I'm Unwell - Blog Posts
You’re my best friend
Now I’ve no one to tell how I lost my best friend
Everyday I think about how Chris Storer wrote Sydcarmy; One of the most achingly beautiful love stories I’ve seen in media in a long time. About two people who were connected long before they met and how they eventually found each other when they needed it the most. Who have continued to build upon their love together and created something beautiful born out of devotion. Who understand each other on a cosmic level, who have made each other better in every way possible. Who were indubitably meant to be partners in every sense of the word. And how Storer very well might throw it all away for one of the most boring, unhealthy, underdeveloped, wonderbread couples who look they could be distant cousins.
i need help...
I have no idea who I kin in the marauders era.
Like I have bits of EVERYONE so sometimes I'm like "omg, everything I do is so regulus core, and I'm even a younger sibling! He MUST be who I kin"
But then the next hour I'm like "oh dear I relate to James SO hard. Like he IS me."
Then the next hour I'm thinking about how I am very similar to Remus and Sirius.
Then I'm thinking about all the other people I relate to a LITTLE to closely. I am unwell
And I have done a marauders test. I took it three times and I got Remus twice and Sirius once. I'm so confused.
sooo my friends have been making plans right in front of me and not including me for a while and they keep talking about it all the time when i’m around and the whole crew is invited except me
so far they planned holidays and movie nights, some in a few days, some in a few weeks
and i know i sound kinda angry or jealous or anything but honestly i just feel worthless and it hurts to see i’m not wanted and it’s just proving me right, i’m not important and they’re better without me
Ooh more about the subtext around James/Sirius? I’ve always read the text this way too!
thank you for the ask anon!
this question could have been prompted by any number of posts i’ve made, because i am a great proponent of the idea that unrequited prongsfoot is canon.
why?
i’m so glad you asked…
let’s begin with a small caveat which - regrettably - involves some engagement with discourse.
the things created within fan-fiction aren’t real - an individual fic can’t cause actual, material harm to a reader, even if it contains tropes that would be harmful or distressing if they happened in that reader’s real life; an author’s use of certain tropes or interest in certain characters is not indicative of their actual morals and values in real life; thought crimes are not real crimes - but fan-fiction is produced by human beings who are themselves products of the societies and communities in which we all live, and these societies and communities all have flaws and failings.
which is to say, those of us who prefer to read male friendships like james and sirius’ as romantic do need to be aware that, no matter how enlightened on gender and its foibles we think ourselves to be, we are nonetheless influenced as modern humans by a modern tendency to discourage platonic physical and emotional closeness between men, especially straight men, on the grounds that two men having this sort of relationship is inherently queer and, in being queer, implicitly sexual - another powerful societal influence on our thought, even if we know we don’t agree with it. we should also be aware that reading a friendship as defining and life-altering as james and sirius’ as romantic gives weight to a modern tendency to prioritise romantic love - and one of its expected outcomes, the love of parents for their biological children - over platonic love, and to regard people for whom romantic love is not a priority as not properly having achieved the milestones of adulthood, nor as properly fulfilled, adored, or satisfied.
everything which follows here, then, can be taken to refer just as validly to a purely platonic relationship between james and sirius if the reader prefers. and, indeed, my view is that this is how the canon narrative wants the reader to understand james saw the relationship.
but i also think that the canonical text wants us to infer that, for sirius, his relationship with james was one of unrequited romantic love.
it must be said, however, that the narrative doesn’t show this explicitly. of course, it emphasises sirius and james’ compatibility, their similar personalities, their shared affection for each other, and a certain element of codependency (the thought of these two boys unable to be apart even for a detention without talking through their mirrors! my heart breaks!), but it also sets up these shared elements as - in some senses - fraternal: sirius is quasi-adopted by the potters; harry thinks of him and james as like fred and george, at least until he sees snape’s memories in order of the phoenix. when sirius speaks to harry about james, the profundity of his love for him is obvious, and on the two occasions when we see them physically together (snape’s worst memory and the prince’s tale) it’s clear that each is the primary driving force behind the other’s decisions. but we have nothing which indicates unambiguously that sirius’ feelings for james were romantic.
until we dive into a bit of narratology. because the text does do something to suggest that its intention is for sirius’ relationship with james to be read as non-platonic, and that something is its use of narrative mirrors. the harry potter series loves assigning its characters to narrative pairs - harry and voldemort are the obvious one; ron and draco malfoy are the one which deserves more attention - and it assigns to sirius a narrative mirror whose own story is one of unrequited romantic love.
severus snape.
