I love Canon Remus and all of his flaws. Enough of this "Casanova of Gryffindor Tower" BS, Remus is the cowardly lion of Gryffindor tower. He values bravery because it is something that he lacks and yet still strives to be. He has an ingrained sense of shame and self-loathing and an inferiority complex that stems from society's contempt and marginalization towards Lycanthropy, a condition he was cursed with from a very young age. He wasn't a leader, he was a follower. A blind follower who believed to his core that he was unworthy of love and respect because of what he was.

Which opens the door to what I believe to be Remus' greatest flaw: His unwavering, unquestioning devotion to Albus Dumbledore.

I think Remus saw Dumbledore as the perfect encapsulation of Good. He was everything that Remus desperately wanted to be, everything that society was determined to believe a werewolf could never be. And maybe, if Remus could earn (and cling to) Dumbledore's favor and make him proud, he would prove to the world and himself that he is Good, too, in spite of his lifelong curse.

Remus felt that he owed Dumbledore a debt he could never hope to repay for allowing this chronically ill little boy into his school when no werewolf before him had ever been given such an opportunity. So many of Remus' choices in canon stem directly from this imagined debt that he had dedicated his life to paying. Hell, he didn't even hold a grudge against Snape for OUTING HIM to the entire wizarding world simply because Dumbledore trusted him.

Remus trusted Dumbledore wholeheartedly. And Dumbledore personally saw to Harry's placement with the Dursleys. Why should Remus have considered, for even a moment, that Harry wasn't safe? Certainly far safer than he would have been with a monster in close proximity, as Remus believed himself to be. In his mind, staying away from Harry was what was best for Harry. Until Dumbledore needed a favor, that is.

It's reductive to suggest that Remus failed Harry (and by extension, James) for putting his trust in Dumbledore to do right by Harry. James and Sirius trusted Dumbledore, too. They all did. Stripping away all of the nuance and blaming the abuse Harry suffered on Remus is simply unfair. NO ONE helped Harry, not even those who were fully equipped to do so, and Remus was the farthest thing from being equipped to take that on, what with being an impoverished werewolf living in a society that reviles his very existence. The only person who could have saved Harry from the abuse was the very man that placed him in that home, the very man that Remus revered with blind conviction.

Me: Man I really love marauders characters. There’s so much that hasn’t been explored. I wonder what the fandom is like.

Marauders fandom: Remus is a tall fuckboy alpha, James is sunshine boy in love with a death eater and sirius is a dumb hysterical twink stripped of all his canon complexities.

Me: Ahhh well I’m not really interested in these OCs. I wonder if there are any canon marauders fans out there.

Canon Marauders Fans: Everyone's white, queer ppl didn't exist in the 70s, all praise the nuclear family model

Me: fuck.

Sirius Black Appreciation Post

Time to celebrate Sirius Black's birthday by highlighting my favorite canon facts 🥳

Sirius is tall. We're talking at least 6'.

He's intelligent AF. He became an Animagus at 15. He charmed a Muggle motorbike to fly (Arthur couldn't do that with a car, Sirius did it in his late teens, latest at age 20). He escaped from Azkaban. He got a cat to order a racing broom. My man is brilliant, no doubt about it.

Sirius has a complicated relationship with his mother and it is *not* merely hatred. Note that he did not destroy his mother's portrait, or slash it as he did with the Fat Lady's. I'm confident that he could've figured out a way to destroy it or otherwise get rid of it, but he doesn't. His refuge is in his mother's old room with Buckbeak. There's something very complicated in his relationship with his family that can't be labeled as simple loathing. Sirius may have run away from home at 15/16, but his background 100% shaped him and left its mark on his personality and psyche.

Sirius was good friends with Lily. The letter from Lily to Sirius is great proof of that - it wasn't James who wrote that letter, but LILY. Sirius was smiling and genuinely happy at Jily's wedding.

Sirius is emotionally driven, and lashes out *with good reason.* When he goes after Wormtail the night the Potters died, it's because Harry is taken away from him. He has nothing to hold him down - and even gives his motorbike to Hagrid. When he tries to get to Wormtail in PoA, he slashes the portrait but doesn't harm a single boy in his search for the rat. When he goes to the Department of Mysteries, his focus is on Harry. These are good reasons, even if it puts him in danger.

Sirius has a great sense of humor. He puts little Santa hats on the decapitated elf heads. He chases pigeons as Padfoot just to make Harry smile. He sends a good luck note with a muddy paw print. He is scathingly funny, when he derides Peter's hero worship of James in Snape's Worst Memory. He's bitter and sarcastic. We love to see it.

Sirius is a baby boomer. He was born in 1959. "Ok, boomer," is an applicable retort.

Sirius is not misogynistic. He does not hate women. He is often kinder to women than men. He helps Ginny up in OoTP. No matter how angry he gets at Molly, he is never, ever physical with her (unlike the way Sirius is with snape, who he does get physically aggressive with). He is kind to Hermione. He had a great relationship with Lily. Even in the end, his last words to Bellatrix are 'you can do better than that.'

Sirius does not have a canonical love interest.

Sirius is willing to challenge Dumbledore. This is an important point - with so many people deferring to Dumbledore's judgment, including Remus, the Weasleys, and Harry - Sirius will challenge him and his decisions. He may not get his way, but Sirius has the personal strength and confidence to challenge one of the greatest wizards of all time.

Sirius was great with animals. Crookshanks and Buckbeak are prime examples of this.

Sirius is deeply flawed: he can get very intense. He can be rash, even if he has good reasons. He can be bitter to the point of hurting others ('the risk would've made it fun for James'). He can be cruel and condescending (my robes have enough filth without you touching them/wormail will piss himself with excitement). He can be callous (wishing it was the full moon, sending Snape on a potentially deadly adventure). He's a hurricane of deep, complex emotions.

