that theory that the Arkenstone is a Silmaril…it’s doubly implausible, but imagine if nobody knew. If the dwarves were guarded enough of their greatest treasure that…you wouldn’t even need to hide it from that many people, honestly. Mostly a few elves, and all wizards.
and then Bilbo sidles up to Gandalf like, “Thorin and all are holed up in the Mountain, but I think they’re being nuts, so I…kind of stole the Arkenstone, I think.” And (it’s been thousands of years since the light of the trees was doused save for the precious brilliance locked away in Feanor’s gems, since oaths and blood and war that raged until the skies cracked and the earth shattered, and the little people of the Shire have no memory of it at all) he pulls out a fucking Silmaril.
Gandalf: *hurriedly glances at Thranduil. the king of Mirkwood’s eyes shine with curiosity and greed, but not recognition, nor the terrible lust that overtook Feanor and his sons. right, right, he was never in Thingol’s court while the jewel that Luthien and Beren took was there. we’re good. we’re good for now*
Gandalf: That’s, uh, nice, Bilbo. Put it away, would you?
Gandalf, telepathically(?): EMERGENCY RINGBEARERS ONLY CONFAB NOW
Gandalf: [mental image of a goddam Silmaril in hobbit hands, labelled “thisfuckingrockagain.jpg”]
Galadriel, who watched 95% of her family slaughter everyone within 100 miles for several thousand years over these things, including each other and themselves: no.
Elrond, who was very nearly one of those people slaughtered, and did watch most of his town be killed before he and his twin were kidnapped for a while: Absolutely Fucking Not.
Gandalf: Apparently fucking yes. The legendary Arkenstone-
Galadriel: You’ve got to be kidding me.
Elrond: Thorin Oakenshield has a Silmaril right now?
I mean, given that Tolkien retconned “The Hobbit” so Bilbo’s little invisibility ring became an ancient piece of jewelry that controls minds and drives the mighty mad, one can at least understand why it seems plausible that the other shiny white gem that destroys empires and makes the mighty go mad with greed could be linked from his kid’s book to his gigantic early mythology in retrospect??
You know this actually explains a lot about why Gandalf didn’t immediately raise the alarm about Bilbo’s ring out of an abundance of caution.
I mean, what are the odds, what are the fucking odds, that this one little hobbit stole both a Silmaril and the Ring of Power? Like, you are Gandalf the Grey and you have already dealt with the heart attack to end all heart attacks because this little innocent fool stole a world war inspiring artifact once. You still get flashbacks every time Bilbo offers to show you something and have to employ all of your angel’s serenity and thousands of years of learned composure not start giBbERinG “ pleaseletitnotbeanotherartifactpleaseletitnotbeanotherartifact”.
And then. AND THEN! One day he’s like, “hey Gandalf let me show you this neat ring I found back on our journey”. And on the inside a tiny part of you is screaming “nottheoneringnottheoneringnottheonering” while a more rational part of your brain assures you it could not possibly be the one-
“It’s this plain gold ring that’s very precious to me and turns me invisible!”
AND THEN YOU FUCK OFF AND SEARCH THROUGH EVERY POSSIBLE TOME YOU CAN TO PROVE IT CAN’T REALLY BE THE RING OF POWER, SAURON’S RING OF POWER, THAT RING, THE ONE RING, LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE TOME, BEFORE FINALLY FUCKING ACKNOWLEDGING THAT THIS SHIT IS REALLY HAPPENING AGAIN
Tags:
#it got better #fanfic #Middle Earth #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog
Not nearly enough “Sirius Black makes himself at home in Privet Drive because there’s nothing the Dursleys can do to get him to leave” fic out there, and it’s a crying shame.
Harry just rolling up like WHADDUP THIS IS MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT FAMILAR HE EMOTIONALLY SUPPORTS ME BY MAULING PEOPLE WHO THREATEN ME. And Sirus dog-charades AND THIS IS MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT COUCH YOU CAN SIT ON THE FLOOR FUCKERS.
You know what else is good “Dudley gets on top of how fucked up his parents are faster” fic, and i feel like “Sirius Lives at Privet Drive” dovetails nicely into this:
Dudley, age 14 and realizing his mother’s Loving-but-Ill-advised cooking is setting him up for some serious health problems, and that he’s tall enough to look his dad in the eye now, so his previous rationale of “If he’s hitting Harry he’s not Hitting Me” doesn’t hold up now, and goes full Eye of The Tiger to cope.