sirius and snape are incredibly similar, personality-wise. they also serve identical narrative roles, in that they function as the guides who lead harry through an emotional arc which begins in earnest in prisoner of azkaban and concludes in deathly hallows, in which he sheds his childish, black-and-white view of his parents and comes to regard them as real, flawed, and complex people. harry does this with james in order of the phoenix - after the realisation that he was a bully stops the hero-worshipping which has defined his earlier attitude towards his father - with sirius as his guide (sirius is then killed off the second this narrative sub-arc is complete). he then does it with lily - who spends the earlier books as secondary in importance to james in her son’s mind - in half-blood prince and deathly hallows, in which snape (via the proxies of slughorn, the discipline of potions, his textbook, his patronus, and his memories) serves as his guide, until the fact that lily is the key to the whole mystery is revealed just before harry sacrifices himself to save the world.
in the course of this, it comes to be revealed that each of them considers their life to be defined by their relationship with and love for one half of the pair of james and lily (although the series hides this in snape’s case - making it look as though he is also motivated purely by his antagonistic relationship with james - right up until the last moment). their mirrored relationships with harry - while the idea that sirius is incapable of distinguishing him from his father is an invention of the films - is also driven fundamentally by their relationship with one of the two halves of his parents.
sirius and snape’s mirrored motivation-by-love is shown most clearly in their identical approach to guilt and grief, the two things which overarchingly drive their individual character arcs across the seven-book canon (or three, if you’re sirius - rip king).
both sirius and snape indirectly trigger the death of the person they love - and, let’s be frank, if we’re going to excoriate snape for reporting the prophecy to voldemort, exactly the same level of ire needs to be reserved for sirius and his plan to switch secret keepers (what we could do instead, of course, is recognise the life-altering tragedy of making this kind of mistake, which we all have to hope we never experience ourselves, and treat the lads with compassion) - but it’s clear in canon that neither accepts the idea that their involvement was, in fact, indirect. sirius openly tells harry that he considers himself to have ‘as good as’ cast the killing curse on james and lily; snape rejects dumbledore’s (back-handed) comfort that james and lily’s deaths were caused by ‘putting their trust in the wrong person’ by wishing to die himself.
wracked by guilt and hollowed out by grief, both of them then decide to punish themselves in an effort - one which, i think, they both consider futile, since they clearly regard their sins as too great to be redeemed - to atone for causing james and lily’s deaths. both of them do this by subjecting themselves to the pain and humiliation of imprisonment.
in sirius’ case, obviously, this is literal. we know from canon that he refuses to profess his innocence at any point during his show trial - and why would he, when he considers himself to be guilty? - and that he remains in azkaban for twelve years, despite possessing the means to escape before then. he leaves the prison only to attempt the one action which he thinks will redeem him in james’ eyes: murdering peter pettigrew.
in snape’s case, the prison is a metaphor (foucault just sat up). snape entombs himself both at hogwarts - not a place he seems to have been particularly happy - and in spinner’s end, allows dumbledore to repeatedly humiliate him, and risks his life as a spy as a means of self-flagellation. like sirius, he fails to profess his innocence - through ordering dumbledore to tell nobody of his true allegiance - because he considers himself to be guilty. he leaves the self-constructed cell in which he is skulking only when dead - when harry, who has taken on the burden of fulfilling snape’s atonement himself by preparing to kill voldemort, starts screaming his true motivations in the dark lord’s face - although there is some implication in canon that dumbledore’s intention was for snape to end the series by attempting himself the one action which he thinks will redeem him in lily’s eyes: murdering voldemort.
[after all, why does dumbledore say to harry at king’s cross that his intention was for snape to control the elder wand if he wasn’t hoping he’d use it to give the dark lord his death blow?]
snape and sirius mirror each other exactly in their response to the death of the person they love. we can justifiably assume, then, that we are intended by the text to read that love as identical in type.
jkr has been very clear that snape’s relationship with lily is one of unrequited romantic love. we obviously don’t have to accept this in our own readings or in the way we write the characters in our own work - i love a queer snape sacrificing everything for his platonic best friend as much as the next girl - but we do have to acknowledge it as the doylist text’s stated intention. it stands to reason, then, that the text’s intention is for us to regard the mirror-image of snape’s love for lily - sirius’ love for james - as romantic as well.
or, unrequited prongsfoot is canon.
GET YOUR I SURVIVED KINGER’S LORE DROP TICKETS HERE
Me, before watching the new episode: Aw, that was sweet, in a humorous way! The bucket is a nice touch!
