#I’m talking about Snape fans | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

zombee · 7 months

Text

I feel like the luckiest Our Flag Means Death fan in the world after the season 2 finale. By a series of incredible circumstances - including a significant metatextual realization that came in at the 11th hour - it was close to perfect for me.

This essay has everything. Completely normal behavior over a television series. Steven Universe references. The David Jenkins School of Whatever is Best for the Bit. Humbling catharsis.

First: this piece does not exist with the central thesis of “it’s okay to not like something but that’s not the same thing as it being bad.” I feel like thousands of words have already been written on this since Thursday, so I’m going to try to not get too in depth on that.

Second, cards on the table, because it’s relevant and I don’t want to waste your time if this is going to sour your ability to hear me out: I’m an Izzy Canyon hater. For MANY reasons, but from way before the concept of the Canyon existed, (some) Izzy fans pinged me in the same way as Snape/Kylo Ren fans did, and before May 2022 was over I went from genuinely enjoying Izzy’s character and place in the narrative to hating him because his fans made it impossible for me to enjoy him anymore.

(SOME! of his fans. Please don’t keep making me say this, although I’m not going to talk about the Canyon directly anymore after this. I know there are a ton of normal Izzy Enjoyers and even Canyonites, I am literally friends with many of them, please take this all in the good faith it’s intended and if you’re not One Of The Bad Ones then you’re fine! I very carefully don’t go anti-Izzy on main, and when I stopped enjoying his character, I stopped writing him into fics. I’m not trying to be a dick, I just want to be honest. Anyway.)

The season 2 finale made me weep over Izzy Goddamn hands.

ALL season long, I was disgruntled. All season long. I really, truly, DEEPLY appreciated what they were doing with his character and arc, I thought it was wildly on brand for the themes of community/queerness in the show, I saw the vision, I liked it!!! But. I wanted a fucking apology, yall. I needed three seconds of “sorry I called you a slur, Ed :/” and that would have been enough. But I had to let it go. It was poisoning my enjoyment of the whole season, which I loved with very little exception (not none!) and I just had to let it go. I wasn’t getting an apology. That didn’t negate what they were doing with his character.

Yall. They withheld the apology on purpose.

THIS FUCKING SHOW!!!

Let’s go back a bit. I was at the episode 6 + 7 screening, and the breakup shook me. Probably a LOT more than if I had watched it alone in bed at 3am on my laptop - five days of no sleep after NYCC, lots of emotions, seeing it on a big screen with a hundred other intense fans, etc etc - but I did see other folks reacting in parallel ways to me when the episodes aired to the regular public, so maybe I would have felt the same way. Regardless, I was mad at Stede and to a lesser extent Ed. I NEEDED AN APOLOGY FOR THAT FISH LINE. I needed it! “Whativah” autocorrects to “WHATIVAH” in my phone. I was going through it.

(When I rewatched the episode when it aired it was not nearly as bad as I remember, lol)

So now the episode 8 screeners go out and the reviews drop and I think I catch one half-glimpse of a “What a heartbreaking ending!” kind of snippet, and some of my friends who are spoiler fiends unintentionally drop little hints about similar ideas (devastating/heartbreaking/split the fandom) type shit.

And I was a fucking WRECK! about it.

I do love this whole show with my whole chest. I do!!! But I’m not rotted because this is an excellent television show, I’m rotted because two old men kiss each other! On the MOUTH!!! in an excellent television show. You get it, right? I’ve written 700,000 words across almost 100 fics and 98% of them are dedicated to those two men falling in love in different universes.

So it just did not even occur to me the “heartbreak/devastation/fandom split” would be about anything but Gentlebeard.

Another piece of this that was fucking me up - David Jenkins and his “satisfactory” ending biz. My brain was reacting like this show was ENDING ending, even if I knew logically! that this is just season 2!!! And I wasn’t ready for that, because what if it wasn’t personally satisfying, and I’m a mess about it? Why was I so worried about not liking it? I’d liked the whole season! Even if they didn’t nail the landing I wasn’t going to stop writing fic or hanging out with my pirate community & friends.

…is what I kept trying to tell myself, but the way anxiety disorders work is funny like that lol. What if I did stop writing fic and hanging out in pirate spaces? That would hurt much more than a show I like disappointing me. And for anyone who’s having that experience with ofmd s2, I’m so very, very sorry. It sucks and that’s where my epiphany came from on Wednesday before the finale.

Because it has happened to me before.

I flit from hyperfocus to hyperfocus, as ya do when you’re spicy, but the last thing to get its hooks in me PROPERLY like pirates was Steven Universe. And I did NOT like the way the regular season ended!!! (I actually really did like most of Future; that’s not what I mean. I mean season 5). I don’t like how they handled the Diamonds, tldr; I think the scope of their villainy got too out of hand, and I was left grieving the thing that had meant enough to me I ran a fan convention for four years based around it.

Side note: imagine if I had channeled the hyperfocus of almost a million words of fanfiction into an American OFMD con instead. We could have made magic :( I did consult with Our Con Means Death though so I am at least a teeny tiny bit of that one!

I did not like the way Steven ended… but I do respect the story they were telling and think they told it well.

I’m still sad about it. Steven is still one of my most beloved, it will always be beautiful and great to me, but that experience did and does sully my memories. There is so, so, so, SO much more good than bad from being in that fandom, and I cherish it. And I hope, if you’re having this experience with OFMD right now, that you’ll find similar comfort.

But, like I said at the top, “it’s okay to not like something but that’s not the same thing as it being bad” has been belabored already by people better at writing about it than me. I just had the incredible privilege to remember my brush with lower case T trauma and having that experience in my last REALLY big deal fandom. That’s why I had been so extra anxious about being disappointed. Because it happened to me before. It helped so much to connect those two.

So the finale happens, and it’s actually about twelve hours of me going from “eh, rushed but fun, whole season was great” to “THIS MAYBE IS THE BEST SHOW OF ALL TIME, ACTUALLY!”

BECAUSE THIS SHOW MADE ME CRY OVER IZZY FUCKING HANDS!!!!

They literally told me this was the story they were telling this season. “Men can change” “The end of piracy” “Ed leaving Blackbeard behind (ish).”

As for me? I didn’t get an apology for the fish. Instead, I got “Sorry I was a dick.” “You weren’t a dick. Life’s a dick.”

Just… fuckity BAM. THREE FUCKING SENTENCES resolving that fight. Saying so much in so little.

In real life, should these two men have an actual conversation about this shit? Sure!!! But that’s not how OFMD tells its stories!

It works in symbolism. It works in vibes. It works in an hour’s worth of content into each half-hour episode, and for how much lamenting I have done about the pacing, I would prefer that 100x to having to stretch it out too much.

I have said since March 24, 2022 that OFMD wields anachronism as a weapon. First and foremost, it’s fucking funny, but in addition to that, it’s stating clearly: “This is a fantasy world. This is not real history. This show is about romance (and so much more than that), and the rest is just VIBES!!!”

Sometimes vibes can be historical accuracy. Sometimes vibes can be true emotional poignancy. Sometimes vibes can be Ed finding his sunken leathers in the sea, changing underwater somehow, and coming out of the ocean like the Birth of Fucking Venus, because water and rebirth and mermaids and shit is all very prominent this season. And ALSO, and this is very important! BECAUSE IT LOOKS FUCKING COOL!

I don’t want to do much real Izzy meta here. It’s been said by others, and better than me. But it was telegraphed and it was symbolic – he was the paragon of Traditional Piracy in season 1, for goodness’ sake, and Traditional Piracy is Toxic Masculinity, and he was a part of Blackbeard and Ed had to leave Blackbeard behind (yknow, ish), and he got this ABSOLUTLEY FUCKING LOVELY! storyline about appreciating what a (queer) community can do, and god fucking shit fucking dammit… most of all, best of all (for me), was Buttons landing on Izzy’s grave at the end. Men can change. And Izzy DID!!! He did it for Ed. For love. For community. I am puzzled by “it’s fucked up to use Izzy to further Ed’s storyline” because… this was Ed’s season, in the way that season 1 was Stede’s. And Ed cannot be removed from piracy as a whole (neither can Stede!) so to have this old, set in his ways, coded-queerphobic character blossom to the point he can give this gift to Ed and to piracy… idk man. I just find it so fucking beautiful.

It is okay not to like what they did. It’s okay!!! It’s okay, and it’s okay to mourn, and while it’s not okay to do [insert vile behavior here], it’s okay to carefully examine what you think is “bad writing” vs “what you would have preferred to happen” and give good-faith, textually-based criticism on that.

But I want to remind you over and over and over again, this show works on vibes. It tells its stories leaving many, many, many gaps. There are many things I would have liked to see, and y’know what? I would have told the Izzy story differently. I would have personally done it differently. But it’s not my show! It’s not my show, and I am humbled and delighted to remember that, and to appreciate Our Flag Means Death for what it is and not what it isn’t.

Other words have been written better than I could about the 18 months between seasons 1 and 2 and what that does to us as rabid fans with expectations of how things will go. Millions and millions and millions of words have been written about OFMD, fictional and non, and that is going to color our expectations and experience. We had built it up SO MUCH in our minds and along the way I think some of us forgot (INCLUDING ME!!!) that it is first and foremost about Vibes.

