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I'm sorry if I sound cynical or callous.

It's certainly not the average bit of PPC writing, but it...has very little to do with the PPC. In-universe presence or not, it's not exactly connected to HQ. Maybe New Cal, if you stretch it a lot and add in a highway (or a smaller road) called the Queensway, but I think that's pushing it.

I obviously don't agree with a lot of what he's written, other than (very generally) a bit about holidays being increasingly commercialized and that if you're celebrating them as religious holidays you might ideally know at least some of the relevant history and traditions, even if you choose to celebrate it differently than your ancestors did (though if you don't know, I'm not about to think worse of you, or anything - it's just that I have a background in both history and Jewish Studies, including the religious side, so historical memory is especially important to me and I feel there's a lot of richness that can be added from that cultural history).

I might be mildly off topic. My point is: I don't feel like this piece is for me. I don't celebrate Christmas. Judaism is agreed that Jesus holds no religious significance to Jews. I...don't especially care here. Maybe I would have cared a little if I was a Boarder at the time and felt this was somehow aimed at all of us - and for all I know it was! Christianity does allow proselytizing (Judaism forbids it) - but I think it's more likely I would have had the same reaction, which is: okay, this is clearly not for me. I can see a few cross-religious echoes in a sentiment and a half of what you've written, and while this maybe wasn't the most relevant place to post this, so long as you don't try to proselytize to me or badger people about this, I don't really mind all that much that this is your viewpoint. So long as you can continue to engage with others respectfully, this basically just means I now know you're more religious than I'd realized.

I read AW's MSTs back in the day. I don't remember much, just that I enjoyed them at the time and was sad when the website went down. I don't remember his writing being some kind of proselytizing tract. I just remember enjoying it. It's possible that if there was anything there I just missed it, and would be more likely to catch it now (the Narnia allegories felt far more blatant to me a couple years ago than they did when I was a pre-teen, for example), but...yeah. My point is, apart from being connected to an in-universe PPC publication, this is basically just a religious opinion piece that found its way in, presumably around the relevant holiday. I don't agree with it. I can see y'all don't all agree with it. Odds are at least a number of Boarders at the time didn't agree with it. But unless it became a bitter argument rather than an expression of opinions and mutual agreeing to disagree (if a discussion around it even got that far) - or took a proselytizing turn that was difficult to shut down - I just...don't feel especially harmed by it. I can see the potential for feeling harmed in some way there, but giving the benefit of the doubt (to someone I don't remember anything particularly negative about, though it has admittedly been many years), my response is kind of just...cool, that's your opinion. Not sure this is entirely the right forum for it, but so long as you aren't about to get on my case in some way over, say, running a Purim RP or having my characters celebrate Jewish holidays on and off screen (written in a way that's hopefully reasonably accessible enough to people who don't know much, if anything, about them), then whatever. Believe what you believe. It is my deeply held hope, wish, and belief that, in this day and age, we can coexist in peace.

So yeah. Religious Christians exist, including in the PPC. The PPC probably wasn't the best audience for a religious opinion piece, but so long as there wasn't ill intent and it didn't blow up into something big and hurtful (which...I guess we can't know, at this point), then...whatever. It only affects me in the sense that it's yet another bit of Christmas stuff in my vicinity, which is a whole other topic that boils down to that if you live somewhere the majority of people are religious or secular Christians, including the people who had the majority presence at the start of what became the current culture, and you engage with pop culture even a little bit, it's very difficult to avoid both things like knowing some of the music and traditions and feeling absolutely surrounded by it when you go out of the house at the relevant time of year. But that's a whole other topic.

~Z, clearly not the target audience for this piece and trying hard to stay hopeful for the future

or Jesse Jackson to synthesize as much cocaine as possible to leave behind a fortune for his broken and dying family

I interpret Elon as being entirely 100% dead serious about how utterly idiotic he is all of the time, because... he hasn't really given me any reason to think otherwise? His ill-advised changes to Twitter Verification, his firing of 75% of the workforce and then begging them to come back when he couldn't understand the system, his banning of anyone who huwt his feewings, his Tweets, this whole Twitter deal, his particular style of grandstanding... the pile of mistakes is just too high to read as anything less than pure sincere stupidity to me. Plus, if he can have fans then it's totally plausible that he can be just as irrational as them. So I do think he seriously thought he'd be able to change the rules of social media, to defy political correctness and show those woke moralists who'll cancel who -- in other words, "If Elon thinks that this speech should be on the platform, he will allow it. If he doesn't think so

The problem with this is that Elon is a businessman first. His goal in running Twitter is to make money, and since he keeps insisting to the world (and his shareholders) that he can "make Twitter profitable" he's going to be forced into profitable policies whether he likes it or not. And those policies are probably going to look a lot like the previous Twitter administration, because they knew from years of experience what they were doing. Capitalism is just so powerful a system that even the people on top are forced into its trends because they are still playing the same game by the same rules with the same objective: Crush the opposition and grow at all costs.

