moonllotus:

When You Sing the Blues

It’s A Wonderful Life Wolfstar AU

• Sirius works as a mechanic. He initially had been going to school for law but had to drop out when his parents disowned him.

• He and Remus ran away together at 19. It’s been a struggle for them since but they’ve managed okay.

• Remus comes home to Sirius having just bought them a fancy new espresso machine (£273.04)

• Remus was just laid off from his company. They’re downsizing. And he’s asking where the fuck they got the extra money to buy this machine.

• Sirius explains it’s an early Xmas gift for the two of them and he charged it on his card “It’s not big deal Re”

• Remus kind of loses his temper. Because he’s had a shitty day. Being fired and worrying about money.

• “We can’t just splurge like this Sirius!” They argue.

• Sirius just shakes his head and walks out. He doesn’t know the whole story and he was trying to do something nice. He knows their strapped for money, but he wanted to do this for Remus.

• Sirius finds a large fountain and makes a wish that things were different.

• He talks to Remus on the phone explaining that he’s going to the Potters house for the night. Even though Remus begs him to come home. But Sirius says no. He needs the night alone.

• Sirius wakes up to Regulus shaking him.

• Regulus, whom he hasn’t spoken to since his family disowned him.

• Sirius is in a penthouse he doesn’t recognize. Pics of him and politicians and celebrities on the walls. Nothing personal. Everything chrome and modern.

• Sirius who’s mother greets him upon his arrival to breakfast with Regulus in tow.

• He has breakfast with his family. He forgot how much he loved them. Despite their disagreements. Despite the fact that Sirius chose to stay with Remus and living in poverty.

• But he needs to find Remus.

• Remus is a teacher. Living in a larger flat that’s quite nice. And it makes Sirius realize what Remus sacrificed to be with him.

• Remus is surprised to see him and isn’t kind. Until Sirius says he can’t get ahold of James. James Potter died in a crash several years ago, he never got with Lily Snape. Whose Harry?

• When Sirius breaks down Remus let’s him in, thinking he’s high on something or other.

• So Sirius explains. Tells their whole life story to Remus.

• Remus shakes his head. Explains that James and Peter died in the same crash and Remus and Sirius fell apart.

• Remus then states that his boyfriend was about to come over and that it’s been weird to see Sirius again and please don’t come back.

• Sirius wanders. James and Peter are dead. Harry was never born. Remus didn’t love him. This isn’t what he wanted when he made that wish.

• He finds the bench by the fountain and stares at nothing.

• “This is why you should always be careful with what you wish for.”

• Sitting next to Sirius is his uncle Alphard. A man who died three years ago.

• “Please tell me this is a dream.”

“It is, but it’s the only way I could speak with you. You need to find my solicitor. His name is Horace Slughorn and he has my will.”

Alphard hands him a card with the information before leaning forward and giving Sirius a hug.

• Sirius wakes up to the sound of 4 year old Harry giggling and the smell of burnt toast. The card in his hand.

• He kisses Harry all over his baby face and gives James and Lily crushing hugs.

• His phone is dead so he uses James’ to call his boss and take a sick day before finding the lawyer.

• This is when he finds out what his mother had done. Slughorn had just managed to get Sirius’ inheritance freed from her. He looks shocked when he sees Sirius as his next step had been to find him. He explains to Sirius that he was his uncles sole heir. Leaving Sirius the family law firm, a villa in France, his apartment in London, his cars, and £20 million.

• Sirius begins to hyper ventilate.

• They spend the day going over paperwork and preparing for a legal fight for the firm.

• He leaves Slughorn and goes to Peter’s. Treating his friend out to dinner and making sure Peter’s aware how much Sirius loved and appreciated him as a friend.

• It’s nearly 1am when he finally stumbles back home.

• “Where the fuck have you been?!” Remus had been pacing in the dark. Hair a mess from tugging on it and dark circles under his eyes. “I called your job and you weren’t there, I called James and you weren’t there, I’ve tried your phone but it went to voice mail. I only knew you were alive because Peter told me!”

“My phone died.”

• Sirius stares at Remus. Drinks him in and asks.

“Do you love me? Do you regret running away with me? Do you want to go back to school? To be a teacher? Would you be better off without me?”