This means Sirus gets dragged along on a lot of Parent-avoiding “Walkies”
So many that one evening after a fight Dudley is trying to round up Harry and Sirius for a cooldown run and Sirius groans “Oh you’re big lads you can jog to the tesco on your own.” from the couch There’s a hot moment of silence.
“He’s a Magic Dog.” Says Harry.
“What do you mean your dog is a 40-year-old man?” “What do you mean your Dad’s BFF?” “What do you mean convicted criminal?” What do you mean WIZARD HITLER WANTS YOUR HIDE??” “..Shit I gotta up my workout routine.”
“You’re not gonna punch Voldermort out Dudley.”
“Not with these wimpy biceps I won’t.”
Shit’s getting increasingly tense in the house so when Ron announces they have tickets to the Quidditch World Cup Harry has to ask “Hey, can Dudley come too?”
Dudley might be short on wizarding skills but one thing he’s learned at Fancy rich boy School is the art of Schmooze. They meet Corneilus Fudge and Dudley charms the hell out of him. Fudge doesn’t even realize he’s not a Wizard. Harry tries to impress upon him the ‘VOLDERMORT’S ALIVE WITH A CULT DIPSHIT” upon him and nearly ends up in tears before Dudley takes his arm and whispers “Let me Handle This.”
Thirty minutes later Corneilus is organizing a Task Force of Aurors.
“What the fuck do they teach you there?” asks Harry. “Oh, buttering egos, Trigonometry, grift, the usual.” “What’s Trigonometry?” Asks Ron, walking with them on a field trip through Muggle London for Nandos. Dudley’s Uncle “Gerald White” is supervising them it’s fine. Dudley stares for a moment. “You guys… are learning math, along with your Divination and Transmorfigication and whatsits, right?” There is an awkward silence. Even Sirius considers morphing back into a dog to avoid this conversation. “Oh for fucks sake.” Sighs Dudley, texting Hermionie to see if she brought her Muggle textbooks along.
(She Did)
IDK what happens when the school year starts but I love the idea of “Well some snitch (Snape) might notice if Sirus is hanging around, so instead he goes with Dudley to Fancy Rich Boy School. Maybe they’re short a teacher there and he can reccomend his friend Remus, currently out of work for reasons that aren’t his fault…
Yassss!
“What’s trigonometry?” some pureblood at the World Cup asks him. “It’s a variant of arithmancy,” says Harry, who’s become somewhat adept at bullshitting translations between magical and muggle things when the incentive was avoiding Aunt Marge’s wrath.
Nobody’s ever heard of trigonometry except for one elderly pureblood witch, who had heard it mentioned once back in school by a classmate who went on to become a famous name in advanced and extremely theoretical arithmancy.
Everybody loses no time in agreeing that trigonometry must be this tremendously advanced arithmancy specialization and Dudley Dursley must be an absolute arithmancy prodigy to the point where even the arithmancy buffs don’t want to risk making themselves look stupid by asking him about his research.
OBVIOUSLY Dudley goes to some extremely foreign wizarding school with an advanced research program available. There can’t be many of them with an advanced “trigonometry” program like that, so nobody asks which school it is because what if there’s only one of them and they look stupid for not knowing about it?
Besides, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, is giving him the time of day like he’s someone really important, so, yeah.
Oh, yeah, he’s definitely the type of absent-minded brilliance that forgets his wand regularly, head in the clouds with all those theorems.
Dudley actually takes up computer programming at Smeltings. He tried it out because he likes video games, and then sort of fell in love with the process, the building something up out of lines of code, the thrill of success when it works. The awestruck reactions of wizards who see a couple of his notebooks when he sits there scribbling out code on a spiralbound notebook with a ballpoint pen is almost tangible.
The ballpoints and the notebooks take some suspicion for their muggleness until Harry points out that you don’t need to pay attention to how much ink is left and when you need to dip it, so it’s perfect for somebody who might want to scribble out whole pages of that stuff without noticing whether they’ve run out of ink, and the notebooks have pages so you could remember where something is. Pretty soon quill-tipped ballpoints are all the rage and spiralbound parchment stacks are being sold in all the stores.
