The Distinctive And Memorable Thailand-only Covers For The Harry Potter Novels.

its just embarrassing when you make a fandom related post and it doesnt get any notes like okay. so no one want to play tuoys with me. no one wants to play with our little guys together. okay thats fine. yeah its cool... puts my hands in my jacket pockets. kicks a beer can that was on the side of the road a little

I come to you with this question because, having read all your other metas, I think you'd be the right person to ask. Id love to know what you think about Regulus because I have a very hard time understanding his character. Partly because of fanon characterization of him makes him seem like some secret rebel against Voldemort and partly because I just can't really understand any of his motivations. But regardless, I think what we know about him in canon is so interesting - i just can piece it all together. I'd love to know what you think!

(Sorry for the longish ask)

thank you very much for the ask, @hauntingpercival! regulus is a character i also find a bit of a mystery, and so thinking through this answer was really fun.

i'll start by being clear that i'm certainly not a regulus fan. by which i not only mean that i don't vibe with the fanon!regulus of the marauders fandom, who is essentially an original character - and you can read my views on jegulus here... [spoiler alert: i do not back it] - but that when he appears in my own writing in ways i'd like to hope feel influenced by his canon form, i always find myself focusing on aspects of his character which are rather unlikeable.

there is a little bit of a discourse-y reason for this, which will be pertinent to the rest of this answer...

i really don't like the sort of "omg aristocracy is so hot and sexy and interesting" tropes which are so prevalent in writing around the black family. this is firstly because i don't think that aristocracy is in any way these things - and i find it distasteful to imply otherwise - which is because i'm a prole who lives somewhere still bearing the scars of british colonisation who also went to the sort of university where one sometimes encountered aristocrats and they were all cringe and unbearable.

but it's also because it's not - and i will genuinely die on this hill - an accurate reflection of how the blacks are presented in canon. not only does it take sirius' comment that his parents considered themselves "practically royal" to be a statement of fact [sirius is quite clearly taking the piss out of his parents' pretensions], but it also misses that the purpose sirius' discussion of orion and walburga's politics serves in the narrative of order of the phoenix is to show how mainstream their blood-supremacist views were.

sirius tells us that his parents were not death eaters, but that they nonetheless thought voldemort's overtly sectarian political aims were correct. in this, they hold the political views order of the phoenix emphasises belong to cornelius fudge - unimaginative, deferential to the class system, casually prejudiced, and so on. orion and walburga function as a way of showing us just how entrenched the death eaters' manifesto is, how close voldemort came to winning the first war, and what an uphill struggle the order faces to unravel the roots blood-supremacy has in the wizarding world.

[and they also show that the baffling vibes of grimmauld place - while these are made worse by it being three different gothic literature tropes in a trenchcoat - are wizarding norms, rather than evidence that the blacks were uniquely immersed in dark magic. the decor at grimmauld place - and the family's collection of dark artefacts - is the same as that found in malfoy manor, even at a time when lucius malfoy is considered eminently socially respectable. this is a point we will come back to...]

i think, then, that it's crucial to approach regulus not as a swaggering aristocrat, but as someone from an upper-class background which - while still posh, rich, inferring enormous social capital, well-connected - was unremarkable within the circles in which he moved.

by which i mean that hogwarts is based on real-world institutions - britain's elite boarding schools - which are so exclusive and expensive to attend that the student body are from a class-background which seems inhumanly exclusive, affluent, and powerful from an outsider perspective [i.e. from the perspective of someone from the majority middle- and working-classes] but which seems completely normal within the student body itself.

