The Remains of a Poet

The Ache

This is the house I grew up in
Sixteen years
Other people live in it now
They don’t know its history
But that doesn’t matter
I’ve got a new house
And it’s comfortable
Adequate

So why do I want to walk up those front steps
Open the door
Reclaim this house?
Why do I feel like without this house
I’ll always feel homeless?

How can a building mean so much?
Just two-by-fours and drywall
A giant, hollow, inanimate object
“If these walls could talk…” we say
But they can’t
They’re just walls
And they’re mute by nature
Mute to everyone
(Mute to everyone but the ones who know them
Who knew them)

Why do we miss these things?
It’s not the superiority of the building
It’s the memories it holds
But buildings don’t hold memories
We do
We still have the memories without the building
But we value it anyway

Why do I still long for home?
How can that building hold it prisoner?
Why can’t it let it go?
(But I’m the one who needs to let go
Aren’t I?)

They say “home is where the heart is”
But they’re wrong
Or they just never tell you
That your heart can divide
Into so many pieces
So that no matter where you go
A part of you will always long
For somewhere else

They don’t tell you that a piece of you
Gets left in the past
Where you can’t retrieve it
Don’t tell you about the ache
That never goes away

It doesn’t matter what happens
What you do
Where you go
You can stay in that house
Until it crumbles around you
And you’ll still be aching
Because somewhere between childhood and adulthood
A piece of your heart breaks off
Stays behind
And you can never get it back

You think if you go back to that building
That first home
You can retrieve it
But a building’s just a building
And hearts don’t come when they’re called

So you learn to live with aching
With homesickness
Forever

It’s called growing up

When I was little, you sang me lullabies.  You took me shopping, and you didn't care about the price.  You took me out for milkshakes, and you bought me stuffed animals just because.  When I was sick, you got me juice and ginger ale.  You taught me to play cards without making me overly competitive.  You drove me to school and choir and the dentist.  You bought me pizza or chinese if I expressed a craving.  You listened to me and laughed with me and loved me unconditionally.  You are the only person in my life who never let me down, and even though I learned early not to trust people, I always trusted you and you always proved yourself worthy.

It's Mother's Day, and even though you aren't technically my mother, you are so deserving of that title.

I've never been big on writing cards, and I know you don't want them anymore anyway.  But if you did, this is what I would write in yours.

Happy Mother's Day, Grandma.  I will always be grateful for the seventeen years we had together, and I will never stop missing you.

All my love always,
Me

So I've watched through 2x15 of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I like it. It definitely gets better after the first season. It also seems to follow in its predecessor's footsteps in that the majority of the characters seem to be totally gay, even though they're all going around pretending to be straight. It goes something like this:

What is allegedly going on romantically:

• Riker and Troi have some sort of history and are still kind of in love, but can't be together for reasons that are not revealed/don't seem to make a whole lot of sense.
• Picard and Beverly Crusher are also in love, but can't be together for reasons that make a lot more sense.
• Geordi and Data are bffs.
• Worf is straight but has to be single because human females are "too delicate" to be with Klingons, and there aren't any female Klingons around. He occasionally angsts about this.

What actually seems to be going on romantically:

• Worf is straight for Klingons, gay for humans. (There are multiple scenes throughout the episodes I've seen that heavily suggest Worf is up for sex with men.)
• Worf is in love with Riker, who is in love with Data, who is in love with Geordi, who isn't in love with anyone but really needs to get laid. (Seriously, LeVar Burton, you were on a children's show!  You are tarnishing my Reading Rainbow memories!  Simmer down, there!)
• Riker and Troi are gay bffs who like to flirt with each other because it's fun, and probably have some sort of pact along the lines of 'if we're both still single when we're fifty, we'll get married so that we won't grow old alone.'
• Also, in the first season, Troi has a thing with Tasha Yar.
• Picard and Beverly, who are the only people on the whole ship who come off as any kind of straight, just need to get a room already!

Seriously, all the UST on that ship is going to rip a hole in the universe! It's worse than high school! Just do it already, people!