Me, after watching the newest episode: Oh...
i just got stabbed and am throwing up all over the place rn btw!!
SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US S2 EP2 .ᐟ
okay i'm just gonna rant for a little bit so stick with me.
one. that death scene man. god. and i will say ellie crawling to joel is HEARTBREAKING. and also... abby breaking the fucking golf club. and that shot zooming out of ellie laying next to joel. along with ashley johnson's singing into the valley. i'm ILL.
now for some criticism...
i know alot of people are saying this but the pacing felt abrupt and there wasn't enough buildup!!! i've been talking to my friends about how i thought they would do it in ep3 or 4 this is NOT what i expected. and i feel like his death was just more cold and oddly sterile. the game made you live with that death and i feel like the show just uses it. and i don't know why they switched from the basement to the like living room area???? it felt much more sickening in the basement when it was dark. i don't know why it felt so much more disturbing so hopefully somebody explains why it feels like this lmao.
and i think what they could've done for ep2 instead was some scenes of joel and ellie’s strained reconnection. flashbacks to fill in time between seasons (their time in jackson, their awkward silence blah blah). joel teaching ellie guitar!! wish they had that guitar scene early on i genuinely love that scene so much! and to me it reinforces not just that he’s her father figure, but that he’s still shaping who she becomes. and maybe a tense moment where joel almost confesses what he did at the firefly hospital, adding to future conflict idk. and obviously abby's pov without the reveal. hate that they literally just tell you she's jerry's daughter this early. introduce abby and her crew, but withhold TELLING US EVERYTHING!! make us intrigued by her — not force us to empathize with her. let her and her group be a mystery. build suspense like the game! who are these people? why are they tracking someone? it’s better to be curious about abby than to be told we should understand her pain immediately.
also some scenes focused on the jackson life. give us scenes of joel, tommy, ellie, and dina in this insulated world. show their interactions, their daily routines, the illusion of safety. let joel have a moment of quiet and happiness! not to fake us out but to remind us what is being taken from ellie and us as the audience! oh yeah also i hate what they did with abby i'm sorry. it's been talked about alot before but abby's build IS important to her character!!! making her this short skinny girl is kinda crazy just saying!
yeah that's kinda it i literally just don't know what to do with myself and this is really poorly worded but rip joel. again. my goat ❤️
just started ep2...... eek
On that cowboy shit again (pls click for better resolution probably ♡)
Why watching my friend's telegram channel where she's laughing and hanging up with her friends feels like being stabbed in the heart?
"Dad issues"
"Mommy issues"
Nah-uh, I'm the issue
Guys, I couldn't kill myself, please forgive me for causing distress and worrying y'all:(
Also sorry for people who expected/wanted me to kms, I just couldn't... I'm really sorry, hope I could do it soon
TW: CW: SU!C!DE PLAN.
Okay, okay... I think I've suffered enough, so... This is how I wanna end my life.
Firstly, I've decided that I wanna jump off the roof, because this seems the best way to do it. I already found a high-rise building, so I just need to come in, and when I wait for people to open the door for me, I'll start a livestream. Before I jump, I'll cvt myself, and I'll cvt so much that I'll be a piece of meat. After that I'll jump off the roof, hoping that someone will remember me. I'll also wear my favorite clothes, because if die I'd prefer to die only in it.
It's funny to hear these "you matter" and other shit of this type from people, when you're literally a useless piece of muscles and organs, and can't go and commit su!c!de because it's too painful.
High blood pressure sucks, especially when you're 13 years old ☠️☠️☠️
This One's for all my Pacific Northwest Homies
Friends in Spokane! Whither and how have you drifted so far from me? We've been together almost two years, and for those two years, I've been tracking your movements on Google Analytics. Spokane friends, you have gone from number one in site visits to number NINE. Come back to me. Don't leave me now.
I don't know who you are or why, at one time, you exceeded site visits from even my home city of Chicago. I don't know if you all know each other and discuss these posts. I don't know why I've carved out a special spot in my heart for my small, yet rabid and anonymous Spokane Fan Clan.
I know that your city rhymes with "raisin bran" and actively correct people who pronounce it as if it rhymes with "cocaine". It does not! I know that without people, strangers especially, reading my blog i would wither into dust! I would DIE! I know that somehow...somewhere...I've lost you Spokane, and I would do almost anything to get you back.
Don't go breakin' my heart, Spokane. Don't go breakin' my, don't go breakin' my, don't go breakin' my heart.
If I don't post anything tomorrow I have died
That's how committed I am to keeping the monstrosity tag active until the series drops
Trust