Is This NOT WHAT HAP-

How do you live up to this, you ask yourselves. How do you live up to the legend? How do you follow in your own footsteps, now much too large to fill? How do you come home when your home has lived a hundred lifetimes without you?

They look at you and see not your bodies (school child-child-too small-too fragile), but a landscape full of life and long-gone peace. They see victory, glory, a battle easily won and a gracious rule. They see salvation, legend, a golden age. 

They don’t see the scars, the unyielding prison, the shake of your breaths and the purple-bruise map of all fights and failures you come with. They don’t see the steel, the gnarled roots, the ugly mess inside your chests.

They don’t see children, and did you not wish that? Did you not wish for them to see you as you are meant to be? Why then do their eyes that see royalty without hesitation feel like chains? Why do your shoulders droop under the weight of their eager gaze?

Perhaps it is because they don’t see you as you were then. They see legends, mythology, saviours upon a pedestal of shining light, a throne they paint golden when it should be red and blue for every wound it gave you. They see idols, statues, carvings on stone walls, paintings within historical tomes. And that is not what you are, standing among them in clothes that used to fit better in another life and with promises that slide across your tongue like tar. That is not what you are.

You are claws and teeth and unsung roars. You are tear-stained screams and bloodied hands and crowns too heavy for anyone but you to bear. You are cracked marble, crumbling stone, unworked metal, burning wood. You are beautiful, regal, a coming storm, but you are not what their eyes tell them they see.

And how does one even begin to tell these desperate souls that their salvation will not be golden? That glory is not so easily achieved? That you did not sit upon your throne with clean robes and regal smiles when you became rulers of a kingdom, but stood upon a cliff in bloodied armour and torn skin and swore oaths unknown to the creatures that now call you saviours? 

So how do you tell them that you are not what they make you out to be? You don’t. You swallow down the words like molten rock and choke on that truth. They cannot help seeing the fairytales you have become in a land that hasn’t known you for a millennium. You aid them as they ask you to, and pray their dreams won’t cut them when they shatter underneath your feet.

ok but the hunger games literally did mention it All like… the use of propaganda by the elite as an attempt to divide the minority groups they oppress by making them perceive each other as rivals and prevent them from recognizing and uniting against their real enemy? check. criticism of the way we consume media with no consideration for other people’s privacy like we’re entitled to every detail of their lives and a lack of empathy for their pain because it makes good entertainment? yeah. realistic depictions and explorations of the effects of trauma, particularly that caused by conflict? hunger games has you covered. acknowledgement of the existence of and links between racism and classism, and that conventional standards of beauty are influenced by the societal elite, which people are encouraged to harm themselves in order to conform to (the fact that the weathier people in district 12 are white, blonde and blue-eyed while the coal miner families are mostly people of color; that the two poorest districts, 11 and 12, have majority poc populations; that most people, katniss herself included, consider prim to be prettier than katniss partly because she looks like her white, blonde, blue-eyed mother, who was from the wealthier part of the district; that the first thing that happens to the tributes when they’re taken to the capitol is they they’re “prepped” to conform to capitol beauty standards before they even meet their stylists in ways that literally violate their bodies permanently, and that many of the capitol residents have extreme body modifying surgery that can take a severe toll on their health and wellbeing in the long term)? none of this is accidental, and is both brought up and criticised multiple times throughout the trilogy. the sexualization of minors for adult consumption, especially young celebrities? the fact that politicians in positions of power and authority gain those positions through corruption and by considering anyone harmed in their acension collateral damage? the significance of propaganda and social influence in modern warfare? the misery caused by poverty, which is caused and intentionally maintained by the wealthy elite? the brutal and violating experience of living in a surveillance police state, especially as a member of a minority group and/or poor person? the inherently immoral and corruptive nature of warfare and the military and the unimaginable atrocities and suffering it leads to for ordinary civilians? every YA dystopia novelist tried so hard to be mrs collins but most didn’t even understand half of what went into her books that made them so compelling.

Fleur Delacour had the most impressive performance in the First Task of the Triwizard Tournament, imo, and it is a Crime that she came in last place. Like, sure, maybe what she did took awhile and it wasn’t flashy, but imo she did by far the most impressive, difficult, and most humane piece of magic. 