Canon Sirius would obliterate fanon Sirius.

Happy birthday, Sirius. You would've loved James Sirius, Albus Severus, and Lily Luna. You'd have had the time of your life at Hinny's wedding. You are an absolute king.

What the internet did to James Potters character is actually so incredibly fascinating... in canon, this man was a background character who served not much of a purpose other than being used as a tool to develop other characters. We see him in like two scenes in the entire franchise: a throwback to Hogwarts where he acts so horribly that his own son, who previously *admired* him more than anything, is in total shock and disgust when he sees it. Not only does James commit an act of SA out of literal boredom, he is also seen treating his own 'friends' - Remus, Peter and Lily - as if they are worthless or beneath him, all within a few pages. I could probably write a whole essay about the dynamics between all of the characters present in Snape's worst memory, they way this supposed friend group was already falling apart, the way James and Sirius treated Remus and Peter with utter disrespect. Anyway, the other scene he appears in is when he dies. And that's it. That's all we have. On top of that he was, in canon, pictured to be average looking at most, a pasty kid with nerdy glasses and an even more nerdy hairdo that would most likely make him the victim of bullying, rather than the bully, at a real school. And the only people who talk of any sort of character development are his old friends and teachers, the same ones who either stood by or actively participated while he harrassed *several* other students for fun and casually commited acts that could probably land an adult man in prison for a few years. Plus they were trying to restore some of the glorious image of his father that Harry had in mind. So, not the most reliable source.

The fascinating part is how a corner of the internet managed to hyperfixate on this background character who was pictured as nothing but an awful person in the books, erased *all* of his canon character and turned him into the exact opposite. Suddenly he looks about ×1000 times more attractive in fanart, and all bad things he did are conveniently forgotten. Same goes for Sirius, especially in relation to the Wolfstar ship. James and Sirius were clearly close friends, but Remus? He was just strung along, not given the same respect. Sirius carelessly yaps about his being a werewolf in the middle of the schoolyard where anyone could hear and talks about how he wishes it was a full moon so they could have 'fun' - a sentiment I'm not so sure Remus shared. It's a very unhealthy and dysfunctional friendship that would be even worse if it was a romantic relationship. That being said, they are all very complex, very flawed characters who are extremely interesting to analyse. Fanon often strips away any complexity that these characters had in canon in order to make them more appealing. It's just... a shame almost, at least in my opinion. These fanon characters are entirely unappealing to me. I respect them as a sort of seperate fandom with their own original characters, but it's gotten so mixed up with canon that people no longer remember who these characters truly are, and if you bring up and dare to criticize their ugly sides in any way, then good luck soldier.

i’m currently listening to all the young dudes when i drive too and from work as my aux chord has broken and i’m on the beginning of sixth year and BRO the fifth year angst is just so good i’d forgotten

like:

why’d you burn the letter

grant

THE PRANK

sirius running away

remus’ birthday !!!!!

atyd is be no means my favourite fic but it is a classic and just all those events !!! i’m a sucker for angst icl it’s just so entertaining even though i’ve read it before like

and one thing about me i. love. the. prank.

i love to see the complex ways james reacts (admittedly atyd is one of the least interesting portrayals of it no hate) and how remus views it differently in each fic, how sirius deals with the guilt and fallout

one of my favourite things is when lily is someone for sirius to lean on; not forgiving him but knowing he needs someone

give me canon prank. give me au prank. idc i want it all

12, 14, 16, and 22 for Snape asks please

I am most interested in your view of Lily as a character. To me, she never really seemed to live up to the hype I see? Like, I get the point that she's supposed to be Harry's mother and is supposed to be seen as the one who can't do any harm because of the sacrifice and all that. But I don't know whether JK purposely or intentionally put, like, the worst flashbacks to portray her as angelic(?). If I remember correctly, she wasn't even talked about as much as James by Remus or Sirius, they had to add things about her in the movies.

I can't ever see Lily as a good friend to Severus. To others, maybe, but I feel like it was different with Severus. More like a complicated one that was give-and-take, including Severus. Severus, an abused poor boy from Cokeworth, who knew about the wizarding world and Lily, a girl brought up in a happy family, who knew nothing about the wizarding world. Severus was able to get a friend while Lily gained knowledge of the wizarding world. But the one thing that cements this view of mine is the line where it says that Lily looks as if she was about to smile when Severus was being flipped over. Plus, I don't care if anyone says that she tried to defend him, but girl couldn't even use her wand or take points off as Prefect?? Girl was literally making a show, or whatever you want to call it.

Sorry about the rant, but I'm all for a good friend Lily in fics but when people say she was like that in canon? Maybe at times, but not when it mattered. I'd love to hear your opinion though.

thank you for the ask, @be-at-peace05!

[snape ask game here]

12. if you had to choose a golden trio era student to be snape's friend, who would it be and why?

while i don’t subscribe to the idea that he’s his godson, snape’s affection for draco malfoy does seem to be completely sincere. malfoy is also possessed of the sort of intellectual curiosity which snape obviously values (for example, how he figures out how to repair the vanishing cabinet - it’s genuinely impressive, and the fact that this is what he might be doing is certainly something which doesn’t occur to anyone in the order) and, while there’s no doubt that snape probably has as little interest in hearing him whine about everything as lucius does, i can see them having some genuinely fulfilling chats about potions. after all, malfoy gets an outstanding at owl, he must be good at the subject and he does seem to be interested in it.

14. what do you think is snape's favourite potion to prepare?

veritaserum. you just know he was chuckling to himself the whole time he was whipping that fake batch up for umbridge.

16. were you ever a snater? how and when did you become a snover?

i’m also extremely theatrical and fond of chemistry, so snape was always my boy.

i’m also capable of understanding the genre conventions which govern children’s literature and which require him to act as he does, so even when he was being a cock to various children we were chill.

