Latest Posts by bleuetteecatholic - Page 13

there had been a horrible incident the day before, when hannah abbott had been taken out of herbology to be told her mother had been found dead. they had not seen hannah since.

hp + poetry ❧ lily evans (2¯50)

“Flowers cannot birth a human, but cannot a human be made of flowers?” If only you had met the girl who bled rose water and cried petals - she was a meadow of wildflowers that played at being human.

— ara kay ( @eunoiaschaos )

Harry Potter growing up and becoming more confident and sassing the fuck out of adults that have abused their authority over him in the past gives me strength like the entire conversation he has with Vernon Dursely at the beginning of DH is incredible I mean:

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “What a surprise,” said Harry.

“Are you out of your mind?” demanded Harry. “A plot to get this house? Are you actually as stupid as you look?”

“Just in case you’ve forgotten,” said Harry, “I’ve already got a house my godfather left me one. So why would I want this one? All the happy memories?”

Uncle Vernon got dragged

The only favor the Dursleys ever did for Harry...

Make no mistake, the Dursleys are terrible people and unquestionably abusers. 

But the one favor they did for Harry was never pretend as though they loved  him. Vernon and Petunia made it very clear: You are not a part of this family. We don’t like you and never will.

They didn’t try to frame their abuse as “for Harry’s own good.” They didn’t try to make Harry believe that he could earn their love through good behavior. They didn’t tell him they loved him just as much as they loved Dudley, then subtly treat him like shit. 

They were honest. And that honesty allowed Harry to put some emotional distance between himself and the Dursleys, even before Hogwarts. Because if the Dursleys don’t like him, then he didn’t have to like them.

Instead of vying for the Dursleys’ affection, Harry basically snarks his way through childhood, relishing in his status as an outsider. His early descriptions of the Dursleys are practically dripping with razor-sharp snark about their appearances and foibles. He finds comfort in the knowledge that a) he dislikes the Dursleys as much as they dislike him, and b) he alone sees these cartoonishly awful people for who they are.

since you mentioned him, why do you like mysterio so much?

Much like I mentioned in that other post, my appreciation for Mysterio is based on "pretty much everything the character's been in, comics in last place" first and foremost, mainly because comics Mysterio, while he's obviously the source and has really great, essential storylines for appreciating the character, also has a lot of moments that make him too much of a scumbag for me to enjoy the way I'd like to, particularly Guardian Devil, I really, really don't like that storyline. It's this problem everyone cursed with a love for comic book characters runs into, especially when they are villain fans who like their favorite villains a little or a lot less nasty / murdery / perverted / etc-y than how most writers prefer to use them, I think you all definitely know what I mean without me having to cite specific examples, so we can put this caveat aside.

So I can talk about how much I love Mysterio in general.

(Art by michalivan)

First off, Mysterio has what is EASILY one of the greatest supervillain designs period, not even just for comic book characters, and I'm that they never got rid of the fishbowl or tried to permanently redesign it into something "cooler", like the fishbowl isn't already unbelievably cool, and that, even with the lengths they took to modernize and blockbuster-fy Mysterio for FFH, they didn't touch the fishbowl and instead used it as a centerpiece for some of his illusions (by far the best part of that movie, really the only thing that made me watch it, was it's depiction of Mysterio and his traps). 

It’s a design that wouldn’t look remotely out of place in a Power Rangers or Kamen Rider show and I mean that as a compliment, tokusatsu supervillain designs are generally a cut or several above comic book supervillain designs, partially because, much like how fighting game characters need to be appealing at first sight in ways other videogame characters do not need, tokusatsu villains, especially in monster-of-the-week formats, need to strike up an impression and be distinguishable and show you what kind of threat they pose or character they are, often with nothing BUT their design. And so Mysterio stands out in any line-up, next to any candy-colored criminal mastermind or deformed gangster or animal-themed superthug.