It's... kind of sad, honestly. I have negative sympathy for the guy who unbanned Donald Trump but the knowledge that even the people at the top can't escape the soul-crushing, individuality-erasing, personality-greyifying effects of capitalism is disturbing. Maybe one day people won't have to live under so irrational a system.

Or is yours also a victim of your research program?

Magical bonding marriages is a very popular fanfic trope, especially in fantasy verses like HP. The mechanics of the Bond in purityworld fics tend to vary between formal ceremonies witnessed by family to physical consummation to some sort of… twining magic together thing, so I don’t think it’s really ripping off anyone else so much as the author playing around with different ideas.

In the Deconstruction, Matrimonial Bonds are invoked by the couple and their families, sealed with a kiss, and consummated. In Britain specifically, though, the Maiden’s Kiss initiates a pre-Bonding connection that is then formalised in a Bonding ceremony’s invocation and then consummated. This was started in the 18th century to compel witches to save their first kiss for their Bonded. Maybe other societies briefly used the same format, but Britain is one of the few places that still practices this by the late 20th century.

There’s also older Bonding rituals that involve blood exchanges, but those will be featured in Year Two, so I won’t get into more detail now.

They keep coming back in, and I can't run the summoning circle for fear one of them gets possessed.

...

Of course I need the summoning circle. I'm doing research.

...

Look, wanting my toast made for me in the morning is a valid reason.

...

Come of it! What's the worst that could happen?

...

No, it can't turn us all into dust that mechanically obeys orders. Although I guess that would be possible with—OW. Okay, I deserved that, but you really could—OW HELP MY PARTNER IS ASSAULTING ME

Specifically, there is a “Bonding” ceremony in the These Hollow Vows series. While I wouldn’t exactly recommend them, they have a similar concept, though the Bonding is less creepy. I think.

—Ls

I named this one Carl. And that one is Carl, and that one is Carl, and other one is Leslie.

I love them all!!!!

pulls her phone out

Gotta take a picture~

For most effective use, all the people affected by the Matrimonial Bond must use Un-Ceinte concurrently. It is possible to use it one-sided in order to stop one’s Bonded from using said Bond to compel submission or compliance, but it’s definitely more effective when all members of the Bond use the unction together.

If the Bonding gives that . . . drive . . . to men as well, does Un-Ceinte also work on AMAB people?

And yes, the "Creep" cover was great too!

Yeah, it’s sort of alluding to how in a lot of the Purityworld fics people just kinda accept it when they find out they’re soulmates/Bonded to someone else who, if they all were IC, they might not like at all. I mean how else do you explain it besides them getting dropkicked into a plothole and replaced with a Suvian clone?

But yeah besides the creepy Bonding magic the rest of a lot of these Pureblood Bondings use the same reasons that keep IRL dysfunctional aristocratic marriages together—appearances, wealth and lifestyle, duty over desire. Not everyone gets to be madly in love and lust with the person they Bonded with (which is what makes Lucius and Narcissa particularly obnoxious in this AU, which you’ll see in 2nd year hahaha).

That cover of Under Pressure is legit incredible. Best discovery I ever made, right up there with that string quartet cover of Creep.

Oh no . . . I hate that the Bonds can like . . . force changes in people's minds like that, that is so nightmarishly squicky. It's hard to imagine anyone would be against finding a solution for that, but I suppose the being-told-you're-culturally-superior-juice is a hell of a drug . . . Ugh, I despise the thought of being mind-controlled like that. Lily and Jenny are absolute heroes!

—doctorlit is off to Bond with marry that orchestral "Under Pressure" cover from your Spotify playlist, because he's in love with it

Yep, they're back.

So, a while ago I used to post monthly writing prompts on the Board and I mentioned doing them again and people seemed to have a positive reaction to that so here they are for December:

- One of your characters accidentally hits something with a snowball.