22. do you think that lily was a good friend to snape?

well… this is the big one.

and the answer is no - but.

i always think it’s worth, before discussing lily, doing some quick acknowledgement of her narrative role in the story, which is a major contributing factor to why she feels a bit of a flop in person compared to the way she’s built up by other characters.

lily’s characterisation in canon is primarily hamstrung by two things. the first, as you note, is that her sacrificial role within the story requires a certain degree of perfection - not least because the harry potter series borrows heavily from the genre conventions of christian literature. lily is the analogy for the virgin mary - as we see when her purity of spirit succeeds in inflicting the first defeat on the satan-coded voldemort which will then be fulfilled by harry-as-the-resurrected-christ in the final stages of deathly hallows. obviously, a marian symbol is denied the complexity of other women - and that’s without even getting into the fact that the series has an extremely limited view of what ‘good’ motherhood is.

the second issue is that the text needs to keep lily’s centrality to the mystery hidden for as long as possible, not least because it needs to obscure snape’s true loyalties - and the role lily played in triggering them - until the very end of the seven-book series. this is the reason why sirius and lupin only speak about her once (after harry sees snape’s worst memory - and, even then, they’re mostly talking about james) and why harry’s self-conception is rooted entirely in his father - or in characters like sirius who are stand-ins for james - until half-blood prince, when the narrative begins to suggest that his mother is much more important than harry has previously given her credit for.

[the best way to illustrate this is to note that harry doesn’t give a shit in order of the phoenix that snape calls his mother a mudblood. his primary concern is that his father was a bully and that sirius aided and abetted him - when he thinks about lily, his concern is only that she doesn’t seem to like james, and his worry that his father forced her into a relationship. he doesn’t raise the fact that snape called lily a mudblood with sirius and lupin, and he doesn’t mention it to anyone else. but he cares - viscerally - about the slur at the end of half-blood prince, once the narrative is explicitly trying to convince the reader that snape is an unambiguous villain.]

these narrative necessities are a heavy burden for the canonical lily - and so i think she deserves some grace when it comes to how we analyse her behaviour in the snapshots of her as a real person we get in canon.

because of course she’s not perfect. why should she be? teenage girls are allowed to be less than flawless people - even towards their best friends.

[as an aside here, i think we have to be very careful - in our reading and our writing - not to replicate the contempt that jkr has for women who don’t fit her narrow view of ideal female behaviour. jkr loathes bitchy, girly, flighty, butch, rude, vapid, ugly women - just look at anything she’s ever said about pansy parkinson - and she tends to write her heroines - ginny and hermione chief among them - as that perfect not-like-other-girls storm of exactly pretty and clever and popular and brave enough to be worthy, but not so pretty as to be vain or clever as to be haughty or popular as to be slutty or brave as to be villainous. lily gets this treatment - and i think this drives the tendency of readers who dislike the way she behaves in canon to be hyper-critical of her characterisation. but the issue with this is that it’s also confining ‘good’ women to narrow boxes - while, all too often, allowing male characters a complexity their female counterparts are not permitted.]

which is to say: no, lily isn’t a good friend to snape. but he’s not a good friend to her either.

the issue that the two of them have is that they each relate to the other as though the other is the version of them that they’ve constructed in their head. they never take each other as they actually are.

it’s clear in canon that lily never moves beyond seeing snape as the child - devoted only to her - whose role was to teach her about the wonderful world of magic, and who acted primarily as a tool of her own self-actualisation. this is the reason why she can’t understand why snape is so concerned about fitting in at hogwarts - above all, why he wants to be friends with mulciber and avery - or why she never realises that he wants to be reassured of her affection for him versus the marauders, or why she doesn’t take what happens to him at the marauders’ hands seriously until she is made a part of it by james, or why she doesn’t understand snape’s relationship to his own social class and its role within slytherin. she simply doesn’t conceive of him as someone who exists for himself or who has a life of his own - he exists for her.

and snape thinks the same - he sees himself as the person who gave lily the wizarding world and, therefore, as the person who gets to dictate how she understands it. this is the reason why he can’t understand why she pushes back on his defence of mulciber’s use of dark magic (since he - in a very voldemort-ish move - clearly thinks that applying boundaries to what magic can and should be studied is gatekeeping), or why she doesn’t agree with him that the death eaters will help him, or why she’s upset when he’s rude to petunia, or why she leans into the performance of class expected from muggleborns (sucking up to slughorn, taking her pureblood husband’s name) in a time of increasing sectarian tension. she exists for him.

this assessment obviously makes them both sound incredibly cruel, but actually this is the way that childhood friendships often go. it’s very easy to see how the fact of being the only two magical children in cokeworth was validating for both snape and lily, and how this formed a tie between them which was very fierce but very brittle - which was never going to do anything other than shatter as they grew older, especially as they became aware of things like social structure, political affiliation, and sexual desire. it’s cruel of lily to laugh at snape’s poverty - absolutely - but it’s also the way that lots of teenagers who haven’t entirely grappled with their own relationship to society behave, and it’s also true that acting up in front of a boy you fancy is a time-honoured tradition which can also cause you to be quite cruel. lily isn’t nice by any means when snape is being attacked by james and sirius, but she doesn’t have to be. she just has to be human.

there are two final points which i think it’s worth being aware of:

the first is that snape evidently stands out as one of the few visibly working-class students in the castle [so much so that i have a meta in my drafts about whether or not hogwarts is a selective school] and the fact that he is obviously targeted for his poverty is cruel, and i understand why it makes many fans want to defend him - particularly given the fandom’s fondness for glorifying aristocracy and wealth.

but lily is also an other in wizarding society. i think it’s often not taken as seriously as it should be by snape fans just how terrified she must have been for her own safety, particularly from the later 1970s onwards, when all the evidence of canon is that voldemort is about to win. the wizarding world is set up to exclude her just as much as it is snape, and while we can and should be critical how her response to his poverty is unfair, we have to do the same for his outright refusal to acknowledge that she is subjected to discrimination on the basis of her blood status.

the second is that we don’t actually know if lily was a prefect - she was head girl, but james managed to become head boy without having been one. the person we do know was a prefect was remus lupin. if we’re criticising anyone for failing to intervene, it should be him.

