River Cartwright Is Harry Potter And James Webb Is Draco Malfoy.

Reblogging for #2

some more for the collection while i finish writing the fic!

SLOW HORSES 3.01

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Slow Horses (TV), Slough House - Mick Herron Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: River Cartwright/Diana Taverner Characters: River Cartwright, Diana Taverner, James "Spider" Webb Summary:

Her friends are so jealous / You know how bad girls get / Sometimes it's not so easy / To be the teacher's pet

Cartwright catches Taverner's attention during training. HR violations ensue.

#which could mean absolutely nothing at all

+bonus

Im gonna lose it over the way people are so prescriptive about shipping

"Why are you focusing on romance when the show doesn't --" because I want to, i dont need the show to do anything, im not trying to get into the writers room im on ao3, you don't have to panic because i'm engaging with media different than you

"You cant ship them together because [something in canon]" what on gods green earth would be the point of fanfic if all it did was respect canon?

"That's never going to be canon" okay! I dont need it to be! Once again, hence the fanfic! 99.9% of things ive shipped in my life were not canon and had no chance of becoming canon and tbh that makes it more fun for me

"Stop shipping [pairing] theyre obviously platonic" or "why are people shipping A and B when A and C is right there?" This isn't a competition, i'm not trying to prove anything to you, im shipping the characters who make my heart pang and if you dont share that perspective we're all going to be okay

the best lord of the rings thing ive seen is the headcanon that gimli is like Prince Tier of beauty for dwarves and is absolutely stunning and legolas is like, for an elf, absolute butt ugly like relatively and everyones always like gimli how could you marry such a shit tier ugly ass elf and gimli is like ach.. nae…i love him

You need help. What about you, man? What about you? I'm not the only one who's a little fucked up here, Robby. Why don't you look in the mirror?

Okay, Slow Horses fandom, serious question: we all know that in season 1 / book 1, Sid is at Slough House because Taverner sent her there to keep tabs on River. But. Why!?

Sure, he caught her Up To No Good. But:

1. He has no idea that he has any dirt on her

2. He's been very effectively removed from any position with any kind of authority or access

3. His reputation has been thoroughly destroyed and to anyone who might have listened to him before, he is now a cross between a laughing stock and nuclear waste. He's untouchable and non credible after Stanstead/King's Cross.

4. She already has Jed Moody on the inside at Slough House. Sure, he sucks but he's there.

5. Sid is not a fuck up and Lamb's not an idiot, so placing her there risks drawing attention to something that Taverner is hoping no one ever notices.

Also, what is the budget line item for this? "0931. Surveillance misc. personal"? I know it's the security services but it's also government. You probably can't get a highlighter out of the stationary cabinet without filling out a form in triplicate.

So what is so important about River that he gets his own marker on a full time basis? I like to think that there is something deeper to the whole situation but honestly I cannot imagine what. And what did Taverner tell Sid to look for?

I love imagining the surveillance reports this must have generated though.

"Day 42. Subject is still sulking. Took coffee black instead of usual milk and sugar - sign of growing despair? Was called a "dumb cunt" by J.L. Visibly did not appreciate this. Spent 3 hours and 17 minutes playing spider solitaire instead of working. Otherwise no suspicious activity."

OP, thank you for seeing this and saying this.

Guess what, FRANK? The reason you can work so hard at being a doctor is because your wife gets up every time a kid is puking at 2 am and every morning 365 days a year to make then breakfast. She makes sure there's milk in the fridge, toilet paper in the bathroom, and clean underwear in your drawer. She sends your mother her favourite flowers for Mother's Day and writes your name on the card. And she probably quit her consulting job at McKinsey to do all that.

And that's why he actually doesn't deserve Mel. He doesn't understand or respect the woman he already has. Addiction? Yeah, whatever. Call me when he goes to rehab for being a sexist jerkoff.

honestly this is the only thing he deserves an ass beating for. everything else he can recover from

Never in my life have I wanted two people to lose focus and have a consensual workplace relationship than I have with Langdon and Mel. For many reasons, but mostly because so many people, even her fans, seem to see Mel as this Incorruptible Fairy of Pureness and Good who will help fix Langdon as he comes back from rehab. And I think Mel deserves better than that.

Look, I see a lot of myself in Mel. I’m not autistic, but I am very awkward and anxious and tend to cope with that by being cheerful and overly kind. I give a lot to anything I do and everyone around me, frequently to my own detriment. And treating these qualities like they make someone too good for bad decisions isn’t admiring or flattering or positive representation. It’s infantilizing. To imply that Mel being autistic or even just awkward and anxious makes her incapable of questionable moral choices is demeaning. It treats her as someone who is an ideal, not a person, because people make bad choices. That doesn’t make them bad people (see Langdon and his drug use— bad choice, good person), it just makes them human. So acting like Mel is inherently above that just denies her humanity and personhood, or frames her as incapable of understanding bad choices the same way a child is. So, for Mel to be seen as a full adult, she and Langdon need to have an affair. Not an emotional affair that can be swept away as Mel not understanding relationships, but a full-blown, physical, banging-in-the-on-call-room-until-someone-catches-them-and-even-then-they-don’t-stop-just-yell-for-them-to-leave affair.

TL;DR: Mel and Langdon need to have an affair to push back against ableism.