The vibes of Izzy’s death are about rebirth and forgiveness and leaving traditional piracy behind. And he got to die in Ed’s arms, knowing (HAPPILY!) that he had been wrong, and giving Ed the gift of letting him know he is loved, and being a part of something. We had a funeral but we also had a wedding. The only constant is change. Men, piracy, Blackbeard; it all changes. And Izzy found peace in that.

Before my last point, I want to @ myself on things I felt versus realizing in the end it is (I will say it until I’m blue in the face) about vibes.

· I was convinced they left Buttons’ transformation ambiguous because they wanted to leave room for it not having been real. NO!!! It is real, until they decided it isn’t. Magic in the OFMD universe? Fucking why not!!! IT’S SYMBOLIC!!! IT’S IMPORTANT TO ED’S STORYLINE AND THE CENTRAL THESES OF THE SHOW!

· I was unhappy, and still am a little, about the Polycule Situation, but now that I realize Oluwande is Zheng’s Stede… I am less so. The Zheng : Auntie :: Ed : Izzy vibes, btw? Fuckin immaculate.

· Obviously they touched on Stede/Ed’s “killing people trauma” but I’d reallyyyy like Stede to address it, and even though I think Ed’s is left on a very satisfying note, I’d like him to dip a bit more into it as well. But if they don’t, oh well! It’s not like they ignored it, they just didn’t have a Deep Dive like I Wanted Them To!

· They didn’t deal with Ed throwing Stede’s shit away. They just ignored it! Stede started to collect new trinkets, and I believe that was as much about giving the audience back the old feeling of the Revenge as it was anything important (not to say it wasn’t also important thematically!!!). Just like Ed going back to his leathers is both Extremely Important thematically and about putting Taika back in the leathers because that’s what Blackbeard should be wearing for the epic final scenes for the sake of visually keeping the show consistent. That’s Blackbeard’s uniform.

· Stede’s frilly little outfits my beloved. God I hope they give him back some of his frippery in season 3. I think they will re: cursed suit BUT his journey this season was about something else, so!

· Ed’s stupid little non-profit non-apology, oh my god. It was so funny. And there is a transition from eps 5 to 6 where Ed is back in his leathers and the crew is more comfortable around him. They didn’t have to have him do a Real Apology, it’s implied it was all settled. What was the timeline? A day? DOESN’T MATTER, BABY, VIBES!!!

· Lots more, I’m sure, but now that I’ve tried to let it all go, I’m remembering less of what I wanted and appreciating what I got!

And, last point here, I think it is also very very very important to remember that a lot of people are normal about this show. In fact, WAY more people are normal about this show than aren’t. And that is EXTREMELY! IMPORTANT!!! because otherwise it wouldn’t be profitable and we all know what would happen then. We are the core of it, to be sure. Without word of mouth that stems from our intensity, this show would not be NEARLY as successful as it is. I truly, truly believe that.

But.

Do normies need deeply emotional discussions dissecting the central relationships? No. What normies need is Ed and Stede running dramatically toward each other on the beach and kissing. And I am happy, so fucking happy, to realize that’s what I need too. I’ve got fanworks for the rest.

I love this fucking show and this fucking fandom and its fucking creators so much. Fuck.

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2

313 notes · View notes

albondiguilla007 · 3 months

Text

So:

I mostly opened this account to talk about Harry Potter with other fans. I need potterhead friends I’m begging you, take pity on me.

✨ First though, here’s a Marauders playlist:

✨ my pinterest :)

Ok, so a bit about me and this blog contents:

✨ We don’t judge here, every ship is welcome

✨But if it’s gay better

✨ I love the golden trio, I won’t stand for ANY kind of SLANDER, not of Ron, not of Hermione, least of all Harry. They are human, and they are good friends with flaws who love each other very much. They are growing up, grieving, taking care of each other and learning about life. I adore their friendship, and fanfics that give a realistic portrayal of their relationship will always be a soft spot of mine. (wholesome one shot)

✨ Hot take: If you have any fanfic recommendation where they are romantically together (the three of them, as in an actual relationship), I would appreciate it very much

✨ Drarry (please) 🥵

✨ Wolfstar (they are my parents) 🐾🌒

✨ Jegulus (depending on the mood) Jegulily thooo 👀

✨ Tomarry? I’M A SLUT FOR TOMARRY (please I need more time travel fanfic recommendations) Some very good ones tho:

Terrible, but Great.

you belong to me (i belong to you).

Of Kings, of Pawns, and of Men. (This one is not time trivel per se but its AMAZING I’m telling ya)

Wear me like a locket around my throat

(all of them are in ao3)

✨ My boy Harry is incredibly underrated on his own series. He is amazing, I love him, I wish him all the happiness in the world. WE NEED MORE FANFICS WHERE THEY PORTRAY ALL HIS MENTAL STRUGGLES AND GRIEVING PROCESSESS. (He’s gone through so much, I don’t buy the way canon just swept everything under the rug and moved on)

✨ Draco Malfoy is a power bottom and you can’t change my mind

✨ Support sophithil on insta

✨ Another soft spot of mine? Fanfics where Harry time travels to a time where his parents are alive or a different dimension all together.

To make it better

Devil’s White Knight

Across the universe

You’re somebody else

(all in ao3 except Across the universe, that’s a short story in fanfic.net)

Other recommendations

✨ My bedtime readings are hardcore Drarry smut with some very questionable dom/sub dynamics

✨ Canon Remus was a bit of a people pleaser with no personality, but I forgive him because fanon, obviously

✨Canon James Potter was a dick, but I forgive him too. He did change a bit after Hogwarts, but I keep hoping he would’ve matured more if he’d had the chance to grow up into an actual adult

✨ Aaron Taylor Johnson and every other version of James Potter is mine, no arguments

✨ NO SNAPE SLANDER. He is an amazing character, and a very complex one at that. He is not supposed to be a good person, but a complicated one with a gray set of values. Y’all do not understand that, and I’m tired of watching Marauders stans be so fucking hypocritical when it comes to him.

Crime and Punishment (an amazing severitus fic on ao3)

✨ August, Cardigan and Betty are about these three idiots (Lily, James and Regulus) and you can’t change my mind. You know the drill, if you have any fanfic recs I’m all ears baby.

83 notes · View notes

saintsenara · 10 months

Note

You mentioned fanon turning barty crouch jr. into an uninteresting character. I don't know much about what the new fanon characterisation has really done with him, but I'm curious for your thoughts on why he's a canonically interesting character. I agree that he is, but it sounds like you might have some interesting thoughts on it that are already fleshed out.

thank you for the ask, @jamesunderwater, and i'm sorry for taking so long to drag myself around to answering this.

as you may have gathered if you’ve read my views on jegulus or wolfstar, the common fanon interpretation of marauders-era characters and i don’t really get on.

this is not a new development - me and goofy fanon sirius have been beefing for over a decade at this point, i fear - but our enmity has taken on a new form since (roughly) 2020, when the emergence of what we might call the modern marauders subfandom brought with it a whole series of expectations about characters, ships, personalities, and appearances in first war stories which, let me state my position immediately, have absolutely nothing to do with the characters as they are in canon.

i could talk about sirius or regulus or james or snape or lupin until the cows come home - as, i’m sure, could many of us - but i also dislike the expectations the marauders subfandom has around its supporting cast. these characters - who largely fall under the categories of women, slytherins, or both - have names that we might recognise from canon, but they are - to all intents and purposes - original characters.

to do some marauders fan defending, i do understand the rationale behind this. hogwarts is a school, and it needs to be filled with the sort of incidental characters that lightning-era writers can pull from the canon text (shoutout to ernie macmillan, the mvp). if you’re writing about lily, then she needs friends - why not have them be alice, marlene, dorcas, emmeline, pandora etc.?

[well, because dumbledore isn’t running a child army. it makes no sense for the entire order of the phoenix to be in the same school year - and the idea that alice is probably around ten years older than lily, that pandora is around the same age as narcissa malfoy and isn’t a pureblood, and that marlene, dorcas, and emmeline are hard-nosed ministry bitches in their fifties who can have mad-eye moody quaking with just a look is something which can be prised from my cold, dead hands.]

and if you’re writing about the epic highs and lows of high-school football going to school during a sectarian conflict, then you need some antagonists. which is to say, you need some slytherins.

the issue i have is that the three key slytherins who seem to have been elevated to principal cast in the marauders pantheon - regulus black, barty crouch jr., and evan rosier - get what can only be called the smol bean treatment. that is, that three teenagers who all canonically join a terror organisation are turned into soft and tiny babies who thought lord voldemort was just feeling silly when he said, ‘my aim is the eradication of the muggleborn population through violent means.’

and even fics which do acknowledge that the three willingly become terrorists often go out of their way to provide justifications for this which don’t contextualise their decision (something which is important - you can’t write about snape becoming a death eater without acknowledging the way that poverty, loneliness, and a sense of hopelessness make someone an easy target of radicalisation) but which minimise it. sometimes, their violence is turned into romantic vengeance - i’ve seen a fair amount of suggestions that barty goes to torture the longbottoms because frank was the auror who killed evan. sometimes, authors imply - or even outright state - that there’s no need to see these boys as aspiring villains: voldemort is right; the class system is good and should be maintained; and purebloods (usually james, sirius, regulus, barty, evan and maybe a token woman or two) should stick together while the half-breeds and the mudbloods go hang.

this - like all aristocracy wank in this fandom - annoys me enough with regulus and evan. but it’s particularly grating when it comes to barty crouch jr. because - unlike evan, who is literally just a name in the text, and regulus, who isn’t much more - he actually has a canon personality.

and it’s fascinating. indeed, i would even go so far as to say that barty crouch jr. is the greatest villain in the harry potter series.