Somebody asks Dudley about his family history. “Oh, they’ve all been like me,” he says, “as far back as anybody remembers” and he means not-a-wizard, but everybody thinks the opposite.
His father is blustery and yells and prone to explosive bursts of anger, he says, and his mother is obsessed with cleanliness and etiquette, and everyone is perfectly happy to never suggest they’d like to meet them.
Once Dudley figures out that everyone thinks he’s a wizard, he and Harry have a solid laugh over it and Harry teaches Dudley what he’d need to know to continue the deception. Fred and George are brought into the equation and provide him with lots of cool tricks and such so that he can appear to do some small bits of magic now and again.
He eventually marries Daphne Greengrass, who knows about his muggleness at that point and loves the idea of getting one over on her overly bloodpurist parents without them ever knowing about it. Harry and Sirius quietly gift them Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, and the assumption that Dudley has the sort of money that buys a historic Pureblood property as a starter home goes round and round.
Dudley ends up on the Board of Governors, and later Minister for Magic, and in their old age Petunia and Vernon suffer the mingled pride and fury that their son is a Government Minister and they can’t brag about it.
Two other AUs this goes well with:
“all the pureblood dipshits tithed thier land and holdings to Voldemort so when Harry kills him, all the assets go to him and now he owns half of wizarding UK.”
“early on his career as a wizard, Dudley goes to Wales to meet another Famed Arithmancer and becomes close friends with fellow videogame and rugby enthusiast Howell Jenkins.”
Tags:
#Harry Potter #fanfic #story ideas I will never write #abuse cw? #embarrassment squick? #oh look an update
iroh: once, i told zuko that he needs to work on his inter turmoil. he screamed at me that he had no such inner turmoil, and then proceeded to go to a cliff during a thunderstorm to scream at God to strike him with lightning
alfred: master bruce and i have that interaction at least three times per week.
hey bruce spent a lot of his bat-study abroad in the far east and has kind of a weeb weapon collection so proposal, what if Bruce appreciates Iroh’s tea
while Zuko is enthusiastic about cream and sugar
further fueling their dad-figures’ passive-aggressive rivalry?
As someone who has spent time with professional ornithologists and has seen people make 500-mile trips to see a Single Species Of Hummingbird i can say without a single doubt that wizards being discovered cus they keep bringing their nonnative birds places is a completely realistic scenario
i’m imagining a bunch of very confused ornithologists trying to research the appearance of non-native owls in scotland, but they keep getting turned around by hogwarts’ anti-muggle defenses and it’s this endless cycle of
“well, we know that within this few mile radius of undisturbed highlands, there are massive concentrations of owls that Should Not Be Here. we know the owls are here, we know where they hunt and approximately where they return to roost but we just. we jsut. can’t find a SINGLE fucking nest??? anywhere?????? every owl we tag has their tracker malfunction RIGHT HERE but whenever i investigate i somehow end up back home in my slippers with a cup of tea.”
Bruce Wayne, mostly to annoy Alfred and partly because he genuinely doesn’t believe anyone will care about his antics, claims that his almost ten year disappearance from Gotham was because he was cryptid-hunting across Europe/Asia.
(He was learning to be Batman but whatever.)
“Yetis are real,” he tells Vicki Vale. “And one day, I will make contact.”
Bruce establishes himself as a cryptid enthusiast pretty quickly and blames most of his suspicious childhood injuries on dumb things he did trying to photograph Bigfoot behind Wayne Manor.
So anyways, Batman shows up and Bruce is a smart guy so he knows that Batman being partially myth and urban legend is going to help his crusade against darkness. But he’s also smart enough to know that people are going to start getting suspicious if Batman shows up at the same place Bruce Wayne is and Bruce Wayne constantly denies his existence.
He sets his plan into motion at a bank robbery he happens to be involved in. After sending Alfred off with his costume, he slips back into the bank in time to be there when the police arrive so that he can give his statement.
Bruce makes sure to play it up: his eyes dart around nervously, his voice pitched with excitement, and asserting at the end of his statement that, “I cannot be sure, but I am pretty positive that we were saved by a large, bat-like creature.”