[i.e. nobody at eton with princes william and harry will have been astonished to have been at school with a royal, because they will have been familiar with their social circles, cultural experiences, level of wealth, and expectation of knowing someone with considerable social influence from childhood.]

while hogwarts appears to be a state-funded school [although it also expects an enormous amount of financial investment on the part of parents - such as buying all the textbooks], the fact that its real-world parallels are so elite [and, therefore, come with a specific "look" in the british cultural imagination] means that the student body is incredibly well-heeled and working-class students stand out enormously in a way very rich students do not. hogwarts also exists - like real-world elite schools and universities - as a way of propping up the status quo of the class system by which the wizarding world functions. its pupils have an expectation of procuring jobs in the civil service and other influential professions - using not only connections established at school but connections they possess through their [male] relatives. many hogwarts students we meet in canon are related to someone who occupies an elite position in the wizarding executive or is otherwise socio-politically influential.

at school, then, regulus would have been completely, perfectly average in terms of social position. i also like the idea of him as perfectly average in terms of intellect - and as a good, but not exceptional, seeker. this provides a really interesting point of contrast with sirius, who - while he's also not socially unusual in terms of class [and i will never vibe with tropes like him being followed by whispers going "omg, he's a black, that means he's important"] - stands out in that he's the first black in generations not to be in slytherin, that he's precociously intelligent, and that he - and the rest of the marauders - are class clowns and show-offs.

and i like the idea that this would give regulus a desire to stand out - to be considered the most important person in the whole school. we can get a hint of this in canon - the picture of sirius and his friends harry sees in deathly hallows is immediately contrasted with a picture of regulus sitting in the seeker's position in the team photo. the seeker who acts alone.

and i think this desire for notoriety is what drives him to sign up to become a death eater - that he decides he's sick of having parents with the perfectly normal level of social influence and a brother who is more popular than him, and that he thinks that he's cleverer and more worthy of attention than everyone else in the castle and the world better start showing it.

[and i've never bought - i'm afraid - the idea that he and sirius are close. it's clear from canon that regulus had no issue being thought of as "a much better son" than sirius, and that he colluded with his parents against him. sirius can love him - and miss him, and regret how they were never able to repair their relationship - but i don't think this means that he feels he's lost a bestie.]

that he holds sincere blood-supremacist views is a given - because within the world in which he lives, these are completely normal and held completely casually [i.e. that slughorn is shocked lily could be muggleborn because she's clever]. the more virulent expression of these views - saying "mudblood", etc. - is clearly considered ill-mannered, but not something which might have any real impact on one's social standing [draco malfoy uses the term with impunity while at school, and nobody ever considers that informing a teacher of this would result in him being punished; equally, nobody from the crowd who witness the event reports snape for calling lily a mudblood].

and so i think it's clear that he becomes interested in joining the death eaters - and starts putting together his terrorism pinterest board - because his mainstream belief that being pureblood is better crashes into his desire to be special to form a conviction that riding the coattails of voldemort's ostentatious malevolence is the way he can become famous.

[in this, he is very like snape.]

my assumption is that regulus is one academic year below sirius, meaning that he was born in 1960-1961. my assumption is also that he receives his dark mark while still at school - probably at some point in his newt years [so the academic years 1977-1978 and 1978-1979].

the standard view - expressed vehemently by various order members in half-blood prince - is that voldemort has no interest in death eaters who are still at school.

the order is wrong about this, obviously - not only when it comes to their refusal to accept that harry's right about draco malfoy being marked, but also in the fact that several of the death eaters who are very young at the end of the first war, barty crouch jr. [who is still young enough to be described as a "boy" in 1982 at the earliest], chief among them, must have been taken on by voldemort prior to graduating.

but it seems fair to say that admitting teenagers into his inner circle is unusual for voldemort, especially when those teenagers don't really offer him anything useful. crouch, for example, could be put to work informing on his father's movements. regulus is - as i've said - just ordinary.

and so my view has always been that regulus is marked by voldemort as a favour to bellatrix. i think this partially because i'm bellamort trash, partially because i think it's a nice narrative parallel between regulus and draco [who are very similar] to have bellatrix be responsible for regulus' recruitment when she's canonically vociferously in favour of draco's, and partially because realising that voldemort thinks of him as just some guy who warrants [essentially] a pity dark mark would be a big blow to regulus' conviction that joining the death eaters would make him impressive.