[my apologies to lord voldemort.]

after all, even though he’s been imprisoned under the imperius curse for over a decade, barty is still so lucid and powerful that he is able to:

produce magic capable of tricking the goblet of fire, which is treated by all the adult characters involved as unprecedented.

pull off a year-long impersonation of a man whom dumbledore evidently knows extremely well without being clocked until his mission has been successful, even though his opportunities to observe the real moody can have been virtually non-existent. he is in character within seconds of his ambush on moody’s home - after the intruder-alert dustbins are set off - and is able to persuade ministry personnel who can be presumed to have met moody personally (including both amos diggory and arthur weasley, who appear to know him not only personally, but well) that he is the real deal. he maintains his performance even under close scrutiny from the teaching colleagues he has to interact with daily at hogwarts, despite the fact that he presumably can’t get a great deal out of the real moody, since he’s having to be kept deliberately weak and docile under the imperius curse.

manipulate multiple people into become accessories to his crimes, without ever being suspected of doing so. with the hindsight of knowing who he is, the first defence against the dark arts lesson in goblet of fire, in which ‘moody’ deliberately distresses neville by using the cruciatus curse directly in front of him, before swooping in to be the person to cheer him up so that he can plant information which will help harry win the triwizard tournament and deliver him to voldemort, is chilling. he just gets unlucky that harry has the biggest martyr complex in human history.

commit murder on hogwarts’ grounds without ever being suspected of wrongdoing.

execute lord voldemort’s plan to kidnap harry and use him in his resurrection ritual flawlessly. the plan itself may be convoluted - but dark lords are allowed to have a flair for the dramatic, as a treat - but, crucially, it works, and barty succeeds in every respect.

but, i concede, we’re talking about the adult barty here. perhaps he was once a sweetheart who went unfortunately off the rails after his father sent him to prison and then - in effect - drugged him for years. that wouldn’t be a ridiculous suggestion.

except for the fact that - canonically - the teen barty was just as clever, sly, manipulative, and - above all - ardent in his support for voldemort as his adult self.

at his trial in the early 1980s, young barty gives the performance of a lifetime. he screams, he shakes, he looks terrified of the dementors, he is pale and weak and harmless-looking, he begs his mother to help him, he pleads with his father for mercy, he maintains his innocence as he is dragged off to his cell. he gives off the impression of simply having been in the wrong place at the wrong time so well that harry potter is almost certain that his conviction is illegitimate. so too, it is implied, is albus dumbledore.

indeed, barty plays the part of the wrongfully imprisoned so well that - as canon tells us - he not only influences public opinion to be broadly in favour of his probable innocence (or, at least, his diminished culpability - sirius suggests that the widespread view was that he was probably there, but that he only ended up involved in what was clearly bellatrix’s idea because of his father’s failure to relate to him properly), but also changes public opinion against the government’s anti-death-eater strategy entirely. following his imprisonment, his father - a man who never met an extrajudicial punishment he didn’t like, and whose ruthless approach to dealing with the death eaters in the first war (such as his use of internment for suspected terrorists, his order to aurors to shoot to kill) was, we are told, enormously popular with the wizarding public - is forced to resign in disgrace from his role as head of the department of magical law enforcement. crouch sr. is quietly shuffled off into a boring bureaucratic position, his ambitions to be minister in tatters, and his only way forward to free his son from the prison cell where he is languishing for the crime he very literally did.

[as an aside, i do think that we are supposed to read that bellatrix is the ringleader of the torture of the longbottoms. but, all too often, that gets reduced to her doing everything while rodolphus, rabastan, and barty just stand there gormlessly. they were clearly performing the curses too!]

now, barty’s unusual cunning can - of course - be explained by narrative reasons. the text needs to conceal that he’s the villain (since, as with philosopher’s stone, it wants to imply that the dark lord’s faithful servant at hogwarts is severus snape) until the very end - and this naturally requires dumbledore to not think too hard about whether his good judy alastor is behaving even more strangely than usual.

the text also needs to suggest that he is innocent in order to properly stick the landing on the narrative role of his father - barty crouch sr. as with dolores umbridge in order of the phoenix, crouch sr. exists to show harry (and the reader) that the rot in the wizarding world was not caused by - and will not stop with the defeat of - voldemort. his ruthlessness and inflexibility, his lack of respect for due process, his astonishingly cruel treatment of winky (brutal beyond even the standard way in which wizards abuse their enslaved elves) all serve to teach harry that the anti-voldemort cause can become just as easily corrupted as the disillusioned young men in voldemort’s orbit. the suggestion that crouch sent his own son to azkaban without good reason, simply because he would not deviate from his beliefs, is an important lesson to harry about what ‘justice’ actually means.

but, despite this, barty is also able to pull off his deception because he’s spectacularly talented. it’s not all just narrative.

and his talents are caused by characteristics which aren’t good or bad in and of themselves. he’s clearly very intelligent (he got twelve owls, the series’ benchmark for genius). he’s hyper-observant, creative, adaptable, good under pressure, and possessed of nerves of steel. he shares these traits with other villains in the series - voldemort above all - but he also shares them with plenty of the heroes. harry, for one.

which is to say that all of his personality traits could be put to non-criminal uses. but - as with harry, who is capable of being quite sinister when he wants to be (for example, when he manipulates slughorn into giving up the horcrux memory) - they would give a non-criminal barty an edge. and this doesn’t seem to be present in his standard fanon persona - as sweet and goofy as all marauders-era men - to any great extent.

finally, there is another aspect of barty’s character which is absent from his fanon version - that he clearly has some sort of childhood trauma, but that this does not excuse any of what he does.

even though crouch sr. is right to send him to azkaban, he was clearly also a cold and distant father, who had absolutely no idea how to relate to his son.

[as another aside, this emotional negligence is bad enough without it needing to be written as having been accompanied by extreme physical and/or sexual abuse. there seems to be a real tendency in fan-fiction - not only in marauders-era stuff, although the exaggeration of orion and walburga black into despotic villains is one example of this - to make childhood misery ‘worse’, in order to justify a character’s later actions.]

voldemort demonstrably uses barty’s terrible relationship with crouch sr. (and his absolutely flagrant daddy kink) to groom him into taking the dark mark (not least because there’s otherwise no explanation for why he cheerfully informs him that he too is named after his dad), which he may very well end up taking when he’s still at school. my reading is that he’s recruited to inform on his father - since voldemort would undoubtedly wish to keep the head of the department of magical law enforcement under constant surveillance - and that this is why the dark lord pays him the attention he is so obviously lacking.

but, as with snape and regulus and draco malfoy and all the other young death eaters, barty also colludes in his own radicalisation. voldemort is a master at ensnaring recruits, sure, but he’s also a busy man. he only bothers to make the effort because the clever, creative, cunning, manipulative young man - who wishes to avenge himself on the father who never paid him attention (sound familiar?) - he finds before him is very much determined to become a spectacular part of his terrorist organisation. and stories which feature him owe it to him to give him that dark complexity of character

show the series’ best villain some respect.

#asenora meta #barty crouch jr #characterisation #asks answered

215 notes · View notes

jmagnabo92 · 4 months

Note

So I saw a post on Instagram, and it said:

‘Isn't it funny how James Potter decided to bully and harass a malnourished little boy from an abusive family just for existing, and years later, James' son became a malnourished little boy from an abusive family that bullies him just for existing’

And all the comments were agreeing and saying things like, ‘Karma’, ‘Glad I’m a James Potter hater’, ‘Don’t understand how he has even one fan’

And I was like… what??? Was so tempted to write a whole thing about it but decided the hate I’d get wasn’t worth it. What are your opinions about this?

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK??!!!

That's my initial reaction.

Don't these people know that the sins of the father shall not be visited upon the son?

It's not karma for Harry to suffer for James' mistakes. It's bullshit and I hope that no one that believes that has ever done anything wrong in their lives or their kids shall suffer. AND THERE"S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT THIS BS.

Now, let's point out how else they're wrong.

First of all, I had to re-read the Prince's Tale - and mind you, I did skim it so I could've missed things, but there is NO WHERE that says he was 'malnourished' as a boy. Not a single description said anything was physically wrong with Snape like malnourishment. It talks about his mismatched clothes, and his parents arguing. There's a line about James having an 'air of well-cared for - ness that Snape lacked' but there's NOTHING that he states he was malnourished or even abused.

So that's utter BS. I won't argue about the abuse, but there was no evidence that he was malnourished.

As for the about "just for existing" - I think a lot of people forget that SWM canonically happens *after* James saves Snape's life from Werewolf Remus. The reason that it's easy to figure that out is there is a scene with Snape/Lily arguing about the MM thing and she literally mentions James saving him the other night.

The next scene is SWM.

Now, before get into that importance - I want to point out that in the scene about MM & the saving of Snape, Lily asks, "Why are you so obsessed with them?" and if it was a relentlessly unfair bullying situation there's two obvious answers:

A) he's been bullying me for years

B) I have to obsess so I can get one over on them.

He doesn't say either of those things - you know what he *does* say - he says "Potter fancies you"... and more about 'how great he thinks he is'.... isn't that rather suspicious?