Do you like Remus? Like I’m genuinely asking because it seems like from your anti wolfstar posts that you dislike him 😭

This was a surprise to receive. I'm curious what I said to lead you to ask but I love Remus. He was an instant favorite of mine pretty much the moment we met him in POA.

There's so much to like about him, especially if you like flawed characters. Remus is smart and has a great sense of humor, but he's also extremely self serving, I think, in his attempt to protect himself because of his lycanthropy. We see two extreme cases of him failing to overcome his own cowardice and making reprehensible decisions because of it (hiding the fact that Sirius is an animagus when he was attempting to break in to the school and basically trying to abandon his pregnant wife). He clearly has a strong internal battle between wanting companionship and feeling undeserving of it and that's such a compelling element to his character. I love that he was the Prefect that was supposed to keep his friends in line and the best he could do was frown at his textbook in SWM.

This may sound like I'm dumping on him but that's not the case. He's interesting precisely because of his flaws! He's witty, fast-thinking, clever, and a sarcastic voice inserting itself in when Sirius and James are going off the rails. He's mischievous just like the rest of them, a prankster, up for a good laugh, and I don't think his name is first listed on the map for no reason. He's a bit quiet and bookish but it's mostly to keep people from giving him a second glance. He can deliver a cutting line that puts his friends in their places but he's also quick to forgive them because he values their friendship more than anything in his life. He considers himself a monster and to some degree desperately wants to believe his friends when they say he's not. He's also guilt-ridden from the risks his friends took becoming animagus but he was too cowardly to fight against it because deep down he wanted to not be so isolated. He's loyal but also in a self-preserving way like in his insistence that they have to trust Dumbledore and his loyalty can be swayed when presented more information, like the fact that he was down to kill Peter the second he realized Sirius was innocent. Remus is powerful and can be scary, not unlike Sirius. I could go on about his role in the war and the way he had to carry on after Oct 31st but I digress.

Remus is not some gigantic, overly scarred, sex-on-legs, extroverted, smooth-talking guy. He's pretty average, blend in with the crowd, sheltered only child, staying under the radar, "loony loopy Lupin".

TL;DR I love complex canon Remus Lupin. IRT fanon deviations? You'd be right, I'm not a big fan of characters straying far from canon because their canon characterization is the foundation upon which my appreciation and affection has been built.

Idk if you're the person to share this with but oh well. Idk I just feel like a lot of current marauders writes tend to use Sirius as a comic relief/clown character to make wacky stuff happen so everyone else in the fic and face palm and go like "oh Sirius will you ever grow up" and it makes me crazy bc to me he has so much more depth than that and is a really interesting and complex character if you're willing to put in the effort of fleshing him out. But no, we gotta flatten him out to one exaggerated trait for the lols

I am absolutely the person to share this with because I love talking about how modern fandom does Sirius dirty.

Yes, I can 100% see this being the case. Not that I read a ton of MWPP-era stuff (teenagers don't interest me, I only want to read about Sirius as an adult), but from the Incorrect Quotes and other headcanons I see here, writers these days absolutely use him as comic relief. Or they portray him as a reckless idiot and Remus as the sensible one who has to keep him in line. It is BAFFLING that someone read about canon Sirius and then decided that he's an airhead who only exists to pull dumb pranks and have everyone roll their eyes at, instead of a student who was at the top of his classes, never needed to study, and performed complex and illegal magic at 15.

thoughts about wolfstar? you're now the one i go to for any hp related thoughts

omg this is VERY nice of you but i'm pure flop on marauders thoughts, they're all extremely half-baked, so best left to others. here my half-baked wolfstar thoughts offered sheepishly and apologetically!

the thing is - i quite like the idea of wolfstar. to be honest i was sort of imagining a sort of wistful wolfstar vibe to how i wrote lupin in orchards in the aftermath of sirius' death. but i think the wolfstar i like is quite a specific version of it that's increasingly hard to find in fic searches so i don't often go looking for it (which is pure laziness on my part). my interest in canon coherent characterisation limits me here - i think there's such a strong case for wolfstar as a pairing written in ways that attend to the very clear dynamics (and timelines) that canon makes plausible (including in AUs, where actually characterisation matters more, not less, than in 'canon compliant' fics, because it's the reader's only anchor). there is an intensity and an intimacy to what sirius and remus share in the marauders and the significance of a boyhood spent together in their adult lives, a literal physical proximity of them living together as adults post azkaban as two men who have such complex feels towards themselves and especially to their bodies, including an overlapping self loathing, and they're both characters that can very plausibly read as queer-coded in rich and interesting ways. and then, of course, there's an inherent narrative shape to both of their canon arcs (the tragedy, delicious). these are just some of the dynamics in a potential romantic relationship between the two of them that can make for really rich and interesting potential to work with in fic writing.

the trouble i find with a lot of wolfstar, less as a matter of principle than what actually gets written more often than not, is that the stuff i personally find rewarding and interesting as a writer/reader is work that bears some relationship with the canon text (even if - especially if - it's to pull it apart and expose its flaws and complexities). a queer reading of the relationship between sirius and remus in canon is absolutely plausible and can be deeply compelling, and, as queering HP as a text remains a powerful fuck you to its author whose reaction to the ship was errrr quite homophobic, still really important.