Day 28: Hogwarts subject you would most like to take

That’s difficult. Probably Transfiguration. I feel like that could be really useful, and McGonagall would be a really awesome prof. Or Apparition lessons, because if I could have one super-power, it would be that. Or Defense Against the Dark Arts, but only if it were being taught by Lupin or Fake!Moody.

Day 26: What aspect of the books has been best translated to film?

Voldemort. Not in the first film, but ever since Ralph Fiennes came onboard. Voldemort is Voldemort, which I actually never expected, so good on them.

Also Snape. Obviously. Alan Rickman has never done anything less than deliver from the moment he entered that dungeon in the first film. He’s in a class all his own.

Actually, most of the Hogwarts staff translated really well. McGonagall, Filch, Hagrid, Lockhart, Trelawney, Moody, Umbridge, Slughorn…. Not Dumbledore, really, though I’ve grown fonder of Gambledore with each film. And not Lupin, but David Thewlis is a great actor, so um … you know, it’s not his fault he’s not how I imagined Lupin, or that somebody thought it’d be a good idea to give him a rape-stache in PoA. I mean, I like the guy, you know? I don’t want to bash him, it’s just … he’s not my Lupin. Anyway…

Hogwarts sometimes translates really well. It kind of depends on the movie/scene. Sometimes I don’t even know. Same with the Burrow.

Day 24: Rant about Steve Kloves something

Trust me, you don’t want me to. Where do I even begin with this man?

Okay, to start: He has a massive crush on Hermione, and it really shows. The bias is just … it’s insane. I mean, giving her Ron’s “If you want to kill Harry you’ll have to kill us too” line in PoA? Crossing the line. Majorly crossing the line.

It’s just like … I think it’s pretty obvious he ships Harmony, and frankly, I don’t care about that for the sake of Ron/Hermione, because as much as I love and ship Ron/Hermione, if Kloves doesn’t, whatever. Like I said before, romance has never been a particularly important component of the HP series for me.

But he killed Harry/Ron. He killed my favorite bromance, and I’m not okay with that. It was my favorite bromance before bromance was even a word and became the “in” thing, and Steve Kloves killed it because he’s in love with Hermione and wanted her to end up with Harry. He turned Ron into this horrible 2D “ahaha-I’m-only-here-for-comic-relief” moronic coward, and I really, really hate him for that.

If the books are about the epicness of any friendship … well, the books are about the power of the bond between all three of them, actually, and how they are strongest and function best when it’s the three of them working together. But if you compare Harry’s falling out with Hermione in PoA with his falling out with Ron in GoF, there’s no question: emotionally, Harry needs Ron far more than he needs Hermione. There are just so many little interactions and unspoken things between them… I know it’s sounding like I’m a Harry/Ron shipper, and that isn’t it. It’s just that their friendship is so epic and beautiful, and it frustrates me that that wasn’t translated onscreen because it wasn’t even translated into the script.

One of my professors pointed out that if Harry Potter had been written by a man, Ron’s character would be a girl and Hermione’s character would be a boy, because Ron is emotional and Hermione is intelligent, and I think that’s true, and interesting both psychologically and culturally, but that’s not why I’m bringing it up. Kloves writes all these scenes about how Harry and Hermione are totally BFFs OMG, but I would argue that in the earlier books especially, Harry and Ron actually have a much stronger and deeper emotional connection than Harry and Hermione. Hermione might be more aware of what’s going on when it comes to romance, but in general – and maybe without even being fully aware of it – Ron has a much better grasp of what Harry’s feeling and what to do about it. There’s this great moment in GoF when they get back from the World Cup, and Harry’s telling them about his scar hurting and stuff, and Ron asks Harry if he wants to play Quidditch, and Hermione starts to tell him off for not being sensitive to Harry’s emotional needs, basically, and then it turns out Harry really wants to play Quidditch because he figures it’ll make him feel better. Ron just gets Harry in a way Hermione simply can’t, and that’s what’s so great about his and Harry’s friendship. And Kloves took that and gave it to Hermione, and that really bothers me.