You know what's also suspicious? If Snape's being relentlessly bullied than WHY DOESN"T HIS BEST FRIEND KNOW THE OBVIOUS? Maybe because it wasn't a situation of bully/victim - maybe it was a rivalry like Dumbledore suggested in the first book.

Now, back to the timeline:

So James saves his life and yet says "it's the fact that he exists" - which sounds terrible, right?

Of course it does, but here's the thing - Snape had literally as recently possibly two weeks previously (we don't know *exactly* when but sometime between Nov of 5th year and OWLs) had attempted to (at best) OUT Remus (at worst) KILL Remus - who is ONE of James' BFFs. Now - on top of that - we know that Snape has been obsessed with a theory for ages about Remus. We see this in the MM & Saving conversation - Lily says "I know your theory" with the air of someone that has heard his theories before. Given that he only found out *for sure* within a few days of that conversation that suggests that he has been going after Remus for a while.

So, here we have Snape's attempt to get Remus out or killed and James has every reason to hate him - he's a loyal guy. He believes in his friendships so much it cost his life and literally learned something that could put him behind bars *just to help his friend*. Whatever happened, however it happened, that doesn't matter to James.

What *does* matter is that Snape tried to detrimentally hurt his friend. So he has a reason, but in SWM, he literally *can't* say that. He would be outing Remus and he's not going to do that.

Which means he NEVER did anything *just because he exists* - he had a reason, he just couldn't say it.

Now, why does James have fans?

Because he's a good man. This is the man that did stupid shit when he was a teen, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, but nothing he did was ever on par with the things that Snape was doing - I've got a while post on that.

After he grows up, he joins the Order - to do good for people that he doesn't have to care about, yet does. He does so much good, he becomes a target. In that, he then goes on to give his life for wife and son. And they think this man doesn't deserve fans? What Bullshit is this??

***

ANYWAY, my longass point here is that: They're idiots, and I kind of wish that some people had more thought into the situation. James deserves better.

#james potter #Pro James Potter #Anti Severus Snape #Anti Snape #Meta

137 notes · View notes

peace-love-and-french-toast · 4 months

Text

Severus Snape rant

Disclaimer: I don't support JK Rowling's views and I'm not a TERF. TERFs, DNI for you.

Sorry for ranting, y'all. I'll try to keep things quick (note from the future: be warned. I failed). Spoilers and mentions of friendship toxicity and bullying under the cut.

By the way, for this I am generally talking about regular canon. When I discuss things people think about this, the headcanons are generally assumed to go alongside regular canon to complement it. I understand that there are fix-it fics out there where everyone is happy, and while I love that, I'm talking about how JK Rowling let it play out.

UPDATE:

Don’t interact with this post if you only want to insult me/my writing style. I am not accusing anyone of doing this, but I can see that there is a very definitive downward spiral, and I don’t want to see the bottom of it. However, I am willing to listen to arguments until things turn into personal attacks.

I don’t care that much about Snape: just a few lines on a page. I understand people have strong opinions on him (me too!). That’s fine. But I’m a real person, just like all the people on this platform (well, except bots). Let’s embrace that, and focus on the fact that we are all, in the end, Harry Potter fans.

Kat out.

Let me start with this: Severus Snape shouldn't be with Lily.

To keep to the simple stuff and the things most people can agree on first, no one "deserves" Lily. In this post, I was nearly guilty myself of talking like this, but please keep in mind: Lily Evans is not some kind of consolation prize, something given out to whoever is deemed the most worthy, the most angsty, whatever. Regardless of Snape's virtues (or lack of them: but give me a sec) he won't somehow earn the right to be in a romantic pairing with Lily. In all the stuff on the table in terms of how Lily viewed Snape, she wanted a platonic relationship. So that's part of what I have an issue with: talking about canon as if there was any part of romantic thing on the table. Lily never had a crush on Snape. It was a one-sided thing.

Now, to controversy. Let's address some common reasons for why people say Lily shouldn't have ditched Snape and why these shouldn't excuse his behavior. Keep in mind I'm talking about things that happened before Lily's death, because after death doesn't really matter to her. She's dead by then.

Snape had a bad home/school life.

That's true. But he then chose to continue the cycle of pain by joining a pureblood supremacist group and calling fellow students slurs?

2. The Marauders did some terrible stuff to him.

I really need a disclaimer here. THIS WAS TERRIBLE, AND I HATED IT, AND THE MARAUDERS WERE COMPLETELY IN THE WRONG HERE.

But this post isn't defending the Marauders, it's arguing that Lily was justified in choosing to let go of their friendship.

Anyway, this is an irrelevant excuse for why Lily should remain friends with him, because she thought this was terrible too... and then Severus screamed a slur at her when she was trying to help him. Way to go, Snape.

3. He loved Lily.

Hold up. Stop the clock.

Wut.

Okay, this needs to be a new section. Let's call it:

Being In Love With Someone Doesn't Excuse Your Actions Towards Them

Quick story time, cause this section uses an extensive metaphor. IRL, I used to be best friends with this girl. She was toxic and refused to change.

Her excuses for why I should keep hanging out with her?

Current mental health situation.

Things just "slipped out". (Yeah, Snape LITERALLY USED THIS EXACT EXCUSE)

I was really important to her (So was Lily to Snape)

I stopped being friends with this girl regardless, because her actions harmed my mental health, isolated me, etc.

(And before someone says friendship is different etc. she had a crush on me two Valentine's days in a row and I'm unsure if she still does)

These are all excuses. Let's define that word for a second.

"attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify." -Oxford Languages from Google.

Contrast with an apology, where someone actually tries to make things better. Snape constantly gives excuses. His apology comes much, much too late in the form of begging Lily. Now, with my own toxic friend, she also claimed to want to make things better.

In the case of both Snape and Toxic Friend, they'd continually insisted it wasn't their fault, ignoring the problems in the relationship and not making an effort to fix them. By the time Lily and I broke things off, we'd made up our minds. We turned away and felt good about it, because they negatively impacted our lives.

Maybe Snape was in love. Maybe my friend really wanted to be friends with me. Both are probable.

Still, neither followed through on the steps necessary for a good friendship.

Depersonification, aka Lily is a Person Not A Shiny Toy, Severus

Crack open your books, hit play on the movie, or simply recall as we all remember how Snape looked at Lily.

In the books (won't mention the movies because I didn't watch them) he looks at Lily and Harry sees "undisguised greed" in his eyes. Um...

Snape's fine with hurting Petunia, figuratively and literally.

He ignores what Lily is actually trying to say to him once she tells him what he wants to hear.

And calling her Mudblood. (Can't help myself interrupting here: I myself never 'just accidentally' call someone a racial slur. That's because I don't use them, so they aren't exactly waiting on the tip of my tongue).

All of the things he does are in there for a reason. JK Rowling is trying to unsettle us, and she succeeded. Snape seems to view Lily as an accomplishment, an achievement, a plaything to be admired.

Why?

He never takes Lily's feelings into consideration. Not once until it negatively impacts him. Look at where he comforts Lily: when it looks like they've made a mistake and hurt Petunia.

When Lily gives up on him.

And I know: there was more, there was more, there was more.

Potions homework done together.

Eager chatter between classes.

It's not black and white.

But these are the scenes JK Rowling has decided will give you the best impression of their friendship. She didn't pick tender scenes with cocoa and cookies because that isn't a theme in this friendship.

And onwards to:

They Used To Be Friends, Why Did Lily Stop Talking To Him Like This

It's hard to know what a person is truly like. You only know what people show you, and they hold back the worst of themselves at first. In Lily's first scenes, she doesn't know everything. She doesn't see the greedy looks he gives her. He is a new boy about her age who understands her like nobody else in town could.

Years go by. He calls people like her "Mudblood", he makes friends with awful classmates who do illegal and immoral things and are rumored to be training for war. The other side of the war, the one that kills people.

He shows her the worse sides.

By the time he calls her Mudblood, she has already tried to stop him from going down the wrong path. He's ignored her and ignored her and she finally snaps.

Can you blame her?

This apology seems like yet another excuse, a means to an end of keeping her by his side.

She's had enough.

Conclusion

So concludes the saga of Lily and Severus.

As he makes his decisions and she hers, Lily perishes saving a son whom Snape will later torment in her classes.

Harry grows up.

Snape oversees the creation of a school designed for indoctrination, watching passively as cruciatus curses are dished out. Her son meets him on the battlefield.

Voldemort gets to Snape first.

And thus, Snape meets his end.

And that's it, because things work out like that sometimes. Snape chose his path in life. Lily responded accordingly. And years later, he continued to stay stagnant in character growth, even becoming a child's worst fear from his unequally distributed cruelty.

A note:

If you disagree, feel free to debate me! I enjoy calm discussions. HOWEVER, please remember that we are all, in the end, people with lives and feelings, so don’t scream at me if you don’t agree with what I’ve said here.

#anti severus snape #long post #rant post #toxic relationship #don’t hate me #anti snily

90 notes · View notes

im-in-a-love-cult · 8 months

Text

MARAUDERS HCS!!

the original 4 <33

James

So naturally funny. Can literally put a smile on anyones face

feminist.