The officers are like ‘yeah ok whatever man’ because Bruce Wayne once fell off of a water-tower because he thought he saw Mothman flying in the night sky, but some of the other witnesses describe seeing a weird bat-thing too so really who knows at this point.
Whenever Bruce Wayne appears publicly somewhere the Batman saves the day, he always makes sure to give a statement about Gotham’s new cryptid and how he intends to be the first on actually catching it in the wild.
“This… Bat-man creature seems to have a moral code,” he tells Vicki Vale. “If I could just,” he clenches his fist, gazing wistfully out onto the street. “Meet him…..”
This also allows for him to ply James Gordon for information without arousing suspicion. And because Gordon has a soft-spot for the little orphan he comforted during his worst night, he usually is willing to give Bruce a little bit of info on cases that the Batman has been working on.
Bruce: Batman is real, don’t lie to me.
Gordon: I can neither confirm nor deny those rumors. *gives Bruce a knowing smile*
Bruce: I heard that he tore through Falcone’s racketeering club the other night!
Gordon: Well…. *glances around* We did get a call from the docks the other night. SOMEONE tied up most of the gang and left them for us to find…
Bruce: Most of the gang?
Gordon: We think five of them are still on the run.
Bruce: Hmmm……
And of course, Batman does eventually become less of an urban legend and more of a known entity.
Bruce, busting down the doors of GCPD: BATMAN IS REAL!!!!!!!!!
Gordon: *puts head in hands, sighs*
And like maybe one time Oprah or someone confronts Bruce like “Hey people are saying that maybe YOU might be Batman” and Bruce just like… fucking loses it on live TV and is alternately crying and talking about how Batman is REAL and he pulled Bruce out of a VERY DIFFICULT TIME and how without Batman Bruce would be LOST and if people want to ruin the SANCTITY of that BOND well FINE.
And then like… Batman Incorporated becomes a thing and Bruce is all teary-eyed and smiley doing news conferences and showing off the blurry picture of him shaking (Dick)Bats’s hand and talking about how “I just always believed and I knew this story would have a happy ending and when I clutched his talon in my hand I knew that I was home.”
Bruce similarly becomes famous for insisting the Superman is a fraud put on by the government.
Tags:
#Batman #cryptids #fanfic #story ideas I will never write #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #embarrassment squick?
1. “Raven” was an occasionally-encountered name for a girl in the contemporary period, and “Ebony” would be at least recognizable as a name. The other elements of this name are flatly atypical.
2. During this part of the War Period, this character’s hairstyle would not be considered shocking, but it would be viewed as garish and nonconformist.
3. A contemporary music performer known for a melancholy style of music and a gothic and dramatic aesthetic. The title of the work probably comes from one of her songs. However, her aesthetic and attitude has little in common with that in this work, being much more conventional and less garish.
4. A member of the contemporary band “My Chemical Romance”, also notable for a “gothic”, melancholy, and macabre aesthetic
5. i.e. the speaker considers him to be handsome and attractive; despite the pornographic material later in this work, the word “f_______” is here used only as an expletive.
6. Vampires as romantic figures had been increasing in popularity over this period, with a trend away from malicious monsters towards seductive but more benevolent figures, romanticized by their capability of being terrible.
7. Strangely, despite the characterization of this character as a Satanist, “witch” should here be characterized as having meaning similar to “wizard” and not “idolater”, “sorceress”, “maleficar”, or other practitioner of what we today recognize as “witchcraft”. The background material to this work constantly faced accusations of being satanic by an uneducated reactionary public to whom the difference between technology, wizardry and witchcraft was not meaningful (”witch” was sometimes even considered a female equivalent to “wizard”!), which completely failed to diminish its popularity.
8. It is important to understand that “goth” as an aesthetic, counterculture or subculture had a completely different meaning in the contemporary period than it does today – what remains similar is the love of the melancholy, the macabre, the dramatic, the romantic, and contempt for conventionalism. In the mid-to-early-late War Period, “Gothic” people were associated with contempt for morality, certain types of sexual display (usually of a shocking and sometimes fetishistic type), various forms of concupiscence, and a fairly significant connection to the occult and even to outright Satanism, though the latter was all but universally an affectation (this is true of most Mid War Period satanism). See contrast on p 321, The Gothic Movement In the Catholic Church. Moreover, the “gothic” aesthetic as described by this character is a stunted and over-the-top form that has also been corrupted by the counterculture-commericalism that was universal in the Late War Period.