Like, there’s this pissed off dragon mother, right? It’s been boxed up, taken to this strange place, then stuck in a noisy arena where its eggs are being threatened. This dragon is probably Unbelievably scared and angry. 

It can take 4-8 adult wizards working in tandem to Stun a dragon, especially a pissed off one, but Fleur “fairy princess” Delacour walks into that arena, stares down an angry apex predator, and somehow manages to single-handedly enchant it to sleep. This Common Welsh Green is surrounded by hundreds of people, needs to protect its eggs, but Fleur Delacour’s magic manages to override all of its fear and anger? That is an incredible feat of powerful and probably very complex magic. 

Like, no wonder Fleur Delacour can come off as condescending, that is mind-blowingly impressive. That is the work of 4-8 adult wizards. You cannot tell me that the watching dragon-handlers were not LOSING THEIR MINDS. 

Between sexism and Fleur being part-Veela, it is unfortunately very realistic that she faces a lot of prejudice, but come on, Professors Sprout and Hagrid and etc. must have been going wild. It’s only some very bad luck that her skirt was accidentally set on fire. She got the golden egg. There was zero damage to the dragon or to the real eggs. Even if Madame Maxime and Fleur worked together to prepare it, Fleur still had to do it, and Madame Maxime would have been so rightly furious that Fleur’s bravery and magical skill wasn’t recognized. 

Anyway, part of where I’m going with this, is that this injustice also creates some choice eldest Weasley brother reactions. Like Bill Weasley is writing his regular letters to Charlie, right? And he happens to mention, “Hey, I met this woman at work, on that guardian beast problem with that tomb I was telling you about. Do you remember the Beauxbatons Champion, Fleur Delacour?” 

And Charlie Weasley writes back like, “DO I REMEMBER FLEUR DELACOUR? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! WE HAVE A POSTER OF HER ON OUR WALL! I HAVE HER GRADUATING CHARMS THESIS ON CALMING MAGICAL CREATURES AND I WANT IT SIGNED. SHE REVOLUTIONIZED OUR DEALINGS WITH DRAGONS HERE. INJURIES ON THE RESERVE FOR DRAGONS AND HANDLERS ARE DOWN BY LIKE 75% SINCE WE BEGAN IMPLEMENTING HER REINVENTED SPELLWORK.” 

“Uh, alright then. Well, you can send that to me and I will ask her to sign it for you,” Bill Weasley, an extremely successful Curse-Breaker, writes back. (It isn’t that he doesn’t find Fleur Delacour’s accomplishments very impressive, it is just that the poster on the wall thing is a Bit Weird.) “That’s not going to be weird when I ask her out or anything. Wish me luck.” 

And Charlie writes back, “LUCK? LUCK?! WILLIAM WEASLEY, IF YOU DON’T MARRY THAT WOMAN, I’LL DISOWN YOU. TELL HER THAT IF GRINGOTTS DOESN’T APPRECIATE HER, SHE CAN COME TO ROMANIA. WE’RE BROKE, BUT I HAVE A DOZEN MUSCLED WIZARDS, WITCHES, AND OTHERS READY TO PROPOSE TO HER ON THE SPOT.” 

“I was thinking dinner first,” Bill writes back. “But I’ll let her know?” 

So, Fleur initially has to deal with a lot of crap from the Weasley Family, but at least she’s always got Charlie “Number One Fleur Delacour Fan” Weasley in her corner. You’ll catch Uncle Charlie excitedly telling the story of Fleur Delacour in the First Task to Bill’s children forever. 

(Charlie: “IF YOU DON’T MARRY HER THEN I WILL!” 

Bill: “Charlie, you’re not even into women.” 

Charlie: “WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE MOST IMPRESSIVE DRAGON-HANDLING I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE?!!”)

John Mulaney, a true ADHD icon

4-2-2011

There is literally nothing in nature that blooms all year long, so do not expect yourself to do so.

“Always the same words: ‘He’s at Hogwarts…he’s at Hogwarts.’”

Some experimental The Chronicles of Narnia illustrations I did in my uni. I wanted to draw the most memorable landscapes from each book as I imagined them in my childhood. Tried to do some experiments with style and practice more in drawing environments¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

prints: x

Page decorations for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1899 edition.