‘It’s the 70s he wouldn’t be a big feminist!!’ did i ask?? 🤨

British English/Indian

first years are scared of him when they 1st join but they warm up to him almost immediately

has a whole fan club by the 1st years

BEST HUGS ‼️‼️

will lit hug u if you ask him even if u don’t know him

‘hey james can i have a hu-‘ his arms are already around u.

either str8 or pansexual no in between

if someone calls lit anyone pretty he’s like ‘I can see it’ (unless it’s Snape 😾😾)

such a big hypeman

can match energy so well

Sirius

so beautiful

like unnecessarily beautiful

Japanese/British English /French

his french accent isn’t as strong as Reggies

Nobody knows how his lungs aren’t pure crust with how much he smokes ngl

Bisexual

he teases people but he never actually means it

unless he’s teasing snivellus

massive flirt

loves peculiar people

finds them endearing

that’s why he approved of Pandora

Cuz she’s kind and endearing

loves all his friends so much

no boundaries he just loves them

softest hair ever

girls/people with long hair constantly asking his routine

loves being extra flamboyant

God i could talk about him for hours

Remus

he’s usually soft with people but if he’s pissed off he’s a moody bastard

Ugly-hot

loser energy

sorry i’m just bullying him 💀💀

when he accidentally buys a jumper that’s too scratchy he’s genuinely disappointed

bro goes through mild depressions over jumpers

Welsh/British English

never cries but when he does he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it

Roadman 🔥💀💀

Tall but lanky

also he has really bad posture

/ is him basically

always spills his tea

it’s a problem

likes physical contact with people he’s close with hates it with people he isn’t

loves it with Sirius 😼😼

Full on homosexual

besties with Lily

it took a bit for him to warm up to her tho

JUMPY

he’s so AUHSIWHUAG

Peter

‘he’s so nice and quiet 🥺🥺’ THAT MAN IS A MENACE AND YK IT

ok maybe just around his friends BUT POINT STILL STANDS😾

demiromantic

just wants to sleep

relatable

happy doing his own shit but happy around his friends too

sad when James calls Sirius his best friend and not him

hatesss attention being on him

feels like the outcast sometimes

he’s so me wtf

herbology is his fav subject

baby face

SO SCARED OF NEEDLES HE DOESNT KNOW HOW SIRIUS DOENST THROW UP GETTING HIS TATTOOS AND PIERCINGS

cannot seem to find the right haircut

strangely good at breakdancing??

it goes through him when someone cracks their knuckles

in conclusion he is me i am him

apart from the knuckles part i crack mine 😿😿

TELL ME IF YALL WANT MORE WITH DIFFERENT CHARACTERS 💕💕

111 notes · View notes

scarrletmoon · 8 months

Note

it's izzy hands it's kylo ren it's billy from stranger things it's snape it's draco it's loki circa 2012-2014 it's a REPEATED PATTERN throughout all of fandom of an antagonistic white guy getting a devoted fanbase that is both disproportionate to his importance in the story and also misunderstands the white guy's role as an antagonist. they think their mean little guy is a misunderstood victim and they base their entire fandom experience around him. and then in season 2 ofmd went and redeemed izzy before killing him off to further ed's arc, something that is a solid choice from a technical writing standpoint but from a fandom perspective it built the izzy fans up into thinking they were right about how izzy has never been homophobic, izzy is a poor downtrodden abuse victim, and from day one izzy has been a protector and the only competent guy around and a loyal and dutiful first mate. and possibly the most significant part is that so many izzy fans have accidentally and unknowingly tricked themselves into thinking that izzy is a main character bc their fandom engagement revolves so heavily around izzy that they forgot the actual show itself doesn't, so they were completely blindsided by a death that has been foreshadowed since season one ("im not dying, not for that twat and not for you" and "only retirement we get is death" and the whole "plumb the depths, man" sequence where izzy was talking to stede through a death shroud ffs). and i want so bad to just ignore it but we literally got a queer romcom centered around an interracial couple and an incredibly diverse cast and an indigenous main character and a diverse writer's room and the season ended on a happy note and it's all about queer joy AND YET. soooooooo much of the post-season discussion has to center around the white side character!!! even in death izzy hands takes up a disproportionate amount of the fandom conversation and im exhausted. it's every fandom! every fucking time!! this isnt anything new this is the same time-honored fandom tradition of white man favoritism YET A-FUCKING-GAIN and im SO FUCKING TIRED OF IT!!!!!!!!!

(i get so scared when i turn on anon bc i’ve consistently gotten such shitty, cowardly messages through it but i’m glad this isn’t one of them lmao)

i know i’ve said this 374748 times but the last time i made the kylo ren/snape/white villain connection on twitter (i mean that’s on me, it’s twitter) i had people legit furious with me for calling them nazis which………..i literally never said

and i get the frustration. trust me, I GET IT. the white villain problem smashes right into white fragility and makes it almost impossible to talk about any of it. it means, like you said, that we’re talking about a fucking white side character in cast of amazing, nonwhite talent, because some people can’t handle confronting the fact that whiteness insulates them from the realities of racism, and that their ignorance and hostility makes them active participants in white supremacy

(and it’s really hard to explain this to people who’ve been taught that racism is when slurs and white klan hoods, because then they’ll say and do the most vile shit and CRY or fight you when you gently try to explain the racist shit they just did)

and because fandom is very queer as well as very white, we also have to contend with the kinds of white people who think that queerness somehow negates their whiteness. that they can’t express their privilege in contexts involving POC. that we’re making shit up to be victims and to minimize their pain on purpose. and time and time again, i have had my queerness erased by white people, so they feel comfortable ignoring criticism i only ever shared bc i was hoping for something better

i’ve said it again and again and again and AGAIN that it’s ESPECIALLY depressing seeing white people close ranks in ofmd fandom especially BECAUSE it has such a diverse cast and doesn’t shy away from discussing racism in all the ways it manifests. like, most of the racism in the show isn’t even subtle and y’all STILL elected to ignore it? do y’all not feel ANY shame about that?

and some of them don’t! bc they think we’re infiltrators. bc they’re only a few steps removed from “they will not replace us” as they see more POC try to join fannish spaces. and they’ll pretend they’re not trying to push us out bc they’re marginalized in other ways — deliberately ignoring the fact that they’re also crushing their fellow queer, disabled and marginalized community

so you’re tired? yeah. me the fuck too. we deserve so much better

#scarrlet answers

69 notes · View notes

ashshmee · 1 month

Text

olivia rodrigo is secretly regulily (aka how i think every one of her songs relates to lily evans and regulus black)

brutal - “i’m so sick of seventeen, where’s my fucking tonnage dream” you can’t tell me this isn’t regulus as a death eater. if choices was a tv show, i would play this song as his intro after the time jump and you can’t tell me it wouldn’t SLAP

traitor - i’m not a big fan of a jegulily cheating fic because i want them all to kiss eachother on the mouth in succession, but i have read some fics where lily and james are together but then he leaves to be with regulus, so i think this song could be from lily’s perspective in a situation like that. or vice versa!

drivers license - sounds like lily being betrayed by regulus joining the death eaters and the cult against people like her tbh

1 step forward, 3 steps back - i feel like this song would be what it would be like to date regulus black. i love him, but his partners would never know where he’s at in a relationship.

deja vu - again i feel like this could be about either regulus or lily being jealous or resentful of the other once they go and be in a relationship with james. i find them to be really similar characters in a lot of ways, so i think it suits it really well

enough for you - the title says it all. this is a regulus black anthem.

happier - another potential lily/regulus/james triangle angst situation

jealousy, jealousy- i see this one for lily because growing up with a sister and living with girls all the time i think it would be really easy to compare yourself to them a lot. and also when you are in such close proximity to people you tend to learn a lot about them, see what kind of lives they lead, and end up feeling like you fall short in comparison.

hope ur ok - “well i hope you know how proud i am you were created, with the courage to unlearn all of their hatred” is actually lily evans talking to regulus black actually

all american bitch - i headcanon lily as half american sooo this is too perfect! also like the criticism of the ideals of the perfect woman play into the way lily’s character is often reduced to just a mother when she can be so much more

bad idea right? - regulus would definitely pull something like this, be so for real

vampire - i’m thinking this could be about lily and snape actually but idk

lacy - lily’s lacy is petunia and regulus’s lacy is sirius i will die on this hill

ballad of a homeschool girl - regulus regulus regulus!! regulus feeling like everyone got the guidebook of life and he never did

making the bed - regulus :( he’s so tired of being the girl that he is

logical - hear me out, regulus lying to lily and james that he will leave his family for them. this song would be them in the aftermath realizing just how he never intended to fight for them to be able to stay together

get him back! - wait why did i just imagine a fic where lily and regulus both have the same ex and somehow they meet eachother and are like omg that dude sucked so then they team up together to get him back and they do all the things (key his car, kiss his face with an uppercut, etc.) but as they do they fall in love with each other and their shared devious abilities and what if the ex was james and instead of getting him back they get him back and then jegulily happens?

love is embarrassing - regulus would absolutely think live is embarrassing and that’s why he’s always in denial

the grudge - i think i’ve heard people say the grudge from lily’s perspective is about severus and the grudge from reg’s perspective is about sirius and i support this message

pretty isn’t pretty - okay so i think most people imagine regulus as being really pretty, and i almost feel like pretty people put so much identity in their beauty that it feels like all they are worth. and so when being just pretty isn’t enough, it leaves you being not enough, which again is regulus black’s inner monologue

teenage dream - this is just soooo marauders coded of a song, works for reg, lily, and everyone else

obsessed- this would also go crazy as a jegulily ah where one of them dated james first and then broke up, then he gets together with the other and they become obsessed with the ex

girl i’ve always been - lily and snake friendship song for sure

scared of my guitar - aside from the guitar part, i think this song feels very regulus coded like “if i was brave and noble like you, id have the nerve to stop stringing you along”

so american - again half american lily serenading either her french boyfriend regulus or her british boyfriend james

#regulus black #lily evans #regulily #jegulily #waterlily #stargazer #sunflowerseeker #sunstargazer

27 notes · View notes

slu7formen · 8 months

Note

HEY HEHEGE IK I JUST SENT IN A REQUEST but can i pretty please have another slytherin reader x ced sickfic😭😭😭😔😔😔 this cold is kicking my ass rn i need ced to take care of me🤞 how bout if the reader is like stubborn denying she’s sick but ced is a casual dom taking care of her and reader just complies when he gives her the stern look😫😫 and he’s worried sick not letting her out of bed n stuff omg i want someone to scold me for being sick ffs im lonely as hell. also thank you sm for the last request i made you r a godsend🥰🥰

also can i know what to call you pls i feel rather awkward calling you, well, you. love you tho 💋💋 i’m confident im ur biggest fan if there’s no appreciater of ur work then im probably dead in a ditch somewhere

you’re always requesting and I think that’s just so sweet 🥹 thank u ! also, had so much fun writing this.