[i also think regulus is recruited before 1978 because i think there has to be a shift in voldemort's modus operandi at about this point, in order for the fact that sirius says that his parents got cold feet about what the dark lord was prepared to do after regulus became a death eater to make sense. my view has always been that voldemort's violence prior to c.1978 overwhelmingly targets state institutions and people connected to them and/or people with known anti-voldemort political views, meaning that ordinary citizens can regard these people being killed or injured as reasonable risks of their jobs and/or behaviour. and then that after c.1978, the dark lord begins targeting civilians - including upper-class pureblood civilians - indiscriminately, which makes his casual supporters start to waver a bit.]

so, let's suppose that regulus leaves hogwarts in june 1979 and finds himself expected to participate as a full death eater, after having been let off all the dirty work by virtue of being at school...

as i've said, regulus has an enormous number of narrative parallels with draco malfoy. and i think that the best way to think about him is to write him as sharing draco's canonical attitude to voldemort's cause - that he believes whole-heartedly in the message of blood-supremacy the dark lord promotes and that he has no problem with people he considers subhuman [mudbloods and blood-traitors] or unimportant [faceless families massacred in their own homes] being subjected to violence in the name of that message, but that he lacks the character traits necessary to perform that violence himself, to see it done to people he likes, or to witness what it actually involves versus the image he has of it in his head.

and so i imagine he starts struggling pretty quickly with the fact that being a death eater isn't quite as easy as he thought it would be when he was making voldemort fancams on tiktok. and that part of the reason he's primed to turn against the dark lord is because of the tension he feels warring within him at the fact that he's still a blood-supremacist, still desperate to be important, and yet growing disenchanted.

i don't however, think this is why he does what he does... so let's get into that:

why does regulus turn against voldemort?

let's be clear about one thing - regulus turning against voldemort has nothing to do with him having some sort of damascene conversion against blood-supremacy.

[or, at least, that's what i think.]

the outline of regulus' defection that we get in canon goes as follows:

voldemort asks someone to lend him a house elf. we know that regulus volunteers kreacher, because he told kreacher so - and so i imagine voldemort mentions at a meeting that he wants to procure an elf [although, of course, he doesn't elaborate on why] and regulus immediately jumps up and says "pick me, my lord" because he sees this as an opportunity to get voldemort to finally notice him.

his assumption must be that voldemort will use kreacher for a purpose which is considered normal in wizarding society - i.e. that he will require him to do something akin to domestic service, perhaps preparing potions ingredients.

it evidently does not occur to him that voldemort would transgress this social boundary and harm kreacher. not - to be clear - because i think that regulus was some kind of abolitionist legend, but because we see several characters express the view in goblet of fire that how barty crouch sr. treats winky is his own business, and that it is impolite for respectable wizards to comment on how anyone else treats his slave. this sort of social behaviour will have a second part - that it is impolite for respectable wizards to treat anyone else's slave in a way which goes beyond what wizarding slaveowners see as normal.

or: that it's fine to be lent a slave to serve you, but very much not fine to nearly kill that slave [someone else's property!] for your own gain.

kreacher informs regulus what voldemort asked of him, which makes regulus suspicious about what the object voldemort deposited in the cave was. regulus then decides to investigate.

kreacher tells us that regulus goes away for an indeterminate period of time and then returns to grimmauld place "disturbed in his mind".

dumbledore claims in half-blood prince that voldemort appears not to wear or display the objects the horcruxes are made from after he turns them into horcruxes. i think we can agree with this or not without it affecting the story - i quite like the idea that voldemort doesn't make the locket until the later 1970s [maybe after the murder of dorcas meadowes, the only person in the first war other than james and lily to have canonically been killed by him personally], but we can also say that he might have worn or displayed it when it was already a horcrux. certainly, regulus must have seen the locket - either on voldemort or somewhere in his lair - and, after kreacher tells him what happened, he goes to see if it's still there.

when he discovers it isn't, he comes to an important conclusion. one which requires a little detour...

how does regulus know what a horcrux is?