but. challenging the text means having some sense of the characterisation of the essence of these characters as rendered in the text, and canon is clear about certain aspects of sirius and remus' characterisations that limits my enthusiasm for a lot of wolfstar that has sprung up in recent years (especially in and around ATYD, which i'll say more about in a minute). the truth is that canon strongly suggests that sirius cares much less about remus than he ever does about james (dropping @saintsenara's excellent manifesto for why unrequited prongsfoot is canon, also the rec for one of the best fics i read last year that @ashesandhackles put me onto, empire builders by shecrows, a gorgeous complex funny angsty prongsfoot fic that's not not canon compliant timeline-wise). it's also clear that the marauders as a friendship group functioned as a group of three boys all working towards james potter as the de facto leader, each with their own complicated feelings and levels of loyalty and devotion to james that undoubtedly shaped, and limited, how the other three felt towards each other (especially after james' death). the kind of wolfstar lore that's sprung up in the last few years, especially from marauderstok, of roadman remus the romeo of gryffindor tower that young sirius is wildly and hopelessly in love with, and is desperate to reunite with after azkaban, is a version of wolfstar that's sort of compelling as an original story but, for my taste, bears too little relationship to their core canon characterisation to be really up my street. a wolfstar with really fucked up power dynamics that plays with sirius' idolisation of james and remus having to play second fiddle? delicious. or even unrequited/onesided wolfstar from remus to sirius - yum. but the rest, i struggle with. by the time they've left school, remus thinks sirius is the spy and sirius thinks remus is the spy. that is not giving soulmates, in my mind. but as with most of these things, i'm very open to being proved wrong.

(with that said, though, i think the subculture and lore that's built around wolfstar is really astonishing and often extremely compelling, i think ATYD is obviously a huge accomplishment and deserves its flowers for launching such a phenomenon, and there's masses of quality writing and art and general creative talent coming out of wolfstar spaces that it's hard not to be continually impressed by. also some of those tiktok edits absolutely slap. that remus-centric animated noah kahan one. unreal)

hi i'm really curious to hear your opinion on this post: https://www.tumblr.com/oxydiane/693952155206500352/honestly-people-who-are-insufferable-about-the?source=share

well first off idk what they mean by people being insufferable about the prank exactly but i think it's just common sense to hold Sirius responsible for it. like it was his fault lol. I don't know if recognising that your favourite characters (and Sirius is one of mine) have flaws and did bad things sometimes counts as "crucifying" them rather than just enjoying the characters as they are, so I'm not sure what they're referring to. they do say in the tags that they don't think Sirius was in the right to be fair, but I think it's somewhat disingenuous to claim that Sirius wasn't expecting Snape to go down there when there's no evidence for that and even if true it wouldn't change the outcome.

I think there's a tendency in fandom to think you can only like characters if they're understood as 100% good flawless people whose every action is justified somehow. to me not only is this boring it's just kind of ridiculous. I think there's no way around the fact that Sirius did something that was objectively extremely fucked up not only to Snape but also to Remus, and then later displayed little remorse for it as far as we know ("‘I’m bored,’ said Sirius. ‘Wish it was full moon.’") and like... who cares? In the sense that to me, that just makes him an interesting character. And I don't think it erases his good qualities, it just makes him complex.

As far as Snape, like I said in another post I do think that he had some responsibility in the matter. And as a Snape fan this is worth discussing imo and the same exact thing goes for him as it does for Sirius. I think his obsession with discovering what the Marauders were up to went past the point of reasonable and that's why he was so easily manipulated into going down into the willow (for someone so intelligent, walking into an obvious trap is not his greatest moment lol) and we're shown in canon that this obsession was also interfering with his ability to be a good friend to Lily. If I absolutely had to choose then yeah, I think Sirius is more at fault than Sev but that's not as interesting to me as exploring the different motivations at play in the situation. Either way it's kind of a dishonest reading to try and make excuses or handwave rather than accepting that Everyone Is Terrible and just being okay with that.

I guess my point is, are you really a fan of a character if you have to overlook their flaws and weak moments in canon? it's a question worth asking. I love both Snape and Sirius because they have flaws but also admirable traits and I'm chillin feeling absolutely no need to defend anyone lol

edit- oh also I agree with your replies to that post, I've just seen them :)

marauders era (very?) unpopular opinions

i don't really Iike the rockstar-ified regulus characterization. i feel like he's been sort of sirius-fied and, while i am all for different characterizations and different viewpoints on certain characters, i, for one, can't see regulus as that. (i can go in depth about my view and characterization of regulus in dms, if anyone wants to hear it.)

this might not be as unpopular, but i do not mind the transfem sirius headcanon. while i do not headcanon it myself, i've made a post about it in which i explained my stance on it.

i love remus lupin with all my heart, but if i had to pick a least favorite marauder, he would be my choice. in my opinion, he is slightly overrated and, to be honest, the least interesting marauder. james has so much unexplored potential, sirius is a dilemma in his own, and peter's betrayal and dynamic with other characters pre and post betrayal is something so intriguing to me. remus is certainly an interesting read in his own, i just prefer the others more.

atyd is not the best fic this fandom has. of course, it's well-written and, despite the characters not fully aligning with my view of them, it really is tied into the 70s, which is something i always look for in fics. however, the use of slurs really put me off and, generally, despite atyd being a good fic, i have read far better than it.

james has only become popular recently because of jegulus and, if you go in the james potter tag, a lot of the posts are, in a way or another, related to jegulus. i've seen the same phenomenon with jily, though to a smaller extent, and, to some, it seems like james is a person inherently tied to the relationships he is in, and i think that him as an individual is far more important and complex than his relationships.

this is not exactly an unpopular opinion (to some extent), but the marauders era nonmen are criminally underrated, and, in certain cases, they are more compelling than the men. seeing the fact that their characters are so unexplored, that leaves a lot of space for people to be creative and work around certain characters, each character in different people's grasp.