9. A clothing store mostly specializing in counterculture-commercialized and faddist apparel. Critics accused it of being a mercantile vulture that fed by turning more honest and vivacious countercultures into fads.
10. It was almost unheard-of for women in the Mid or Late War Period to wear corsets, but they appeared in the Gothic subculture (which itself heavily borrowed from sources such as Victorian-era clothing, including mourning dress). However, what Enoby is describing is probably not actually a true corset, but a “corset top”, which is essentially a laced bodice. Either would be worn with neither chemise nor overblouse.
11. Probably a nondraped skirt that barely passes her wrist.
12. Hose, stockings, or tights in the form of a wide-open mesh
13. Probably not actually military issue boots; these were tall, heavy black leather boots with lacing all the way up.
14. This character’s outfit would be considered inappropriate for school in the Late War Period, but not shocking to Late War Period mores except by its garishness.
15. Originally meant students at a university-preparatory school; with the extremely high percentage of students seeking to attend university in the Late War Period, this came to mean a subculture of young people who adopted a highly conventionalistic and professionalistic attitude and sought admission to the prestigious and traditionalistic universities in the Eastern United States, often without academics being their true passion. Such people were often viewed as social climbers and sometimes attracted contempt from both their less-professionally-oriented peers and from those who were true intellectuals.
16. Also known as “giving the finger”; a very rude gesture in the War Period as it is in ours.
18. This phrase went through considerable popular memetic mutation (as did the entire tract): “It was _______ <weather> so I felt ________. A lot of _______ stared at me. I ________ them.” See extra material 34c.
17. I.E. “How are you today?”, “how are you feeling?” as a greeting.
I know it’s 2020 but Merlin AU where Uther notices a bunch of problems that could only be solved by magic ~spontaneously~ getting solved around Arthur, and concludes that this must be a side effect of Arthur only existing due to magical intervention. An intense bigotry-versus-parental-love internal conflict commences, followed by some that’s-pretty-hypocritcal-of-you-isn’t-it-dad screaming external conflict, generally upending everything. Merlin is standing in the corner the entire time holding a serving jug of mead and sweating.
Morgana, dramatically slamming open the throne room doors with both arms: I’M ALSO UNWILLINGLY MAGIC. Arthur: What???? Morgana, raising one fist at him: Solidarity, motherFUCKER! Arthur:What????????
What’s Uther gonna do? What’s he gonna fucking do???? Execute his secret Scottish child, but not his nonsecret blond heir child??? They’re ganging up on him now. He’s fucking cornered.
At some point someone mentions that an eyewitness would be great. And they all realize that Merlin is persent for all these things and start asking Merlin what it looks like when Arthur performs these magical feats. And he’s half way through the royal mead so fuck it. And he starts talking about how Arthur glows and shit. And usually Merlin has to knock him on the head to get him to stop glowing and whooshing and what not and the idea that Merlin could be saving the prince from his own magical distraction is so absurd they decide it’s just a drunk idiot telling tales.
Merlin, really getting into this: It was to save you from your own magic, sire. I had no other choice. That’s… That’s what you do, you see a born sorcerer and you just wham, knock them out for their own good.
Morgana, thinking about her sleeping draughts: It’s true Arthur that’s what they do.
Arthur: I’m.
Morgana: But it’s fine look we just have to win Merlin over to the side of magic.
Merlin: …
Merlin: I don’t know guys, that’s going to be a tough sell.
Merlin: I just. I just don’t know if I could be persuaded.
Arthur: Merlin, you aren’t even from Camelot. Why would you have anti-magic biases.
Merlin: But you’re always so insistent magic is eeeevil.
Merlin: Maybe you should persuade me. Tell me what’s so great about sorcerers.
Merlin blatantly and magically refills the jug with more mead: What? Why’d you stop? Keep talking about how great sorcerers are Arthur. Come on now, you were just getting to the good parts.