“If this is your way of breaking up with me-”

“I adore you. I need you. I love you and am entirely selfish about you. I know things are hard, but everything will be okay.”

• Remus doesnt fight it when Sirius hugs and holds him.

• They win the lawsuit. Sirius didn’t care for the firm but it was the principle of things.

• He forces Remus to go back to school.

• They move into Alphard’s London apartment.

• Every night Sirius thanks his uncle for taking care of them. And sometimes he swears he could feel himself enveloped in a warm hug.

my latest edit for class, here are some romance movies

As I’ve considered the real lesson of January 6, I’ve been prompted to rewatch a movie that provides a hint of an answer — Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which was released 75 years ago this month.

When I first saw the movie in the late 1960s, I thought it pure hokum. America was coming apart over Vietnam and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, and I remember thinking the movie could have been produced by some propaganda bureau of the government that had been told to create a white-washed (and white) version of the United States.

But in more recent years I’ve come around. As America has moved closer to being an oligarchy — with staggering inequalities of income, wealth, and power not seen in over a century — and closer to Trumpian neofascism (the two moves are connected), “It’s a Wonderful Life” speaks to what’s gone wrong and what must be done to make it right.

As you probably know (and if you don’t, this weekend would be a good time to watch it), the movie’s central conflict is between Mr. Potter (played by Lionel Barrymore) and George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart). Potter is a greedy and cruel banker. George is the generous and honorable head of Bedford Fall’s building-and-loan — the one entity standing in the way of Potter’s total domination of the town. When George accidentally loses some deposits that fall into the hands of Potter, Potter sees an opportunity to ruin George. This brings George to the bridge where he contemplates suicide, thinking his life has been worthless — before a guardian angel’s counsel turns him homeward.

It’s two radically opposed versions of America. In Potter’s social-Darwinist view, people compete with one another for resources. Those who succeed deserve to win because they’ve outrun everyone else in that competitive race. After the death of George’s father, who founded the building-and-loan, Potter moves to dissolve it — claiming George’s father “was not a businessman. He was a man of high ideals, so-called, but ideals without common sense can ruin a town.” For Potter, common sense is not coddling the “discontented rabble.”

In George’s view, Bedford Falls is a community whose members help each other. He tells Potter that the so-called “rabble … do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community.” His father helped them build homes on credit so they could afford a decent life. “People were human beings to him,” George tells Potter, “but to you, they’re cattle.”

When George contemplates ending it all, his guardian angel shows him how bleak Bedford Falls would be had George never lived — poor, fearful, and dependent on Potter. The movie ends when everyone George has helped (virtually the entire town) pitch in to bail out George and his building-and-loan.

It’s a cartoon, of course — but a cartoon that’s fast becoming a reality in America. Do we join together or let the Potters of America own and run everything?

Soon after “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released, the FBI considered it evidence of Communist Party infiltration of the film industry. The FBI’s Los Angeles field office — using a report by an ad-hoc group that included Fountainhead writer and future Trump pin-up girl Ayn Rand — warned that the movie represented “rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture.” The movie “deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. This … is a common trick used by Communists.”

The FBI report compared “It’s a Wonderful Life” to a Soviet film, and alleged that Frank Capra was “associated with left-wing groups” and that screenwriters Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were “very close to known Communists.”

This was all rubbish, of course — and a prelude to the Red Scare led by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, who launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of Hollywood, the State Department, and even the US Army.

The movie was also prelude to modern Republican ideology. Since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have used Potter-like social Darwinism to justify everything tax cuts for the wealthy, union-busting, and cutbacks in social safety nets. Rand herself became a hero to many in the Trump administration.

Above all, Reagan Republicans, CEOs, and Trumpers have used the strategy of “divide-and-conquer” to generate division among Americans (a kind of political social-Darwinism). That way, Americans stay angry and suspicious of one another, and don’t look upward to see where all the money and power have gone. And won’t join together to claim it back.

What would Republicans say about “It’s a Wonderful Life” if it were released today? They’d probably call it socialist rather than communist, but it would make them squirm all the same — especially given the eery similarity between Lionel Barrymore’s Mr. Potter and you know who.