Dr. Alistair McAlpine shared a
series of tweets from his terminally ill child patients, after asking
what they enjoyed in life, and what gave it meaning
I took my meds too close to bedtime again and I need you all to know the dream I had last night involved Robin Williams becoming the new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. Not, a character portrayed by Robin Williams, just Robin Williams as himself running around Hogwarts doing wandless magic and being as loud and big as possible because and I quote before I forget:
“Listen, children, I’m not saying all this bad shit that is happening isn’t scary and you shouldn’t be concerned–because you should!–but I’m telling you this now for free. Life is a boggart, it’s the biggest boggart of them all. You never know what it’s going to look like one moment to the next. And sometimes you just gotta laugh. It’s okay to laugh. It’s part of the grieving process. You need to grieve before you can heal. But it’s okay to laugh while you’re doing it.”
I didn’t wake up right after that, some more stuff happened in a hazy sort of way as the dream began to dissolve into conciousness, but I remember him yelling Expecto Patronum as he punched a Death Eater in the face. Because sometimes, evidently, you have to make your own happy memories.
So, erm, I didn’t read the HP books, only saw some (maybe all, by now) of the movies ;A; So I’m not qualified to have an opinion or even qualified to properly summarize/sort other ppl’s opinions on this.
However! I’ve been asked about this before tho so check these answers out:
^I STILL think Claudia would end up in the same house as Lestat, continuing the tradition like the Malfoy line does, but I could be wrong on that. The sorting hat would be taking a LONG time w/ Claudia, tho.
Anyone is invited to sort our beloved characters! Do the thing (ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
like i have my problems with harry potter and jk rowling but it will never stop meaning something to me that rowling was a depressed 30-year single mother living on welfare when she thought of this story, that she was – in her own words– at rock bottom and she managed to put herself out there, to create this brilliant amazing series that has impacted so many people’s lives. there’s something to be said for hope.
I remember my very first day, I improvised a line. My first day, probably my first shot, I had to kind of flounce out of a room when Dumbledore, played by the late, great Richard Harris, put me in my place, and there was no line written, no exit line. And I’d been humiliated, and my plan had come to nothing. And I said to Chris Columbus, “Don’t you think there should be a line?” And he said, “Well, say something. Say whatever you like.” So we did another take, and I hadn’t told anyone what I was going to do. And as I turned to leave, I looked at Daniel, and I said, “Let us hope Mr. Potter will always be around to save the day.” And then Daniel, who was all of 12, stepped right up to me, looked me right in the eye, and said “Don’t worry. I will be.” A chill went down my spine. And as he did it, I thought, “Christ, this kid is good.” — Jason Isaacs
I… ;A; I didn’t read the HP books, only saw some of the movies, I had turned this over to more qualified ppl before, check out this post, (it looks like your choices almost all align with @annabellioncourt‘s!) and anyone can respond to this one, too!
But what about the VC characters as STAFF?
Subjects:
History of Magic
Muggle Studies
Dark Arts and/or Defence Against the Dark Arts
Headmaster/Headmistress
Transfiguration
Caretaker
Divination
Charms
Care of Magical Creatures/Groundskeeper
Flying
Librarian
Astronomy
Potions
Herbology
Arithmancy
But also: could/would a vampire even be accepted as a student or staff member at Hogwarts? What about the fact that they’d have to take/teach all their classes at night (if they were the kind of vampire that has to sleep during the day)?
I think what probably gets me deeply into my feelings about this “JKR should have just made her students Of Color to start with, she can’t ret-con and pretend she did it right the first time” is that I grew up with Anne Rice and Anne McCaffery, two female fantasy writers who hated headcanons and fandom and sued people for deviating from their original vision or doing any kinds of derivative works without their express contractual permission.
I feel like people who get irritated with her about defending black!Hermione don’t appreciate how much healthier JKR’s attitude toward the inclusivity movement in her fandom is than theirs was. Or Moffat’s is. Or Gatiss’s. Or Whedon’s. Or Green’s. Or even, until very recently, Lucas’s.
She’s not a PCR, but goddamn, at least she’s passing us the milk rather than pissing in our cornflakes.
Jo is actually almost entirely responsible for fanfiction being what it is today.
BUT WAIT, I hear older fandomers cry. X-Files, Star Trek, Xena, how dare you. And yes, I say to those fandomers, you held those banners first! Be proud of the paths you forged. But Jo–
Jo did something no author or creator had ever done before.
She was a household name who encouraged fanfiction.
When I first began writing fanfiction in 1998, it was common practice to preface your fic with this massive disclaimer about how you weren’t selling it, and it was for fun, sometimes quoting the Fair Use part of the Creative Commons act, and even begging authors not to sue. Because in those days, that was a very real danger. Eleven-year-old me had reams of fanfiction on floppy disks I didn’t dare send to archives because I might get arrested and taken to Plagiarism Jail.
And then there was Jo. And no, Jo said, this is not a private amusement park at which you may stare longingly from the other side of wrought-iron gates. It is a giant sandbox. Here are my pails, here are my toys. Come sit and play with me. Eventually you may decide you like some other sandbox better, and all I ask is that you leave my toys here for others to play with, and not try to take them with you. But why should I lock you out of my sandbox? It is, after all, far more fun to play in a sandbox with many people than by yourself.
People were boggled. They didn’t get it. They thought she was crazy. And the fans? They kept loving, and writing, and drawing, and creating, and Jo kept loving them back. Potter Puppet Pals, A Very Potter Musical, Potter!, Remus and the Lupins, all stuff Jo just kind of went “whatever, they’re having fun.”
And attitudes began to change. And then someone else threw her lot in with Jo, someone who doesn’t get a lot of credit for contributing something massive to fandom culture and should:
Stephenie Meyer.
Yeah, you read that right. The goddamn author of Twilight, who refused to sue teenage girls who just wanted Bella to end up with Jacob. (And who is way more gracious than I would be about Fifty Shades.) She actually has a fanfiction archive right on her website! I’m serious: Smeyer has links to a personally-curated list of Twilight fanfiction she personally enjoyed or found interesting. Whatever you may think of her writing, that loving attitude of “we’re all here to have fun, I love that you love my world and my characters, please enjoy” was such a departure from the days of C&D letters and page-long disclaimers.
These two women changed the face of how fandom works forever. Yes, their work is flawed. They are products of their time and upbringing. But just the fact that they embrace the concepts of “my world as I see it and my world as you see it are not the same, and that’s not just okay, that’s good” is something to be celebrated.
I have a lot of issues with Meyer, but her treatment of fans is not one of them.
This is fascinating and all credit to Meyer and Rowling for being so instrumental in changing the culture. I do just want to add that the producers of Xena actually hired a fanfic writer to scriptwrite on their final season. As it often did (with a female TV action hero, with a musical episode), Xena helped to point the way.
I-want-my-IWTV 