tying into the former, there is no right way to "create" a certain character. differences of opinion will always exist, regardless if it is a fandom opinion or not. certain ways to characterize a certain character. tying into my first opinion, just because i do not like that way of portraying regulus does not mean that other people don't. some people agree will agree with me, and some people won't, and that is absolutely fine. my cup of tea is not everyone else's, too.

this is not exactly an opinion that is tied into the marauders, but it is, to some extent. i do believe that lyall was a good father. not the best, admittedly, but i do believe he tried his best to offer remus a decent life and, as much as i hate citing canon, there is canon evidence for it. i do choose to ignore canon, though, and the characterization of lyall that i am fully in love with is the characterization of a flawed man that is trying his best to be a good person. again, tying in the former point, no one is forced to agree with me.

coming on here to quickly rant abt remadora. Okk yess I know ‘another wolfstar shipper shitting on remadora’ here me out okay!!! Just for a sec!! I read the Harry Potter books for the first time back in 2017 and remadora was my shit. Remus was my second favourite male character and tonks was my second fave female character. (Harry and cho were my first faves — yes I self inserted into Harry and had the biggest crush on cho — yes I cried when they broke up — shut up we all had our embarrassing phases!!)

Anyways back to remadora, I just thought they were so cute together, even tho it felt a little random. But one thing that I remember that really pissed me off was the ship name. I never understood why it was ‘remadora’ and not ‘ronks’. Tonks hated being called Dora!! I remember ranting abt this on my Wattpad acc (yes I know SHHHH) when I was reviewing all the Hp ships.

I don’t ship it anymore (obviously lol) and looking back, I think my issue with the ship name is lowkey symbolic for my key problem with remadora — it basically removes everything that made her interesting in the first place and reduced her to just Another Woman Character in the series. When she got with Remus, she became more mellow, more feminine, more complacent — which are fine traits btw — but that’s not tonks!! Now as I’m older, and re-reading the series, I see a lot of subtext for a gender non-conforming and possibly genderqueer person forced into a heterosexual relationship simply becoz jo didn’t want ppl thinking Remus was gay and coz she had this weird thing abt all ‘good’ women being mothers.

Which brings me to tonk’s pregnancy — I wouldn’t mind a storyline for tonks having a child — I just hate how jkr had to fit it into this whole nuclear family model and get her and Remus to get married. I feel like a more compelling, or at least consistent characterisation would have tonks having a one night stand with Remus after they were both mourning their cousin/uncle/lover’s death. Shit happens sometimes. And it would be interesting to see Tonks and Remus grapple with this and what it means for their child.

Another head cannon I saw on tik tok was that Tonks had a threesome with Fleur and Bill and since polyamory wasn’t socially acceptable she asked Remus to be the stand in legal father — and ofc Remus would say yes coz he’s Remus!! This hc sounded wild to me at first but they all gave me queer vibes and it just makes me happy so now this is the headcanon I stick with lol.

Anyways not every woman has to have a husband and 2-3 kids to be a good person jkr!! Families are complex! Women are complex! And Tonks deserves better imo.

P.s. if you ship remadora that’s completely okay!! This is just my opinion!! I’ve seen remadora shippers who don’t water down tonk’s character/subtextual queerness — I just hate how jkr depicted the ship in canon.

Prongsfoot Week 2023 - Day 1

This... maybe got away from me a bit, but I'll take any chance to present my Prongsfoot ramblings in a semi-organized fashion!

When and Why did you begin to Ship Prongsfoot? What makes you Ship it? Basically, just gush on this ship.

Somewhat ironically, developing a NOTP led me to this OTP: Back when the books were still coming out, I was a Harmony shipper. (Not a crazy one, I swear!) This led to a lot of "discussions" with people who shipped other pairings, but most relevantly with several Sirius/Remus fans who were both extremely disdainful of my noncanon ship and adamant that their ship was, in fact, canon/eventual canon. This led to little Past Me re-reading the PoA and post-PoA books multiple times, trying and failing to see this "proof" of Wolfstar, but in the process paying a lot more attention to pre-Golden Trio characters. "Actually," I thought, "Sirius seems a lot more attached to Harry's dad than to Lupin. Huh." I found myself fascinated by their dynamic, by the hold Sirius' friendship with (and loss of) James had on Sirius, and how much is implied about James that we don't get to see (the Potter lineage, James "maturing," etc). Imagine my disappointment when not only was Sirius/James not popular, but Wolfstar, which didn't appeal to me, was only gaining steam (see: "Wolfstar is canon/eventual canon!"). Shipping wars were more 'maniacal sports fans' than 'political discourse' at the time, but between being deep into then-fandom and not liking Wolfstar, I found myself shipping Sirius/James almost by accident because… Well, it just made so much more sense.

Yes, James is dead before the series actually starts; yes, James marries a woman and has a son; but I've yet to meet a fandom that lets such paltry things as 'canonical facts' stop a ship, and it's always baffled me that Prongsfoot isn't more widely recognized for its potential, if nothing else. I will always believe this stems from a one-two punch of early HP fandom's obsession with canon vs noncanon, Jily being canon, which led to Wolfstar and the subsequent idea that Sirius "belongs" to Remus With the series completed, we have a surprisingly complex character in James, tantalizingly hinted-at if not explored in-depth, and we're given ample on-page examples of Sirius' exceptional qualities as well as his deep attachment to James, who must be exceptional himself to command this kind of devotion and affection. They're the most interesting characters to me, for what we see and what we don't see, and unlike a lot of other pairings they don't require a hammer and chisel to force them into a romantic mold: They're best friends and platonic soulmates, but they could just as easily be romantic partners and the shift feels completely natural. There's an equality and an authenticity to their partnership that I cherish deeply and don't find in a lot of their other ships, which often require them to be OOC… and if a fic doesn't include them as each other's best friend and Most Important Person, I consider it OOC.