Cedric taking care of you when you’re sick <3

slu7formen’s masterlist | cedric diggory masterlist

Sometimes Cedric hated how stubborn you were. Like, really, he truly felt that you behaved like a child that tried to get everything their own way and everything else was just wrong.

He noticed. It was not fucking hard to notice that you were about to catch the worst flu of your life; you looked so sick you could easily be mistaken for someone who was dragon pox. Your sore throat, the pain in your chest, the phlegm in your chest when you coughed, and the sneezing. And still, you were bold enough to lie to his face.

“I’m fine” you affirmed, followed by a small sneeze. Cedric raised his eyebrows at you, you rolled your eyes. “Seriously, it’s nothing”

“It’s nothing?” Cedric raised his voice, looking at you in disbelief. “Honey, you can’t even talk without choking in your own phlegm”

“Don’t overreact” you bit back. “I said I’m fine”

He didn’t want to fight. Whenever you did, it was because most of the time, you behaved like the most stubborn person ever… but he just relaxed. Maybe you could get better, maybe you were right this time.

Of course you weren’t right. Do you really believe that you’re ever gonna prove Cedric wrong?

The next morning your body was hurting, swollen and sore everywhere and constantly groaning as you sat down in chairs during classes. Cedric noticed every single time.

“Can you please let me take you to the Emergency Wing?” he had whispered to you once Snape had walked past you two.

“No” you argued.

“You’re not even writing there” he pointed to your hand, where the ink had dropped a few drops since you just lifted your wrist in the air, without writing anything.

“Cedric” you called. You rarely called him by his name, it was always ‘Ced’ to him, unless you were mad. “I’m fine. Stop it”

He let it pass just one more day, but when you didn’t even show up to your first class the next morning, he truly started to get mad.

You woke up with him sitting at the edge of your bed. You gasped as you sat on the bed, desperate and confused. “What time is it?” you asked, already trying to get out of bed.

“Don’t worry, you’ve missed classes already” he interrupted. You sat on the bed, angry.

“I what!?” you yelled, as painful as it was for you to do so.

“You’re staying in bed” he demanded, big arms crossed over his chest as he stood up, standing in front of your weak body like a giant statue, demanding you to stay where you are.

But of course, you had to complain.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” you stood up and pushed his shoulder, walking past him. “I’m f-…” before you could reach the door, an invisible force bounced you back into your place. You scoffed in disbelief, and Cedric grinned, satisfied. You tried to walk again, but the same bouncy feeling hit your body, much harder this time.

“Imperturbable Charm” he explained. “You’re not getting out of this room”

“Imperturbable-, where’s my wand?” you walked towards him, almost hitting your chest to his, even though the scene was not threatening at all. To Cedric’s eyes, it looked quite funny. You, all red nose and sore throat, smaller than him, trying to act angry at him. Yeah, as if he would let you win this time.

“I’m not giving you your wand. You’re staying inside this room, so do as I say, and go to bed”

You scoffed, crossing your arms over your chest. “No”

“Oh?” he dared, raising both eyebrows and lowering his head. He studied your facial expressions for a moment before speaking again. “Baby, that wasn’t a question. Let me take care of you, and go to bed”

You bit the inside of your cheek. His grey eyes were working their way inside your brain; you fucking hated it and loved it at the same time. You groaned when you slowly saw his satisfied smirk grow on his face, he knew he already won.

Once you got yourself covered in bed again, he walked to the nightstand next to your bed. On top of it, there was a small ceramic bowl with a brown liquid inside, it smelled good. He grabbed it carefully and handed it to you. “It’s chicken and pumpkin soup” he explained. He slowly placed it over your lap, instantly feeling the heat grow over your thighs, it was still hot.

He then squat down and took his leather bag, the one you gifted him just a few months ago. He opened it, and took one small glass bottle, placing it at your small nightstand bed. “And this,” he pointed to the horrible red liquid “is Pepperup Potion. You have to drink it. Madame Pomfrey said it’s just a common cold that you have, but since you’ve been like this for days, if you’re not better by tomorrow morning, you’ll have to stay at the Emergency Wing”

You gulped, looked down at the hot soup, and then back at him. “Okay” you said in a small voice. Cedric sighed heavily before taking a spoon and sitting in front of you at the bed, next to your thighs. You tried to take it, but he quickly backed it up. He served some soup on the spoon, making sure that a small piece of chicken stayed there, he knew how much you loved to have in the first bite… or drink.

“Open” he demanded. You did so, and the warm and salty taste of the soup felt good against your tongue, already satisfied with your food for the first time in three days. You didn’t say anything, just letting your boyfriend put food into your mouth as he placed his free hand over your thigh, squeezing and soothing up and down.

“Thank you” you said after taking one particular big spoon of soup. “And, I’m sorry for being stubborn… and for not letting you take care of me”

He snorted. “It’s okay, angel” he replied. He knew how much you loved it when he called you that. “I know how hard that skull of yours can be sometimes”

You rolled your eyes. “Shut up” you laughed. He forced you into taking more of your food before it gets cold. “You shouldn’t be doing this. I can take care of myself”

“No one takes cares of you better than I do” he took the bowl out of your legs and placed it over the table.

“It’s not like I have a choice. You locked me up here”

He moved closer to you. “And don’t you like it?” he asked. “You and me, locked inside your dorm-…”

“Ced!” you gasped in disbelief before he bursted out laughing. “You’re supposed to be taking care of me, remember?”

“Excuse me, am I not doing it?”

You placed a hand at the back of his neck, slightly running your fingers through his scalp. “No. I would say you’re more of a distraction”

His face got closer to yours. “Am I?” he leaned in, but you backed up, surprise.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll get sick too?”

“I really don’t care” he said before softly placing your lips over yours. Kissing Cedric always felt like kissing the smoothest and plushiest cloud. His lips were warm, and the way he captured your lips between yours was always the hardest thing to separate from whenever you broke the kiss. If you could, you’d kiss him forever.

He leaned back and placed his forehead on yours. “Want me to give you a massage?” he asked.

“Yes, please” you groaned. He laughed.

“Okay, okay” he stood up “But before that… your medicine” he took the glass bottle and shook it in his hand.

“Nooo” you whined, hiding under the covers.

“You have to drink it, honey” he tried to uncover you, which was already hard enough since your hands gripped onto the sheets with amazing strength.

“No!”

“You won’t get better unless you drink it”

“I already feel better” you lied.

Cedric found your head hidden under the blanket and gave it a light smack. “Liar” he panted.

After fighting for some time, Cedric promised you a chocolate frog after the medicine. He stayed with you for the rest of the day, only going to his own room when your roommates came back to your dorm to sleep, not leaving without kissing you first, and getting rid of the charm he had put around your bed.

It still felt weird when Cedric took care of you like this. You knew he was someone that cared for the people he loved, but you never thought it would go as far as staying with you in bed for a whole day, missing classes and risking himself on getting sick too.

But the truth was, Cedric loved you more than anything in this world. Taking care of you was the least thing he could do after you agreed in giving your heart and soul to him.

Is it a bad time for me to ask you to go check on my new ethan landry one shot ? 🥹

#cedric diggory #cedric diggory x fem!reader #cedric diggory x reader #cedric diggory x y/n #cedric diggory x you #cedric x y/n #cedric #cedric diggory x female reader #cedric x you #cedric x fem!reader #cedric diggory blurb #cedric diggory imagine #cedric deserved better #cedric x reader #cedric x oc

140 notes · View notes

moonlightdancer26 · 7 months

Note

I'm an ex-marauders fan at this point, but haven't yet worked up the nerve to leave :( Wish me luck.

The marauders fandom promises acceptance and tolerance and lighthearted fun, but as soon as Severus comes up, the previously rosy atmosphere turns downright ugly. I've seen so many marauders fans posting or reblogging about how “your trauma is valid”, how “intentions don’t matter if you hurt someone”, and how “apologies don’t count if they’re coupled with an excuse”… who also go out of their way to justify the ‘prank’ because Sirius didn’t /mean/ to almost kill Snape, and how it’s really all Snape’s fault, and why can’t he get over it already since the marauders clearly became better people (even though Snape never received any kind of apology or any indication that they regretted their behavior)?