- A change of schedule causes a last minute flurry of activity.

- One of your characters is involved in a competition.

Just a few things to note:

1) If you want to post your response here, great. If you don't want to post your response here, also great. You do you.

2) While this is the PPC I'm never going to make a prompt be specifically about the PPC. If you want to use your PPC Agents, go for it. If you want to do other OCs or whatever, I'm not going to stop you (not that I really can to be honest). This includes the type of response you want to do. Short story? Great. Haiku? Cool. Twelve page long poem? I might not read all of it, but go for it!

3) These are my own prompts (unless noted), I'd rather they weren't shared about the internet but once again, I can't exactly stop you on that count either.

4) I'm going to be posting (roughly) monthly, but don't be afraid to post your response to a December prompt in January or whenever (if you want to post your responses). There isn't going to be a strict timetable besides "at the start of the month. Hopefully."

Nova.

P.S. I'm going to start out doing 3 prompts, if you want more or less or you want prompts in a different format to how I'm doing them let me know and I will try to adjust it to fit what people want.

Severina chewing Harry out but still giving him a chance to help out is one of my favourite things about her—she’s helpful but still such a dick about it!

The tweak to Hermione’s speech is also a favourite bit for me to write. It felt like it was laying it out more clearly why they’re all friends? In the books, they were so frequently dysfunctional that I just wanted them to be better friends here (mostly Ron and Hermione, since their bickering got so bad that I could not ship them at all without the intervention of goodfic about them). There’s enough messing with them from the outside that they don’t need internal strife, too.

Hermione is a bookworm; of course she would’ve read LotR and the Hobbit. Harry had a more normal childhood here, so he also read the Hobbit. He and Lily are trying to find time to continue with LotR. Eventually by the end of year 3 I think Harry and Hermione will have a conspiracy theory that Tolkien was secretly a wizard (sorted into Hufflepuff, I bet, because Hobbits). Anyway, Harry and Hermione’s friendship language of Muggle pop culture references is yet another favourite detail of mine, especially because it would piss off the Purebloods. (Pretty sure if they could wear Halloween costumes, Harry would be Luke, Hermione would be Leia, Ron would be Han, and they would convince Hagrid to be Chewbacca.)

Yes, exactly; the Enchanted Ballroom is designed to punish you from deviating from the manners, but then playing along makes you die of exhaustion. Short-term pain to end the enchantment is indeed the answer!

Nesh and I agreed while creating the potion that Un-Ceinte works like a hormonal contraceptive. The Matrimonial Bond not only gives your husband access to your magic, but it also has a procreation compulsion layered in there that sorta… inflicts a kind of pon farr-like heat that cannot be satisfied until one of you is pregnant. Then after the baby is born, the heat can be sparked again through certain hair rituals. For m/m or f/f couples they may get a similar urge to adopt or to drink a potion to render one party capable of bearing a kid. Not fun if you want to be Bonded but childless. Thus, Un-Ceinte not only prevents pregnancy, but it also prevents the Matrimonial Bond from driving you crazy until you procreate.

If you notice that Sev also touched her left forearm before she gave Harry the Cloak, you might have some guess as to why Greengrass has a brand on her forearm…

That’s the Pureblood Culture part—they’re also answering the desire within HP fandom to have more elements of fantasy in their Wizarding world. It’s just that they unironically play along with Pureblood prejudices and try to justify or explain them, and oftentimes the setting doesn’t so much examine how different the stories would be if there were a stronger fantasy element involved as it focuses on some female character’s dresses and jewellery and how they fall in love with the designated male love interest. We’re trying to use HP canon rules to explain why there’s this sudden dystopian magical theocracy in the middle of late 90s Britain, and if there happens to be some romance later on, it’s fully in service of the plot rather than having the plot exist to force the characters together.