Merlin, getting irritated after Arthur splutters for several minutes, gesturing with the jug: Look, there’s no need to be modest! Say that sorcerers are brilliant and amazing and have myriad skills and cheekbones you can etch glass with.
Arthur turning red because he still thinks they’re talking about him:
Morgana, tossing her hair: Thank you, Merlin. Your non-magical cheekbones are very nice too.
#it got better #BBC Merlin #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #story ideas I will never write #fanfic #embarrassment squick #god this is so in-character though #100% the sort of thing this show would do
Not nearly enough “Sirius Black makes himself at home in Privet Drive because there’s nothing the Dursleys can do to get him to leave” fic out there, and it’s a crying shame.
Harry just rolling up like WHADDUP THIS IS MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT FAMILAR HE EMOTIONALLY SUPPORTS ME BY MAULING PEOPLE WHO THREATEN ME. And Sirus dog-charades AND THIS IS MY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT COUCH YOU CAN SIT ON THE FLOOR FUCKERS.
You know what else is good “Dudley gets on top of how fucked up his parents are faster” fic, and i feel like “Sirius Lives at Privet Drive” dovetails nicely into this:
Dudley, age 14 and realizing his mother’s Loving-but-Ill-advised cooking is setting him up for some serious health problems, and that he’s tall enough to look his dad in the eye now, so his previous rationale of “If he’s hitting Harry he’s not Hitting Me” doesn’t hold up now, and goes full Eye of The Tiger to cope.
This means Sirus gets dragged along on a lot of Parent-avoiding “Walkies”
So many that one evening after a fight Dudley is trying to round up Harry and Sirius for a cooldown run and Sirius groans “Oh you’re big lads you can jog to the tesco on your own.” from the couch There’s a hot moment of silence.
“He’s a Magic Dog.” Says Harry.
“What do you mean your dog is a 40-year-old man?” “What do you mean your Dad’s BFF?” “What do you mean convicted criminal?” What do you mean WIZARD HITLER WANTS YOUR HIDE??” “..Shit I gotta up my workout routine.”
“You’re not gonna punch Voldermort out Dudley.”
“Not with these wimpy biceps I won’t.”
Shit’s getting increasingly tense in the house so when Ron announces they have tickets to the Quidditch World Cup Harry has to ask “Hey, can Dudley come too?”
Dudley might be short on wizarding skills but one thing he’s learned at Fancy rich boy School is the art of Schmooze. They meet Corneilus Fudge and Dudley charms the hell out of him. Fudge doesn’t even realize he’s not a Wizard. Harry tries to impress upon him the ‘VOLDERMORT’S ALIVE WITH A CULT DIPSHIT” upon him and nearly ends up in tears before Dudley takes his arm and whispers “Let me Handle This.”
Thirty minutes later Corneilus is organizing a Task Force of Aurors.
“What the fuck do they teach you there?” asks Harry. “Oh, buttering egos, Trigonometry, grift, the usual.” “What’s Trigonometry?” Asks Ron, walking with them on a field trip through Muggle London for Nandos. Dudley’s Uncle “Gerald White” is supervising them it’s fine. Dudley stares for a moment. “You guys… are learning math, along with your Divination and Transmorfigication and whatsits, right?” There is an awkward silence. Even Sirius considers morphing back into a dog to avoid this conversation. “Oh for fucks sake.” Sighs Dudley, texting Hermionie to see if she brought her Muggle textbooks along.
(She Did)
IDK what happens when the school year starts but I love the idea of “Well some snitch (Snape) might notice if Sirus is hanging around, so instead he goes with Dudley to Fancy Rich Boy School. Maybe they’re short a teacher there and he can reccomend his friend Remus, currently out of work for reasons that aren’t his fault…
Hello, yes, I love this. I love the idea of Dudley and Hermione tutoring Harry on Muggle science and whatnot, and Ron is sitting there confused and just going ???? Also, you just know that Hermione is going to read ahead extremely quickly and she’ll be Dudley’s best study partner.
Omg, Dudley and Hermione joining forces to bring the wizarding world into the modern age
Adding: Dudley stays relatively fat, but now he can bench-press Buckbeak.
Tags:
#Harry Potter #fanfic #story ideas I will never write #abuse cw? #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(the Gerald White reference)
Brinens and Things 