RP accent, estuary offered a “relatable” and, more importantly, “authentic” feel. Its use as a political tool further closed the gap between people’s perception of their class (and promoted the idea of the UK as a ‘classless society, which, lol) and their actual circumstances. The wildest example of this is perhaps Victoria Beckham describing being driven to school on a Rolls Royce while claiming her family was “very working class.”

Now, Estuary English has a really complicated place in the UK especially in the way it has homogenised regional accents, but one good thing about it is that it normalises and even valorises patterns of speech that have been historically mocked, excluded, and treated as markers of poverty, criminality, and stupidity. Double negatives, the glottal stop, using a hard “ff” for “v” sounds, and a “v” for “th”, and where someone the ‘drops’ and vocalises ‘h’. I said earlier that RP was a shibboleth, and these were some of the most commonly observed tells that someone didn’t belong. Given that the vast majority of social power in England rested in the same area that the estuary accent drew its sources from, it bears a lot of similarities to the accent of the working classes in those areas - the ones most often mocked, parodied, or disparaged by those in power.

And the thing is, people still have those accents - or they have adopted the similar estuary in place of those accents - but unlike BBC talk show hosts, or politicians trying to convince you they’re a “man of the people,” these people *cannot* code switch. They have no access to RP, and their accent - despite being mainstreamed and in some ways privileged - is still used a shorthand for vulgarity and stupidity. It remains a punchline, a joke. They are still constrained by it - they can’t put it aside or mitigate it in formal situations, they can’t leverage RP to their advantage when it suits, and thereby use their actual accent as proof of “authenticity”. For them, the shibboleths remain - just (like thick RP) hidden now.

I don’t want to call it cultural appropriation, because that’s not quite the right term, but there is something very cruel in that way that - in one of the most classist and economically unequal countries in Europe - an accent which apes several working class accents has become enormously culturally privileged, but only when it is NOT used by somebody working class. And although that isn’t apparent to the casual observer - not even the people being totally shafted here - there is, I think, this broad cultural sense that we’ve been had. That we’ve been played for fools on some level it’s really difficult to quantify.

We have been told that class and accent no longer matter - but every day in our lives, they transparently *do*. So anyone hearing my “middle class vowels” will assume I’m posh, and have endless contacts and support - despite the fact I lived a lot of my adult life below the poverty line - but in any situation where being perceived as posh would get me contacts and support, it’s immediately apparent I’m not part of the Old School Tie, because I don’t talk quite right.

Or how a poor kid with an Essex accent will be told they couldn’t *possibly* be discriminated against because of their class, because that’s how all the presenters on Radio 1 talk, meanwhile whole comedy sketches are still written about how ‘ugly’ and ‘stupid’ the Essex accent sounds.

Or how an accent that is somehow globally understood to be one of power and privilege (be it RP or estuary) and can therefore be ‘punched up’ against is - at home - only ever used to punch down on us. How people who want to ‘do well’ have had regional accents beaten out of them (in some cases literally) and were granted conditional acceptance for it, while the same people who’ve owned the country since the Middle Ages got to slum it down with us, without surrendering any of their money or privilege.

It’s… complicated, okay?

Yet i want to talk about my experience in this fandom. It's mostly positive beside that I rarely talk to someone and being to shy to interact much with other people.

On the other hand I got not really nice messages over the year. I never reacted to them, but I guess it's time that I will now. Because I feel like it. I will put them together in the three themes those messages mostly are:

You are too old for this fandom. Go and pay taxes.

I am there since 2003. Mostly not engaging with the ygo community. Thank you for your concern, that the fandom maybe could distract me from my duties. My taxes are paid and you don't have to worry anymore. Everything is fine.

Your favorite pairing sucks. Stop drawing it!

So you dislike my favorite pairing. This is fine. But I will draw much more if you tell me that, just for you. I'm this kind of person and now that I know you still watch me drawing it instead of just blocking me I will have fun to annoy you much more with it. (Despite the fact that I don’t even draw that much pairing stuff.)

I hate you.

Great, I didn't even know you exist.

I'm too old for shit like that. Seriously. I'm just concerned that people love to surround themselfes with things they hate, instead of stuff they love.