i complained at the start of this answer about the black family being portrayed as unusually immersed in the dark arts - rather than some sort of familiarity with the dark arts being perfectly normal for people of their social class.

and i am sure that you might think I'm about to have to eat my words, since i'm not going to try and deny that regulus was able to identify a horcrux all by himself...

but, actually, i'm just chucking malevolently at the opportunity to clamber onto my soapbox and say:

horcruxes are canonically not magic which only a handful of people know about. where voldemort goes beyond the theory of horcruxes which a wizard of regulus' class-background would be familiar with is that he makes seven.

this doesn't mean - to be clear - that i think it was ever common to make a horcrux [i don't think the wizarding world is quite that lawless...], but that it was reasonable to know they exist, in the way that we might have some general understanding of something macabre - like techniques for disposing of a body - which would enable us to suspect if we saw a neighbour behaving strangely while doing one of those things...

after all, slughorn can suggest [even if he doesn't believe this is what he wants to do] that voldemort could justify his interest in horcruxes by using the excuse that he's working on a project for defence against the dark arts.

that harry, ron, and hermione don't know about them is a result of a combination of their own lack of interest in the theory of the dark arts, the information blackout instituted by dumbledore at some point after voldemort graduates [and my theory as to why dumbledore hates horcruxes even in the forties? grindelwald made one - hence why dumbledore is so hopeful at king's cross that the rumours of his repentance might have been true...], and the fact that they don't discuss their mission with anyone [tonks, kingsley, and moody, who literally have to specialise in dark objects as part of their jobs, would one hundo have known what a horcrux was].

[what they would not have known is what voldemort's horcruxes were likely to be made of and where they were likely to be. it's this - rather than the idea that horcruxes are completely unknowable magic - that is why it has to be harry in charge of hunting them down: he's the only person in the series who knows voldemort well enough to realise that, for example, he'd have hidden one in gringotts because of his jealousy at being excluded from this pillar of wizarding normality.]

so, regulus has a little rummage, works out the locket has disappeared, and has no trouble - especially because voldemort mentions in goblet of fire that he'd told his death eaters he couldn't die [which regulus might not have thought was him speaking literally] prior to 1981 - guessing what it's being used for.

and so, regulus turns against voldemort.

and i think that he does this because the horcrux makes it impossible for him to pretend any longer that voldemort's aims are - when the ministry is forced to the negotiating table by his paramilitary activities - an oligarchy in which upper-class pureblood families benefit and muggleborns and blood-traitors become second-class citizens, but which doesn't deviate too much in terms of its overwhelming norms from the way wizarding society functioned at that time. instead, he is confronted with the undeniable fact that voldemort intends to reign forever as an immortal absolute monarch, and that he has never had any intention of elevating regulus and people like him to the positions of importance he so craved.

[we see something similar happen to draco, whose increasing fear of voldemort throughout half-blood prince and deathly hallows is clearly driven by him realising that voldemort isn't joking when he says that he'll kill him and his parents unless he obeys orders, but is joking when he says he'll be considered a valuable servant should he manage to kill dumbledore...]

and so his death - and his threat to destroy the horcrux - is a repudiation of his beliefs. but, specifically, it is a repudiation of his conviction that voldemort was a primarily political figure who would act as a champion of the pureblood class-system. it's him recognising that voldemort would not stop with a takeover of the ministry - he would kill and kill forever, concerned only with how much further he could venture beyond the norms of magic.

the lil mannerisms and micro-struggles i give these british teenage boys are so . . unabashedly girl-coded, undoubtedly bc im a gal myself, in what i hope is in a subtle way but idek atp,,,

draco slaps half a pound of gel onto his head whenever he's too dead inside to do his hair in the morning, ron gets sidelined and mansplained to constantly and chooses to smile genially and take it bc it'd take just too much energy to get properly offended abt it . . .

draco hides nearly every single emotion he has behind a polite, blank smile whenever he's not (performatively) taking out his pent-up anger on the gryff trio, he is performing for an audience even when he's not supposed to be, when he's taking a break from the mask to be nasty and cruel . . but of course you have to be nasty and cruel in just the right way of course . . .

ron has so deeply internalized the belief that you have to be exceptional (something he is inherently, at the absolute base-level, not, he believes) to be worthy as a person that he's completely stopped putting in any effort at all; has so completely given up hope for himself (his erised-reflected pipe dream of standing out: head boy, quidditch captain, etc) that he struggles to see his own positive/arguably exceptional aspects at all; is living, essentially, in low power mode . . .