Mysterio’s look, even at it’s most basic form, strikes a weird, confusing, mystical figure. What should be a fairly obvious albeit still cool supervillain look, with that green bodysuit and purple cape and wrist ornaments, turns almost into some kind of weird abstract art piece, with the net pattern over his body and those wretched eye ornaments attaching his cape and of course the fishbowl, obscuring and dehumanizing his features beyond even the usual  monstrous mask, evoking something far less bestial than the other Spider-rogues, instead pushing it to the truly alien and dreamlike, something you’d find minding it’s business in M.C Escher rooms squirreled away in unexplored depths of subconscious, something that only bothers to look human so it can better taunt you with just how stupid and ignorant you really are about the world around you. 

And of course, Mysterio is not some grandiose, godlike alien, he’s just a theatrical asshole with parlor tricks, and his design excellently communicates both of these aspects to him, especially when the fishbowl is inevitably destroyed and suddenly the entire illusion is gone. Or is it? He always finds a way to get you the hardest when you think you’ve got him down and he’s got no more illusions to pull, and then he turns out to have a whole ensemble of extra illusions, or just good old fashioned dirty tricks, because Mysterio is nothing if not a resourceful bastard.

I mentioned atop that I don’t like some moments where Mysterio is made too much of a bastard for me to enjoy the character as a fun supervillain, but that is in no way me saying that I don’t like Mysterio as a bastard, quite the opposite. I love that he in particular, out of most of the major Spider-Man villains, is the one with the least tragic reasons for becoming a villain. He wasn’t turned into a monster, he wasn’t screwed over unfairly out of his life’s work, he didn’t have any mental illnesses or conditions to push him to crime (which gives him less of an excuse than fucking Carnage, of all people), he didn’t even have a tragic life story prior to taking up the costume.

His backstory is that he was an accomplished VFX artist and stuntman, with steady employment, who became bored and, failing to transition into acting, decided to take up costumed supervillainy (a retcon later established that he was blacklisted after one of his special effects injured someone, but that doesn’t mitigate anything as he could have, and indeed has, found any number of workarounds for this). Even adaptations that try to give Mysterio more concrete or understandable (and sometimes less fun) reasons for becoming a supervillain don’t do anything to mitigate that this guy, while not nearly as cruel as the Goblin or the Symbiotes, or as dangerous as Doc Ock or destructive as someone like Electro or Scorpion, is a piece of shit who became a costumed terrorist purely to sate his ego, because he had the means and resources to become a supervillain and the idea appealed to him, so he did it.

You know how Breaking Bad appears at first to be the heartbreaking story of an average, well-meaning man driven to crime out of desperate financial woes, when it turns out to be mainly the story of a gargantuan, cartoonish asshole finally finding an excuse to cut loose and go on an ego trip at the expense of everyone around him? Or Death Note and that whole joke that goes around in this site, about how Light Yagami saw the slippery slope and decided to grab a sled? That’s Mysterio. He’s the greatest example of a genuine, bonafide Saturday morning cartoon villain in Spider-Man’s rogues gallery, and often times this doesn’t at all mitigate the threat he poses, even when Spider-Man is actively aware that he’s dealing with Mysterio’s Scooby-Doo bullshit again.

If there’s a single thing that asshole’s honest about, is the why he’s doing this, and frankly I tend to like that in a villain, especially because all the other Spider-Man villains tend to be largely tragic victims, fully monstrous and irredeemable murderers, or funny assholes who are meant to be slightly sympathetic and pathetic also. In a world where the biggest villains tend to be self-deluded monsters and scumbags doing wretched things under a pretense of nobility or excused (sometimes by the narrative even) by personal tragedy, like Magneto or Dr Doom or the X-Men in the Krakoa era or MCU Thanos, I find Mysterio refreshing. Nobody’s gonna ask me to debate the morality of the mass murders and war crimes committed by Mysterio (and it helps that he’s not interested in doing those, he really just gets his kicks out of putting on a show and fucking with Spider-Man) and we’re all generally on the same page that he’s a total dipshit and kind of a joke but he’s also very cool and genuinely scary at points, and he’s generally not bad enough to the point it ruins how fun he is to watch as a cartoon villain (again, minus stories like Guardian Devil, at least for me). Nobody’s gonna come up to me in real life and argue with me that “he’s got a point” that I should consider debating over. 

