My favorite thing ever is how Ron just sent Charlie a random letter like “hey yo there’s an illegal dragon at hogwarts, could you come and smuggle it out of here, please?” and Charlie was just like “yeah sure, I’ll trespass into the castle and steal a dangerous magical creature, of course, lemme just hit up my friends”
It’s better if you imagine Charlie and co as a group of Grad Students trying to avoid their other responsibilities.
Charlie is drunkenly revising the third draft of his thesis on proper care and feeding of greenhorns when his family owl slams into the window.
Three of his friends jump and look around. Glinda doesn’t raise her head from her folded arms; only groans, “Is that Baines coming to do me in?”
Charlie totters to the window and fetches Errol from the window pane. “No such luck,” he says. “You’re still going to have to take the exam.” After some consideration, Charlie lays him on a clear patch of floor to recover. “Do owls take firewhiskey?” he asks the room at large.
“It’s not fair,” Glinda wails into the tabletop. “I swear he didn’t say anything about Bridgewort’s handling practices when we did the review in class.”
“Oh, Merlin,” says Ali, freezing over their notes like a Medusa wyvern had bitten them. “Oh, Merlin’s sweet saggy socks. Is he covering Bridgewort?”
“That’s what he said when I went to his office hours.” Glinda sits up. “You know his lapdragon singed my new sweater?!”
Charlie decides not to give Errol a nip of whiskey. Flying under the influence is really not done. He unties the letter from Errol’s leg. Ron’s childish spiky handwriting spells out Charlie’s name on the front. Inside is a hastily scrawled message.
“Yes, we know it ruined your sweater,” snaps Ysabelle. “You told us twenty times. Why didn’t you tell us Baines told you we’re going to be tested on Bridgewort?”
“I meant to,” says Glinda. “Sorry.” She flicks her pile of notes. “I was lost in the miasma of gloom and desperation.”
Ali puts their head back and groans. “I’m gonna die. I’m gonna say ‘fuck it’ and just fucking walk into a dragon’s mouth so I don’t have to do this.”
“Hey,” says Charlie. They don’t hear him.
“How much is this worth again?” Glinda asks her bottle of butterbeer.
“Twenty-five percent,” Ali and Ysabelle chorus. Ysabelle adds, “and the thesis is fifty percent of our total grade.”
“Hey!” Charlie repeats. They look at him. He waves Ron’s letter. “My littlest brother at Hogwarts has an illegal dragon he needs to get off campus. Anybody up for a midnight flight?”
Ali slams their hands down on the table and stands up. “Fuck yes,” they say decisively. “Maybe I’ll fly into the Whomping Willow and die a quick death.”
I always found it a bit odd. Hilarious, but it raised too many questions. When did Steve make these? Why did Steve make these? How did he manage to be so cheesy and overly sincere knowing how much crap he would get from the other Avengers for it?
Well, today my sister told me her headcanon. Picture the scene. Steve leans on the back of a chair, as above. Peter immediately launches into ‘So, you got detention…’. Cap blinks. Peter awkwardly tries to explain. It turns out Cap has no idea what videos he means, and neither do any of the other Avengers.
So they get in touch with the company who made them, and they swear blind that it was really the real Captain America, and that it all his idea. That he came in and said how much he wanted to help the youth of today.And the Avengers all lose it because someone is running around doing an unbelievably good impression of Captain America, they could have destroyed his reputation, they could have infiltrated the Avengers; and instead all they are apparently using it for is to make silly, embarrassing videos.
It’s completely baffling. Who could possibly be behind it all?
yknow if romeo had just Cried on juliets corpse for a couple hours instead of drinking poison Right Then they would have been Fine
The moral of the story is: always take time to cry for a few hours before making important decisions.
So I’m more or less being facetious here, but this is actually a thing.
Hamlet is genre savvy. Hamlet knows how Tragedies work, and he’s not going to rush in and get stabby without making absolutely certain he’s got all the facts.
Except once he thinks he has all the facts – once he’s certain that it really is the ghost of his father and Claudius really did kill him, he rushes in and stabs the wrong guy, which starts a domino line of deaths and gets Laertes embroiled in his own revenge tragedy and ultimately results in the deaths of nearly every character other than Horatio.
That’s the irony and the tragedy of the story. Hamlet knows his tropes and actively tries to avoid them, and the tropes get him anyway. It’s inevitable, the tropes are hungry.
I want a sticker that says the tropes are hungry so I can put it on my laptop
i met a scholar once who said that tragedies aren’t about a silly “flaw” or anything, it’s about having a hero who’s just in the wrong goddamn story
if hamlet swapped places with othello he wouldn’t be duped by any of iago’s shit, he’d sit down & have a good think & actually examine the facts before taking action. meanwhile in denmark, othello would have killed claudius before act 2 could even start. but instead nope, they’re both in situations where their greatest strengths are totally useless and now we’ve got all these bodies to bury.
The tropes are hungry and the hero is in the wrong goddamn story.
wupacing 