While hashing out my Late-Borgin Tom design and demeanor I was thinking about horcrux timelines and when he'd made the locket

"Hm. The locket is the one Ron had homoerotic tension with right"

LOCK IN

I have no AU in mind i just like when loving couples are not matching each other's energy at all and think tom being patronizing towards his much younger agonizingly normal boyfriend who he is emotionally dependent on is really, really funny.

dragging myself thru a fic with Ron Bashing bc it's not too bad otherwise, but the entire Extremely Warped Personality to the Point of OOC, ordeal . . . is making me feel like a war veteran reliving my comrade being butchered to death right in front of me

team voltron and aspects of alienation

I've seen aspects of "not-belonging" in analyses of Lance and Keith's characters and I'd like to shed light on how it's a sentiment that's very well nestled in every member of Voltron.

Starting off with the alienation (ha, get it) that is most flesh out in canon, we have Keith. From the very beginning the show, Voltron is divided into three factions: the Alteans, the Garrison trio, and Keith and Shiro. Keith has trouble mingling with the trio due to Lance's harsh front towards him, and has slight trouble mingling with the alteans due to cultural divisions and difference in views. Then he finds out he's half-Galran and Shiro is removed from the equation, which removes him further from the team. He gains a sense of disconnect from the team due to his heritage, his lack of bonds, and his belief that he's a failure of a leader.

Lance's disassociation from the team is more subtle. It comes from his views of inferiority and the idea that he doesn't contribute to Voltron. Unlike Keith, his sense of alienation comes more from what he does rather than who he is. He doesn't believe himself to be skilled enough, and when he throws himself into gaining skill, he finds that he's not achieving enough. He finds himself becoming more and more irrelevant as time passes, as if he is blending into the background.

The divide between Allura and the team is a storyline that we were robbed of. It's so plainly laid out for the writers to pursue- the cultural differences between Alteans and humans, the unity the humans feel towards each other that they extend to her in friendship to no avail, as she doesn't understand it. The other paladins will not know the part of the war that she knows. They will not know the loss she knows.

Perhaps she finds comfort in Coran. But even the split between her and Coran may grow as she becomes a paladin and he remains support for Voltron. They're still close and they still care for each other, but the way you fight in a war, the things you see, they can define and shape you. War looks different from different angles. Coran has never been in a pilots seat. Hes never been in the mind meld. And he doesn't need to do these things to have a bond with the people he cares about, but he still may feel the distance in his mind.

Hunk's sense of isolation from the team was also something we were robbed of, but were were also robbed of everything when it comes to Hunk. There is a huge difference in drive and fight when it comes to Hunk versus the rest of the paladins. He is unable to throw himself so deeply into the fight it just- it scares him! And I'm sure it scares everyone else too, but can Hunk see that? He sees the way everyone else stands tall and fights and goes into battle and training every single day, and he doesn't feel made for that. He doesn't want to do that. And it makes him feel guilty for not having the "passion" everyone else does even though his heart is in his actions, but at the same time he constantly feels sick.

Shiro is someone who has been both physically and emotionally distanced from Voltron. His kidnappings have shaped and transformed him- but it's not only that he's changed, Voltron has changed while he's gone too. Shiro has left and come back to an entirely different team filled with people who have changed so much because that's what war does, it changes you. There are months of Pidge, Hunk, Lance, Allura, and Coran that he's missed and years of Keith that he's missed. And they'll welcome him with open arms, but it doesn't change the fact that he doesn't feel like he knows them as well as they know each other.