Mysterio is a creature of spectacle through and through. It’s the spectacle that makes superhero comics what they are, and the true power of Mysterio as a character comes not in the ways he poses a personal threat to Peter Parker (which he does, having gone through painstakingly cruel lengths to gaslight and torment Parker’s mind in ways that other villains with direct mind-control powers couldn’t conceive doing), or a major-scale menace to the city. It’s not in the ways he poses a dark mirror to Spider-Man or a symbolic attack on his persona, that’s what you go to characters like Venom or Doc Ock or Kraven for. What makes Mysterio interesting to me, on a deeper level, is that his power lies in the spectacle that we inherently sign up for when we go to superhero stories. He may not break or acknowledge the 4th wall directly, but on some level, Mysterio displays awareness that he lives in a world of story, that he is a player on a stage like all the others around him, and that he must entertain. His very gimmick as a villain is to tell stories within stories, to insidiously take control, even if only briefly and only in the little world he lives in, of people’s lives and puppeteer them along.

Speaking more personally, Mysterio’s always been a concept deeply appealing to me personally, a grandiose theatrical supervillain who specialized in using movie special effects and film concepts to pick fights with superheroes. I’ve wanted to become a filmmaker since I was 13 and it’s a dream I latched onto strongly my whole life no matter what, one I’ve only been able to begun achieving recently. I’ve always loved telling stories, learning about stories, taking facts and events and spinning stories out of them and getting people invested in them, I’ve been doing it even before I knew what it was, and one of the big reasons why I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker is because film affords you more tools to work with when creating a story, and I’ve always wanted to learn more about what those tools were and how to use them. Learn the “magic”, as it were. 

And sometimes it feels weird or wrong to call it “magic”, when it’s stuff that you know how to do so mechanically, when it’s stuff you have to do for a living, when you have to do it when you don’t want to, when you got bills to pay and so parts of the “magic” become a job like any other and suddenly you have to come to terms with the idea that maybe you ended up choking your childhood dream by chasing it and it’s hard to muster up the love and excitement you need to in order to go after those dreams you’ve been putting in the backburner forever now and-

..Allright, you know what, I take it back, maybe Mysterio did have a point. A worker in the film industry, ESPECIALLY in the special effects and stunts department, choosing to become a supervillain, feels like something that doesn’t need much justification. Mysterio’s real arch-enemy wouldn’t be Spider-Man, it’d be CGI. 

Or Sony.

(Fingers crossed that, with all the Raimi love in NWH, someday we’ll FINALLY get some justice in this world and get Bruce Campbell as Mysterio for real.)

Jokes aside though, part of the reason I always found Mysterio cool, even when I had read or watched very few stories with him in it, is the same reason so many people quote first and foremost when asked to describe why they like Batman: the ability to kick ass without superpowers. I’ve always liked to watch Mysterio fight Spider-Man for similar reasons people like to watch Batman fight Superman.

I’ve never, ever, liked the idea of Mysterio using actual magic, it runs very much contrary to his appeal as a tremendous illusionist without any magical abilities, using purely advanced technology and his own brilliant mind to run circles around superheroes (and sometimes even supervillains, even those who are actual magic users, who can’t figure out and counter what he’s doing). I didn’t want to get into film because of Mysterio, but the idea of Mysterio made filmmaking and special effects look cool to me the same way Popeye made spinach look cool or Batman makes being a detective look cool. Yeah, spinach doesn’t turn you into a fighting god (to my bitter dissappointment when I first tried it) and by all means Batman would be a pretty terrible detective, but that’s what fiction is for, and fiction is Mysterio’s power.