In a way, lack of good James/Sirius friendship nudged me towards actual Prongsfoot because other ships de-emphasize the importance of James and Sirius in each others' lives to make the ship work, including outright giving their roles away, ex. someone else being the only person who can rein James in, Sirius running away to [name here] instead of to James. James and Sirius make each other more themselves, for better and for worse, and I honestly believe that they believe it's always for the better: They embrace each other's strengths and weaknesses, love each other for their flaws instead of despite them, support each other even after death (if the memory of James wasn't instrumental in Sirius surviving Azkaban, I'll eat my nonexistent hat). Sirius has so much devotion to James, enough to eat rats and face death for James' son, his godson, who he had a year of knowing before it all went to hell, that I find it hard to believe he had much room for anyone else; and from what we see, that devotion was absolutely reciprocated. Even after marrying Lily, even after Harry, JamesandSirius were such a thing that James' own wife writes to Sirius to say my husband is down and only you can make him feel better, not his wife or child or other friends. They would have buried bodies for each other, and I'd be surprised if that didn't actually happen off-page. What we see of their past makes it clear that they existed together in some rarefied space that would have absolutely continued regardless of who they dated or who they married or where they wound up. I'll always be a little sad that we didn't get more of these two in canon, and I'll always be equal parts frustrated and bewildered that these two are not the Marauder ship, or at least a much much more popular ship than they are.

Over time, the popular depictions of James and Sirius grew increasingly incompatible with the way I saw them, which is generally closer to canon: James is not an idiot jock or an indiscriminate bully (he's very discriminate, thank you) or an abuser, Sirius is not an idiot sex addict or peer-pressured by James into bullying (he's absolutely an active bully of Snape & Co) or there solely to fawn over Remus. This is also where I started to dislike Remus, sorry Remus fans, neither uwu softboi Remus and uberdom alpha Remus are my jam I eventually fell out of fandom in general and didn't think more than the occasional wistful thought until I re-read the books and had that Prongsfoot flame reignited, enough that I started to read HP fic and even write/post stuff again. I'm endlessly grateful for the authors who put such wonderful work out there, and for people who cultivate this little pocket of a fandom that's otherwise become alien to me, as someone who just doesn't get much of New Marauder Fandom and its ATYD influences.

James and Sirius are soulmates and friends-to-lovers and fluff and angst and boyish exuberance and the uncertainty of growing up, they're knowing you're meant to spend your lives together and struggling to exist when your other half is gone, they're sweet domesticity and the darkness of war and Good vs Evil and all the shades of gray, they're loving someone relentlessly and instinctively and maybe unwisely but knowing it's 100% reciprocated, no-strings-attached, because you can't be any other way and wouldn't change that (or them) if you could. There's just so many ways to explore Prongsfoot and all of it works because these boys contain multitudes, and I just want to gather all of it around me like a nesting squirrel and snuggle down amidst the Prongsfoot goodness.

You portray Sirius’s struggles so well, and I think they’re so in line with his canon character. I feel like most authors either ignore and hand wave away his struggles, or they lean so far in the other direction that he’s completely incompetent and nothing like his canon character. It is so refreshing to be able to read about a Sirius who is clever and intelligent and protective and trying so hard while also struggling with his demons and spiraling downwards. Brumous is everything I’ve ever wanted in a Harry & Sirius fic.

🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

I cannot tell you how much that means to me that you love the Harry and Sirius relationship in this story - especially the characterization of Sirius.

I feel like Sirius’ character is often butchered in fanfiction. His childhood trauma is often ignored, even his trauma from Halloween/Azkaban is ignored. I find that a lot of people portray him as this… goofball dramatic person who makes serious/Sirius puns nonstop. Or he’s a thirty-five year old man having prank wars with the twins at Grimmauld Place. His drinking problem in OOTP is always overlooked. Sirius giving Harry pet names like pup or Prongslet or Bambi or whatever is just… not very Sirius. Or the overuse of Moony and Padfoot in post-Azkaban stories. Like… did they ever call each other their childhood nicknames in canon?? I don’t think they did, but I could be wrong so correct me if I’m wrong. I feel like those names wouldn’t be uttered ever again because of the pain that James’ death and Peter’s betrayal brings them. In GOF, Sirius is displayed as a very intelligent man who understands the complexities of wizarding politics and has extensive knowledge of wizarding families - no doubt a byproduct of his childhood being in that pureblood culture growing up.

Even when I write him as a teenager in Bête Noire, he’s a troubled teen who has been severely scarred by his upbringing. He worries incessantly about a threat from Walburga, closing himself off and isolating from his friends. At this point, he’s already drinking and smoking cigarettes as a coping mechanism at 15/16 years old.

Sirius is a very complicated character who has such an interesting backstory. To me, he’s the most interesting character in the entire series. Sorry, Harry. I know it’s your birthday today and I’m not shitting on you, but even you can’t stop thinking about how hot and tall your godfather is. You’re as obsessed as the rest of us.

That’s another thing, speaking of tall Sirius, that shits me about fanon Sirius. He’s tall, okay?!? Harry states it like every single time he sees his godfather. Sirius is tall!! He’s the tallest of all the Marauders. It’s Sirius, then James, then Remus, and then Peter is small. It’s facts, okay? It’s written in black and white. I nope right out of a story as soon as I read Remus or James is taller. The entire Black family is described as tall.

I digress.

I normally write heavy Hinny stories. I love them. They’re my favorite couple. But Brumous isn’t about Hinny. They are the main couple, but this isn’t a story about them. This is a story about Sirius and Harry becoming family and overcoming their childhood traumas. They are the main POVs. They are the main characters. Some of you may hate chapter 35 because it legit only has their POVs. Nobody elses. (Though @prewettpotter asked about a Ginny POV dealing with finding Sirius nearly dead in a pool of vomit and alcohol with Harry so I may have to add that to my list of missing moments.) Sirius finally getting help for all his deep-rooted issues is a major part of this story too. Because you all know it’s Harry, Sirius, Remus, and Tonks who go on the Horcrux hunt next story, you also know Sirius really needs to work on himself in order to really help Harry succeed. He needs to be in a better place mentally. Finally, after 34 chapters, Sirius is getting the help he desperately needs. He officially hit rock bottom and it took nearly dying and having Harry find him to make him realize just how damaged he truly was.