Lastly, there's Pidge. Pidge is a fundamental anchor of Voltron as she produces so much technology to aid the war effort. She throws herself into her work so much that it consumes her, and this ends up eating away at her connections a little bit. There's also the fact that the technological battle she's fighting to combat Galran interfaces and invention rates is a fight that the rest of the team aren't exactly a part of. They can support her, but ultimately it is only she that can do the work she does. This puts a lot of pressure on her and compels her to do even more. She spends so much time working that she misses so much with the others.

The point I'm trying to make is not that Voltron isn't close or that they aren't a family, but that they themselves might not feel close to the team they love. And it's not a sense of isolation felt by one or two members, but instead by all of them equally. I think that dreamworks could've really worked with this dynamic to show the fact that war can make people grow apart (opposite to how a lot of media shows war bringing people together; both are themes that can be explored). Dreamworks could've also taken this opportunity to let the characters grow as individuals and then come together as an even stronger team.

Okay, I finally saw Hamlet performed live yesterday, and let me tell you some of the production choices were *chef's kiss*

King's ghost wore a crown, but upside down,

There was an open grave on the stage the entire play, that leads to to a trapdoor stage exit. Hamlet exited the stage by falling into it no less then 5 times

Everybody was dressed in modern clothes and Hamlet wore a jacket, but as my friends cleverly pointed out to me, he only wears it when he "performs" the role of the prince. When he's alone or with Horatio, he dons it off

Speaking of Horatio, he was kinda just there for a lot of the play? He lurked in backgrounds of a lot of scenes. (Or in foregrounds. In the beginning scene with Claudius and the queen he just sat on the chair at the front of the stage and ate lunch)

When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arrived, Hamlet has only done the jacket half way, and shook their hands with his one arm that is in the jacket

When Rosencrantz told Hamlet the actors have came with them, Hamlet's demeanor changed from snarky to completely overjoyed and he kissed him on the mouth for a full minute

When the actors for the play in the play were supposed to arrive, 20th century fox music started playing

Hamlet forces Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to pinky swear

When Ophelia was returning Hamlet's letters, she also returned a vinyl that he gave her, that he later breaks into pieces in front of her

When Polonius talks about how he used to act, he demonstrates his 'acting skills' by re-playing his death as Caesar, immensely overplaying it. Contrastingly, his own death an act later is quick and lacking fanfare. He simply utters "He killed me" and falls to the ground dead, making it his probably shortest set of lines he had in the play.

During the meta-play, a wedding cake is brought onto the stage, that the actors in the meta play use as a prop. Once the cake was discarded aside, Claudius sneakily stole a bite from it.

Claudius spat on old king's grave after his attempt at prayer

In the scene in Gertrude's chambers, Hamlet arrived shirtless and he had letters written across his torso that spelled S Y N (meaning "son" in my language, but the middle y had a dot over it, allowing it to be read as "sin" in a sort of double-language wordplay)

Also, Ophelia switched languages when she was singing her last song

The stage got progressively messier and messier with each act (mostly by the dirt from the grave)

The first gravedigger put on one hell of a singing performance

Hamlet took Yorick's skull and put it on a chair at the from on the stage, watching the audience until the very end

And the choice that rendered me speechless, that is, turning the lights completely off after "There's only silence" and have that be the last words of the play.

keeping sirius alive in my fic just to make him a fucking wreck in the bg core✨

person: there’s something i have to tell you  my anxiety: *the pink panther theme* 

lmaoo mood 🥲

PLS I HAD THE BIGGEST PANIC OF MY LIFE EARLIER BC I REALISED IT WAS FUCKING 11TH NOVEMBER

LIKE IM PRETTY SURE THAT TWO DAYS AGO OCTOBER HAD JUST STARTED WTF

ANOTHER THING THAT THREW ME FOR A LOOP WAS THAT???????? THIS YEAR??????????? WILL BE OVER?????????????? IN A MONTH AND A HALF??????????????????????? LIKE IT WILL BE 2022 NEXT YEAR????????????????????????? WHAT????????????????????????