Fiction is what allows Mysterio, a no-name scumbag with no superpowers, to pose a regular challenge to a superhero who leaps through buildings and juggles cars. Fiction is what allows Batman to beat up Superman, and it’s specifically the fact that it’s Mysterio’s background in film, in special effects and stunt work and acting and etc, that allows him to do all of this, that always made it really, really cool for me. One of the great things about film for me is that learning how the magic is done doesn’t destroy it, quite the opposite. Is Jurassic Park spoiled for anyone when they find out that, no, they didn’t have an actual T-Rex on set, so they built TWO GIANT ROBOTS made to look impeccably like artistic renditions of Tyrannosaurus and whole teams had to operate those under extremely precise conditions just to get seconds of footage? Of course not, that only makes it better! We all know that the Muppets are not “real”, and that doesn’t stop anyone from treating Kermit like he’s a real dude, just a little smaller and a little more green than other dudes, to the point crew members regularly describe completely forgetting that the Muppets are not actually fellow actors. You know it’s fake, and you still think of it as real anyway. Spider-Man knows everything Mysterio does is an illusion, and he still has trouble fighting him. 

Mysterio is a creature of the story who weaponizes stories, weaponizes the art, the scenery, the actions, the reactions, the character arcs, the medium itself, against the protagonist, on paper for his own benefit, but really, for our own (because Mysterio is nothing if not a performer, and a performer is nothing without an audience). His power is his ability to give us a show. Not Spider-Man. Us. Who guarantees that, beneath that fish bowl of his that betrays no line of sight, he isn’t always looking at the reader to gauge your interest and is just good at pretending otherwise, like he does with everything else? 

Mysterio may be a gimmick villain, but it’s a gimmick that makes him an extremely versatile, interesting villain nonetheless because his gimmick is that he’s a storyteller. He weaves lies, frauds, deceptions, tricks, cons, all in spectacular packages and villainous plots, fueled and sustained by magic. Not the hokey bullshit used by that goober Dr Strange to save the world, the real stuff, that which has magically influenced you to spend time, if not money also, to read or watch a story with a guy who has a fish bowl for a head fighting a guy in spider pajamas. Used and designed by a criminal whose endgoals are often as basic and unremarkable as Quentin Beck himself is when you strip away his costume, when he’s nothing but a scumbag with dirty tricks, but Mysterio? Mysterio is magic, and he’s here for us. 

Or so he would claim. He is a professional liar above all else. But he prefers the more pompous name for that, it’s called “artist”.  

The marauders in Harry's mind are called James, Sirius, Lupin, and Wormtail

Lily and Remus is out... We need more of Lily and Sirius as best friends.

I'm thinking it started off tense. Sirius resented Lily for convincing James that he needed to change (his best friend was just fine as he was, thank you), but Lily's goodness was contagious and she eventually got through to him too.

Suddenly, gasp, Sirius was helping first years instead of tricking them and it was all Lily's fault. It also didn't help that James wore their good behavior like a badge of honor.

During holiday breaks, he made sure all of James' sappy letters to Lily included a mention of him saying hello. And when he started writing his own, he saved each of her responses in a locked box.

“Isn’t pink the most bewitching color in the world?”

— Anne of Green Gables

Tumblr isn’t social media, it’s a habit. Like smoking. We’re all gathering by the dumpster in the cold, reblogging posts.

It's so so important to show badass female characters being moms. It's important to write intelligent cool female characters with deep inner lives also being good parents to their kids. It's actually essential to the future of our society, I think.

Because when people either a.) write mothers as only there to play supporting character to the kid, or b.) write badass women only choosing to be childless, it sends the message that being a mom is for lame loser women who don't have or deserve personalities and lives. And who would want to be that?

And it's not impossible. We do it all the time for men, male characters frequently get to be awesome and also be dads. There's even a whole trope about Badass Dads raising Badass Kids while they trek across the post-apocalypse or whatever. Why can't we give women the same treatment?

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Ch. 2 by Vladislav Pantic

“You don’t need another human being to make your life complete, but let’s be honest. Having you wounds kissed by someone who doesn’t see them as disasters in your soul but cracks to put their love into is the most calming thing in this world.”

— Emery Allen

September 1st 🍂

"I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together."

-Lisa Kleypas

these kids though (or, lily and james potter still crop up in my sketches and probably will forever)

James & Lily. 

So I watched Anastasia (1997) again and I couldn’t help but think: Anya and Dimitri are so Jily together. I guess this is one of those times I love to make fanarts <3

I LOVE THEM

Sirius speaks German!