The thing is, I don’t feel like a lot of people appreciate just how complex Ron really is, and the movies don’t help with that at all because in the movies he’s just so 2D. Worse than that, from the very beginning they took away some of his best qualities. In PS/SS, Hermione is the one who panics when Harry and Ron get trapped in the Devil’s Snare, not Ron, which is what happened in the film. Ron is so incredibly brave throughout the entire series. Yeah, he may not be as awesome at magic as Harry and Hermione, but he’s not a total buffoon, either, and it never stops him from throwing himself head on into a fight if he thinks his friends are in danger. Ron is in Gryffindor for a reason, you know? And by taking all Ron’s awesome qualities and giving them to Hermione, film!Hermione ends up being something distressingly close to a Mary Sue, while Ron ends up being a 2D imbecile.

Anyway, I guess this has been long and ranty enough. Basically, I’ve learned to live with what got cut and what got altered and what got written in. But destroying Ron’s character will never be okay with me.

Day 22: Your favorite villain

Barty Crouch Jr. I mean, come on, Fake!Moody was the best D.A.D.A. professor ever. In so many ways, BCJ doesn’t even make sense. Like, why is he so effective at teaching the kids? Why is he so nice to Neville? Why does he teach Harry how to block the Imperius Curse? Why didn’t he just make Harry’s bag into a portkey the first week of term? Why does so much of what he does make it seem like he maybe doesn’t even want Voldemort to succeed? Why is he just so plain awesome?

Basically, you can either take all that as due to him being poorly written, or due to him being way more complex than we ever get to fully appreciate since stupid Fudge let the dementor suck out his soul. Either way, the fact remains: Barty Crouch Jr. is badass!

(Hey, you know what would make a great fic? Something where it turns out Barty Crouch Jr. and Regulus Black were co-conspirators in the ‘let’s-steal-Voldy’s-horcruxes-and-bring-him-down-from-the-inside’ thing, and BCJ was going along with the Lestranges’ crazy Longbottom torturing thing because, I don’t know why, but we’d come up with something when we got there (didn't he say they threatened him or something?), but then the combination of Azkaban and being under the Imperius Curse all those years made BCJ go kind of psycho (which actually is pretty much true anyway), so that he didn’t even know what he wanted anymore, and he had all these crazy conflicting desires, which is why half of what he does in GoF seems to be counter-productive to his supposed end goal of killing Harry and resurrecting Voldemort. Oh my god, somebody please write me Barty Crouch Jr./Regulus Black BFF fic right now!)

Day 20: A favorite quote

So difficult! I have many, obviously. The twins, Ron, and Harry all have several great one-liners, of course. Then there’s Dumbledore’s words of wisdom/moments of awesome. McGonagall and Snape are also both extremely quotable. Then there’s all the little moments of wonderful characterization for Sirius and Remus, particularly in the Shrieking Shack scene (“If you made a better rat than a human, it’s not much to boast about, Peter,” for example). But I’m going to go with the line that always stayed with me from Deathly Hallows:

“Does it hurt?”

The childish question had fallen from Harry’s lips before he could stop it.

“Dying? Not at all,” said Sirius. “Quicker and easier than falling asleep.”

“And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over,” said Lupin.

First of all, arguably the most moving, heartbreaking, emotional scene in the whole series. Harry here. Just … Harry.

But also, okay, I guess this does kind of have to do with the characterization thing (characterization is a big thing for me) because, just, I love that it’s Sirius and Remus answering Harry here, not James and Lily. Because even though we know they love Harry and Harry loves them, Sirius and Remus are the ones who ended up being there for him, and they’re the ones Harry trusts. Like, I don’t think James and Lily even could have answered this question for Harry. It had to be Sirius. And actually, if you read this whole scene, you can see that. James and Lily assure Harry they love him, but any concrete question is answered by Sirius and Remus, and I think it’s because Harry knows them. He trusts them. And I just really like that.

title: Heroes for Ghosts
fandom: Harry Potter
character(s): Remus Lupin
rating: PG
words: ~2400
summary: He tells himself he’s healing because it sounds healthy and well-adjusted and like him, and James has stopped showing up to contradict him.

Hardening, he thinks, is something Sirius would have done.
notes: This is a bit of a different style for me. It’s also a bit weird. The title comes from the Pink Floyd song Wish You Were Here.


( Two days after Halloween, Remus comes home from the safe house where he's been transforming for the past year... )