And these posts live side by side on their dash? Idk just needed to vent as i figure out where to go next in this fandom (or maybe another one altogether)...

WTF THIS ASK WAS FROM SEPTEMBER 😭😭 I’M SO SORRY I SWEAR I’VE BEEN SO EXCITED TO ANSWER YOUR ASK BUT I GOT TOO BUSY AND ALWAYS POSTPONED IT 😭

Anyway, I totally wish you luck anon. It’s hard switching fandoms and building up the courage to “move to the other side,” but I can tell you that it is 100% worth it when you realise how much the Snapedom differs from the Marauders fandom! As someone who’s been in the fandom for many years, seen what both sides are like, and has a bunch of friends (both online and irl) who don’t always share the same opinion, I can safely say that we are generally far more accepting of different opinions than the Marauders fandom. We tend to steer clear of them because they’re.. very persistent about their opinions and find it amusing to purposefully mistag their anti-Snape posts or to scroll through pro-Snape/anti-Marauders tags and attack the posters. But if you’re not like that and you can accept not always agreeing with friends or fandom members, then we’ll welcome you with open arms <3

And honestly I agree, I’ve seen Marauder stans make excellent and detailed analyses of their favourite characters and articulate their arguments greatly. But then all that reading comprehension shoots out the window when it comes to Snape, and you suddenly see them brush him off as nothing more than a “obsessed incel nazi” and call it a day. I’ve seen similar things happen with Snape fans as well, and I completely understand how you feel.

All I can say is: Just leave the Marauders fandom. Either announce it with a post and say that you no longer wish to be in the Marauders fandom or want to switch to the Snape fandom. Or if you want, you can create another blog altogether. The important thing is that you do it now and get it over with, because simply reading your ask and knowing how it’s negatively affecting you really upsets me. This ask was sent around 2 months ago, so I hope that by now you’ve done something about it, but if you haven’t, this is what I think about the whole situation. I wish you the best ❤️❤️ and if you, or anyone else who’s struggling with anything similar, want to DM me and talk about this, don’t hesitate to do so.

#anti marauders fandom #anti toxic fandoms #anti marauderfen #anti marauder stans #anti snaters #severus snape #pro snape #pro severus snape #snape #harry potter #hp #ask #asks

67 notes · View notes

monstaxtrology · 2 months

Text

alsksnjssjndjdn ok i think im extra annoyed bc I’ve seen the same person spam posting in multiple communities im also a part of but being so illogical and idk they’re like combative while being desperate for praise and attention????

Basically I just saw some hardcore Snape fan (I’m talking posting 100000x times a day on Snape centric social media spaces to the point of tedium… I finally just blocked them bc I was sick of their echo chamber-esque posts clogging up my feed) talk about being vehemently pro life and mocking pro choice people and I just ???????????? What kind of mental disconnect—

Way to COMPLETELY misunderstand his character. His entire LIFE was defined by the shitty choices made by him as a young adult and the people around him.

He spent 38 years suffocating and choking on mistakes and decisions made by other people and it killed him in the end. HE OF ALL PEOPLE would be proudly pro choice.

If he were to have a pregnant partner, he would NEVER EVER force them to have the child if they didn’t want to. That just wouldn’t align with his own experiences.

He would never want to take away that kind of choice from them, even if he himself wanted to have children. Full stop. Like bro please you need to do some critical thinking 😭

Ok rant over 👌🏻 out of sight out of mind

#pro Severus Snape #severus snape #pro choice #anti marauders

22 notes · View notes

saintsenara · 11 months

Note

are you still doing ur asks abt the ships? if u are what r ur thoughts on wolfstar? if not have a very good day!

thank you very much for the ask anon - and thank you in particular for leading me into danger...

my answer to this is going to be - and wolfstar shippers keep calm please - similar to my jegulus one. which means the tldr is: write what you want, but i’m unlikely to read it, especially if you don’t acknowledge the difference between canon and fanon.

i have no aversion to wolfstar coming up as a background ship [let them be happy while harry/anyone are having drama, i’m all for it] but i generally don’t search out fics in which wolfstar is [one of] the central pairing(s) and tend only to read wolfstar-centric stuff if it’s written or recommended by someone whose opinion i trust.

this isn’t because i think the pairing is unfeasible [the canonical sirius and remus very much have the vibes of people who have enjoyed each other’s bodies…] but because the community which has built up around wolfstar, both among "original wolfstar, y’know, like in canon" fans and their sworn enemies"‘marauders fandom, canon who?" fans, largely expects certain tropes and characterisations which divorce the characters from what i personally think is interesting about them.

the most egregious of these tropes, in my opinion, is the fact that wolfstar which purports to be canon-compliant or which follows the canon timeline deals so infrequently with the fact that both remus and sirius have such little trust in each other that they believed utterly sincerely that the other was a death eater.

it’s crucial that we understand the profundity of this suspicion and - therefore - what it says about the fragility of the loyalty between them prior to 1980-81. this is not a brief flash of distrust in a high-pressure couple of days at the end of october. the evidence of canon is that we’re talking about a period of months - if not a full year - in which remus and sirius not only think it justifiable to doubt the other’s loyalties, but also seem to be acting on that doubt to try to get the other in trouble.

harry is born in july 1980, at a point when voldemort has all but won the war. severus snape defects to the order at some point relatively soon after this, when voldemort decides that the potters are the family referred to in the prophecy. peter pettigrew then defects to the death eaters in the autumn of 1980 [which we know because sirius says in prisoner of azkaban that he was spying for a full year before voldemort’s fall].

snape then evidently tells dumbledore that there is a spy in the order - although he clearly doesn’t, despite a common accusation levelled against him, know this is pettigrew, since the voldemort of the first war has apparently heard of operational security, unlike his resurrected counterpart - and this leads dumbledore to demand a restriction on james and lily’s movements until - by august 1981 [the plausible date of lily’s letter to sirius in deathly hallows] - they are basically under house arrest. the implication of canon is that, by this summer at the very latest, james and lily are aware they’re being spied on, from which i think it’s reasonable to infer three things: that dumbledore has begun to suspect that sirius is the spy over the opening half of 1981; that remus, who canonically always trusts dumbledore’s judgements, uses this to confirm his own suspicions about sirius; and that sirius, whose canonical relationship with dumbledore has an undercurrent of unease, especially in order of the phoenix, picks up on this and assumes remus is briefing dumbledore against him. i think it’s also reasonable to infer that the only person convinced there isn’t a spy among his close friends is james.

peter visits the potters’ safe-house and is aware of its address, so we can assume remus and sirius are the same. by october 1981, however, there are clearly concerns that james and lily’s whereabouts are known to the death eaters - perhaps also accompanied by information from snape that voldemort, who loves a bit of symbolism, has selected halloween as the day he will strike - which trigger dumbledore’s advice that they perform the fidelius charm. dumbledore’s unease when james picks sirius as secret keeper is confirmation that he had identified sirius as the spy. that remus is never suggested as a potential candidate is confirmation that sirius believes him to be the spy - and possibly also that james is beginning to think his best friend might be onto something [i always wonder if remus’ bitterness when accusing james of being too trusting in deathly hallows is a flash of self-loathing about the fact that james didn’t trust him]. sirius then persuades james to use peter and, within a week of the charm being performed, james and lily are dead, peter has disappeared, and sirius is in azkaban.

[as an aside here, i don’t love the amount of dumbledore bashing in wolfstar, and i think it’s worth doing some dumbledore defence: sirius’ internment in azkaban without trial - a reference to an actual historical event, if you were thinking it sounded far-fetched - is not dumbledore’s fault. the wizengamot acts on dumbledore’s credible belief that sirius was the secret keeper, while sirius - who is cackling his head off the whole time - refuses to speak in his own defence. similarly, dumbledore does not deny sirius access to harry (via hagrid) when he arrives, distraught, in godric’s hollow because he’s contrived a machiavellian plan to keep harry alone and unloved with the dursleys instead of with his true family, but because all the evidence he has available to him is that harry’s life is in danger at sirius’ hands.]

so sirius spends the next twelve years in azkaban, with remus clearly nowhere near his mind. that he stays in prison, and only escapes when he has an unimpeachable chance to get his revenge and protect harry, is because he - like his narrative mirror, snape - is so haunted by his role [indirect, but he canonically thinks that he essentially cast the killing curse himself] in the death of someone he fiercely loved that he considers azkaban a punishment he deserves.

this links to the next issue i have with a lot of wolfstar: that the defining force in both remus and sirius’ lives is james, not each other.

the dynamic of the marauders is frequently reduced to the following: wolfstar, who are best friends and lovers it would take the heat-death of the universe to pull apart; james and whichever romantic partner the story wishes to pair him with, who are the same; and peter, who is either there and completely futile, or is replaced with a fanonised female character [dorcas, marlene, alice etc. - none of whom, may i say, it makes sense to have in the same school year as the marauders, dumbledore is not actually running the order as a gang of child soldiers] or a woobiefied death eater [regulus black, barty crouch jr., evan rosier etc.].

but in canon, a different dynamic is clear. james is the lynchpin of the marauders’ world, the anchoring point to all their senses of self; and the moment he is out of the picture no bonds of loyalty remain among the other three. [it’s tempting to imagine that remus always harbours a belief that sirius is innocent, but i think that this would be less due to an unconditional affection for his friend and more due to the fact that his own self-loathing needs to believe that he couldn’t have stopped james and lily dying; which he should have done if sirius really was the culprit, since he clearly suspected he was a death eater].