I’ve seen a lot of posts on Tumblr claiming that the Blacks spoke French at home. Now, I see where this headcanon comes from: French used to be the language of the upper-class and, frankly, it is pretty sexy too. 

But… German was the language of Gellert Grindelwald.

Okay, let me take you through my train of thought. I have that headcanon that most of the Sacred Twenty Eight would support Grindelwald and his cause because he wanted to overturn the Statute of Secrecy and create a new order in which wise and powerful wizards were the benevolent overlords of a new society. The purebloods would, of course, hope that, once more, they would be the ruling class under Grindelwald’s rule and learn the language of their master: German. 

So far so good. But why do I think that the Blacks spoke predominantly German? First of all, their family origin. Black is an Anglo-Saxon name and therefore closer related to the Germanic roots (they might have chosen to emphasize that). Secondly, given that Viktor Krumm was very upset at the sight of Grindelwald’s mark, his influence seems to linger and there must have been supporters out there to that day. Last but not least, there are many German names in the Black family tree (Sirius’ mum is called Walburga. That is like every German grandma’s name ever). 

And tbh Walburga yelling at Sirius in German is far more intimidating than French. I also feel like Regulus and Orion would have appreciated German because it’s very precise and has many words whereas Sirius would have disliked it; simply because it reminded him of his family, but he’d speak it fluently. 

Then why did other families drop the language? Some of the Sacred Twenty Eight might not have supported Grindelwald in the first place (maybe they preferred Voldemort’s solution?). Other families might be bilingual or not have a high command of the language and other families might still rely on French as the language of the aristocracy. 

Anyway… maybe next time I get to see a prompt/fic/drabble with any of the Black family using German. I think it’s at least a valid theory. 

She gave the unmistakable impression of girlish innocence unconscious of its own beauty. Her hair was tied with a white ribbon and she wore a pearl necklace, and her lips slightly parted like the petals of an exotic flower before the rains come.

Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow (1969)

keats + terms of endearment for fanny

Peter can’t remember the last time they walked home together from anything. He’s sure he was wearing light up sneakers, carrying a backpack full of addition and subtraction homework, and Mary Jane had multicolored bows in her hair, sporting kittens on her neon t-shirt. It’s kind of surreal, to walk with her now. A woman in a diner uniform, a hero with a mask in his backpack. They’re worlds away from where they used to be. (x)

Do you think Sirius had a favorite cousin in canon? If so, who?

We are told it's Andromeda, I'd have liked proof or more mention of it, of why. Was it just because she married a muggleborn? I mean that is an implication she was more open minded than her family. That being said... I go with Bellatrix. I can see them with being similar gravitate to each other. I love picturing her being a lil devious one teaching Sirius all sorts of spells, showing him pranks she did. But rarely ever getting caught. Despite her leaning into pureblood views, I also see her have her own sort of rebellion, esp as a woman who doesn't settle back, she gets in the middle of things. I can see Sirius admiring that about her even if won't admit it. (Of course Andy rebelled too but I think it wasn't the same, different type of rebellion.) This is all hc, no one come at me. Hahahah, have to add disclaimers to everything. XD I build my hcs around canon but I honestly love Bellatrix so I favour hcs that have her in it. Sorry, Andy.

“…  Wormy was here last weekend, I thought he seemed down, but that was probably the news about the McKinnons; I cried all evening when I heard.” Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Lily Evans & Marlene McKinnon

“I miss you, bitch!”

I have big feelings about them, coach, put me in!

JJ MAYBANK and SARAH CAMERON in OUTER BANKS, SEASON 2

That’s Sarah Cameron. Kook princess. I work on her dad’s boats, so, you know, I’ve seen her around.

You know what I was thinking? What’s that? Let’s get married. Don’t… Don’t we need, like, a preacher, or something? What about the rings? What about rings? I mean, for future reference, I like princess cut. I like emerald cut. Never pear shape. I got an idea. I give you this sweaty piece of my father’s bandana as a token of my love. It’s perfect.

what is the most insane line in stranger things and why is it "but i see you now. i see you."