Once again, thank you for reading! I can’t wait for you to see the end of year 1!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Aaaaa Aaaaaaaa Aaaaaaaaaaaaa

Aaa

I'm not excited by this chapter at all, nope. Anyway—

Okay, there's something downright beautiful about seeing a version of Snape being willing to team up with Harry. They never really got to work together like this in canon, so seeing Severina actually believe Harry and return the Invisibility Cloak so he could help is kind of amazing to watch. It made me feel really good! Same with the conversation between Hermione and Harry, about Hermione belonging, and Hermione recognizing that Harry and Ron don't only respect her for her talents, unlike Malfoy. Also, there's something really great about Potterverse characters quoting Tolkien to each other! And it happens twice! And Greengrass's contribution to the potion's defense is intriguing. I assumed at the beginning that the goal was to follow the proper etiquette throughout the dance, performing the steps correctly and not insulting any of the dancers. But playing along with the dance eventually leads to a death of exhaustion; the only escape is to abandon the dance and physically attack the enchantment itself. I was confused why Greengrass would set a trap where breaking social norms would be rewarded, but then I realized: this culture is so rigid, and ingrains obedience into the populace so heavily, that she was counting on that fact obfuscating the real solution! And it did, for a while; even our rebellious, rule-breaking golden trio took a while to deduce the real solution!

But what I'm really dying to talk about is Greengrass herself! That freaking bait-and-switch! I totally thought Quirrell was going to be at the Mirror again. Then again, Quirrell himself was a fake-out after making Snape look like the villain in Philosopher's Stone, so I really should have seen it coming, huh? So . . . she was leading Quirrell on, like I guessed (is he dead already lol), but I also don't think she's being wholly truthful about her bond with Gaunt, is she? She's speaking like she's fully loyal to him, not realizing that Harry observed her getting tortured by him earlier in the year . . . Maybe she really does want to use a bit for herself, before destroying the source? Also, uh . . . hm. I was going to comment on how Greengrass seems to view the Un-Ceinte metaphorically as a contraceptive, and was trying to see from her perspective, where a witch's greater independence from their spouse would give them more control over pregnancy-causing activities . . . but then I went back and read Lady Robinson's chocolate frog cardin ch. 4, and oh, yeah, it's pretty explicitly a contraceptive, isn't it? Which makes me even more squicked out and disturbed by however these Bonds actually function, ew, don't like it, get it away from me and my children.

Actually, there is one question I'd like to ask, as long as it's not spoiling an unpublished chapter: how is it that Gaunt and Greengrass have a Bond, but no one in the Wizarding World seems to be aware of it? I assume Matrimonial Bonds are kind of akin to Muggle weddings? If so, how is it that one of the most influential wizard politicians is married in secret? And what's the point of keeping the Bond a secret?

Okay, so there's one weird thing I noticed while reading this chapter, that I hadn't thought about before: I've brought up how dystopian this AU is, but it's also more fantasy genre than the original Potterverse. Yeah, both versions have the spells and the potions, but as Soap often said of the canon Potterverse, it's very "gentrified." It's a very middle class suburban setting, with very middle class suburban sensibilities and concerns. Houses and bank accounts and buying crap, and politics and school grades and the protagonist growing up to be a cop. But in your AU, you have something more complex than the superficial trappings of fantasy slapped over a contemporary sitcom. The belief in Mother Magic, and the borderline religious society that belief has produced, actually feel like a fantasy setting, a fantasy culture. I know that doesn't make your AU healthier than the canon, but it does make it a heap more developed and unique. Just food for thought.

I am REALLY looking forward to the next chapter, more than ever before!

—doctorlit learned what "lorry" means today; it isn't a bird

all of the images load in Chrome, but some don't in Microsoft Edge. Does anyone else have this problem? Do all the images load in your respective browsers?

A round, snowman-like creature had somehow hidden in my natsume tea container and bursted out when I opened it. I would like to thank my mysterious benefactor for the most unique Christmas present I have been given.

If it's not bad enough, having a somewhat crazy cat and two even crazier mini-Balrogs, now I have to deal with these snowball critter things? Out, out, all of you!

chases snow golems out of the door and immediately falls over some of them

Curses!

Now, please understand that it was a simple accident, pure and simple, no one's fault. Honest.

But...

We might no longer have a snow golem in our RC, it might, just might mind you, have accidentally wandered it's way into a friendly fire incident.

Although now that I think about it, the fire was a bit too literal and it might not have been all that friendly...

In other news did you know that water golems are a thing?

Well, good luck in your quest for your snow golems and not the water golem that's a completely different thing, honest.

Theo. (Nova)

If Elon Musk thinks he can profit from allowing the speech, it should be protected at all costs.

If Elon Musk thinks he can't profit from allowing the speech, get 'em outta here.

Ethics has nothing to do with it. It's just that Kanye is so radioactive with advertisers that there's more to lose than to gain by keeping him around.

We'll see if the pattern holds depending on how things go with Trump's tax returns and the Jan. 6 investigation and so forth.

~Neshomeh