If you’ve read my stories before, you know I love to really dive in deep into very real and painful everyday problems people have.

hi! i’m sort of contemplating writing a remus centric fic atm, which would feature wolfstar but mostly focus on remadora. the main conundrum i have is that it’s a divorce arc—i love tonks and remus, and i think their relationship is so interesting and complex but i’m writing for an au where they survive the war and remus sort of falls apart (and their marriage shortly follows). I’m sort of nervous about how this might be received among remadora fans? I might hint at a wolfstar endgame but majority of the fic would be about remus and tonks and the angst of their relationship. sorry if this is odd to ask i was just curious what you’d think :)

Hello anon! I'm putting both of these asks together as I assume they both come from you?

In any case. I'm just one of many Remadora fans (I'm suddenly reminded of Arrested Development, if you've ever seen it. Tobias shouts 'there are dozens of us! dozens!' regarding never-nudes [jean shorts] and it's what I'm feeling now as Remadora doesn't have as many fans as other ships).

I can tell you now that the biggest determiner for how the fic will be received is going to be your tagging and/or notes. There are definitely Remadora fans who would read and enjoy this. I know of several who also ship Wolfstar and they'd be fine with this idea.

However, I will also add that many Remadora fans, if they saw that Remadora was not endgame, wouldn't read the work. That doesn't mean you shouldn't write it. You write whatever makes your heart happy.

From personal experience, Remadora fans will gladly gobble up angst. I mean, Remadora is basically the cycle of together-apart-together again. They've got a 'divorce' arc built right into the center of their canon relationship, both between Remus leaving in HBP and leaving again in DH.

I'll say that for many Remadora fans, their reunion and endgame happiness makes the angst worth it. Knowing that they're endgame and will have a happily ever after (or at least have a canon ending where they die together) makes up for all the pain.

Not everyone is going to feel this way. Again, you write what you want. If you're nervous about Remadora fans' reactions, your best friend is going to be tagging and notes. If you are upfront about it by saying "Remadora isn't endgame" from the beginning, either in your summary or beginning notes, then you won't have any surprised or possibly disappointed Remadora fans.

For chose violence 12 13 14 :))

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

[choose violence ask game here]

12. who is an unpopular character you actually like, and why should more people like them?

i've answered this previously for petunia dursley, and i stand by that. but i also have another overlooked woman i adore:

merope gaunt.

merope’s son is, in my opinion, the most interesting character in the series, and his relationship with his dead mother’s memory is one of the most fascinating things about him (and also an aspect of his characterisation which canon dwells on only lightly - dumbledore’s view that voldemort ‘despises’ merope is never interrogated, despite the fact that harry clearly clocks the ways in which his grief about his motherlessness drives his decisions).

but i also think that merope is a fascinating character in her own right, not least for what she reveals to us about the complex threads which bind being a victim and being a perpetrator together, what she shows about how there are no perfect victims, and what she shows about how there are no irredeemable perpetrators.

because merope is a rapist. there is no need to handwave that away. [even though canon does - love potions are treated as somewhat benign in the text, the canonical tom riddle sr. gets no sympathy whatsoever within the narrative, and he is blamed by both harry and dumbledore, even if this happens in ways which make sense for their characters, for ‘abandoning’ his son.]

but she is also someone who must meaningfully lack the capacity to understand what she does as rape. the implication of canon is that she is subjected to incestuous sexual violence at her father and/or brother’s hands (morfin’s jealousy over tom sr., and the fact that he tells tom jr. that merope ‘dishonoured’ him by having a sexual relationship with another man, heavily suggests this), which the narrative once again considers vaguely amusing (the joke about the gaunts marrying their close blood relatives). she is certainly subjected to physical violence by them. she is treated as little more than an object to display her father’s locket. this is a girl (she’s nineteen when she dies) who cannot have any idea what things like consent and bodily autonomy are, and who shows through this how this lack of safety and education in one person’s life can go on to beget horror in another’s.

and, alongside this, she also provides a particularly good insight into something which is often absent from the canon narrative - the failure of the wizarding state. it is extraordinary that, when morfin and marvolo are arrested, she is just left on her own. or that the state has made no prior effort to remove her from the home of two men with reputations for violence, or to make sure that she has an education, or to notice that she lives in grinding poverty. or that she is forced to sell her father’s locket for a pittance because the wizarding state makes no effort to help heavily pregnant women who have nowhere else to go.

this - the fact that evil is often banal proceduralism, and that the greatest harm is caused by state apparatus - is something which is largely absent from the canon narrative, which tends to locate good or evil within the individual. so too is the reality of gendered violence, or how poverty affects women specifically, or how the institutions praised in the series - hogwarts chief among them - maintain a social structure which is hugely oppressive. these things go on to affect voldemort too, but they originate with merope.

[she also deserves defending on one specific charge, which sincerely makes my blood boil: the idea that she could have avoided dying in childbirth if she’d been braver. throughout the course of human history hundreds of thousands of women, who would have loved to have stayed alive for their babies, have bled to death in childbirth, because it is dangerous. they did not fail. they were unlucky.]

13. who gets the worst blorbofication?

remus lupin.

lupin is ready to execute a man in cold blood seconds after learning he’s still alive, and he doesn’t give a shit that three children will be watching. that’s undoubtedly justified, given what wormtail did, but it’s an edge that the chocolate-loving king of cardigans never seems to have.

14. what is that one thing you see in fics all the time?

pornography, i suppose…