if you asked remus, sirius, and peter, clearly each of them would describe james as their best friend [even though james’ eyes are only for sirius - he only has one best man, and harry only has one godfather], but their relationships with each other outside of james are less clearly defined, at least before sirius and remus are the only two left.

this doesn’t prevent pre-1981 [or james lives au] wolfstar - your boyfriend and your best friend being different people is fine, obviously - but it is going to change the dynamic between them in ways i think are significant and which i would like to see explored more, particularly in fics which acknowledge that - for remus and sirius - this dynamic might not lead to the healthiest relationship…

for example, during their schooldays, wolfstar are likely to talk to each other through james, rather than james being surplus to the flirtatious dynamic between them; remus is likely to feel awkward or insecure about the fact that sirius - whose personality is closer to james’ than his - is so happy and gregarious in james’ company; sirius is likely to resent remus’ tendency to stay out of the action, since the fact that he and james mutually encourage each other in their exploits is key to their relationship; remus is likely to resent the fact that sirius is treated by the potters as a second son, while he isn’t, and so on.

during the first war, even if we remove the fact they suspect each other of spying from the equation, they will clash over how to protect james - and remus will undoubtedly take this to mean that sirius cares more for james than for him. during the second war, the long shadow of james - so painful that remus can still barely talk about him, while sirius wants to do nothing but - will hover over everything.

and this leads on to the third reason i generally don’t enjoy wolfstar: that the complicated threads of their canon personalities are removed or reduced to irrelevance to make them fit fanon which has no basis in the books.

now, i’m not going to get into appearance discourse here, although yes, i prefer a tall sirius who tends to wear wizarding clothing and has never heard a single cool piece of muggle music in his life, and i prefer a hollowed and world-weary remus who doesn’t have visible scars. i think background discourse is slightly more important: a great deal of sirius is lost if he is turned into someone who likes being pureblood, who feels more comfortable around his "own kind", or who aspires to sit on the hereditary wizengamot; a great deal of remus is lost if he is turned into someone who didn’t grow up in a loving home with parents who did their best, but whose inability to give him the childhood he really deserved in the face of the prejudice against werewolves in the wizarding world encouraged his absurd gratitude towards anyone who made even a half-hearted effort to act in his interests.

all of my preferred aspects of characterisation are canon-compliant. but deviating from canon is not a moral failing. the term is more flexible than many of its defenders acknowledge, and people are at perfect liberty to imagine that characters look, identify, or behave differently than they do in the canon narrative without that automatically bringing accusations of writing them out-of-character [after all, it’s clear in the books that both harry and hermione are white, but art and fics which portray them as a different race can still meaningfully be described as canon-compliant if that's an aim they're written to have].

similarly, rejecting canon compliance entirely is just as fine - i think you should indicate to your readers if you’re doing that, but i’m capable of using the back button and moving on with my life if you don’t.

the only hard and fast rule is don’t seek out people who do things differently to you and insult them directly, although i would also suggest that it’s worthwhile to spend a bit of time in introspection about how lots of popular wolfstar and the fandom around it - like the fandom around all slash ships - portrays queerness in ways which are heteronormative [i.e. exclusively equating bottoming with femininity] and portrays women in ways which are misogynistic [i.e. how tonks is often treated in wolfstar discourse].

however, with this said, i think there is a difference between rejecting canon compliance and yet still writing the characters in ways which feel connected in interesting ways to their complex canon selves, and just writing original characters named sirius black and remus lupin.

because i just cannot get on board with a remus who is written as the cleverest one of the four, as assertive and direct instead of avoidant and passive-aggressive, as anything other than incredibly selfish, as anything other than an extreme people-pleaser, as being soft and sensitive [his mild manner hides the fact that he is incredibly cold and calculating - this is a man who is prepared to execute wormtail in front of three children mere minutes after learning he’s still alive], as majorly regretting the snape-versus-werewolf incident [he loves it! snape is terrified of him! he downplays it constantly!], or as functioning as the moral heart of the marauders [when sirius says in order of the phoenix that remus tried to restrain their bullying of snape, he is doing it to make remus - who is incapable of self-criticism - feel better in the face of harry’s anger] when he is in fact quite morally cowardly.

and i cannot get on board with a sirius who is written as a goofy himbo, as a constant flirt and womaniser [more grey-ace sirius, i would like to see it], as the world’s wokest king [a man who’s upset his slave isn’t sufficiently deferential to him isn’t someone who’s going to speak in queer theory buzzwords - this, of course, doesn’t prevent sirius being written as queer, non-binary, trans, femme, and so on, it just means that authors have to deal with the fact that sirius’ way of existing as any of these things will be human, rather than perfect], as a small bean unable to take care of himself [he escapes from prison and swims across the north sea! he charges into danger at the drop of a hat!], as anything other than incandescently loyal to james and harry, as - after james’ death - anything other than completely wrecked by guilt over the fact he caused it, as best friends with his brother and his gang of slytherins, or as lacking the fundamental arrogance and cruelty which make him so interesting.

and wolfstar can work, absolutely, when these things are taken into account. i find the idea of second war remus and sirius, stuck in grimmauld place together, buying harry a joint christmas present, the last survivors in a generation completely hollowed out by loss, incredibly moving. remus' choice to self-destruct in half-blood prince - having lost sirius so soon after having found him again - does, i think, justifiably indicate a change in their relationship during order of the phoenix which can be seen as romantic. i find the idea of first war remus and sirius, each in love with a man they think is a spy, wonderfully bittersweet. i find the idea of school-aged remus pining desperately for a friend who is head-over-heels in love with james to be, quite frankly, canon.

and i also think that two original characters called sirius black and remus lupin can do whatever they want - i’ll just be closing my eyes, pretending i cannot see, and leaving them to it.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #wolfstar #sirius black #remus lupin #i am once again in danger

214 notes · View notes

insomniacaesthetic · 2 years

Note

Hello! Would you be able to write Severus with an autistic reader?

YES! I’m so glad somebody asked me for this.

Disclaimer: although I am not formally diagnosed, my therapist and I both believe I am somewhere on the spectrum so I hope I can do this prompt justice. But it will mostly be based on my experience. Feel free to tag me in or reblog with your own headcanons with this prompt too pls.

Headcanons of Severus Snape with an autistic partner.

Gender neutral

Enjoy this gif of Snape stimming

Severus would do really well with an autistic partner. Especially since I headcanon that he’s neurodivergent as well.

He loves to hear you talk about your special interest. Whatever it may be, he’ll listen to you discuss it for hours. He’ll even do his own research so he can bring it up with you.

Feeling overstimulated? He’ll wrap you up in his cloak and hold you. His cloak has the most soothing texture that calms you instantly. Severus also naturally smells good without the use overwhelming colognes or fragrances so his hugs are always welcome.

If you take medication, he’d be the one to remind you especially if you had the tendency to forget. He’d do this with water and food. Not in a controlling or overbearing way. He just wants to make sure you’re okay.

Severus is no stranger to fidgeting or stimming so there’s no need to worry about him asking you “what are you doing?” In fact, he quite enjoys when you mess with the buttons on his frock coat.

You got a safety food? Best believe he’s stocking up on that. Perfect for those times you show up in the great hall and there’s nothing there that makes you want to eat. Or those days when the executive dysfunction is high and you can’t see yourself leaving bed for a meal.

If you had small little preferences or had a strict routine in place, he would be sure to memorize these. Prefer a small spoon or smooth fork? Can only drink out of particular cups? He’ll be sure to have those ready for you. If something was apart of your morning routine, he’d help make sure nothing threw it off. If he was buying you clothes, he’d make sure it was a fabric you liked and would cut out any tags if there was any. Considering I HC his love language as acts of service, I think he’d quite enjoy doing these things for you.

“Is this okay?” “is that too loud?” He’d ask in most situations. Knowing that sometimes it’s hard to voice those opinions. If you both were somewhere and someone was making unneeded noise he’d immediately ask them to quiet it down.

If your social battery dies or you can feel a meltdown coming, it only takes one look and Severus will be there at your side to get you out of a situation and help you feel safe.

If you aren’t a fan of physical touch, that’s fine. He’s happy to be there for when you need him.

He would always be very specific about what he meant when speaking so there’s no confusion or misinterpretation of his words/feelings. Expect reassurance from him too that he understood what you were trying to convey and there’s no need to repeat or reword it.

No need to force eye contact, he would tell you it’s not necessary if you’re not comfortable with it.

In terms of less wizarding world stuff, here’s things that bring me comfort to think about / imagine. This part is hella self indulgent I’m sorry

Sev becoming obsessed with your fidget toys and even getting a few of his own. He loves a good tangle and the small dimple pops. They stop him from picking at his nails.

You wearing your noise cancelling headphones around him for the first time and being hella nervous about it and you’re like “is this ok?” And he’s like “why wouldn’t it be?” 😩

Him loving said headphones and getting himself a pair. You catch him wearing them while he’s in his office, working on some potions or grading papers.

Feeling comfortable enough to unmask in front of him.

When doing your vocal stims he doesn’t look at you weird.

Snuggling with him under a weighted blanket

Finally, just him being there for you on those days where you have a breakdown and keep asking “what’s wrong with me?” after a particularly bad meltdown bc of overstimulation or a disruption to your routine or something else, and he’s just there whispering how there’s nothing wrong with you, and you’re perfect just the way you are.

721 notes · View notes